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euphemia and fleamont wouldntve let sirius rot in prison for twelve years btw

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THE MOTHER & THE CRONE - Narcissa and Bellatrix

HP, HBP / HP, DH / An Oresteia - Anne Carson

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I've really moved on from this conversation, but it is common knowledge that colonised people do not always have their native names because of colonisation.

You don't have to be a historian to know this.

This is a current political reality affecting the lives of millions.

It is incredibly worrying to me that I have to tell you this.

This is common knowledge, and you have been wilfully ignorant if you're unaware.

Your friend didn't ask a question. He asked how the fuck he could work with a black character with that surname and that he had to make her mixed-race because of it.

He wasn't spoken to like a sod. He was told that was an ignorant thing to say and to use some critical thought.

I did, in fact, explain it. For all the good that did.

I can't believe I have to say this but, for anyone else reading this: it's okay to tell people they are ignorant of ongoing global history. especially when that ignorance is harmful to colonised peoples.

I'm genuinely curious why as a fandom we decided that Mary is black.

Her surname is McDonald, how tf can I work with a black character named MCDONALD???

Now I have to make her mixed and not fully Ethiopian, and all of this is because of whoever though it's a smart move.

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I was rereading poa and got carried away

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97th wip plan

Has anyone published a gay AU of the great gatsby yet since it’s in the public domain now

Did anyone do that

Do you recommend it

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List of Interesting Latin Phrases

A list I made just to satisfy my vain cravings for resonating mottos for a secret society I'm working on. Enjoy!

abi in malam crucem: to the devil with you!

ad astra per ardua: to the star by steep paths

ad augusta per angusta: to honors through difficulties

aegis fortissima virtus: virue is the strongest shield

amor vincit amnia: love conquers all things

animo et fide: by courage and faith

arbitrium est judicium: an award is a judgement

aut mors aut victoria: either death or victory

aut vincere aut mori: either victory or death

bello ac pace paratus: prepared in war and peace

bibamus, moriendum est: let us drink, death is certain (Seneca and Elder)

bonis omnia bona: all things are good to the good

cede nullis: yield to no one

cito maturum, cito putridum: soon ripe, soon rotten

consensus facit legem: consent makes law

data fata secutus: following what is decreed by fate (Virgil)

durum telum necessitas: necessity is a hrad weapson

dux vitae ratio: reason is the guide of life

e fungis nati homines: men born of mushrooms

ego sum, ergo omnia sunt: I am, therefore all things are

pulvis et umbra sumus: we are but dust and shadow

quae amissa salva: things lost are safe

timor mortis morte pejor: the fear of death is worse than death

triumpho morte tam vita: I triumph in death as in life

tu vincula frange: break your chains

vel prece vel pretio: for either love or for money

verbera, sed audi: whip me, but hear me

veritas temporis filia: truth is the daughter of time

vero nihil verius: nothing is truer than the truth

vestigia nulla restrorsum: foosteps do not go backward

victus vincimus: conquered, we conquer (Plautus)

sica inimicis: a gger to his enemies

sic vita humana: thus is human life

─── ･ ｡ﾟ☆: *.☽ .* . ───

💎If you like my blog, buy me a coffee☕ and find me on instagram! Also, join my Tumblr writing community for some more fun.

💎Before you ask, check out my masterpost part 1 and part 2 

Reference: <Latin for the Illiterati: a modern guide to an ancient language> by Jon R. Stone, second edition, 2009

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just realized i never posted these harry doodles from twitter!! little harry and his froggy raincoat <3

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There was no shaming involved. Just an explanation you could've come to if you thought (or hell even googled) for a millisecond before you posted.

Colonial history isn’t European history. It is global history. There is no country on this earth that hasn't been affected by it in a major way. It is your history.

You were the one who went out of your way to ask how tf you could possibly work with a Black character who had a Scottish surname. We are telling you that (a) this is in no way uncommon and (b) in the marauders era specifically (since that's the context in which this fanon came about!!) it was even more common than it is now as most Black Brits were of Carribean descent during the 1970s and (c) you don't even need to know the particulars because this remains true of colonised people around the world to this day??? wherever you are??? this is common knowledge I fear!!!

Its not the fanfic we have issue with. You're welcome to write Mary any way you wish. Trust and believe, nobody cares.

It's your argument that it doesn't make sense for her to be a certain race because she has a Scottish surname that was astoundingly ignorant.

People of Non-european races still having European surnames remains one of the most basic lingering effects of colonisation around the WORLD. You don't need to be European to figure this one out.

In fact, you're probably even more likely to know this if you're not!!!

