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[spireasalix]

@hollowed-theory-hall always speaking with facts.

I loved the Marauders as a teenager, but as I got older, I realized they weren't as cool as they seemed. In fact, I like Sirius and Remus better as adults, even though they're not my favorite characters.

Hello! I've been loving reading your metas (especially about Hinny, since I could never quite articulate why I thought they didn't work) and I was wondering: what do you think of the Mauraders friendship? To me it seems a bit baffling, but that could just be JKR's poor grasp of timelines and details.

But it seems that the Mauraders are a close friend group (like, you don't make the map and spend 3 years working on an illegal and potentially fatal Animagus transfiguration on a lark) that as soon as they graduate and join the Order they seem to fall apart. Which I can buy, given the high stress low trust environment they're in, but it seems weird that only Sirius and Remus suspect each other, and I don't think we know why? I could also be forgetting something.

Thank you! 💖

I talked about the Mauraders as individuals a bit here, but their friendship is not as close-knit and happy as the fandom likes to think. I think their dynamic was always more complicated than that.

Like, what you have is James & Sirius who practically fell into friendship at first sight, and have always been the closest in the Marauders group. Remus and Peter were a little bit afterthought. I mean, in SMH, James and Sirius respect each other:

“If it bothers you,” he said, stuffing the Snitch back in his pocket. Harry had the distinct impression that Sirius was the only one for whom James would have stopped showing off.

[...]

“Well, I thought that paper was a piece of cake,” he heard Sirius say. “I’ll be surprised if I don’t get Outstanding on it at least.” “Me too,” said James.

But clearly, don't share that same respect for Remus, whose lycanthropy isn't taken seriously:

“Did you like question ten, Moony?” asked Sirius as they emerged into the entrance hall. “Loved it,” said Lupin briskly. “ ‘Give five signs that identify the werewolf.’ Excellent question.” “D’you think you managed to get all the signs?” said James in tones of mock concern. “Think I did,” said Lupin seriously

[...]

“I’m bored,” said Sirius. “Wish it was full moon.” “You might,” said Lupin darkly from behind his book.

Or Peter who is always the butt of the joke:

Wormtail was the only one who didn’t laugh. “I got the snout shape, the pupils of the eyes, and the tufted tail,” he said anxiously, “but I couldn’t think what else —” “How thick are you, Wormtail?” said James impatiently. “You run round with a werewolf once a month —” “Keep your voice down,” implored Lupin.

[...]

“Put that away, will you?” said Sirius finally, as James made a fine catch and Wormtail let out a cheer. “Before Wormtail wets himself from excitement.” Wormtail turned slightly pink but James grinned.

There is a reason in PoA everyone mentions James and Sirius in the same breath, but they don't mention Remus. There is a reason James and Sirius were: "you didn't see one without the other" and the other Marauders weren't brought up. They weren't as close.

Like, I know from what I've seen in my high school that teenagers' friendships can be really weird and not necessarily good friendships (adult friendships can be like that too, I just think it's easier to fall into in a school-like environment where you are together most of the day — especially in a boarding school, I mean, they shared a dormitory, hey were together 24/7 for 7 years, they kinda had to be friendly with each other). The Mauraders have an unequal dynamic; they aren't the picture of a perfect friend group.

Sirius and James lived together (with Lily) after graduating, but Remus and Peter didn't. It all follows the same pattern.

This friend group was built around James and his charisma. Sirius is probably more alright with Dark Magic than James was ("The world isn't divided into good people and Deat Eaters"), but I'd go on a limb and say he never told James that because just like Remus and Peter he was desperate to be liked by James (I think he saw James liking him as a sign of his goodness and not being like his family). The difference is, James saw Sirius as an equal and respected him in a way he didn't Remus and Peter. He liked them, he liked their attention, but I don't think he saw them as equals to himself and Sirius.

Sirius clearly didn't see Peter and Remus as the same as James. He is the one making fun of Peter more than the others. I think he didn't think Peter would betray them because he looks down on him. He thought Peter worships James too much to betray him (a little projection of his own sense of loyalty as well) — and he was wrong.

