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firendgold · 1 year ago

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If you’re doing the violence ask game, can you do 9, 13 , and 19?

oooh, yes. I am indeed. Let's not delay. My friend the read-more is here to help.

choose violence ask game

9. worst part of canon

This is a very 2007 era, "I just finished Deathly Hallows" opinion, but even after all this time, I think the epilogue really is the worst part of canon. Not just because I personally dislike the canon ships, but because JKR (hereafter referred to as That Woman) had the opportunity to do some more "show not tell" for Life After Voldemort, to flesh out what the characters' priorities would be after defeating the figurehead of Wizarding Britain's prejudice and a few of his public cronies, and she just... didn't.

I probably could have stomached the canon ships if more attention was paid in the epilogue to the reforms that were made or being made to society, the ones that have only passing mentions in Pottermore or post-book interviews—the reformation of Azkaban/removal of dementors, actually seeing Harry as an Auror/Department Head (perhaps chasing down some minor league foe?), or any sort of follow up on the themes That Woman set up in the series. In DH alone we have heroes falling from pedestals, the gritty realities of war for the average people, hostile takeover of an already corrupt government, falsely torturing and imprisoning innocent people, the fallout of being betrayed by peers and/or superiors you trust, more kids becoming orphans... I could go on. There's many, many issues for the war's survivors to tackle once the dust has settled.

But we don't get that. Instead we get "here, look, the main characters got married and had kids! even Teddy is dating someone! you remember Teddy right? last time you saw him he was a baby, and now he's all grown up with a Weasley girlfriend! love love love! kiddos off to Hogwarts again! isn't that charming?" Eh... not really. I, uh, wanted to know if society has improved at all...?

I definitely get the appeal of having the "back to normal" feeling of Kids Boarding the Train at the Platform, I do... it just wasn't what I expected for the end of Harry Potter. In my not-so-humble opinion, "and then they got married and had kids" is boring in literature of any kind. It's just so boring. And it's worse for a world of magic where the characters could be doing anything else.

13. worst blorboficiation

I'm becoming such an old I had to look this up to make sure I knew what it meant before giving my opinion. :')

Am I allowed to say more than one person? This is me choosing violence, so I'm going to list off all the HP ones that came to my mind once I knew the definition.

Remus Lupin. Holy shit, bro. This fandom has ruined this character. I get that people like him. (I like him too!) I get that he's very hard to pin down because he's one of the more mysterious people, but (until recently) I've never seen a character who's pretty neutral in canon get so positively inflated by the fandom. And it's literally just because of wolfstar. Sirius gets inflated too (more on that in a sec), but Remus gets inflated just because long ago fans decided that the two of them were obviously together and, by extension, would be perfect, flawless co-dads for Harry. You could argue that Remus doesn't really show much romantic feeling towards Tonks until DH, but you'd also have to argue that he doesn't show much romantic feeling (or feelings at all, besides grief and nostalgia) for anyone.

But like... I'm not a total Debbie Downer. I get the appeal of wolfstar alone and wolfstar dads, really, but they're hard to completely buy into (especially when the latter usually turns into a Dumbledore bashfest). Sometimes fans act like their ideal of who Remus is and what he is to Harry, Sirius, and other characters is canon when it's not. Preferable to canon, maybe, but not source material at all. The wolfstar-partner-raising-Harry!Remus is nowhere close to the real Remus. The real Remus:

is unaccounted for for the first 10 years of Harry's time at the Dursleys, and for his first and second year, with no retroactive explanation given

doesn't contact Harry after year 3, and indeed isn't even seen or mentioned again until year 5

is only briefly around Harry in year 6 (you know, the year right after Sirius dies)

consents to starting a family and then almost immediately tries to leave that family behind once he finally gets bit by the "oh, maybe now I should try being Harry's surrogate parent" bug, then doesn't understand why that pisses Harry off

So. Yeah. You teach a kid the Patronus charm one time and suddenly you're the man who can Do No Wrong in 99.3% of all fanon material. It's irritating. Ships and/or found family stuff could wrangle with the man Remus is, they just choose not to in favor of recycling old fanon archetypes.

Sirius Black. Much of the same said above about Remus applies to Sirius tenfold. Sirius cares about Harry, sure, but lots of fans like to sand over the part where Sirius made one little protest about Harry going to the Dursleys, then fully committed to going after Pettigrew in 1981 without telling anyone about the Secret-Keeper switch, or anything that would have kept him out of jail even in our aforementioned corrupt wizarding society. In their minds, that evil meanie Dumbledore forced him to not whisk Harry away to Black Manor or whatever to raise him. *eyeroll*

Sirius is a character who is developmentally delayed in canon, but some of his fans downright infantilize him. Poor Sirius, he just wanted to be a baby gay and raise Harry but the Ministry/Dumbledore/That Woman just wouldn't let him. (You can argue the last one, but it is SO RARE to find a fanfic where Sirius has to grow the fuck up and face the consequences of his early choices, while also actually taking steps to be better and be a good surrogate dad for Harry.) Just because Sirius is Harry's godfather doesn't mean he's a perfect one. And he's not dealing with a typical kid either. Sirius and Harry wouldn't easily or neatly slot into typical familial roles because they've both Been Through Some Shit—and that's why their relationship is so compelling.