You don't even need to know much about the deeper issues of colonialism. This is fairly surface level. Plenty of twelve year olds know this.

Hence why I asked you to think critically. For just for a moment.

I'm genuinely curious why as a fandom we decided that Mary is black.

Her surname is McDonald, how tf can I work with a black character named MCDONALD???

Now I have to make her mixed and not fully Ethiopian, and all of this is because of whoever though it's a smart move.

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I enjoy the Two Cakes Philosophy and I believe it deserves its place enshrined in fandom culture.

Forgive me for the extended metaphor but I also want to simultaneously celebrate what I’m calling Bakery Display Case Philosophy. You know when you walk into a bakery and the display case is full of beautiful treats? And there’s a variety of different colors, textures, and flavors to discover? And that’s so deeply exciting?

You might say to yourself, “No one is going to want to read this pairing. No one is going to want to want a character study of that character. No one wants genfic in this fandom, only shipfic.”

And you might use that to discourage yourself from writing a certain fic.

Fandoms, like bakeries, need cakes and cookies and éclairs and cream puffs and shortbread and brownies and pies and tarts and petit fours and turnovers and cinnamon rolls and madeleines and meringues—and so many other things—to survive.

Write your dark chocolate pistachio croissant fic. Your fandom needs it actually.

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cant believe jkr created a prison that forces you to relive all of your worst memories, put a fairly major character in that prison for twelve years without a trial, and then just... didnt make it a commentary on the justice system OR the prison system. just like "lol thats a quirky thing that happened just for plot reasons, no bearing on reality tho"

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this is incredible. I love all the little details so much.

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If we had met James Potter as a bully first and then learned how many thought he was fantastic later in life and how much he changed, and how even when he was this bully he became animagi (illegally) for his friend, he’d be far more popular with those who hate him. He would have been the bad boy turned hero. The man worth waiting for. The man that would be allowed to whisk Lily off her feet and marry her.

But we meet him as the hero first and his childhood behaviour becomes his fall from grace. Quite frankly, it’s a very interesting thing to learn when thinking about how to build or remove sympathy for a character.

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Bed one bed two

Art by Elsv (Twitter)

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hopping on to this meta because the idea of James having his canon personality in part because of his POC (and I personally HC second generation immigrant) identity as opposed to in spite of it is always going to be really interesting to me.

it is not uncommon for immigrant parents, who've experienced overt racism themselves to talk their kids and tell them some form of "you are better than them, but they are going to tell you otherwise" (the 'they' in james' case here is white english people).

now this talk doesn't come from a place of arrogance or pride. it is a talisman of sorts immigrant parents give to their kids so that when their child inevitably comes up against the same racism that they know so well, their kids don't think much of it. so that it will run like water off a duck's back. it is an overly simplistic way of explaining to children, too young to understand the complexity of racism or xenophobia, why they might get treated differently.

can this morph into a form of overcompensation? yes. can there be problems with this kind of thinking further down the line? oh, absolutely.

but if we are imagining an effie and flea who lived through the utter hell that was british imperialism in India and then came to live in the UK? they wouldn't be loving parents if they didn't do this. they know, firsthand, that the UK would try to beat james down. they would have overcompensated massively in how they built him up.

(i'm already at the risk of overexplaining myself but for non-immigrant white people: one such example of this is the very notion of 'black girl magic'. we tell little black girls that their natural hair, their skin, their bodies, is supernatural in some way, 'magical' - not because we want them to grow up into little brats but because we want to get an affirming message into their heads, get them to love themselves before 'they' (white society) tells them that there is something undesirable about their black features).

but then the second part of this that really explains james is what we know about the potter's wealth. it's relatively new.

we can't speak for effie but we know flea at least did not grow up with the same amount of money as James. that wealth came from the Sleakeazys' potion he developed as an adult.

This means that effie and flea could have very well raised james to deal with the levels of discrimation they grew up in (think existing under 1930-40s british imperialism as well-connected but by no means wealthy people)* as opposed to the world that he grew up in (i.e the 1960s-70s UK which, though was by no means a metropolitan utopia but nowhere near as bad + he grew up with enough money to insulate him from experiencing the very worst of it + by the time he is eleven years old the basis of most discrimination he encounters is by blood-status and he is much closer to the top of that hierarchy.

tldr;; we know canon james was an only child, raised in love, in wealth and spoilt rotten. but if james is also indian, consider at least part of that being effie and flea raising him with the radical self-love to combat the levels of racism they faced but james, in the 1970s and as discrimination became more blood-based, did not.

