#so why not explore other potential relationships for sirius and barty?

[touchlikethesun]

Hey man do you actually ship Sirius and Barty or is it a joke?

hey anon! idk it depends on what you count as "shipping." it started out as a joke between me and a few other someones, and the name is deffo a joke (and i can't help but feel we maybe should have been a bit more responsible with our naming, really did not expect it to get any reach)

but the more i've thought about it, the more i find it interesting. barty and sirius are quite similar, or at least the way they're characterised in the fandom is similar, like barty is like a slytherin sirius, and i think there's a lot of potential for crack fics with the two of them - i have a wip i've been working on, on and off, for a few months, where they're reluctant and toxic FWBs.

do i actually think they'd make a good couple? hell the fuck no. but do i think they're funny, do i think you could make something interesting out of them if you tried? yep, for sure.

at the end of the day, fandom's about having fun, and bitchkiller is fun for me, so yeah it's a joke but it's also kinda not? if that makes sense?

[starrylayle]

Marauders Fandom > "There is no canon !!" and other rhetorics

Guess who's back in their marauders phase after 2-3 years of being dormant lmao?? ((spoiler its me lol)). Anyways, a lot has changed since 2021 in this fandom so I just wanted to talk about the direction i think it's going.

I remember in 2020-21 the fandom started to boom in popularity on tiktok --> esp with the rise wolfstar + atyd. I remember people were so suprised with remus' characterization as 'rougher around the edges' instead of the 'soft boi' thing, and how that influenced the new wolfstar dynamic. [Just want to add that the atyd characterisation is much more complex than this and its one of my fave fics --> I'm more talking about the fandom at large's reaction to this)

And since fandom is incapable of having two nuanced and characters who are not stark opposites,, their roles were basically reversed and now Remus is the toxic dom alpha male and sirius is the cute girlyboy twink --- which um,,, the oc-ification is so real its embarrassing but whatever (omg don't even get me started on jegulus 💀)). I just assumed these would stay as headcanons. But now we have people saying, that 'we barely know anything abt the marauders in canon' or 'isn't the whole point of fandom to make shit up?' which i have sO many issues with so let me just try and compile my thoughts into dot points for the sake of coherency.

'we barely know anything abt the marauders in canon' ---> First of all, Remus, Sirius and Severus are fully fleshed out characters in the og series -- why do you think people would care enough to create an entire fandom based on their backstories if they were 2d flat characters in canon?? Like bffr. I saw a post on here (forgot who it was by, let me know if u know!) that said, 'I didn't cry over sirius' death in OotP just for ppl to say that we know nothing abt him in canon'. Like, its just mind-boggling to me lol.

'isn't the whole point of fandom to make shit up?' --> Ok y'all. For a fandom to work, there have to be some guidelines, some kind of source material, some point of reference so people can build upon it and make content. I think we can all agree on that. One reason why HP is such a popular place for fandom is the world-building and potential plots/storylines. I see some people argue that jk rowling was a shit writer anyways so might as well contradict everything she says. Now, I don't disagree with that point in particular, Jo is a pretty mediocre writer and a terrible person. HOWEVERrr, I'd argue that it is a lot more fascinating when people expand or work on the concepts in HP. JK Rowling has a lot of great ideas but executes them terribly -- I love when fic writes do this, which prolly explain why I love atyd as it is still very much canon compliant but executes themes on class, disability and queerness that jkr could barely do in subtext. This doesn''t mean I only think canon compliant fics are valid. That's not the case! I think as long as the charcterization is consistent to the character and the particular circumstances/world they're in, its fine! In fact, I love seeing how the same character would function if in a different place! I also love seeing explorations of the magic and magic systems in aus or fix it fics (or even canon compliant ones) that still fit in with the canonnical system that we know.

I guess what I'm trying to say I wish the marauders fandom explored the world and charcterizations more deeply instead of creating shallow oc-fied version of the characters that fit into whatever's trending -- like just write your own book or smth lol -- booktok will eat it up i promise.

Also, kinda related kinda not but um,,, why are we romanticising fascists -- like babe no evan rosier is not your babygirl he canonnoically tortured multiple ppl and became a death eater soo... not saying that I wouldn't want an exploration of his character or even a relationship with barty -- (who's not some cool dairk-haired edgelord but a actually a cowardly fascist murderer with blond hair -- yes the blond hair is important) -- I'd just want them to be portrayed as the not morally good people they are. Like,, if u want to oc-ify a character like pick someone whos not a death eater or has little info on them like dirk cresswell or frank longbottom,,, or ya know,, one of the MANY female characters in the fandom ((This fandom also has a problem with women and sapphic ships in general but that's a whole other issue lol).

