trippingontheescalator

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After Astarion finds Vellioth beneath the Szarr Mansion--

Karlach: "You're just going to leave your grandad's skull lying around like this?"

Astarion: 😒

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Shadowzel is so funny to me, because Lae'zel is trying to awkwardly compliment Shadowheart, saying things like "Your skills are improving" and "your hair is pretty"

And Shadowheart is just: "🙄 girl stop we are not friends."

YOU HAD A KNIFE AGAINST HER THROAT. You basically just proposed to her in Githyanki. You are the source of her (literal) bruises. You brought this on yourself, Shadowheart.

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Wyllstarion is just Wyll handing Astarion a bunch of uno reverse cards.

"I'm a vampire."

"I'm a monster hunter."

"I'm seducing you so you'll never betray me."

"I'm saving myself until I'm in a committed relationship."

"I'm going to sacrifice all these people and ascend."

"My high charisma and gentle romancing will convince you otherwise."

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So, a post of mine has recently blown up, and I just want to say: it is 100% possible to both write a marauders era fic that is historically accurate and still be as gay and trans and nonbinary as anything that could possibly be written today. All of these things existed back then, people might have struggled to express it verbally without the terminology we have now, and they might have used to terms that were perfectly acceptable in times past but are now discouraged (example, transsexual vs transgender), but people of all kinds still existed. In fact, many of those people wrote books in the past, expressing a wide variety genders and sexualities.

You want some gay guys who get a happy ending (no "bury your gays" trope here!), try Maurice by E. M. Forster. Yeah, that E. M. Forster, of A Passage to India and A Room with a View fame. Originally written in 1913, it wasn't actually published until 1971 after Forster's death. It's about a rich aristocrat getting dicked down by his rugged gamekeeper.

You want some lesbians? Try Rubyfruit Jungle by Rita Mae Brown, published in 1973. Yeah, that Rita Mae Brown, who writes that series of cozy old lady cat mysteries like The Purrfect Murder and Murder, She Meowed. Wrote a semi-autobiographical coming of age novel about the 70s lesbian scene where her main character is just eating up that delicious rubyfruit.

You want some trans men? Try Metamorphoses by Ovid. Published 8 AD. Yep, some Roman guy was writing about trans men in year. fucking. 8. The particular poem in question is "Iphis and Ianthe" and Iphis is a man with a vagina, which is kind of problem because he's supposed to marry the beautiful Ianthe in the morning and Ianthe does not know about this vagina situation. So, Iphis prays to Isis, and the goddess Isis is like, "yeah, I can fix that" and gives him a dick.

If you want trans women... well, there's Myra Beckinridge and the sequel Myron by Gore Vidal, published in 1968 and 1974 respectively. But honestly it's kind of a fucked up and weird book, but then again Gore Vidal was a kind of fucked up bisexual himself with some terrible opinions. Look, not every one of these is going to age well. Myra Beckinridge was an important work that did a lot to subvert gender and sex norms. I would recommend reading a synopsis first to prepare for anything that might be triggering thought.

Fanfiction for a lot of people is a way to relax and enjoy a happier, brighter world, and if that's you then all the power to you. I sincerely hope you find the best fics out there to suit your needs. Not everyone likes historical realism, and not everyone wants to read about the uncomfortable realities of the past, and that is fine. I do. I like reading it, and I will close any fic that doesn't even try to attempt to remember the marauders era is set in the 70s. That's just my particular taste.

There's a paragraph in the novel The Female Man by Joanna Russ (1975 lesbian novel) where the author says farewell to her book and states:

"Live merrily, little daughter-book, even if I can't and we can't; recite yourself to all who will listen; stay hopeful and wise. Wash your face and take your place without a fuss in the Library of Congress, for all books end up there eventually, both little and big. Do not complain when at last you become quaint and old-fashioned, when you grow as outworn as the crinolines of a generation ago and are classed with Spicy Western Stories, Elsie Dinsmore, and The Son of the Sheik; do not mutter angrily to yourself when young persons read you to hrooch and hrch and guffaw, wondering what the dickens you were all about. Do not get glum when you are no longer understood, little book. Do not curse your fate. Do not reach up from readers' laps and punch the readers' noses.

Rejoice, little book!

For on that day, we will be free."

And Russ is stating that it is a good thing when books and movies become outdated and are seen as politically incorrect, like Myra Beckinridge, because this means that society has evolved. We know better now, or at least we know more than we did when it was written. And we are continuously striving to do better and be better and more accepting. Anyway, I don't know where I'm going with this except that I want more gay historically accurate 1970s snape fics, and I'm not going to apologize for that.

