#so I don’t KNOW | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

padfootastic · 1 month ago

Note

hello! this ran away from me and got surprisingly long so, oops? 😅

i think the thing it comes down to is that bigotry doesn’t care about logic, so to me, remus’s plot is actually not confusing at all when you compare it to real-world marginalized groups.

overall, i’m sure there’s a registry of werewolves because governments love to keep track of that stuff, but whether or not it available to the public is debatable. the easy explanation is that it is not available to the public. but if it was, you’re right, how did people not realize the lupin in fifth period is the same lupin from page 90 of the werewolf registry? to that i say, when’s the last time you checked the Inmate Data Search by US state or the national sex offender registry or even Ancestry.com which is considered a important database and archive by the US government (this is all from the perspective of a US citizen so bare with me)(also not trying to relate werewolves with criminal activity and/or harmful actions, just couldn’t think of other registries)? what if your new neighbor is on one? a classmate or coworker? or is it that that’s not something most people think about, so they don’t use the tools, leaving the situation relatively unknown.

this could be the exact explanation for remus passing by unnoticed in school: i assume most teenagers don’t even know about databases like these and an adult would need to take them to the ministry anyway to access it. the parents likely wouldn’t even know a kid named remus lupin goes to the school unless their child tells them. if you’re wondering how the ministry let him into hogwarts, when segregation was made illegal in schools, ruby bridges still had to escorted by U.S. Marshals into what use to be a legally all white school. and then, most black families kept their children in schools they’ve always been in due to location, social stigma (escorted. by U.S. Marshals.), etc. the ministry likely let werewolves into hogwarts because of anti discrimination laws, but when people get killed by hate crimes and law is only as good as the enforcers, most families probably homeschooled their werewolf kids

as for how no classmates knew later once the war was over, i personally think james, sirius, and peter really overshadowed him once they were all famous for dying or betrayal. also, think of the most popular group in your high school, their names and faces in your mind. where are they now? maybe you still know one or two from mutual connection or they did something really big for the town, but the others? if they faded into life or moved places, most classmates probably don’t know what happened to them. of course you can also look them up on a database but why would you when they don’t affect your life?

also, i’m pretty sure it was only the order that was suspicious of him during the first war and the order did know of his lycanthropy but the order was never made public

and that’s only school. for his employment, just replace the word lycanthropy with incarceration and employment discrimination makes a lot more sense for remus. businesses do background checks on potential employees and it is generally encouraged to be upfront about criminal history because if they can’t ask or check, if they find out later they may do everything to fire you. if they can ask, you can’t lie. unemployment itself automatically makes it harder to find a job when it is hard to pay for survival needs and presentation needs (jobs require clean clothes and appearance)

also, incarceration is most similar to lycanthropy in regards to government interference and social stigma. but for an individual, remus, it more presents like a chorionic illness, abet not as difficult due to the once a month and few side effects thing. but still, like you said, few days off every month can be difficult to negotiate in retail or 9-5 with an employer that was probably already iffy about hiring a werewolf. and magic can do so much but so can technology and people with chorionic illnesses still disproportionately can’t make a living with jobs because that tech isn’t used to accommodate them

for the eccentric options, i think it depends on remus’s skill sets and previous experience. with his skill set, i know he canonically did well in school, but take me for example: i got A’s in all my science courses and you still couldn’t pay me to major in science. then, freelancing positions and areas like gringotts require connections to get you in the field and traveling positions require money from previous employment.

as for being a professor, again anti discrimination laws (labor laws have always existed, even in medieval times) would allow werewolves to be teachers so dumbledore wouldn’t have to do much. just keep it quiet from parents; there were plenty of teachers who were gay and if their employer knew and was okay with it, they knew better than to let the parents know

last thing, i don’t think any of this is too mundane or simple because i am just using examples of real life for a universal set in real life. discrimination and quality of life is the most complex and political problem simply because bigotry runs on ignorance. ruby bridges still happened in harry potter, there is still a huge homeless problem in harry potter, if only because she who shall not be named didn’t change that. i think the watsonion’s most coherent and canon explanation is that society develops as society will and people have better things to do than go through databases red-scare style.

i hope this is coherent! also if i got anything wrong about canon, please fact check me :)))

haha i will never turn down a long post!! (also,,,absolutely the wrong person to correct canon facts haha i’m v useless when it comes to that lol)

re the comparison b/w real world bigotry & werewolf discrimination, u bring up some great points! especially about falling through the cracks because who is out here wading through govt records, right? and also yeah, remus having to take a leave for a few days a month can end up being problematic, to the point of making employment tough for him.