I know this 'babygirlification' of death eaters doesn't mean to do this, but it also ends up watering down the themes of oppression, bigotry, etc and leaves us with not nearly as complex characters. Also one of the issues I had with the og HP world is that JK will introduce concepts like wizard racism and slavery and then just like,, not really do anything about it or just have half-arsed redemption arcs whilst not ever actually exploring the root of the issue. And now i feel like the fandom is following in those footsteps unfortunately.

Anyways, i've been rambling for too long so I'll just leave it here. Sorry if this came off as mean spirited in anyway,, I just have a lot of thoughts™ and my family is sick of hearing them lol. These opinions are not set in stone however so I'd love to hear your thoughts on this subject! At the end of the day this is fandom and we're supposed to have fun -- so yeah !! thanks for reading if you made it this far!

[amorremanet]

Arthur/moody, lucius/moody, lupin/snape?

the brutally honest ship opinions game

Arthur/Moody: ……okay, like, I have basically no positive feelings about Alastor Moody — I mean, I feel the same need to defend him from JKR’s ableist garbage that accidentally got me in too deep with Lockhart, but we are still talking about a guy who supports using Dementors on people and apparently dngaf about what someone’s done, just send ‘em all to fucking Azkaban (GOF ch. 30, the flashback of Moody we see in the first Pensieve scene)

who thinks that the best present you could give to a kid who’s lost his parents and just watched a classmate be murdered…… is going over a photo of the First War Order and telling him about how all of them died horribly and he doesn’t ever stop to think that this might not be the best idea (OOTP)

and who is legitimately less sensitive to other people’s needs and less dismissive of people who aren’t his exact model of “useful” than a literal fucking Death Eater one of the biggest points where Barty Crouch Jr. drops character in GOF is when he takes Neville to his office and gives him a pro-Herbology pep-talk, and goes, “so, hey, Longbottom, Professor Sprout said you’re super-good at this subject, why not pursue it,” because based on the actual canon about him? The real Alastor Moody would never do something like that.

Like, he might have the moment he has with Harry and Hermione, where he goes, “so, hey, both of you could be gr10 aurors if you wanted, you should think about it” because that, from Moody, would be a compliment, and Harry and Hermione more closely fit his own ideas of usefulness, but not so much the Neville moment)

—but seriously, do you hate him or something? Why else would you even dream of shipping him with Arthur Weasley? (okay, fine, I acquiesce that there is enough of a canonical basis for some people to roll with here, and I myself have made ships out of far less…… but seriously, why would you ship anybody with Arthur Weasley. Like…… wow, rude.)

Lucius/Moody: again, I’m not on the Alastor Moody fan-train or anything, but why would you even do this. Nobody deserves to be shipped with Lucius Malfoy, like? He’s not even an entertaining villain, he’s just pathetic. He’s a sad, pathetic fantasy-fascist who gets his kicks by bullying twelve-year-olds and torturing muggles who can’t defend themselves. He’s a complete waste of character space and forcing anyone to be in a ship with him is just unfathomably cruel

Lupin/Snape: meh, whatever. Like, it’s not my thing, but… *shrugs* meh?

Like, idk what you’re looking for here, nonny, but I’m guessing, based on the other two ships, that you’re looking for me to get cranky and ship-bashy and figured that Snu//pin was a good way to get there, since there are a lot of legitimate Problems with this ship in the text

But the thing is, I’m just under 900 years old (at least in fandom terms), and I remember the days back before HBP came out, when Snu//pin was the second-most popular Remus ship (after Wolfstar, to the surprise of no one), and was, in fact, so popular that it had its own private archive and got black-listed from most rarepair comms because it, “wasn’t really rare, just less popular than D//rarry, Wolfstar, Ro//mione, Dra//mione, H//inny, and J//ily”

—I mean, there was a short stretch before OOTP where I tried to make myself like it because there was a BNF whose art I loved, and she shipped Snu//pin, so I felt like I had to be missing something obvious and cool and because I was, like, twelve, I tried to make myself ship the thing. That didn’t work and I eventually just moved on, but one thing that I recall about the Snu//pin fandom that appears to still be more or less true, based on everything I’ve seen of the present-day Snu//pin fandom?

Is that they came out about the same as the Wolfstar fandom, in terms of how many shippers ignored or made excuses for #Problematic things about the ship vs. how many shippers work those things into the overall fabric of how they ship the thing, how many shippers LIKE the ship because of those Problematic parts and having the opportunity to explore them in fiction, how many shippers actively dive head-first into exploring those parts of the ships because that’s where they find the most engaging character interactions or whatever they’re into, etc.

