#queer coding in hp

[wisteria-lodge]

And now for a HP fandom question - do you have any thoughts on queercoding in the series and if JKR ever actually intended it, and then backtracked, or if it was always completely unintentional? I'm thinking specifically about Lupin and Tonks (as individuals, not as a ship) Inspired by your post about the intention vs how fans perceived Draco Malfoy. Thanks!

So the first thing I want to do is make a distinction between femme-coding and queer-coding. They're tropes with very similar histories, and a lot of works treat them as the same thing. But Harry Potter doesn’t, and I think we can chalk this one up to JK Rowling’s habit of grabbing aesthetics and visuals without really thinking through the history behind them. 

(Like - the goblins. She says she didn’t mean to write an antisemitic thing, and I actually do believe her. But did she use a lot of tropes and images with a long history of being tied to antisemitism? yes.)

So when I say “femme” I mean giving a male character traits stereotypically associated with femininity. Heightened sensitivity/emotionality, an interest in hair, clothes and being attractive, a love of lace/pink/frills, a dislike of violence and physical confrontation, and a preference for the soft power of manipulation, character assassination and poison - versus the hard power of direct confrontation and physical prowess. Are these things super stereotypical? Yes. But they’re ALSO traits you see all the time on male villains, especially ones that you don’t want to seem that threatening. Femme-coded villains show up a lot in children’s media, or as the Big Bad’s #2. They’re not meant to be heroic or sympathetic (since all these feminine traits are not desirable, especially for guys.) But they also aren’t scary, and you can pretty much always play them for comedy. 

For example: see almost every male Disney villain. And JKR was writing children’s literature in the 90s, so of course she’s pulling from the same zeitgeist as the Disney Renaissance. 

JKR loves herself a femme villain. The absolute gold standard is of course Lockhart - who wears pink, wants to start his own line of hair care products, is self-centered, vain, obsessed with popularity… but he sucks in a fight. His entire MO involves manipulating people into thinking he has these traditional masculine qualities when he just doesn’t. But there’s also fussy, prissy Percy wearing his prefect badge on his pajamas. Bitchy, emotional mean-girl poisoners Draco and Snape (especially early book Snape - which is Snape at his most villainous.) Draco, Percy and Snape are also unusual for being male characters who we see crying for reasons other than grief. 

Lucius Malfoy is an interesting case because he starts off quite masc. He’s threatening to curse people, the governors are scared of him, etc. But, as the books go on… and he gets less powerful… he also gets more femme. When we meet him in Book 5 he’s no longer threatening people, but bribing them, spreading rumors, and giving interviews to the Prophet casting Arthur Weasley in a negative light. He's also getting really into peacocks. In Book 2 he was a major threat, but as he gets recast as Voldemort’s #2 he becomes a more femme, soft-power villain. When he leads the attack on the Department of Mysteries, he absolutely bungles it, which defines his character (and relationship with Voldemort) for the rest of the series. And it makes sense that Lucius is given this kind of treatment! It’s a way of communicating that there's a new villain in town, a real villain. 

So, are any of these femme-coded villains additionally queer-coded? I’m actually going to say no. Queer-coding is (like it says on the tin) finding ways to imply that your character is specifically gay. Like maybe giving them a same-sex relationship that is written romantically, but not explicitly called out by the text. Or pairing up all of the characters except them. Maybe have other characters joke about them being gay, and use that as a way to talk about the subject with some plausible deniability. Or they could just play suggestively with a cigar, or a walking stick. There are different strategies.  

But Lockhart doesn't get any of that. Honestly, I think that if JKR actually thought of him as gay, she would have been a lot more wary about a scene where he keeps Harry alone with him in his office for way longer than he’s supposed to. And she might have skipped this joke: 

“Harry was hauled to the front of the class during their very next Defense Against the Dark Arts lesson, this time acting a werewolf (...) “Nice loud howl, Harry — exactly — and then, if you’ll believe it, I pounced — like this — slammed him to the floor — thus — with one hand, I managed to hold him down — with my other, I put my wand to his throat (...) he let out a piteous moan — go on, Harry — higher than that — good —” 

Like. At least she would have picked a different word than “moan,” right? Which unfortunately has slightly sexual connotations. Especially if she wanted to keep Lockhart a buffoon, to properly set up the twist at the end. 

Slughorn also gets femme-coded in a similar way: he loves his candy, his parties, his smoking jackets, his lilac silk pajamas, his web of connections he can use to get stuff (Lucius style.) We are introduced to him squatting in specifically a “fussy old lady’s” house. He’s also unusually emotional, getting weepy at Aragog‘s funeral. But I don’t think we’re meant to read him as actually gay, or else his relationship with Tom Riddle might’ve read a little too close to Tom seducing/trying to seduce him. Which is a beat JKR does subtly play out with Hepzibah Smith, but idk. by that point at least Tom is a legal adult.

(As a side note - the Harry Potter series got so lucky that all of its adult characters are played by absolutely top-shelf actors who are aware of the connotations and history behind various symbols, and do consider these things in their performances. Kenneth Brannagh and Jim Broadbent are good enough to make sure there’s not even a hint of iffy subtext when they play Lockhart and Slughorn.)

Draco, Snape, and Percy all have a case of the not-gays. Percy has a girlfriend (we don’t really see her or anything, but we’re told she’s there.) Snape of course gets his whole thing with Lily, and Draco… after one too many beats where it’s clear that Pansy is into him, but he’s not into Pansy…  gets a scene where he’s talking to his buddies with his head in her lap. (JKR uses “no one‘s good enough for me” beats with Blaise, Draco and Sirius, and the idea there seems to be more that they have undeservedly high opinions of themselves, and less that they don’t like girls.)

But, I do agree that a lot of JKR's characters do come across as a little more queer than intended. It boils down, I think, to the general lack of any kind of romance in the Harry Potter books and JKR being generally bad at/uncomfortable with writing male attraction directed at women, BUT being perfectly happy writing attraction directed at pretty guys. And because of that… yeah, it can sometimes feel like maybe Harry has a thing for Cedric. Especially when Dudley goes on to tease him about Cedric being his boyfriend, which I believe is the only actual mention of gay people in the entire series.  