The friendship fell apart becouse it was built on sharing a dorm room and being silly together, not on real respect and connection (at least in the case of Remus and Peter. Peter liked being part of the group, Remus was glad to have friends at all, Sirius wanted to be everything his family wasn't, and James was just being himself and had fun). When I read Sirius and Remus' interactions in PoA and later, they always gave me a weird vibe. Like they are both desperate for a sense of normalcy and connection that they remembered from school, but are both completely different people than they were back then, and even then, they weren't as close as either of them was to James. They are both trying to replace James with the other. (If only more Wolfstar fics portrayed them like that and like they weren't that close in school, I might've been more into it)

To illustrate, I always saw their dynamic when at school as something like this:

James also suspected Remus, Remus never doubted Sirius was to blame when he was sent to Azkaban because this entire friend group was around James. And it was also a mess. So, it just makes sense. Sirius never really respected Remus as much as James and Remus knew that.

TL;DR, the Mauraders weren't that close-knit of a friend group as the Mauraders fandom likes to believe.

[spireasalix]

Another day of harry simping over his dearest enemy

[spireasalix]

Cambia, todo cambia

🌟 Novedades

Hemos mejorado el diseño de las cabeceras y los menús inferiores en la aplicación para iOS. En la versión web, solo hemos hecho cambios en las primeras, por el momento, pero muy pronto aplicaremos el resto. Y no nos olvidamos de Android: seguimos trabajando en ello. ¡Todo llegará!

Con el objetivo de reducir la deuda técnica, hemos tenido que tomar una decisión difícil: eliminar la función de envío rápido de las publicaciones a la cola. Sabemos que era una opción muy valorada entre las pocas personas que la usaban de forma activa, pero por desgracia se trataba de un grupo demasiado pequeño como para justificar el esfuerzo que suponía mantenerla en desarrollo. Para que no haya lugar a dudas, el sistema de publicaciones en cola sigue existiendo y funcionando sin problemas; este cambio solo afecta a la función que permitía enviar contenido rápidamente a este apartado.

Hemos rediseñado los filtros de la columna de actividad en Patio para que estés siempre al día de las novedades que más te interesan.

🛠 Mejoras y solución de problemas

Hemos arreglado un fallo que impedía a algunas personas indicar que un contenido no les interesaba desde el menú de opciones que se abre al pulsar el icono de los tres puntos.

Hemos resuelto un error que evitaba que la gente pudiera unirse a las comunidades mediante los enlaces de invitación.

El fondo de las columnas de actividad en Patio no se mostraba correctamente, pero ya está solucionado.

🚧 En curso

Sin incidentes en el horizonte.

🌱 Próximamente

¡No tenemos ningún lanzamiento pendiente que anunciar!

¿Tienes algún problema? Consulta los errores conocidos de Tumblr y, si has detectado alguno nuevo, envía una solicitud al equipo de asistencia: se pondrán en contacto contigo lo antes posible.

¿Quieres hacernos llegar tus comentarios o impresiones sobre alguna función? Echa un vistazo a nuestro flamante blog Work in Progress y empieza a compartir tus ideas y sugerencias con la comunidad.

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¡Y no olvides que puedes consultar todos estos cambios en cualquiera de los idiomas disponibles en Tumblr en los blogs oficiales de los equipos internacionales!

[spireasalix]

Grab Your Tickets! LCDrarry starts posting soon 🍿🎞📽

What are we even talking about, you ask?

LCDrarry is a fun Drarry fest where all creations are inspired by movies, TV shows or theatre plays ... as well as audiobooks, audiodramas or podcasts. The LCDrarry works will post anonymously all through the Month of May, and the creators will be revealed on 1 June 2025 on tumblr and AO3 in our LCDrarry 2025 collection

So follow us 💚🥰 and please share far and wide, so that everyone can enjoy all the Drarry goodness this cinema season 🥰🌈🍿🎬

Your LCDrarry Mods Tami & Suzi @celilasart & @erin-riwen

[spireasalix]

To all my writers who have a tough time with smut terms and not knowing which ones to use, I have found the holy grail for us.

This reddit user took a poll of 3,500 people and went really in depth with asking their favorite terminology, along with actual pie charts on what the readers preferred to see in their smut.