so, i’m going to be honest, i don’t tend to like comparisons to the real world (altho it does make sense!) just bc i feel like the WW exists in such a bubble of it’s own. like, do labor laws really exist there? did they have socialist revolutions that led to the rise of worker consciousness and therefore, employers must adhere to certain norms? even something as basic as background checks feel sus to me because…how are they doing it? with what database? i do realise a lot of is grey (and not set in stone) bc the world building didn’t exist for this purpose but even ignoring my own aversion to it hehe, i think for me, the discrepancy comes about due to one major fact.

to me, the wizarding world is set up more like, say, pre colonial india than an industrialised european nation, if that makes sense. everyone seems to know everyone (atleast, the ones who’re going to hogwarts), what matters is who you know and what your skills are (to an extent) and ofc, your blood. there doesn’t seem to be a sort of…commercialised market system the way you assume is the norm today. the society is generally…slower, with less rapid development and change. similarly, magical technologies are also pretty basic. like, the two way mirrors are the closest they have to an instant communication device and even that seemed to be proprietary rather than the norm. owls take a long time and are also pretty limited in function and scope. they don’t seem to have any mass production sites.

all of this to say, that a lot of what we take for granted in our societies today seem to just be…nonexistent in the WW. this, of course, doesn’t mean that bigotry is nonexistent (in fact, such communities tend to show more exclusionary behaviours) but that it might not present/develop in the same way. that’s why it was so hard for me to imagine that if remus was on the registry, he wouldn’t also be clocked. especially if werewolves were still the bogeyman at that time and people were afraid.

but going beyond all that, my personal belief is that even if there was a registry, i don’t think remus was on it. like, iirc, lyall worked in that area somewhere? and i fully, fully, believe that they hid it from the world, similar to ariana and the dumbledore’s, and that’s why he was able to slip through the cracks. in fact, the others not finding out is definitely more likely than them doing so, and it’s because imo that was the situation they engineered. and, i don’t believe there’s any anti discrimination laws, because the amount of devotion and gratitude remus has towards dumbledore tells me that he believed it was a personal risk the headmaster took for remus’ sake. that it wasn’t ‘allowed’ and he became the exception.

and he went all the way til PoA before he was outed as a werewolf. it’s the only thing that makes sense to me with how the WW was set up. until then, he was just another wizard (with perhaps a higher dose of anxiety bc of having to hide such a large part of himself). so discrimination would be more implicit than explicit, imo (like how it is w ‘invisible’ vs ‘visible’ disabilities, maybe)

magic and technology…i don’t know if i’d be able to equate them, personally. tech is man made and therefore, operates w similar biases unless actively resisted. magic is just…there, to be harnessed by whoever. in that sense, remus probably had the biggest advantage any werewolf could’ve had- a wand. and the training to use it. which is why it confuses me that he was still doing so poorly. (but i guess, it can also be said that he wasn’t doing that bad in comparison to the other werewolves and what we see of him is him making use of that advantage, which the average werewolf is way worse off. so. both sides can be true)

but yeah, a lot of what i just comes from the way i view the wizarding world as fundamentally different from the muggle world, so the comparison wouldn’t fit properly. i would say the same if like, someone compared american and idk indian societies to such an extent, because bigotry manifests differently in both and what is true in one wouldn’t be in the other. and considering how…closely tied the WW is (which again, could be bc harry’s class size is so so small so it seems like everyone would be familiar with everyone)

if, however, one didn’t think like that tho- i think your points fit perfectly!

#like. i don’t mean to minimise bigotry ofc #and werewolves do face a lot of very structural marginalisation and u can’t ignore that #but i do wonder how remus fits into that. bc for most of his life he’s not ‘out’ as a werewolf #but then. on the other end. i have also read some fics where like #werewolves are recognised on sight so maybe. that makes it tougher?#so i don’t know #also i’m v interested in ur point re labor laws have existed in medieval times 👀#i’ve def nor heard anything like that and was always under the impression that they’re a post industrial society thing #but yeah #this feels very all over the place #because i had like. 472 thoughts but i failed at stringing them together coherently #so u end up with this haha i’m so sorry #i guess the bottom line is: remus does make sense in a way. but to me personally there’s a lot more that just. doesn’t work #i think it’s a me problem lol #pen’s asks

5 notes · View notes