So is there any intentional queer-coding in the book? It’s really subtle, but yes. I think Dumbledore is queer-coded. He is unusually emotional/cries unusually often for a Rowling guy. He is also given a scene which emphasizes his “flamboyantly” cut plum-velvet suit, and his relationship with Grindelwald is implied to be romantic for one book and two movies before being actually confirmed in Fantastic Beasts 3. (With the line of dialogue “I was in love with you.” Big step up from “We were closer than brothers.” which is an odd thing to say about someone you are interested in romantically.) 

But you brought up Tonks and Lupin, two characters very commonly interpreted as queer. So let’s get into that. JKR has said that she considers Lupin’s lycanthropy to be a metaphor for stigmatized diseases like AIDS. And… as incredible as it is to say… I actually do not think that she made the jump from there to thinking that maybe the character suffering from AIDS should be gay.

Because the narrative places so much weight on Lupin being bitten young and then on maybe not being allowed to attend school, I’m pretty sure that he’s not intended to be queer so much as he’s meant to be Ryan White, the literal poster child for AIDS activism who got infected via blood transfusion when he was two. Tragic, absolutely. But not gay. Honestly, I hope JKR was thinking of ‘lycanthropy’ as a metaphor for stigmatized illness in the abstract and not as a comment on gay people specifically. Because otherwise, Greyback’s thing about biting children becomes a mash-up of two of the biggest homophobic boogeymen from the 80s: gay men infecting people with AIDS on purpose because… idk, they hate the world or something. And the influence of gay men somehow “turning” children gay. Both absolutely real, if ridiculous, moral panics.

On top of that, Remus and Sirius do get a pretty clear case of the not-gays early on (“He embraced Black like a brother.”) Buuuut Alfonso Cuarón did think through those implications for Movie 3, absolutely saw Lupin as gay, and directed David Thewlis to play him accordingly. No reports confirming or denying whether Alfonso Cuarón ships Wolfstar, but I think that if I’m an actor trying to make sense of Lupin’s motivations… and I know he didn’t show Dumbledore the Marauders’ Map and didn’t tell anyone Sirius was an animagus… and then I’m told my character is gay… well. Anyway, I think there are absolutely hints of Wolfstar in that performance. 

And there's Tonks. Tonks is introduced during a very spooky segment in Book 5: Harry has been going through it, been left alone at the Dursleys while having what sounds like a depressive episode. It’s dark, he hears intruders. It's a really good piece of writing. But JKR knows that it’s the good guys who are coming and thinks, okay. Let’s make that as clear as possible from the word go. And so the first thing Harry sees is Tonks' pink hair. And what kind of person has pink hair? A young adult. A punky young adult. And what power would a teenager think was cool? Well, the ability to change the color of their hair at will. That, by itself, would have worked perfectly fine for this character.

But then (for reasons best known to herself) JKR goes further. Even though Tonk’s hair changing color is easily 90% of the transformations we see and there is no plot reason her appearance needs to change more than that, we see her drastically change her age and body type. When you think about this power for more than five seconds, it becomes kind of OP. For worldbuilding reasons alone, my instinct would’ve been to tone it down a bit. 

But no, we have this counterculture character who seems interested in her career and not in a relationship, who can easily change anything about her body, and (if her ability works anything like Polyjuice) that means she should definitely be able to change her gender. Cool.

Then, in everyone’s least favorite romance, Tonks and Lupin are paired up. I have heard the argument that this was meant to walk back queer-coding, or to punish people who thought they were queer... but I don’t think that’s the case. I don’t think JKR expected these two to be fan favorites, and then was kind of surprised when everyone wanted to hear about their continuing adventures. 

(There are a handful of characters who JKR clearly really enjoys - and really enjoys writing - that fandom honestly could not care less about. Mundungus Fletcher and Ludo Bagman spring to mind. But the reverse is also true. She had one story for Lupin and people wanted to see more. Tonks is probably supposed to be her comment on immature young adults: she is loud, in your face, causes mild destruction and is “a little annoying at times.” But the fans fell in love with her.) 

So JKR has these two fan favorite characters and nothing for them to do. A romance is something for them to do. JKR also has a kind of weird pattern where good people need to either have kids or take care of kids. It’s not good to be a woman who isn’t involved with taking care of children in some fashion: see Rita Skeeter, Dolores Umbridge, Bellatrix Lestrange. This is also (I think) why Harry names his kids specifically after Severus, Sirius, and Albus. Since they’re good men, JKR had to find a way to give them kids after the fact. 

So yeah. I think we were meant to read Tonks and Lupin having a kid as kind of a reward, or at least as proof of their intrinsic goodness. There also just isn’t another guy in the right age range to ship Tonks with. The only other option is Sirius. 

(Harry in the books and Lupin on Pottermore both suspect that Tonks/Sirius is a thing. Completely forgetting, I guess, that they're cousins.)