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Lily 100% needed feminist friends, but I don't think we can lay all of it at the feet of her parents. Unfortunately that was just the 70s. Like, this is a time period where it was pretty common for male characters to rape female characters and that would magically make the female characters fall in love with the male characters because they're so "passionate" and "overwhelmed with love." This is the kind of shit Lily would be consuming through films and books. Marital rape was 100% legal and most people didn't think a spouse had any right to say no except for those bra-burning feminists. If James hit Lily, a lot of people, not just her parents, would probably ask, "What did you do?" And think she drove him to it. The culture was crazy back then.

Snape didn’t only have bad examples of Muggles! He knew Lily’s parents, saw that they lived well, and that they were kind. Did it never cross his mind, “Oh… so not all Muggles are bad! I might be wrong”?

You're asking a teenager whose main Muggle figure in his life was his abusive father, who only saw poverty, filth, and a miserable neighborhood around him—which to him represented the Muggle world—and who, on top of that, meets Lily and Petunia, and the first thing Petunia does is mock him for how he's dressed, to rationalize that maybe not everything was bad? Why don’t you ask the same of Dumbledore, who, without any valid reason, was conspiring with his boyfriend to take over the world and get rid of Muggles?

And sorry, but the whole thing about Lily's parents is pure headcanon. There is nothing in canon that indicates Severus knew Lily’s parents or used to spend time at the Evans' house. We can speculate about it or say it makes sense in a fanfic, but it’s not canon—nor is it canon that if he did know the Evans, they treated him well or had no prejudices against him. What we can rationally assume is that if there were anyone primarily responsible for Petunia developing all that inferiority complex and envy towards her sister, it was precisely her parents, due to their clear favoritism towards Lily. So… sorry, not buying it.

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Okay, I tried googling, but couldn't find an answer, and I need other opinions for possible fanfic-related reasons lol-- but is there any significance to Astarion, Dalyria, and Violet all being white-haired elves (although with the black streaks in Violet's hair, her white hair might be a dye job)? I've seen theories that Astarion resembled Vellioth and that's why Cazador seemed to target him more, and that Astarion was one of the older spawns. Is there any official listing of which spawn came first? Because I've got a theory that Dalyria, Astarion, and Violet are the oldest and the only ones Cazador actually chose because he wanted these spawns for himself, as sort of a "Brides of Dracula" situation, and that Violet dyes her hair white to fit Cazador's "theme" (whether that theme is Vellioth, well, I'm not sure). The others -- Petras, Yousen, Leon, and Aurelia -- came after Cazador made his deal with Mephistopheles, either because they were useful or because they were simply the first few spawn Cazador made after making the deal before he realized "Oh, this is going to take forever and what the hell am I even going to do with 7000 more of these? I don't have enough bunk beds for all of them. Eh, I'll just shove them in cages in my basement for the next century."

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The Marauders Era Historical Resource Guide Part 1: Pre-1960 to 1970

So, to start with, let's take a look at what came before the Marauders, at some of what their parents experienced because this will influence how they raise their children.

Cokeworth, being Muggle, is the easiest to cover. Cokeworth probably experienced a population boom in the Victorian era for either one of two reasons (possibly both reasons!): the "coke" in cokeworth refers to a byproduct of coal that was very important in the Victorian era as a source of fuel for coal-burning stoves and furnaces. We know Cokeworth is in the Midlands, and coal mining was a big industry in the Black Country, so Cokeworth could have coal mines. The name "Spinner's End" implies that there might also have been a textile mill there as well. The textile industry was huge in the Victorian era. Conditions for either job were, needless to say, brutal. To get an idea of what Severus's grandparents and great-grandparents lives might have been like in Cokeworth, I recommend checking out 24 Hours in the Past on YouTube: 24 hours in the Victorian era - YouTube (only the first 8 videos in the playlist)

If the Snape family are native to the area, they probably worked in either one of these two industries (or both!). Other options would be the service industry, which was very large up until the 1940s (to get an idea of what life was like for servants, I'd recommend reading the biography Below Stairs by Margaret Powell). Even a middle class family had a servant or two, but by 1960 this was a thing of the past. Only the wealthy had servants, though Eileen might have taken on work as a charwoman (cleaning lady).