Here's the direct link to the Google doc with all the info!

[spireasalix]

Also come find me on bluesky here!

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the kiddos!

[spireasalix]

Isn't it a bit funny that we know about the history of Salazar Slytherin more than we know about the history of Godric Gryffindor, the founder of the house that our beloved hero is sorted in? We don't even know if Godric had children or descendants, unlike the other founders of Hogwarts. I'd seriously love to know more about Godric. But Salazar's history and legacy really did fill the audience in more than any other history of the other founders.

Like, what we know about Salazar Slytherin is also questionable. Like, the Founders lived around the 990s, a thousand years before the books. If you ever read early medieval history you know there are a lot of unknowns in the information we have. Ancient authors that wrote histories in which they made shit up, heavily biased information, family genologies where people claim to be descendant of important figures to strengthen their claims even though that connection probably isn't real, people writing thri-hand accounts as if they've been to the even themselves. Historical writing from long enough ago can be a mess (not to mention the lack of standardized spelling and words with meanings lost to time that cannot be translated).

That being said, history in the Wizarding World is weird. We have Helena Ravenclaw and the Bloody Baron at Hogwarts, two people who knew the Founders, who probably spoke Old English (which begs the question of ghosts learning new languages). There might be portraits left behind from these times, which allow a mostly accurate (if filtered through personal bias) view of history. Many of the above problems I mentioned will still exist since you're basing your information on word of mouth and not archeological evidence, but it's way better and more extensive word of mouth than what we muggles can get our hands on.

I know you asked more about the narrative and the fact that the narrative doesn't go much into the founders (especially ones that aren't Slytherin), but I think this question of why JKR wrote one thing over another isn't as interesting as how historical research works in the WW. Since I personally prefer to do Watsonian analysis over Doylist.

Becouse, for JKR, it was probably that the other founders weren't as important to the plot, or not as interesting. Which is a legit reason not to mention them. And, honestly, this is a hole in the world-building I don't mind. It doesn't disrupt the narrative and allows space for headcanons and fanon. Which is good for me. I don't mind when a story leaves some space for the reader to fill in blanks, especially when it's background details like this, which aren't actually all that important. And it's good for stories to leave out some stuff to the readers' imagination — that's part of the fun.

My best guess is that Gryffindor's name died out pretty early like Ravenclaw, who doesn't seem to have any heirs since Helena died. The Smith family are descendants of Hufflepuff. The Gaunts are descendants of Slytherin, but we don't really know about him much more than any of the other founders. Like, we don't even know if the purpose of the Chamber was really to kill muggleborns or if it's an intention that was attributed to him post mortem.

We know in the early Middle Ages the sentiment regarding muggles wasn't as negative as we see later on (after all, witch hunts wasn't a medieval problem, it's an early modern problem):

Shrewd enough to see that their Muggle neighbours would seek to exploit their powers if they knew their full extent, witches and wizards kept themselves to themselves long before the International Statute of Wizarding Secrecy came into effect.

(QTtA)

Early medieval wizards and witches worried over muggles requesting magic from them and exploiting their good nature, not that they would be hunted down. That concern only appeared later in the Renaissance (which is when Beedle the Bard lived, btw). So there is some doubt regarding Slytherins' personal opinions about Muggles, muggleborns, and dark magic (since "Dark Magic" as a term is kinda weird. It's a legal term more than a magical one and most spells that the ministry considers "Dark" aren't so (creating Infri and Horcruxes is dark magic, but a jelli-legs jinx is not actually dark, come on). I mean, the Unforgivables only became such in 1717, so clearly, before then, public opinion was different about them and other curses).

But back to the more interesting question of how historians in the WW work. Like, do they question ghosts? Do they have archaeologists? How do they know what happened in the past? Binns isn't a thousand years old; he lived at least 500 years after the founders, so what is his source for everything about the Chamber?

Well, for this, Quidditch Through the Ages comes in clutch. The book includes an extensive section of the history of Quidditch and explains that wizard historians actually don't work that differently from muggle historians. And that their methods to find out history don't actually involve as many ghost interviews as I would've expected.