For examples of what I mean when I say #Problematic things about the ships:

the fact that all three of them are self-loathing [human or werewolf] disasters who are often passively suicidal and either prone to acting out on those feelings (Sirius and Severus), or prone to repressing those feelings until they explode all over some innocent bystanders (Remus)

the fact that all three of them have suffered horrific abuse in their pasts — whether from their parents or other sources — and find ways to take it out on other people (Severus on his students, Sirius on Severus and Kreacher, and Remus on almost anyone who tries to get close to him, even as he makes it seem like he isn’t doing that)

Severus outing Remus as a werewolf because he’s upset and felt like punishing someone else for it, thereby leading to Remus tendering his resignation

the fact that Sirius assuming Remus had to be the spy would’ve been at least partially based on anti-werewolf prejudices, and Sirius still clearly had at least some of those prejudices on his own, because even if Peter totally manipulated them in his favor, there had to be something there for Peter to manipulate in the first place, so???

the fact that Remus doesn’t help shit anything, in any situation ever, with his habit of trying to weasel out of any Emotionally Difficult™ conversations and his tendency to mentally spin most situations so that everyone is going to leave him in the end anyway so it’s acceptable to shut down, close himself off, and pull stunts that more or less come down to, “totally up and bailing on everyone,” which is understandable, given his backstory, but dude, that doesn’t make it okay or helpful??

basically, “literally anything about the characters as individuals, or in terms of their interactions with each other — both past and present — that could potentially cause problems for either/both/any/all of them and potentially make the relationship unhealthy (or unhealthier than it already was, in the cases of Snu//pin and Snack because…… oh boy, let’s not even act like either of those — or any ship with Sev in it, for that matter — is ever going to be ‘healthy’ by any definition)”

So, like? Is Snupin #Problematic? Yes, definitely. Are some of its shippers prone to ship it in #Problematic ways? Oh, yes, absolutely (Hell, the BNF whose art I used to like even flat-out said things like, “Sirius would never be able to be there for Remus like Snape could” and… um? Even granted that this was pre-OOTP: ummm???)

But on the whole, Snu//pin shippers aren’t actually any worse about totally ignoring and/or excusing these elements of their ship than Wolfstar shippers are (and, actually, they might be doing better than a LOT of the present-day Wolfstar fandom, since I usually don’t see any more recently made Snu//pin that doesn’t grapple with at least some of the #Problematic elements of it — they don’t always do it well, but at least they’re trying, which counts for a lot, to me, because most people don’t even try — while most Wolfstar these days flat-out ignores all the #Problematic elements of Sirius and Remus as characters, and of their relationship, in the name of what often amounts to borderline-OOC caricatured fanon nonsense, so…)

(……Look, I love Wolfstar, and I have for longer than some people on this website have been alive. But I don’t love a lot of Wolfstar shippers, which has been the case since the beginning of my Wolfstar shipping

stayed the case when HBP came out and I was all, “Hey, guys? I don’t like this BS Remus/Tonks thing either, but can we NOT erase bisexuals or treat Tonks like garbage when we’re talking about it, it’s not her fault that Molly Weasley is a meddling nosy garbage buttinski who thinks it’s her job to play matchmaker to fully-grown adults who didn’t ask and don’t want her input,”

and is still the case as I’m over here, all like, “ugh, man, at least we used to have SOME people in this fandom who enjoyed reading Wolfstar angst, now it seems like nobody cares about anything unless it’s all fluff, all the time, with absolutely no room for anything else because god forbid you ever want to write about LGBTQ characters whose lives aren’t 5,000% perfect, that obviously must mean that you’re a gross fetishistic cishet and not, for example, a neurodivergent, mentally ill lesbian survivor who feels left out by the trend towards forcing every LGBTQ person to act like we’re happy, all the time, and to act like we’re only interested in fictional LGBTQ people who are perfectly 5,000% happy all the time

“and to decry any and all depictions of LGBTQ people being UNhappy as gross fetishistic straight people garbage even when they were actually created by and for LGBTQ people, only to be misappropriated by straight people, as if there’s no way you could possibly be LGBTQ and NOT feel ~used and maligned~ by depictions of LGBTQ people that are less than 5,000% perfectly happy, even when they are being created by other LGBTQ people, yeah? ……but yeah, no, clearly: the fact that I like angst obviously means that I am a straight person because no ~real~ LGBTQ person ever has any need for those ~gross negative feelings~ or fictional outlets for them, never mind how many LGBTQ people get excluded from our narratives and spaces by this bullshit bc lmao who cares amiright. ://”)

—anyway, my motto has been and remains, “It isn’t a question of WHAT you ship, it’s a question of HOW you ship it,” so hey. Snu//pin is not my thing (it’s not even as non-shippingly interesting to me as Sirius/Severus is, because I love how much those two hate each other while unwittingly being perfect foils for each other), but I don’t actually have any desire to ship-bash it and most Snu//pin shippers are okay with me because unless they’re actually doing anything that’s harmful to anyone else, it’s not my business what they ship

That said: “Snu//pin” is still one of the worst portmanteau ship names ever and it still sounds like a deadly virus or something, but *shrugs* Whatever, it’s not the shippers’ faults that their ship members’ names don’t smush up all that nicely