Or there was workhouse. The Victorian workhouse of Oliver Twist was still very much a thing until 1948 when the NHS was formed. Now, granted, by the 1930s it wasn't quite the Dicksonian terror it had once been (though it still was not what I call great), but Tobias could have very well ended up in a workhouse during his childhood. If he was illegitimate, he might have been born in one. To get an idea of what the workhouse was like during the 1900s, I'd recommend reading about Charlie Chaplin's early life. Yep, that Charlie Chaplin, famous actor of the silent screen spent a portion of his childhood in a workhouse.

The house in Spinner's End does seem to be from this era as well. This meant that it would have been built with no running water and either gas lamps or lit by candles. The government started to refurbish these old houses with running water and electricity by the late 1960s, which meant that for much of Severus's early life he would not have had access to running water or electricity, maybe even as far as 9 years old. He would have had to pump water by hand at the neighborhood pump.

With this he and his family would do laundry, fill a bathtub, wash dishes, and cook with. There would have been an outhouse, probably one he would have shared with his neighbors. Here's a picture of an ex-council house outhouse from the 1950s:

Lily's family, in contrast, has either middle class or lower middle class roots. The Evanses are probably either highly skilled blue collar workers (electricians, chefs, land surveyors, nurses, etc) or are white-collar but are not extremely high paying like doctor or lawyer (such as teachers, secretaries, middle managers). However even the Evanses would have experienced deprivation due to wartime rationing, which only ended 4 years before the characters were born. Mrs. Evans was likely a homemaker. Most likely, her house was built with running water and electricity in the 1930s-1960s.

Remus's mother was a Muggle, and his father Lyall was a civil servant who worked for the Ministry. Lyall's anti-werewolf comments led to Greyback retaliating and biting Remus. From this we can infer two things: that Lyall was important enough that the Daily Prophet recorded his statement (Greyback had to have found out what he said somehow, and I don't think he was hanging around the Ministry water cooler listening to gossip), and that this means the Lupins were probably middle to upper-middle class. (Adult Lupin is poor because he can't get a job due to his condition, child Lupin, however, was not poor and considering how everyone's parents are dead in these books, safe to say his parents died at some point prior to PoA)

Lily probably would have grown up with a television, though probably not a color tv (my mother didn't get a color tv until high school, the mid 1970s, and she was shocked to realize The Wizard of Oz, which was periodically played on tv, was actually in color). Severus probably wouldn't have gotten a tv until after he started Hogwarts. By this time a basic black-and-white television would have cost £70 (about £940 today). In contrast, a color tv would have been much more expensive. Remus might not have had a television at all, if his mother had fully integrated into the wizarding world. He might have had a telephone though, so that his mother could keep in touch with her family. Lily most definitely would have had one. Severus might not have. If anyone in his family needed to make a phone call, they might have gone to a neighbor or pub. If there was an emergency, Lily or Severus might have used an honest-to-gods police box (its not just for time travel). These would have been phased out in the 1970s, during their school years.

Children would have been free range. Even for someone like Lily who grew up in a loving home with good parents would have been expected at as young as five or six to go to the store by herself with money her parents gave her and spend the rest of the day roaming the streets and playing with Severus and other neighborhood kids. You might be thinking, wasn't that dangerous? Yep, Diana Tift was abducted and murdered in 1965 at the age of five when she was walking home alone from her grandmother's house. That's just what they did back then. Lily might even have been expected to pick up cigarettes or liquor for her parents at such a young age. Her parents most likely would have smoked, so would Severus's, and they themselves would have probably picked up the habit. It was much more socially acceptable back then, even for teens. So was child abuse. People might not personally approve if they saw Tobias Snape beating his son, but few would intervene. They would say, "how he disciplines his family is his business."

Corporal punishment was permitted in schools until 1986. Caning was the preferred method, sometimes on the bare bottom and in front of the rest of the school, and hard enough to make them bleed. Girls were not exempt from this. Girls might be more often to get beat on the hands if the school was co-ed, but if it was an all-girls school then they were probably canned bare bottomed as well. Here is a series of school articles from 1976 about it: Caning and strapping of girls and boys in UK schools, January 1976 - CORPUN ARCHIVE uksc7601 Severus, if he did not experience caning himself, would have seen it done. Lily might have gone to a girls' school and experienced it herself, or seen it done, or else be hit on the hands. Since Remus's family seems to be fully integrated into the WW, he probably didn't experience this since he most likely didn't attend school at all. To get a better idea of the sort of school Severus might have gone to, here is a tv news report from 1969 about a school serving an impoverished, rought neighborhood in Sheffield: British Education in the 1960s | It's a battle ground | Education | 1960s | Report | 1969 - YouTube To learn more about the sort of school Lily might have gone to, you might want to check out The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie by Muriel Spark.

