#and when people didn't call severus homophobe

[maxdibert]

yeah, people love to act like w0lfstar are some canon queer icons when in the actual canon Sirius had posters of bikini clad women on his walls and mocked his former classmate for being a crybaby (Snivellus) well into his adulthood, while Remus got a younger woman pregnant and then bolted in fear of the responsibility. none of which means they couldn't be gay or bi! but all of which points to neither of them being the soft uwu boys that fanon likes to dream them up as. all of these character traits are the things that make them even remotely interesting, and I'll never understand the impulse to remove them in order to make them more palatable or nicer. they were assholes too!

Wolfstar is a ship as old as the fandom itself, but its characterization of the characters used to be much more accurate. Back in the late 00s, there wasn’t this kind of twink Sirius who had been turned into a completely different character by stripping away all his essential traits, including the fact that he was always described in the books as the epitome of traditional masculinity: the tallest of them all (not just of the Marauders, but in general; he was taller than most of the characters, and Rowling constantly compares his height with others), the most violent, the most attractive, the one who made the girls sigh, the one with posters of women in bikinis in his room, the one who had A HUGE MOTORCYCLE, FOR GOD'S SAKE. I mean, Rowling really makes an effort to emphasize all these things at various points in the story—she likes to dwell on how handsome, masculine, and handsome, and once again, handsome, Sirius Black was. She repeats it like eighty times. In fact, she repeats it as often as she repeats that Severus is ugly, slouched, and looks like a shadow. Sirius and Severus are described in great detail, both ironically with completely different physiques and diametrically opposed appearances. With the other Marauders, you know certain things, but there isn’t the same emphasis as there is with Sirius. Rowling wants you to know that Sirius Black was incredibly handsome, super tall, a rebellious tough guy with a motorcycle, and that he had posters of naked women in his room. She wants you to know that he was a guy who performed his masculinity in a very heteronormative way. Could he have liked men? Sure, we won’t rule it out, anything is possible, but you can like men and still be a tough guy—those things aren’t mutually exclusive. And I don’t know if Sirius was straight, bisexual, or gay; that’s not something specified, but regardless of his sexual preferences, he was a tough guy. And Rowling stamps that fact into your brain all the time.

This was something that was respected in the old Wolfstar. They respected this Sirius Black, and they also respected that he had very problematic, violent attitudes and was a questionable person. They also tried to stay a bit more true to the Remus of canon, who had this pathological need for acceptance and was a bit cowardly, etc. There was an intention to keep the characters in character, and while Wolfstar has never made sense to me as a pairing because 1) if Sirius had an obsession with one of his friends or was emotionally attached to anyone, it was James, and 2) he always treated Remus like shit and didn’t even care that he might end up in prison for killing a fellow student, just as he was the first to distrust him during the war, and 3) Remus went on to live his life, married a young girl, got her pregnant, and almost abandoned her, showing us that he was the worst kind of hetero but also the best example of an insecure hetero guy, the truth is I didn’t mind that pairing because I always say that people can ship whatever they want and I always respect that.

But what they’ve done now with the characters... I mean, I don’t care who ships who; everyone can ship whoever they want with whoever they want. It’s a free world, and I’m really one of those people who thinks that as long as it doesn’t involve minors with old people, everything is fine. But, seriously, they’ve destroyed the characters, they’ve mutilated them. I don’t know who this person is that I sometimes read about in some posts, but it’s not Sirius Black, it’s not the Sirius Black from the books, and the Sirius Black from the books is a character with a lot of depth who could be very complex if treated properly. But instead of exploiting his essence, which is so inconsistent, full of cynicism, double standards, and pure hypocrisy, they’ve turned him into some kind of... I don’t know, a cheap character from a Netflix tabloid series that lasts five seasons with terrible plots just for the aesthetic. He seems like he’s come straight out of Elite, like, what a cringe.

Destroying Remus’s character also seems like a huge slap in the face to me. Hello? Is this really your queer icon? A man who, at 38, gets a 25-year-old girl pregnant and then runs off? Seriously, don’t you realize that you’re making the most heteroproblematic guy in the entire saga into a sort of symbol of the LGBTQ+ community? I just don’t get it. I mean, at least portray him for what he was, it doesn’t matter, it makes him more interesting.

