#yes their pranks are harmful at times but it isnt for the intention of hurting if you know what i mean

[lilithofpenandbook]

Padfoot and Prongs are pranksters in the same way those fool streamers who become public nuisances are- harass people then claim they were joking when really it's because of their inflated ego and amusing themselves. They are not pranksters or jokers, they just use that as an excuse.

Fred and George are pranksters in the way characters from the Enid blyton school books are (every book there is a prankster or two)- they actually trick people using actual joke equipment, all to make everyone and themselves laugh, and while not malicious, they are thoughtless.

First off your recent post about the relationship between J/S was absolutely amazing. You explain and analyze them beautifully. But there was one part that caused me to pause.

You said there as readers it seems we are to draw parallels between them and F/G and you think that’s where the idea of them as pranksters comes from. Are they not described as pranksters in canon?! Like if so I’m shocked because that appears to be universally agreed upon. I haven’t read the books in years so I’m having a hard time recalling, but it just seems like such a fact about them. I never saw them had the “haha this is so funny, doing it for the shits and giggles kind of guys” but still… honestly stopped me in my tracks.

Thank you! <3 and yeah I get why it’s surprising! It’s so prevalent in fandom that you probably wouldn’t question it without reason. The language around the Marauders is all ‘mischief’ and ‘trouble’ rather than any specifics with regard to pranking (in fact, mainly around James and Sirius but given the group effort of the map, of Remus and Peter’s occasional appearances alongside J&S in detention, a lot of this applies to the group). I also haven’t read the full books for yyyears so I might be off with some of the F&G stuff.

Even so, I can see where the idea comes from. There’s the alignment with Fred and George as a double act and troublemakers, and through ownership of the Marauder’s Map. MWPP call themselves “Purveyors of Aids to Magical Mischief-Makers”, McGonagall calls James and Sirius “a pair of troublemakers”, they get detention for “various petty misdeeds” (as seen by Harry in his own detention in HBP), Hagrid says that Fred and George could give James and Sirius a run for their money. It all leads towards a parallel between F&G and J&S (to a certain extent). Given the non-specifics of terms like ‘trouble’ and ‘mischief’, I don’t think pranking is a wildly incorrect interpretation in isolation, especially when the sense of mischief/trouble that we see in the wizarding world is the Fred and George, Peeves, Zonko’s Joke Shop-style pranking.

BUT I don’t think it works for the Marauders when you consider everything else we know about them, and it becomes even less convincing when you consider the advanced magic involved in the Animagus transformations. Remus says it took them three years to complete, and that they managed it in their fifth year. So by the time they’re in second year, aged 12 or 13, their time is taken up with learning about and then attempting the Animagus transformations - so on a practical level, I don’t think they’d have the time or mental space for endless juvenile pranks.

Once they’ve completed the transformations, they’re working on the Marauder’s Map which also seems to be quite advanced magic, at least for their age. That’s even more time consumed by exploring the castle, then plotting it on a map, doing whatever tracking magic makes it work, plus there’s the added feature of the map recognising and personally insulting people (Snape). This is on top of classes and extracurriculars like Quidditch, so I just don’t see where pranking would get a look in. They wouldn’t have the time, and with the complex magic they’ve been doing I don’t think pranks would be particularly fulfilling even if they did have the time. Remus says he forgot his guilt about breaking Dumbledore’s rules “every time we sat down to plan our next month’s adventure” and planning explorations just fits MWPP so much better than practical jokes - they named the map not after their gang, but for those who maraud, for those who want to explore, expand, and we don’t see another object like the map in the series so it’s innovative and original.

I think that the fun of it for MWPP was that they were doing all of this, undetected, under everyone’s nose - famously “the risk would’ve been what made it fun for James” whilst Remus says they got “carried away with our own cleverness”. I get a sense of like wishful nobility and put-on pompousness and grandiosness in their somewhat elaborate use of language - the aliases, the ‘Messrs’, the wordiness of ‘purveyors of aids to magical mischief-makers’. They seem to enjoy the secrecy and anonymity and the nicknames (not unlike the Half-Blood Prince actually), whereas I think there’s more of an intentional outward showiness with Fred and George. With the Marauders there’s an arrogance, an aspect of “look how easily we can outsmart other people”, whereas Fred and George are clearly skilled and intelligent but I think for them it’s entertainment, it’s for laughs, it’s the joy in the silliness (though ofc they have the Extendable Ears, which are useful and innovative, I just think the balances tip in opposite directions with MWPP and F&G). 