A film that's set in an East London British school from 1967 is To Sir, with Love starring Sidney Poitier. You know those cheesy movies from the 80s and 90s about a white teacher going to an inner city school? This movie the exact opposite, where an African-American teacher goes to a run down British school to teach white kids how to read. It stars Sidney Poitier, one of the best actors of all time.

All three (yes, even probably Remus) would have been aware of the Cold War and the threat of nuclear annihilation. The UK was an ally to the US during the war. Britain occupied a part of Germany after WW2, they were involved in spying and in combat in Korea. It was Winston Churchill that coined the phrase "Iron Curtain." There wasn't desk drills where children were taught to hide under desks in the case of a nuclear attack like in the US, but in 1974 the British government published "Protect and Serve" (https://digitalarchive.wilsoncenter.org/document/protect-and-survive), a pamphlet outlining how to survive in case of a nuclear attack. The bombing of Nagasaki and Hiroshima would have been a terrifying thing for the wizarding world to behold, who had always considered Muggles to be powerless against magic. I can definitely see how the fear and paranoia of cold war nuclear attacks would inflame the rising tensions that sparked the first wizarding war.

James and Sirius would have grown up very differently. Both of them are exceedingly rich, both are purebloods (though only Sirius is considered one of the Sacred 28), and both would have had limited contact with the Muggle world.

The wizarding world seems to be very old-fashioned in many ways, though less sexist to a certain extent (though JKR can't help but infuse it with her own particular brand of misogyny). Whether it's homophobic is a coin toss. You can either state that Dumbledore was hiding his sexuality (though he definitely would want to hide he had the hots for Grindelwald lol) or its so unremarkable to the WW that it's not worth commenting about. There's a whole thing breeding thing going on in the pureblood world, so I can definitely see it as a "gay is fine, so long as you still do your duty and reproduce" kind of thing. As for trans issues, I'm sure JKR has her own opinion about that, but fuck her. If McGonagall can teach 11 year olds to turn a rat into a goblet, people can change their genders. However, they wouldn't call themselves trans or transgender, they would use the term transsexual or, less accurately, transvestite. Muggles would use this word as well. Neither of these were considered slurs at the time and were widely accepted by the community. Likewise, they wouldn't really use gay. It was certainly around by this point but it wasn't as common. Queer, lesbian, and homosexual were all used. Lily and Severus probably would not have encountered this. There were certainly poor and middle class gay people in places like Cokeworth, but the sodomy laws weren't overturned until 1967 and even then only for men over 21. Severus might have come into contact with the seedy underbelly considering where he grew up. There might have been prostitution and it might have been area for "cruising" (anonymous public sexual encounters between gay men, since it was illegal anonymity was important, so men would go to places known to be an area for cruising and have sex there).

The most high tech thing the WW is shown to have is Molly's radio. Considering just how obsessed the WW seems to be with blood status, the fact that there doesn't seem to be a mini-skirt robe option and everything is ankle-length, it's giving Downton Abbey. It's giving Jane Austen. The Ministry itself is almost a monarchy. The Wizengamot is both the judicial system and the legislative governing body. The Minister of Magic is voted in, except when the Wizengamot decides to name who they want as Minister, votes be damned, like what they tried to do with Dumbledore. The WW has never heard of "checks and balances."

The WW is harder to pin down in a historical context because it is a fantasy world that seems slightly out of step with the real one. It's safe to assume that both wartime rationing and the Blitz probably had some impact. They might not have understood exactly why it was so difficult to get sugar. Considering how small the population is, the WW might not spend much time on farming produce themselves and choose to rely on Muggles for that. Stepping out of Diagon Alley only to see the street is now a smouldering ruin would be jarring. Going to Hogwarts and learning that your Muggleborn classmate's parents died during the Blitz. Hearing that the entire wizarding communities in Nagasaki and Hiroshima were obliterated in a blink of the eye.

The world outside the WW is changing fast, even for Muggles. In 1960, Penguin Books was tried for publishing Lady Chatterley's Lover on obscenity charges. Barrister Mervyn Griffith-Jones infamously said, "Is it a book you would even wish your wife or your servants to read?" Which was viciously mocked as being put of touch. Penguin was found not guilty. I can definitely see why there was a conservative, reactionary terrorist-cult on the rise in the WW as the 1960s progressed.