[joe-spookyy]

Dude tell me your thoughts about Daniel Cain + any headcannons??

hi what greatest ask i’ve ever received because all i ever have are thoughts about daniel cain. sorry this is gonna be an essay. um.

tldr - dan cain is a super fascinating character (especially when you read him as queer) and his high empathy makes it difficult for him to make the hard but necessary choices found often in the medical field, but easy for him to be manipulated by those he thinks can help him do the most Good. also he is not immune to herbert west. full post under cut and it’s pretty good you should read it.

ok first off he is literally JUST like me for real. but second. i really think he’s a fascinating character no matter how you read him. his empathy is Soooo high and it affects literally everything he does - sometimes for the worse cause he’s a doctor and honestly cannot afford to be getting this upset every time he loses a patient. but it’s part of him, which i think makes him a super interesting counterpart to herbert. he’s so distinctly Human and he cares so much about the people around him, and he’s a horrible doormat/people pleaser. this is, obviously, not at all like herbert. narrative foils oooooh. when i met bruce abbott he told me he thinks dan is a “spineless worm”, which may be technically true, but i think the way dan is so easily convinced to go along with herbert is because of this heavy empathy. he wants to do everything within his power to make things better, and what could really be better than conquering death? how much pain could he stop just with that?

because of that, i think it makes SO much sense that it was so easy for herbert to initially manipulate him into working together. plus i also think later on in the films his feelings for herbert get in the way of his judgement to. an incredible extent. herbert just has to ask and dan will immediately be at his every beck and call. hes like a dog. he wants out but he can’t stop coming back to herbert. i struggle to find any other way to explain why he’d still be living with herbert after the first movie - after all, herbert kind of did kill everything dan ever loved (girlfriend, cat, legitimate medical career). and i think these things affected him on a really deep level (which. yeah. obviously) but the way he acts in bride is so indicative of what that kind of trauma does to a person and it’s fascinating to me. he projects so hard on to gloria because of how guilty he felt for not being able to save meg. he shuts down in a lot of the more serious situations. sure, he did have his little going into shock moment in the first film, but it’s a reoccurring thing in bride. he doesn’t seem to have such a strong moral code anymore, but that empathy is still there - even though what he’s doing with herbert and their little bride project isn’t quite morally Right, all he really has left is herbert and he is dying for a way to get back to the normalcy that herbert has pulled away from him. and yet, he’s never able to really Leave. he can’t move out, he can’t stop helping herbert, he can’t really get meg back as much as he tries. but he’s too far down the rabbit hole to really care at this point. he just cares about getting what he loves back.

and sure. did he abandon herbert at the end of the first movie for meg? yeah. did he abandon herbert at the end of the second movie for francesca? also yes. did he rat herbert out to the authorities? yes (but that’s a character choice i simply cannot get behind he would not do that shit after everything he still does obviously love and care about herbert if he was gonna be a narc he would have done it after the first movie herbert didn’t even do all that much wrong in the second movie like come on he was just getting creative. whatever. anyways.) now, his choice to save meg in the first movie makes a lot of sense, in my opinion. he assumed herbert was dead (which. not a bad assumption tbh) and meg was his girl - it makes a lot more sense to save her than someone he hasn’t known for nearly as long. but when he chooses to escape with francesca and leave herbert behind, it’s a little bit jarring. he’s obviously gotten close with herbert. they still live together, they bicker like a married couple, and if we’re being honest he kind of follows herbert’s every command. again. like a dog. and plus! they just created life together in a quite homoerotic fashion!!! why in the world would dan fumble this?? well, i think i can explain it. herbert represents a lack of societal normalcy. think like doctor praetorius in the bride of frankenstein. herbert’s heavily queercoded, he actively defies god, he kills and he disrespects the dead and he’s terrible socially and he shoots up drugs (sorta) and he is all about medical malpractice. this is the opposite of what someone like dan SHOULD want. dan’s straight passing (or straight if you want to read him that way which i don’t recommend cause otherwise this analysis doesn’t make as much sense), kind and friendly, and wants a good, normal career in the medical field. and he loves his perfect girlfriend. meg (and later francesca) represent these “good” and “normal” things that dan wants and is expected to want. herbert, again, represents the opposite. so for dan to choose herbert and save him over either meg or francesca, he would be choosing to step away from the life he is “supposed” to live, the socially acceptable life. people are already suspicious of him and west as we see in the novelization of the first movie, and to save his visibly queer strange little “roommate” over the woman he’s supposed to love would have certain implications that would draw dan away from this life of normalcy that he wants so badly. but most importantly. herbert always comes back. he’s a part of dan that can’t be escaped.

well. that was a lot. headcanons. umm. i think you probably got a lot from the novel i just wrote but here’s more.

- i loveeee the dan starts smoking after meg dies hc

- i don’t believe he ratted on herbert. i think they’re still working together making freaky shit to this day. even as old men.

- i know i just said queer the whole time i was talking but he’s bisexual and you aren’t allowed to disagree with me. herbert’s gay though. emphasizes the differences between them - dan CAN choose that “normal” life but herbert can’t.

- i think he ends up needing glasses as he gets older. he wears em to read in the first movie and i think his vision declines.

- also he goes grey earlier than herbert imo cause of all the stress. herbert makes fun of him for this but herbert’s hairline is. ummmn. less powerful. so dan has ammo to fight back.

- i don’t think he’d ever be able to get a cat again after rufus. or really any pet. i don’t think he trusts himself not to damage everything he touches

- i think he’s a huge talking heads stan. you could argue this as canon because of the stop making sense poster above his bed, but i think he’s a super fan. and maybe i’m projecting. so what.

- no matter how many times herbert does it or offers it to him, he refuses to take any of the reagent.

uhh. yeah. sorry that this post is so long i hope it is sufficient to what you were looking for. thank you sincerely so much for asking this was the most fun i’ve ever had. bless up.

[madladmorty]

Can we reclaim Voldemort? Seriously, I wanna do that-

If you read the books, you can, amongst all the transphobia and antisemitism, find a lot of queer coding in Voldemort. Specifically trans/non binary and aromantic.

Look at that fucker, and then look me in the eye and tell me he would be a transphobe. If you can, I politely and respectfully ask you to fuck off because that is not the vibe at all.

The aromantic coding isn't even coding at this point. While, yes, Rowling got it quite wrong about where aromantisism comes from with Voldemort, (for a shockingly nice representation of it I recommend looking at Charlie Weasley), he is canonically aromantic. He doesn't understand love, it's a foreign concept to him. It doesn't make him evil, in fact my aro friends agree that they actually find him a little relatable in that way. Like, wtf is this thing that everyone is constantly talking about? I don't get it. It's weird.

As for trans/enby, bare with me here.