I don’t know what the hell has happened to this fandom. I’ve never liked the Marauders, but their fandom was bearable years ago. People used to keep the personalities and traits of the characters. And the physical appearance too, because this new generation even invents that, turning Sirius into a gnome or something, I don’t know, lol. I really don’t know what the hell has happened in recent years, but that place is unbearable now—not only because it’s full of toxic people or because it glorifies abusive rich kids, or because most of them have a super classist background, but because they’ve destroyed characters that, while you might not like them, at least the reasons you didn’t like them were the same ones that allowed for interesting dynamics. Or to make interesting analyses. Or to read interesting metas. Now, it’s all reduced to seeing who fits more with a magical version of Sex Education, and it’s not only cringey but it also takes away all the charm of the characters.

[sevilynne]

No, literally! I had a similar experience with you as well. I talked about him with my friend group and (not) surprisingly, they were Wolfstar and Jegulus stans who red Crimson Rivers and ATYD. I had to defend myself when they called me a "Snivellus stan" and it's really embarrassing how these are 19 year olds who freshly just graduated from HS, say this.

This happened just three weeks ago and I'll say this, I'm very disappointed that people defend 4v1 and bullying. Fanfics tend to change Severus's whole personality into a pure-blood jerk who struts down the hallways and embarrassingly, is their "sunshine" James Potter.

I really wish that one day, even if they don't ship my ships, that they'll at least keep Severus's canon relationships with the Snape Gang and not turn them into Slytherin Skittles if they do not.

This is embarassing because once, I encountered a Jegulus and Wolfstar AO3 fanfic (approximately two to three years ago) where they (Marauders and Skytherin Skittles, who included the whole Severus's Gang) has planned the prank on Severus being he was apparently being homophobic to Regulus.

This is quite funny because Severus gives bi-coded with the Lily and Mulciber thing whereas Regulus is probably homophobic since the family traditions and it's the literal 70s. (Let's be real, they would be both homophobic but Severus wouldn't care if Lily was bisexual whereas Regulus would probably be disgusted if Evan opened up to him, lol.)

Back to the topic, I believe the girl in my friend group said with the lines of:

"At least Regulus didn't bully children!"

Hypocritical because, she literally has Minerva pictures all over her room.

Thank you for reading my small little rant about my stupid classmates who took Criminal Justice as a major. :D

people who like snape: I haven’t read the books but I love the films. snape is pretty cool I guess

people who love snape: here is my 5,000-word essay analysing snape’s childhood based on these three sentences from the books, and here is my 10,000-word dissertation on why snape smells like cinnamon based on fuck you that’s why he smells like cinnamon

people who hate snape: actually, if you read all the young dudes —

[maxdibert]

it's funny when people call Sev a homophobe because, well. he might have been! he was groomed to join the fascist death cult at 16-17, so who knows what he was like during his teenagehood? but you know who else was joining the fascist death cult at that age? barty crouch evan rosier and regulus black, LOL. and all of them were under wayyy less extenuating circumstances than Snape ever was. Sirius proves that if they had wanted to, they could have left it all behind - they didn't because they believed in the cause

Look, if Severus Snape was homophobic then his whole crew of rich, privileged kids—future Voldemort minions who kissed up to him and were dying to be his chosen ones— definitely were too. And I’ll take it further: Sirius and James would been likely guilty of the same thing. Those two radiated toxic masculinity that could only be explained by the time period and context, but today? They’d be a pair of nauseating gym bros with a podcast where they interview themselves, showing up on TikTok clips whining about “the limits of humor,” “the tyranny of political correctness,” and “how feminism is ruining old-school chivalry.” You’re not going to convince me otherwise because they give off every single vibe of the average Reddit hetero-basic dude mansplaining to women online.

And let’s not even start on Barty Crouch Jr. He’d 100% be the kind of extreme libertarian right-wing radical who worships Elon Musk, has Donald Trump posters in his room, and if he’d been a Muggle, he’d have been Margaret Thatcher’s #1 fanboy back during the canon events of the saga. So don’t even try to argue with me—not a single one of them would be spared.

[harry-potter-sideblog]

@ottogatto sorry didn't realise you hadn't finished.

Im not "policing" anyone - if you want to interpret this scene in such a way then go ahead I have no problem with this. However thats different to just saying "Sirius calls Severus a lapdog" as an example of him being homophobic without any clarification and then insisting lapdog is an inherently sexual insult when it is generally not understood to be this.

Also

If people are still out there claiming furries=gays in hp

Sorry what? Do you mean furries like the fetish? If so a) where on earth were the furries in Harry Potter and b) it is definitely homophobic to says furries = gays like what? I'm so confused i feel like I'm misunderstanding you quite severely here.

I gotta say, I love how Marauder stans act as if the popular school gang were at mercy of the unpopular boy that was laughed at by a whole crowd.