And I haven't even gone into the other side of fanon!Sirius, the one who's this devil-may-care man who Got All The Ladies in his time, is mostly physically and mentally unaffected by his Azkaban stint, and is only around to: support Harry in whatever independent!Harry schemes he has going on (screw Dumbledore! run away from the war somehow! become a Cool Dude! fight the power!), blather on about Lordships and fanon shit the real Sirius wouldn't give one toss about, or to give him girl advice on whatever girl (or harem) Harry is being shipped with in that particular fic. The only reason this version of Sirius isn't an obvious homophobic backlash to the "Sirius is gay" version is because I'm pretty sure this version came first chronologically in fandom. I'm actually not sure which version of Sirius is more annoying to me.

last but not least, we have:

Daphne Greengrass. Technically I shouldn't be able to put her here, because she doesn't even HAVE a canon personality. Everything about her besides her name, her House, and her sister('s relationship to Draco) is completely made up. But fanon has come to a Consensus on her, and this consensus is THE MOST annoying made-up persona in a fandom where we also have "he's just misunderstood/traumatized by the Muggle wars/going about things the wrong way!" Tom Riddle/Voldemort, "he was just being mean to Harry for his cover/Harry deserved it" Severus Snape, "brightest witch of her age And No Other Personality Traits" Hermione Granger, "he WAS going to change sides, really!" Draco Malfoy, and "purebloods wanting to gatekeep magical society and call uppity muggleborns slurs is fine actually" fanon discourse, among other irritants. Maybe it was intriguing the first time I read it. Now, it's not.

Every single time I see "politically-neutral blonde/black-haired ice queen who teaches Harry about Noble Houses/convinces him that Not All Slytherins/gets him on the Right Political Path For His Future" I want to throw up in my mouth. It's so fucking boring. It's not what Harry Potter is about to me, it's not what it should be about, and it's not even what I look for in other media. (I think the Sword of Truth series is the only series I read where there's actual politics that I care about, and it's still high fantasy!) So much Daphne and Haphne fandom content just feels like a bunch of people missed the point of the series, which is that pretentious family nonsense is just that and pureblood tradition shit doesn't matter. And Daphne's "backstory" is not even logical. Neutral factions? "Gray" factions? Do you really think that 1970s era Voldemort, at the top of his game, would have been okay with a supposedly prominent and influential pureblood family sitting out the war in the way the Greengrasses are often written? Like, actually saying "no thanks, our clan has always been capital-N Neutral" to him? No. Fuck no. He would have murdered them all and skipped away, leaving them to be found by other "fence-sitting" purebloods as an example. Yes, there are people who are neutral in wars, but not in the HP universe when Voldemort asks you directly. And the fanon Greengrasses would have been asked directly to get that skull tattoo.

I've even been bamboozled in the past into reading Haphnes that I think are going to be different but then start treading down this same stupid road, like the comments are getting to them or something. (And readers, why the fuck would you want to read the exact same fanfic 1,000 times but written by 1,000 different people? Hello??)

It's gotten to the point where it's actually refreshing if Daphne shows up in a fic and isn't shipped with Harry, or if she is but she has a completely different personality than the above. I'm reading a few Haphnes now that I can stomach because they are different or the plot is interesting enough for me to ignore the tropes, but it's been a long time since an HP fanon "collective character headcanon" or ship other than wolfstar has left such a bad taste in my mouth or caused me to actively avoid content with that character.

...oop. I know I said "last but not least" above but I forgot to mention Regulus Black so I'll briefly do so here. I don't know what happened in the last five-ish years but this man went from "devoted Voldemort follower who did one decent thing because he liked his slave, thank goodness, even though he slowed down the locket's destruction by taking it away" to "OMG my BLORBO he was fighting the GOOD FIGHT and also he's probably in love with James Potter!! and Lily is evil for keeping them apart!!" Huh?? Fanon's gonna fanon, but is one fanfic really responsible for all this? Jegulus and "secret freedom fighter Regulus" are just beyond my comprehension I guess. Mostly because it seems like fandom picks and chooses when they want a character to be evil-aligned-but-complex, and when they want to just sand over their rough edges and make them an Unsung Hero Who Did Nothing Wrong Ever. And also because I firmly believe that if James was gay, he'd have been with Sirius.

19. you're mad/ashamed/horrified you actually kind of like...

Teacher/student ships. (I mean, of course. I'm running this blog.) Of course IRL I don't condone that at all, but some of the most fascinating pairs in the HP universe are bonds between some of the professors and some of their students. Albus and Harry speak for themselves. But you've also got Minerva and Hermione to a lesser extent, and Snape with Draco in the early years (not so much later). And even those are nothing compared to the most interesting partnerships, which imo are between adults who at one point weren't both adults. Consider Albus and Minerva, who have been teaching, working and living together for at least five decades, before which Minerva was probably one of Albus' better Transfiguration students. Consider Albus and Snape, with Snape being the person who so recently graduated from being one of Albus' pupils to being one of his closest confidants. Consider Horace Slughorn and... well, Tom Riddle was my first choice, but really him with any student, because imo that man is very weird about networking with children. Hell, consider Albus and Tom because you know that was the most awkward seven years either of them has ever had, both being so powerful and skilled while intensely disliking each other. They're all so good. Playing with power dynamics can be fun. Especially when (and this is the only time I want politics in my HP fics!!) the older party potentially faces consequences, or doesn't, for taking advantage of the younger one, precisely because of who's involved and who's on the Hogwarts Board of Governors and what war's going on right now in the background and...

I think that's all the violence I can dish out for these questions! Thanks for the ask.~

#fireandgoldposts #thanks for the ask!#choose violence ask game #Harry Potter #not tumblr trying to fuck up where my readmore line goes every time I save this draft #please change it back @ staff. literally find me who asked for this redesign #Sirius Black #Remus Lupin #Daphne Greengrass #Albus Dumbledore #Minerva McGonagall #Tom Riddle #Horace Slughorn #Regulus Black #I think that's everyone #if not I'm tired and it's been 2 hours so I'm going to slap this up there #not fireandgold

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