As a trans person myself, I can actually match up to the muggle raised wizard experience in general, but Voldemort has added stuff.

For starters, he always knew he was different, knew he wasn't like the rest but also realised that talking about it would result in a worse situation for himself. Very relatable. I remember when I was very young and finally realised that, no, girls don't all want pixie sticks. I don't why, but I felt that I had to shut up about it because some things are just better left unsaid.

I think the biggest trans/enby coding in Voldemort is the name change. Unfortunately, the way Voldemort's name is treated does somewhat reflect experiences of real trans and non binary people. No one calls Voldemort by the name he has chosen for himself, except the those who view him as a threat. In fact, Harry, egged on by Dumbledore who also does it, flat out deadnames him. To his face. Dumbledore even acknowledges that he uses a different name now but STILL calls him Tom just to seemingly assert dominance. Real mature, Dumbledore, real mature.

Then there is the fact that he has undergone drastic physical changes that people around him view as 'monstrous', 'unnatural' and 'deformed'. That ring any bells? As a trans guy it sure does for me, as Abigail Shrier in her infamous book Irreversible Damage claims that trans guys have a 'bulldozed female profile' and says over and over that we are mutilating ourselves and having our womanly features stripped from us as if we didn't choose this for ourselves.

So please, can we reclaim Voldemort? We can really expand him as a character, it's incredibly easy. I don't condone his wizard nazi views, but we can give this complex, multifaceted, nebulous being the respect and depth that he truly deserves. what do think?

[mage8]

There was a period of time where fanfics of fanfics were really common, especially on long WIPs with large followings. The fandom term for them was "cookies". Does anyone else remember this?

Here is a link to Mirror of Maybe's mailing list FAQ page. It mentions cookies, and talks about their different genres gen slash etc. so it's clear we're talking about fics.

Mirror of Maybe is abandoned HP WIP that had a really large following and it's own fansight with a cookie archive and mailing list.

Why don't we call them cookies anymore? Does anyone else remember this?

u ever read a fanfic so good that you want. fanfic of the fanfic

[runin-reads]

James/Lily vs James/Sirius: a case of accidental queer coding

Jily (James/Lily) is a pairing central to the HP universe in the sense that had they not been married, Harry Potter, the main character, would cease to exist and neither would his story as we know it. Yet we are left with only a few brief glimpses of their relationship in canon whilst other pairings are textually far more fleshed out– take Prongsfoot (James/Sirius), for example, who are frequently portrayed as The Duo, not just by those closest to them (Lupin) but by many others too such as McGonagall, Flitwick and so on. Harry himself could see how close they were during SWM in OOTP and this is someone who had a very limited time with Sirius and close to none with James. 

Queercoding is described as “the subtextual coding of a character in media as queer. Though such a character's sexual identity may not be explicitly confirmed within their respective work, a character might be coded as queer through the use of traits and stereotypes recognisable to the audience.” One character comes to mind when I think of “queercoding” and that’s Sirius Black. He’s estranged from his family, goes against the norms associated with his upbringing, there’s no mention of any ex-girlfriends and most notably he has intense love and devotion for his male best friend; James Potter.  At first glance, James had led an incredibly hetero-normative life by virtue of his wife and son, but through his relationship to Sirius there’s leeway to reach a queer reading of him as well. 

As recognised by countless characters and even Sirius himself, Prongsfoot come in a two-for-one deal:

“Do you remember who his best friend was?”  “Naturally,” said Madam Rosmerta, with a small laugh. “Never saw one without the other, did you? The number of times I had them in here — ooh, they used to make me laugh. Quite the double act, Sirius Black and James Potter!”  “Black and Potter. Ringleaders of their little gang. Both very bright, of course — exceptionally bright, in fact…”  “You’d have thought Black and Potter were brothers!” chimed in Professor Flitwick. “Inseparable!” 

The use of the word “brothers” in the above quote is one reason why fans don’t interpret Prongsfoot as queer-coded and/or romantic. However, it’s important to note that Sirius never referred to James as a brother, and there’s no canonical proof to suggest that Flitwick was close to James and Sirius– he was their teacher, not their friend or confidant. He isn’t calling them “brothers” either but rather he’s saying that word to express how strong their bond was. Hence why I believe an exclusively fraternal reading of their relationship doesn’t hold much weight. 

They are, however, established as each other’s closest friend and most trusted confidant. 

“Harry had the distinct impression that Sirius was the only one for whom James would have stopped showing off.” “Potter trusted Black beyond all his other friends. Nothing changed when they left school. Black was the best man when James married Lily. Then they named him godfather to Harry.  “I persuaded Lily and James to change to Peter at the last moment, persuaded them to use him as Secret-Keeper instead of me.”  “Lily and James only made you Secret-Keeper because I suggested it,” Black hissed

On multiple occasions James and Sirius were described as a unit– The Unit– within their friend group. Lupin said they were “the cleverest students in the school.” They were the “ringleaders” of the Marauders; always on the same page and in agreement with each other.

“Then, with identical fluid movements, they reached into their back pockets.” 

Even during their very first encounter, they quickly and effortlessly become a team. 

“Got a problem with that?”  “No,” said Snape, though his slight sneer said otherwise. “If you’d rather be brawny than brainy–” “Where’re you hoping to go, seeing as you’re neither?” interjected Sirius.  James roared with laughter.

This excerpt from DH also neatly sums up the Marauders group dynamic:

“To Sirius’s right stood Pettigrew, more than a head shorter, plump and watery-eyed, flushed with pleasure at his inclusion in this coolest of gangs, with the much-admired rebels that James and Sirius had been. On James’s left was Lupin, even then a little shabby-looking, but he had the same air of delighted surprise at finding himself liked and included” 

Lily herself acknowledged Sirius’ importance in James’ life in her letter to Sirius, where she all but says that only he could lift James’ mood whilst the Potters’ were hiding from Voldemort’s forces. 