We see what James and Sirius are entertained by in Snape’s Worst Memory and it’s unpleasant and mean, it’s public humiliation, it’s assault, and it’s to ‘liven [Sirius] up’ when he’s bored. So from that angle turning someone’s hair green in the middle of class or whatever just doesn’t seem like something that would catch their attention. It’s beneath them, it’s not exciting enough, it’s not dangerous enough. The depiction of out-and-out clowns, frothing at the mouth to throw a Dungbomb or whatever, minimises the bullying aspect of James and Sirius in their Hogwarts years - they are practically salivating to torment Snape, Sirius is “like a dog that has scented a rabbit”. Indirectly the concept of them as pranksters becomes a mechanism that helps people avoid engaging with an the unpleasant side of their faves which I’m just very unwilling to do. The meanness and the privilege and the superiority that are behind the way they treat Snape are key to James and Sirius’ characters and their development, whether they reform or not.

The way ‘prank’ and ‘joke’ are used around the Marauders is actually quite interesting, in that it’s used basically exclusively to refer to the Shrieking Shack incident, which gives an insight into their perception of a prank as something quite sinister, actually. In the case of Sirius, Remus and Dumbledore, those words are used to minimise the seriousness of the event to Harry and it’s sarcasm from Snape, because it clearly wasn’t a ‘trick’, he could have died. So ‘prank’ in its use around the Marauders is essentially a euphemism for actual dangerous or horrible shit.  

This makes sense given the sense of mean-spiritedness beyond SWM as well - the double detention for blowing Bertram Aubrey’s head to twice its normal size, James tripping up Snape on the train. It reads to me as James and Sirius being dicks to other people to make each other laugh, which is a stretch on the idea of a prank. Even in the prequel, which is fairly harmless, they just call some policemen stupid and say silly names at them, it isn’t exactly a prank - it’s not something they seek out, and it’s an in-joke with each other, it’s them laughing about how clever they are vs these silly policemen - Sirius’ description of them as ‘arrogant berks’ comes to mind.

Essentially, it’s up to you how much you lean into the idea of them pranking in the sense of practical jokes, and it depends on how liberal your definition of the word ‘prank’ is. It’s a very slapstick, American-ish concept to me, which is probably why it doesn’t work with the way I read MWPP and it’s also just not interesting to me lol.

I could get behind it as a sort of blowing-off-steam exercise after they’ve worked on the transformations/map for a long time - like watching a reality show to let your brain switch off, it’s just easy. I also don’t really have an issue with practical jokes when MWPP are younger, like first and second year, because it doesn’t conflict with their other activities at that point. I can see it as a small way that they might show off or try to impress each other - like Fred and George turning Scabbers yellow. I could also see it as an off-the-cuff kind of thing, but in terms of these big orchestrated pranks where they plan them for weeks and spend every second plotting it and choosing the perfect time and date, not even slightly.

Maybe I’m being a bit nitpicky/overly specific/literal but I think it’s partly a frustration at the over-emphasis on pranking and how it so often overwrites James and Sirius’ intelligence, or even directly dumbs them down. It happens to Fred and George too, they’re clearly very intelligent and capable characters, and maybe I wouldn’t mind so much if humour and intelligence were reconciled and worked together a bit more, because typically they’re traits that go hand-in-hand anyway. However I do really enjoy the way both F&G and J&S have that verbal acrobatics, bouncing-off-each-other thing going on. Very satisfying.

Once again I’ve written ten million words on something that isn’t the end of the world, and which is an interpretation at the end of the day. It’s not one that holds up that well in my opinion and it becomes a bit caricature-like. It’s one of those small things that makes me go ehhh when I read it, but not necessarily something that will make me completely disengage if it’s in a mild enough dose. I’m just asking for a bit of nuance!