#james and sirius are classist dickheads

[birdiebirdjay]

my thoughts on the marauders

the numbers aren't rankings btw (also i sound dead in this post because. i am dead inside rn. kjfdjkdfahkj help me)

fuck james, only useful thing he did in life was get laid and help create BWL

fuck sirius but at least he suffered :/ i guess he was an ok father figure but still a shit person + classist (like james). (upon further reflection, he wasn't even that great of a father figure- harry loved and relied on him though so?) edit: okay i have realized my thoughts on sirius are kind of complicated. like, yes, the logical part of my mind hates him. BUT, a part of me does like him, even though i constantly feel guilty about it lol. i accept that he's a bad person who did bad things, but i can't help but feel bad for him, you know?

fuck pettigrew, hate him, fucking creep and weirdo lived as MULTIPLE LITTLE KIDS' PET RAT AND SLEPT IN THE SAME BED WITH THOSE KIDS AND DID GOD KNOWS WHAT ELSE, but it was the marauders fault he betrayed them imo. they never treated him as an equal despite what fanon will tell you.

okay controversial but. teen remus was a victim of james & sirius. like. the marauders were such a stupid classist dynamic of a friend group, i ship prongsfoot because they're the only two that are dickheads enough to match each other. anyways, remus' thing was: he got into a bad situation and Could Not Get Out. his problem solving Thing is just run away, run away, run away, and never look back. at hogwarts, he couldn't do that. there were super popular kids who were his 'friends' and knew his deepest darkest secret. if he hadn't befriended them by luck on the train, he'd probably be another severus, because james and sirius are, again, classist dicks. but, as he did befriend them, he had nowhere to go after that which. as a dude with a fucked up childhood + trust issues + commitment/staying in one place issues,,, that sounds like a nightmare. as an adult tho the things he did were. unacceptable. i feel like they are direct effects from his fucked up youth? like he never got to grow up properly mentally/emotionally? he's still in the 'run away run away run away' mentality always. add being constantly discriminated against bc of something you cant control that people hate you for and its just. kskdhskshf. his life sounds like a nightmare i just can't help but feel for him :(

[rewritingcanon]

What would you say are your more controversial opinions about the hp characters?

ohhhh okayyy. i feel like my opinions on a lot of the characters aren’t controversial because i dont feel super strongly towards anyone in any negative light but here are some i could think of at the top of my head:

i’m glad the malfoys faced more extreme backlash after the second wizarding war. a lot of people in the fandom seem to be very sympathetic towards draco and scorpius for getting dogpiled with the brunt of it (which yeah, it sucks, especially for scorpius) but the prejudice makes complete make sense to me. if i was someone who didn’t know scorpius’ character, and had someone from my family get killed in the second war due to death eaters or something— seeing the malfoys still be wealthy and walk around freely without any jailtime, i would be bitter too. they’re hated on but they’re still one of the richest families ever, so they’ll live LOL

another anon has asked about this and i haven’t responded to them yet but when i do i will link it here for my reasons. basically: the best character in the cursed child is harry potter. i think the way they wrote his character and ptsd carried the play. it was def his story, not albus’.

i do think dumbledore has some aspects of him that may be considered morally gray, but mostly i dont think he is. he does everything for the good of the world, and his complete selflessness leads him to sacrifice anything for it— even himself and the people he loves, when necessary. i completely understand why people wouldn’t agree with his methods though.

james potter isn’t a sunshine character he’s a dickhead. fans of him made him a golden retriever character to be more palatable for modern times. i like him the way he is: an asshole and then less of an asshole 👍 this is what true stanning looks like

pansy parkinson is racist and out of all the female side characters, developing HER is so questionable from fandom

harry had questionable descriptions about a lot of male characters to make people think he could be a little 🏳️‍🌈 there was bill, there was sirius, there was cedric. but draco is not a part of that list. harry was not feeling draco whatsoever throughout the series but drarry shippers cling to that one ‘obsessed’ line

furthermore, harry rejecting draco’s offer of friendship wasn’t a sad or a ‘what if’ scene. draco was being a classist piece of shit and harry didnt want to fuck with that, there isnt any way in any timeline he wouldve accepted draco’s friendship.

slytherin sucks just generally lol. people want so bad to pluck anti-heroes out of a series that was written specifically with the mind to make all the characters suck.

hermione and ron’s drama isn’t as toxic as people make it out to be. yes, this includes the time hermione sent birds after him. people act like its the end of the world but she was tackling puberty and the end of society soooo i give her a pass to tweak out.