“James is getting a bit frustrated shut up here, he tries not to show it but I can tell — also, Dumbledore’s still got his Invisibility Cloak, so no chance of little excursions. If you could visit, it would cheer him up so much.” 

On the other hand, Jily is portrayed in a less compelling way for lack of better words. I spoke about this in my other meta but to summarise it briefly: Lily is James’ wife, the mother of his son and… that’s pretty much it. In the books they’re barely spoken about as a couple, unlike Prongsfoot who are always mentioned together as if they were a package deal– which they were, as recognised by practically everyone. That’s not to say Jily has zero textual backing, though it is far and few between.

“How come she married him?” Harry asked miserably. “She hated him!”  “Nah, she didn’t,” said Sirius.  “She started going out with him in seventh year,” said Lupin.  “Once James had deflated his head a bit,” said Sirius.  “And stopped hexing people just for the fun of it,” said Lupin. 

Conclusion

What we do know about James and Lily’s relationship is limited to the following: Lily disliked James because he and Snape were enemies, James developed feelings for her first, they began dating in seventh year once James had matured, they got married when they were nineteen to twenty years old, had a child together. The end. 

On the contrary, James and Sirius are constantly implied to be each other’s closest, most loyal friend; each other’s most trusted confidant. They are equals in every conceivable way. Both were popular, from wealthy backgrounds  and intelligent. Throughout the entire series Sirius’ only priority was Harry, James’ son. He went through unfathomable lengths to protect Harry: he was the first to escape Azkaban, he snuck into Hogwarts with all the dementors around and lived off rats during the GOF so he could be close to Harry, the last piece of James he had left. 

There’s also evidence to suggest Sirius was a narrative parallel to Snape. There are two adults in Harry’s life who sought to protect him due to their respective relationships with one of his parents. Snape was a double agent for Dumbeldore out of love for Lily; Sirius escaped Azkaban to protect Harry out of love for him, an extension of his love for James. 

All these factors are  why I believe that by not fleshing out Lily as a character and Jily as a couple, JKR accidentally queer-coded Prongsfoot. 

[mybrokenoath3000]

Calling all enjoyers of the Cadence of Part-Time Poets, I need your help as part of my contemporary literature analysis class 💀

basically i've been tasked with the insane assignment of analysing the rockstar/rock band AU trope in a fan fiction, i thought "why not look at the most popular one on ao3?" — i've promised myself to read it all but deadline fast approaches.

The question is "What is the relationship between (particular fan fiction trope) and community".

The angle I'm taking it is how rockstar/rock band AU in ship fanfic acts as a metaphor for queer identity and desire, expressing themes of performance, cryptic queer coding through performance and song, theatrics, self expression, authenticity, the blur between art and reality, tensions between private and public persona. Basically the HP/marauders fandom offering perspective and insight of queer love through the trope, especially given the context of JKR's fuckassery.

i am looking for specific chapters or quotes or just some context so if you can help a struggling student out i will truly love you forever. message me or comment, lecture me on what im missing out on.

[starrylayle]

I don't think fanon marauders fans realise is that most of us (canon marauders fans) actually enjoy readings of a fem/androgynous/trans/gender-fuckery Sirius Black! I personally believe he is heavily queer-coded as a character and love seeing different interpretations and expressions of such in fics/fanart ~

We just don't like it when u characterise him as a tiny, dramatic whiny bitch. Save that for ur gilderoy lockhart moodboards babes xx

and yeah to all those ppl who say,, "just don't interact with that content!!!!" -- do u realise how many tags I've blocked and filtered out and i still see these oc-fied marauders everywhere?? even my non hp fans see some of that content -- it is impossible to avoid so thus i will complain.

if ur any type of content creater and. u depict sirius in the former pls just ignore me i am a hater but I love all artists. feel free to block me tho lol

[blorger]

Yes to all this, also we can see what jkr sees as an acceptable performance of femininity by the way she portrays Hermione, her self-insert.

Hermione doesn't care for frivolous things like makeup and gossip but, when need be, she can perform femininity better than anyone else (see: yule ball Hermione, the prettiest of them all); Hermione cares for her appearance the right amount, in that she's not bothered by how her hair looks on the day to day but she still makes sure to sneakily decrease the size of her front teeth at the first available opportunity*.

Even though jkr goes to great pains to show us that Hermione is not like other girls™️ (she's tough, she values knowledge over looks, she's practical), at the end of the day she still reacts to situations like a Girl: she shows compassion more often and more visibly than Ron and Harry, she cries -together with other girls- when sad things happen (something men aren't allowed to do), she gets silly crushes etc etc...

Also, at the end of the day, Hermione still ends up as a wife and a mother because that's the end goal for all women (according to jkr). Since she's special, though, she gets to be a working mother (the only one I can think of in the books besides Marietta Edgecombe's mother), because Hermione surely can balance a career and motherhood like no-one else can.

*: Hermione's teeth are a perfect example of her ideal approach to femininity: they're not really mentioned (aside from her introduction in book 1) until book 4, when jkr needed something frivolous for other girls (Pansy) to make fun of her for. Still, Hermione makes no move to permanently change her appearance on her own (that would be Too Girly and therefore vain), she conveniently catches a stray teeth engorgement hex which means she has to go get them fixed by madam Pomfrey and, since she's already there getting them reduced, what's the harm in telling Pomfrey to stop re-sizing her teeth a bit later?

the author of hp uses femininity so often to immediately communicate a character's virtue to the reader... you're supposed to dislike "too" feminine characters like umbridge, rita skeeter, fleur, pansy, lavender, trelawney, etc... the author's writing mocks feminine women for being vain, frivolous, or incompetent, which is quite demeaning for a "feminist." but she also bashes women who aren't feminine enough, like petunia (thin and unmotherly), marge, rita skeeter. rita gets a second round...she dresses feminine but the author describes her as physically "mannish"

bonus round for less traditionally masculine men. queer-coding villains isn't new, but note that a lot of her male antagonists are portrayed as feminine also... particularly snape, literally voldemort, draco, lucius (perhaps mostly in the movie). is this supposed to make them appear more sinister?