give me an eleven-year-old indian james potter who has been built up, continuously been told he is better than other people but has also been insulated enough to never really be torn down. give me an eleven-year-old james potter whose binary view of the world does not stop at good or bad magic but extends to good and bad white people (a.k.a those who think he's god's gift to this earth and those who don't).

give me an eleven-year-old indian james potter who figures out lily evans isn't racist, but still for some reason doesn't like him.

give me an eleven-year-old indian james potter who has this revelation fundamentally FUCK with worldview.

how does writing james as south asian change his character?

i've seen a few people discussing this recently—how they don't like the hc because no one seems to account for how much this would change his character.

i agree! i write canon james as indian (usually hyderabadi but there's a few fics where i've changed that) but yea it can be difficult to reconcile him as the popular golden boy in 1970s GB with the racism of 1970s GB. not to say anything about the subconscious racism that often comes with this interpretation of his character.

we never really see james. we see him in snape's and voldemort's memories, and in harry's dementor-induced recollections, not in-person.

there are a few character traits we can pull out: arrogant, clever, athletic, loyal, brave, cruel, self-involved. when i think of james potter i try to imagine what an eton boy would be like if he actually took part in self-reflection. these traits connect to him being popular and talented in a way that makes severus jealous.

he's the masculine ideal. james naturally fit into the idea of a what a man "should be", with the exception of his race if you hc him as south asian. men do not have to be kind, they have to be powerful. his rivalry with someone in a lower class—and it should be noted that severus' main rival is james, not sirius—and his subsequent wins cement his class status.

so, severus and james' rivalry. if you take the canon white, half-blood, working class severus and a hc of south asian, pureblood, upper class james, you have tension between these three markers of status.

my impression of GB society is that class operates cross-generationally, in a way it follows genetics. social class in england (and a lot of parts of south asia) was seen as a marker of your inherent status and worth.

so severus is white, but he's got a muggle dad, he's working class, and he's far from the masculine ideal. james is south asian, pureblood and upper class while being the masculine ideal. their dynamic in this context could be seen as either trying to assert their status, though i think it's severus who is consciously doing this. james just sees most people as less than him and sirius.

severus may also be more jealous of james than sirius because he doesn't think james deserves his status, it should be severus who is raised beyond what his birth entitled him to! severus' ideology is blood supremacist, and though he hates sirius at least sirius acting like he's better than severus is par for the course. it's not as embarrassing as james potter's superiority complex.

but, how did james develop a superiority complex in a world that actively oppresses him? the same way me and my bestie did. meeting young, understanding each other, being naturally intelligent, and having no one else who really gets it. prongsfoot 5eva. james even has an advantage neither of us had, being the only child and being spoiled. open your minds. oppressed people can be arrogant assholes.*

but how did he get popular? this is a better question. honestly, i think charisma, money, and the "rebel" aspect of james made him intriguing to a lot of people.

when it comes to integrating the greater world politics of the period, i hc that due to the collaboration of some upper caste families in india during the colonial period (historical fact) there's a fair amount of south asian wizarding families that have middling status. this makes it easier for him to integrate into the hogwarts social sphere.

the social mores of muggleborns and half-bloods who interact with the muggle world would also be impacted by the multiple civil rights movements of the 60s and 70s. generally young people put on a rebellious, progressive veneer, so this melts into general hogwarts society.

all of this to say, i think james fits the social roles of a pureblood man with a "rebellious" edge that is appealing to young people, and if he is south asian part of that edge is because of his race. that's gross! it's realistic, imo. he doesn't deviate too far from acceptable until he joins the anti-fascist militia. i think most of us understand what it means to be the "acceptable other"

i don't think james being south asian weakens his role in the story as the perfect man. that role is deconstructed, and the contrast of james having more social power in the wizarding world and lily having more social power in the muggle world is interesting to me.

tbh, i've been hc james this way since i was a teenager and didn't think it out until the last few years. i really like the hc but i needed it to make sense to engage with the canon in a complex way.

*this is a joke. i understand that this is complicated and discrimination will always have an impact. i just also think a lot of you see oppressed ppl (esp. poc since this is such a white fandom**) as pure angels and it's weird. most of the ppl making the initial argument at the top of the post are NOT being weird about it

**i am a white american so take what you want from that

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"Harry described how the figures that had emerged from the wand had prowled the edges of the golden web, how Voldemort had seemed to fear them, how the shadow of Harry's father had told him what to do, how Cedric's had made its final request. At this point, harry found he could not continue." - Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire

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good godfather sirius black 🥲

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Lily Evans is only in Chapter 28 of OOTP for approximately two pages but in that time frame James Potter manages to say ‘Evans’ seven times because he is an Absolute Disaster at playing it cool