mostly every harry potter character has horrific names. like literally mostly everyone. even the name harry potter 🙁

movie romione wasn’t that bad LOL

severus snape’s ‘redemption’ or whatever was so ass. he bullies kids for five years and then everything is chill because… true love? on harry’s mum? are you kidding me 💀

weasley family angst goes hard but people (especially percy stans and some ron&ginny stans) acting like they’re the most toxic family to walk the earth make me want to rip my hair out and eat it. molly loves her kids guys shes not evil. jesus.

genuinely trying to think of more but i can’t right now…. maybe i will reblog and add to it. i feel like most of my opinions aren’t that controversial though 😭

[suncchaser]

okay so- i am slightly confused

before i start: i hate fanon regulus. he is literally a character who did like one (1) relevant thing to the plot, and that was making the horcrux harder for harry to find. he was an enthusiastic death eater and only backed out after getting cold feet.

but, in the same way, canon james potter is a bully who stalks and objectifies a girl and tries to guilt trip/manipulate/whatever her into dating him by tormenting her best friend. he is super white-privilege coded and very heavily classist. i totally get just liking the character and his potential in AUs, but do you have any thoughts on his canon characterization?

not meant to be rude, genuinely trying to understand things. no pressure to answer if you don't want to! :)

James is, along with Sirius, my favourite Marauder, so I am totally open about speaking on his characterisation.

In regards to your ask, James stalking Lily and obsessively asking her out is fanon. We have one instance of him asking her out in the books and absolutely no indication anywhere that he had done it before and it was a common occurrence.

James was indeed a bully and a dickhead during his teen years and his attitude did come from a place of growing up very financially secure and sheltered. At the same time, James was a great friend. He went out of his way to help those close to him. He had a strong sense of morality as well. He was a pure-blood man that could have allowed the war to go on because he was safe but he still chose to fight, he still chose to marry the woman he loved even if so many people in their world frowned upon their marriage.

Does any of this excuse his actions towards Snape (and towards other students he hexed on a whim)? No, it doesn’t. But it doesn’t have to because nuance exists. Characters should be three-demensional, flawed.

To me, the most interesting aspect of James’ characterisation is his growth. Fanon takes that away from James by making him into his perpetually kind person who wants to help everyone. It removes the nuance from James to turn him into an accessory to other characters’ redemption and victim arcs.

[birdiebirdjay]

i have,,, a lot of thoughts on this. specifically on young remus and the young marauders.

first off: you're completely right. indifference is not better, it is just as bad as perpetrating!

HOWEVER: there are a lot of parallels between young remus:marauders and young severus:death eaters.

both were poor/lower class (iirc, but i admit my memory is slightly foggy and remus may have only been impoverished as an adult) half bloods. they were both marginalized kids who went to more powerful people for protection and ended up with the wrong crowd. (and yes, i do genuinely think the marauders, primarily james and sirius, were just as detestable as the young DEs were and did just as terrible things, which we are quite literally shown in the text.) even in the groups they joined, they were somewhat looked down on (severus as a half blood, and remus with james loudly discussing his condition, the group making jokes about it, and maybe most notably, The Prank).

the thing is, neither could have done anything to get out of the groups they were in at that point. i don't see why severus would have wanted to; the people on the 'good side' had made his life a living hell for years! (this makes his eventual turn even more defining and even more heroic, obviously.) remus probably didn't want to either, but if he did, what could he have done?

take a step back and look at it from his perspective. he is lucky enough to have made friends with the two most popular (and dare i say, powerful) boys in his year by sheer luck. he realizes they are utter dickheads who abuse their power and torment the people they don't like to the extent of sexual assault. and that's just what they do to an impoverished, lower class halfblood kid just because he exists! imagine what would happen if their relationship with a certain halfblood werewolf soured. werewolves are already hated and stigmatized by everyone else; what happens if his secret gets out? i would be willing to bet that he'd be dead within a week. or, alternatively, he'd be kept alive and the torment from the marauders would be drawn out for years more. i would not put it past them.

i'm saying this as a diehard snape fan and defender. i don't think you can blame teenage remus lupin while simultaneously defending teenage snape when you look at all these parallels, because neither of them truly had a choice.

more of my thoughts on remus and the stupid classist dynamic of the canon marauders here.

if anyone else has ideas about this i'd love to hear them!

edit: i have been informed remus being poor was indeed a fanon invention. my apologies for the inaccuracy!

And if I said Remus Lupin...