[keepmycandleburning]

And then the second thing I was going to post about last night was the idea of a writer 'punishing' their characters. You've seen it surely. Like the idea that Umbridge being attacked by centaurs was her punishment for being too girly (and furthermore that this is a statement from Rowling that unlikable women deserve to be raped and the reader is supposed to sympathize) (many examples this is common). This idea about HP is most typically about the author 'treating' women who don't properly conform to her standards a certain way: like Lavender Brown was attacked by Greyback as narrative punishment for being too feminine (This whole Twitter thread is a gold mine for unimaginable takes. I don't understand how SO many people believe that characters' actions are an expression of the writer's beliefs. It really makes me wonder if I am somehow wrong).

Can you 'punish' your fictional character? Is making something bad happen to an unlikable character punishing them? What if the POV character is glad the bad thing happened? What if the POV character is imperfect, or even straight up wrong? Can you treat a fictional character improperly? As with my post last night, the answer is technically yes, there can be problems with writing, but I just don't see it in these particular situations or in this type of fiction. For example some conservative Christian could write about a woman having premarital sex and then her life falls apart but then she saves herself by finding God and it's clearly meant to be a pretty straightforward message, and it lines up with the writer's irl beliefs, and they use to it to push their irl narrative, etc, and I'd say sure that character is being punished. Or conversely a writer can definitely punish an abusive character. So yeah you CAN punish a character. But how do you know when this is what's happening, and why do so many people apply this way more liberally than I do? What if someone were to think I was punishing one of my characters, and what if they thought it was for an immoral reason? What if I were to make a bad thing happen to one character, and someone thought I was saying 'I think this bad thing should happen to every real person who resembles this character'? Or on the other hand, must a writer punish their immoral characters?

This is extremely niche, but what about the criticisms of Rita Skeeter's appearance being masculine? Is this communicating that Rowling thinks masculine women are evil? If so, how do you know? Can you only queer-code 'good characters'? Surely not. So how would one avoid being interpreted that way? Making multiple varied characters w whatever trait definitely helps, but do you have to? How much do you have to proactively plan for people to misunderstand?

Does Harry having a certain thought mean that's Rowling's thought (Is Harry making fun of SPEW Rowling expressing her real belief? How do you know?)? Does Harry having a thought mean that's 'meant to be' the readers' thought? Are plot elements all Rowling's morals, and what she thinks is good and right? What about world-building elements, like how people will say that Rowling made all the women housewives (+ married young) because she's sexist? Why would an author simply designing their fictional world in a certain way mean they think it's good? Are they then obligated to have their narrative condemn the negative aspects of their world, or can the reader decide that for themselves upon observing it?

Overall I think most of these questions of mine come down to that 1. I think a story's narrative typically comes from its POV character, while other people seem to think a story's narrative comes from its writer's beliefs, and 2. that I think the reader can think for themselves and typically draw the intended conclusion, while other people criticize when the message isn't spelled out on the page (look at this lol. SURELY Azkaban was a commentary on the justice system. Why does the fact that Harry doesn't really sit there and ponder it that much mean the message can't come through clearly to the reader—surely it does!)

Feel free to actually answer these questions, not because I will follow any of the rules, I won't necessarily, but you know just to discuss the reasons why something is going to get interpreted in these ways

[gloomiedyke]

Do you like weird little towns/cities? Do you like mystery and murder with an Eldritch horror/cryptid monster flair? Do you like archeology, linguistics, and magic? Victorian era queer romance? Found family? A surprisingly chill series of mystery adventures despite the horrors involved?

May I recommend: the Whyborne & Griffin series by Jordan L Hawk, starting with the first novel Widdershins (the name of the aforementioned fictional weird little city/town).

We have our introverted, autistic-coded academic main character, a philologist (essentially historical linguistics, it's great) turned sorcerer. We have his love interest, a dashing private detective (with so much trauma). We also have his best friend, a shotgun wielding Lady archeologist (who likes complaining almost as much as she likes discovering artifacts and is ALSO autistic coded but in an opposite way).

These books fall somewhere in the centre of the Sherlock Holmes-Agatha Christie-Dead Boy Detectives-Scooby Doo-HP Lovecraft-The Last Binding by Freya Marske hexagon.

In short:

A tired academic-slash-sorcerer, an angry academic-slash-sniper, and a cheerful detective walk into a bar.

[wisteria-lodge]

When you say queer coding is specifically about implying someone is gay, is that a media studies definition, or is it because it's far more difficult to imply other romantic/sexual interest combinations? It occurred to me to ask because there are typical, perhaps more gay-alignment geared signals, but then there are also ongoing/emerging social signals which can be incorporated into media to ie. imply someone is bi (although this is usually done poorly because we live in a fairly monogamous promoting society and if a partnered person is also showing coded interest in someone else, this is typically taken to mean they're not into their current partner), or ace, or sapphic (since it seems more "queer coding" allegations does tend to fall onto men in media, possibly because men occupy a quite rigid version of "correct behavior" making it easier to write outside that prescription, possibly because there are simply more men available to observe in media)

This ask honestly does a really great job of breaking down the problem. Yes, in a media studies way, "queer-coding" is kind of an umbrella term for "gay coding," "femme coding" (applied to queer guys) and "masc coding" (applied to queer girls.) My argument about Harry Potter was that it does a lot of femme coding without getting into gay coding, and so that's why I had to split up the definition.

I agree that "bi coding" isn't nearly as much of a *thing,* and sadly bleeds over into communicating infidelity/promiscuity. "Ace coding" is *maybe* more of a thing? but I'm not sure how prevalent it is outside of slightly cold scientist types. There are definitely more queer-coded men in media, just because there are more men in media period. But there is certainly a history of queer-coded women: dressing/looking more masculine, association with yonic (instead of phallic) imagery, taking a little too much interest in the heroine. They're usually also villains, and generally framed as scarier than then the queer-coded male villains. Long history of queer-coded female *vampires,* for instance.