Records show that witches and wizards in Europe were using flying broomsticks as early as A.D. 962. A German illuminated manuscript of this period shows three warlocks dismounting from their brooms with looks of exquisite discomfort on their faces. Guthrie Lochrin, a Scottish wizard writing in 1107, spoke of the “splinterfilled buttocks and bulging piles” he suffered after a short broom ride from Montrose to Arbroath. A medieval broomstick on display in the Museum of Quidditch in London gives us an insight into Lochrin’s discomfort (see Fig. A).

(QTtA)

Early wizarding writings and paintings give us some idea of the games our ancestors played. Some of these no longer exist; others have survived or evolved into the sports we know today.

(QTtA)

The famous painting Günther der Gewalttätige ist der Gewinner (“Gunther the Violent Is the Winner”), dated 1105, shows the ancient German game of Stichstock.

(QTtA)

Scotland was the birthplace of what is probably the most dangerous of all broom games – Creaothceann. The game features in a tragic Gaelic poem of the eleventh century, the first verse of which says, in translation

(QTtA)

We owe our knowledge of the rude beginnings of Quidditch to the writings of the witch Gertie Keddle, who lived on the edge of Queerditch Marsh in the eleventh century. Fortunately for us, she kept a diary, now in the Museum of Quidditch in London. The excerpts below have been translated from the badly spelled Saxon of the original. [...] It is immensely interesting that there was a “big Scottish warlock” present. Could he have been a Creaothceann player? Was it his idea to bewitch heavy rocks to zoom dangerously around the pitch, inspired by the boulders used in his native game?

(QTtA)

We find no further mention of the sport played on Queerditch Marsh until a century later, when the wizard Goodwin Kneen took up his quill to write to his Norwegian cousin Olaf.

(QTtA)

These are some examples from the book and the methods for historical research are pretty much the same as we have. It's based on diaries, writing, paintings, and archeological evidence (the medieval broom). No one is asking ghosts who lived back then how Quidditch was played. No one is talking to magical portraits. They rely on physical or written evidence and speculation based on logic, just like we Muggles do.

I mean, magical portraits might have only been invented later, but it doesn't explain why ghosts aren't asked. I mean, Helena and the Bloody Baron were alive in the 10th century. They would be familiar with some of this history; they would know about 10th-century brooms, so how come no one asks ghosts? For that matter, why did no one ask Helena about the whereabouts of Ravenclaw's diadem until Tom Riddle in the 1940s?

And all these questions led me to two new headcanons/theories:

1. Magical portraits were invented in the 1400s or later. The fact that paintings from the early Middle Ages and into the 1100s are referred to as "paintings" and not "portraits" and implied to be non-speaking, suggests the talking portraits we see are a newer magical invention, and therefore history before the early modern period cannot be learned from portraits.

2. Ghosts are considered "unreliable" sources of history. My guess is that most ghosts are more like Binns than they are like Nearly Headless Nick. Binns doesn't know which class he is talking to, what the students' names are, and what year it is. He is stuck in his own unexistence. If most ghosts behave this way, it could explain why it's a frowned-upon practice among magical historians to use their accounts as evidence.

But if that's the case, it's even more bizarre that Binns is teaching history. But then again, teaching history isn't the point of these lessons, and he's been at his post so long, all the parents have been taught by him. Not to mention he isn't teaching his own experience, but that from books, so his own biases/memory issues that are the problem with getting history from ghosts are irrelevant. There would only be a few magical historians (like Bathilda Bagshot) who might object to his position, but most of the wizarding population probably doesn't care.

These are just some thoughts I had regarding how history is written in the WW, and how, therefore, all the in-world history we know is inherently flawed since it is based on surviving written/oral accounts and physical evidence. They clearly don't have any magical method to learn more about their history, and for some reason, no one is asking the ghosts. But this all is great, since it means their history can be taken with a grain of salt the way I usually treat their in-world history.

[spireasalix]

WIP

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The original OTP #ronmione #MFEO #ronweasley #hermionegranger #harrypotter

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Luckily for Draco, Harry is a moronsexual

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A quick sketch from last night

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Palette #1 ⚡️ Drawing Drarry

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slytherin harry and quidditch

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Ten years since we got one of the best soundtracks ever.