[hp-confessions]

People in this fandom need to know the difference between queer coded and a queer reading of a character.

None of the HP characters are queer coded because JKR is not a queer author wanting to, hide if you know you know, symbols in her text.

Characters can have a queer reading and interpretation but nobody is queer coded.

~

[whinlatter]

thoughts about wolfstar? you're now the one i go to for any hp related thoughts

omg this is VERY nice of you but i'm pure flop on marauders thoughts, they're all extremely half-baked, so best left to others. here my half-baked wolfstar thoughts offered sheepishly and apologetically!

the thing is - i quite like the idea of wolfstar. to be honest i was sort of imagining a sort of wistful wolfstar vibe to how i wrote lupin in orchards in the aftermath of sirius' death. but i think the wolfstar i like is quite a specific version of it that's increasingly hard to find in fic searches so i don't often go looking for it (which is pure laziness on my part). my interest in canon coherent characterisation limits me here - i think there's such a strong case for wolfstar as a pairing written in ways that attend to the very clear dynamics (and timelines) that canon makes plausible (including in AUs, where actually characterisation matters more, not less, than in 'canon compliant' fics, because it's the reader's only anchor). there is an intensity and an intimacy to what sirius and remus share in the marauders and the significance of a boyhood spent together in their adult lives, a literal physical proximity of them living together as adults post azkaban as two men who have such complex feels towards themselves and especially to their bodies, including an overlapping self loathing, and they're both characters that can very plausibly read as queer-coded in rich and interesting ways. and then, of course, there's an inherent narrative shape to both of their canon arcs (the tragedy, delicious). these are just some of the dynamics in a potential romantic relationship between the two of them that can make for really rich and interesting potential to work with in fic writing.

the trouble i find with a lot of wolfstar, less as a matter of principle than what actually gets written more often than not, is that the stuff i personally find rewarding and interesting as a writer/reader is work that bears some relationship with the canon text (even if - especially if - it's to pull it apart and expose its flaws and complexities). a queer reading of the relationship between sirius and remus in canon is absolutely plausible and can be deeply compelling, and, as queering HP as a text remains a powerful fuck you to its author whose reaction to the ship was errrr quite homophobic, still really important.

but. challenging the text means having some sense of the characterisation of the essence of these characters as rendered in the text, and canon is clear about certain aspects of sirius and remus' characterisations that limits my enthusiasm for a lot of wolfstar that has sprung up in recent years (especially in and around ATYD, which i'll say more about in a minute). the truth is that canon strongly suggests that sirius cares much less about remus than he ever does about james (dropping @saintsenara's excellent manifesto for why unrequited prongsfoot is canon, also the rec for one of the best fics i read last year that @ashesandhackles put me onto, empire builders by shecrows, a gorgeous complex funny angsty prongsfoot fic that's not not canon compliant timeline-wise). it's also clear that the marauders as a friendship group functioned as a group of three boys all working towards james potter as the de facto leader, each with their own complicated feelings and levels of loyalty and devotion to james that undoubtedly shaped, and limited, how the other three felt towards each other (especially after james' death). the kind of wolfstar lore that's sprung up in the last few years, especially from marauderstok, of roadman remus the romeo of gryffindor tower that young sirius is wildly and hopelessly in love with, and is desperate to reunite with after azkaban, is a version of wolfstar that's sort of compelling as an original story but, for my taste, bears too little relationship to their core canon characterisation to be really up my street. a wolfstar with really fucked up power dynamics that plays with sirius' idolisation of james and remus having to play second fiddle? delicious. or even unrequited/onesided wolfstar from remus to sirius - yum. but the rest, i struggle with. by the time they've left school, remus thinks sirius is the spy and sirius thinks remus is the spy. that is not giving soulmates, in my mind. but as with most of these things, i'm very open to being proved wrong.

(with that said, though, i think the subculture and lore that's built around wolfstar is really astonishing and often extremely compelling, i think ATYD is obviously a huge accomplishment and deserves its flowers for launching such a phenomenon, and there's masses of quality writing and art and general creative talent coming out of wolfstar spaces that it's hard not to be continually impressed by. also some of those tiktok edits absolutely slap. that remus-centric animated noah kahan one. unreal)

[thedrarrylibrarian]

Several people have been kind enough to let me publish their thoughts on fandom, community, and queerness to celebrate Pride in the Library. Today's piece comes from @wolfpants.

Dear readers, dreamers, and purveyors of the glittering, gilded aisles of the Drarry Library,

Fandom life began for me at age fifteen. We just got our first family computer, taking pride of place in the utility room between the boiler and my dad’s boxes of tools. I had recently come out as bisexual to my friends at school, who, props to them, had all taken it quite well despite the small town we grew up in (I was very lucky, they were great - everyone else though? Not so much). Still, even with supportive friends offline, I never felt like I could talk to them about what I really enjoyed: watching Buffy, reading Harry Potter and looking for queer subtext (I could never have convinced any of them that Harry’s story screams gay allegory–no matter what JKR has to say on the topic back then or now), scouring bookshops and libraries for any sort of queer content I could get my hands on, desperate as I was to read something that spoke to me, to read about love outside of the heteronormative landscape of the popular media. I wasn’t just tired of boy-meets-girl; I had never identified with it in the first place.

The year we got dial-up internet was the year I discovered Livejournal. The absolute joy I felt, stumbling upon an LJ community specifically dedicated to roleplaying Harry Potter characters in queer pairings. Discovering, beyond that, that people wrote stories about Harry and my other favourite queer-coded character of the series: Draco Malfoy. And then it was Wolfstar (specifically Sirius), then Drarry again, and somewhere along the way my lurking fell off and I stopped reading fic for a while when I moved to London and settled into my first job, my first real relationship, and sitting uncomfortably atop my bisexual identity and not really knowing where that shift happened and why. All the while, I was pursuing a writing career on the more journalistic side: writing for music and film outlets, doing a little bit of secret creative writing on the side, dipping in and out of HP RPGs but never really—connecting. In “real life”, my relationship with my ex was falling apart, and I felt very disconnected from the LGBTQIA+ community because, even though I knew I belonged, I never felt like I could be truly me with anyone—perhaps because I was, unknowingly, still discovering who I really was.

When the pandemic happened, it gave me the breathing space I needed to get to that point. It brought me back to fandom.

It started with reading The Popular Wolfstar Fic Everyone Was Reading, and reopening my ao3 account to re-read some old favourites from over the years. It then unrolled to, hey, I have some free time, why don’t I try writing my own Wolfstar fic for my oldest, dearest friend (who I met RPing on LJ at 15!), which then turned into: you should publish this, and see what happens.

So, I did. And I made a tumblr account, and I lurked for a while, shyly reblogging things and scrolling through author accounts I’d admired from a very young age, astonished and really fucking impressed that they were still in the game. I read their new fics, I was drawn back into Drarry, and from there I discovered what a wonderful community this is, not only for its immensely talented creatives, but for its values as a inclusive, equitable, supportive, uplifting, and joyful group of individuals who genuinely welcome everyone with open arms and love. That, in itself, has made it easy to reach out to like-minded folks here, to make life-long friends, to chat to people who have been through similar experiences in questioning their identities (it is truly thanks to this fandom and the many discussions I’ve had with people here that I’ve been able to realise my identity as a NB lesbian). To write! To share! To not be ashamed of my kinks and to discover fun, delicious rare pairs! To look at breathtaking art and read some of the best goddamn writing I’ve ever set eyes on!

I have spent thirty-seven years on this planet. A good chunk of that time has been spent questioning many parts, pieces, and niggly jiggly bits of my identity. Who am I? What am I? Is there anyone out there who is just like me?

After many years of searching in the dark, of asking these questions over and over, I can joyously say that the answer is: yes. And oh, how thankful I am for that, for all of you, because fandom has really been the community I can categorically point to and say: they did that for me, we did that for we, and I will do anything for you.

Happy pride.

Thank you, Wolf, for joining me in the Library. Your love and joy for fandom have left me feeling quite tender-hearted, in the best way. It's so so good to ask the question "Is there anyone out there who is just like me?" and find over and over that the answer chorusing back is "yes." Thank you for adding your yes to our chorus, and joining me for Pride in the Library.

If you want more @wolfpants be sure to check out their work on AO3! I can't help but recommend the fic that made me fall in love with her writing in the first place, Pages of You, which I've featured previously for Happy Hour. It's got Drarry and Wolfstar, and is one of my favorite comfort rereads.

🏳️‍🌈 Lots of Love and Happy Pride! 🏳️‍🌈

[impishtubist]

Was the authorial intent for Sirius to be portrayed as reckless in OOTP? Yes, but the author didn’t actually do a good job of it. This was saying one thing but showing another. Molly, for all she was acting from a place of loving Harry like a son, was treating Harry like the child he should’ve been and not as someone with a stake in the war. In a perfect world, Harry’s biggest concern at 15 would’ve been his exams. In canon, he’d just witnessed a death and was Voldemort’s biggest target. He deserved to know why, not be handled with kid gloves. I give Hermione more of a pass because she’s also a child and has no actual knowledge of psychology (nobody in HP seemingly does). She’s smart and all, but she’s 15 and way out of her depth, I doubt she was expecting this when Harry and Ron saved her from a troll. She’s interpreting Sirius’s actions from a lens of a child who’s stuck in the middle of a war that should’ve been dealt with by the previous generation and is just beginning to understand the scale of corruption in their world. She gets more of a pass on account of her age, but she’s wrong. Dumbledore gets no room whatsoever to judge Sirius, esp when he’d been dead less than an hour, bc he’s one of the main people that failed Sirius. He can vouch for actual confirmed Death Eater Snape, but he can’t check things out to see why Sirius did something so wildly out of character as betraying James? Sirius is having a real bad time in OOTP, stuck in a place of trauma that he had to legitimately flee as a teen, but he’s not being reckless. He’s trying to make the kids understand that this is a war and their parents want to protect them from that, he wants people to stop thinking ignorance will protect Harry when it never has, and he wants the kids to be able to protect them. Like, the DA was a decent chunk of why the kids survive DH, how are people saying Sirius was reckless to encourage it when that’s the only reason the kids could later defend themselves? Plus, Sirius was one of the best fighters in DOM, he was putting a fighter back in play by heading there. Every adult there were barely keeping the kids safe, they needed every single adult present at the DOM.

Oh, for sure the author did a bad job of it! She really wanted us all to hate Sirius (he was modeled after an ex of hers, after all) and that backfired terribly because she's actually a bad writer 😂 Just like she then tried to convince us that the two remaining queer-coded characters were actually straight.

[transfem-monarchist-laura-rolla]

there's a bit from the shriekcast (the podcast xeecee cohosts, for any misericorde fans who are unaware) i think about all the time, "tonks become normal" where they talk about how when introduced in hp book 5 tonks is a cool punk girl who's kind of queer coded and it sucks that she just ends up becoming kind of trad wifed in a relationship with a queer coded guy. and i think it's interesting to think about that with alex (punk girl in relatively modern times conpared to the main story) being one of the only women to both be confirmed attracted to men (eustace's gender might be complicated but she seems to just know him as a guy) and not explicitly into women. especially considering all the characters we know are sapphic are medieval nuns, so if a random person were given the whole cast in a lineup (if she had a sprite) and asked to guess which one was a lesbian they'd probably pick alex over anyone else

i don't have any concrete takes on this but it's interesting to me that misericorde decided to make the 'modern' chapters (that take place over 40 years ago but are close enough to read as such) less explicitly queer (again eustace probably has Gender going on but it's not clear what exactly and it's not made explicit to alex) than the medieval ones, especially given alex's vibe