Fleamont, we know, was in charge of his company. Sirius's father Orion likely had a job as well because being one of the "idle rich" is not looked upon favorably no matter how rich you were (even Lucius has a job on the Board of Governors). Law, charity, and government work are the most likely options. Euphemia and Walburga would have been involved in some sort of charity work (what Walburga thinks of as "charity" I can only imagine lol).

As far as I can tell, the WW has no form of primary education, which makes sense since they haven't really evolved since the 1910s. Education was considered the responsibility of the parents. For someone like James or Sirius, that would mean hiring first a governess and then a male tutor when they were old enough to teach them maths, writing, etc. For someone like Remus, who is in the middle class, then might mean sending him to a privately-run day school in someone's house that might have 5 - 10 students, or his parents teaching him at home. Now, the best novel about a governess is Jane Eyre, but she's rarely shown actually teaching, so if you want to see more about governesses, go with Agnes Grey by Anne Bronte (the other, other Bronte sister).

Expect Part II covering the 1970s... sometime.

@charlotterhea it was your tags that inspired me to write this! I hope you write that fic!

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#oof yes#that's why i'd be nervous writing a marauders' era fic#the amount of details you might have difficulty researching#because you don't even know what you have to research#puts me off#i'm not a huge researcher anyway#writing#fanfiction

You know what, these tags here have inspired me to write a historical research guide for the Marauders Era. Because I don't want to stifle anyone's creativity with this post, but research can be very daunting! Yeah, I'm gonna do it.

Sometimes I think this fandom forgets that the Marauders and Snape are boomers. I just saw an "rip Lily Evans you would have loved Dolly Parton" post and like... Dolly Parton began her career in the 60s. Lily most definitely would have listened to "Jolene" as a 13 year old kid. And as a fanfic writer myself, I don't want to unnecessarily dunk on anyone's hard work, but it is a pet peeve of mine when I search for fics set in the Marauders era during the 1970s and the characters all sound like they are heavily involved in 2024 tumblr discourse. These kids would have never heard the term "genderfluid." They would call themselves transsexual or a butch dyke and there would be 212% more cigarette smoke, just everywhere. Fuck there was a designated smoking area at my boomer parents' high school for students and so long as the parents signed the permission slip the kids could go there and smoke. This was incredibly common (at least in American high schools) pre-1980s. Like, I can see the Evans family playing a game of lawn darts, Mr Evans with a beer in one hand, a cigarette in his mouth, throwing highly dangerous lawn darts that would eventually be recalled because of all the deaths it caused. Severus Snape had most certainly absorbed lead from the leaded paint in his house. Nobody was going to call the cops on any abuse they might see going on in the Snape's house because its the 1960/1970s and "how Mr. Snape disciplines his son is his business." War rationing had just ended 6 years before Snape, Lily, and the Marauders were born. Mental illness was extremely taboo, dyslexia wasn't really recognized in schools or talked about until the 1980s, after the Marauders had graduated, a lot of people were still calling PTSD "shell shock." For Muggles, there was no real DNA testing (it was in its infancy), no cellphones you had to pray there was a payphone nearby, and you wpuld talk to a telephone operator. It wasn't until 1966 that the UK switched to an all-digit telephone numbers. Before then instead of an area code it was a central office in every city/region that used letters. So if Lily, as a six year old girl, wanted to talk to her grandma in Manchester, her mother would have dialed something like MAN-9126 (I actually have no idea what Manchester's central office code was lol, this is just an example). Cokeworth is likely a Victorian mill town, and the major push to replace outdoor plumbing with indoor plumbing didn't start until the 1960s. Severus would have most likely spent his early years without indoor plumbing while living in a rowhouse built in the 1860s. Tubs would have had to be filled by hand, laundry scrubbed by hand and hung out to dry, he would have used an outdoor toilet and considering he is in a poor urban area he most likely would have shared this toilet with his neighbors in the other rowhouses.

These characters' story are shaped by the time they lived in, and sometimes I think the fandom doesn't realize how different the 1960s and 1970s really was.

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Okay, so first bg3 playthrough I was a red dragonborn monk Durge who romanced Lae'zel. Perfect, 10/10 no notes.

Now I'm playing Shadowheart who's going to romance Halsin because I like the way their stories interact in Act 2, and also I like the idea of them retiring to a cottage with SH's parents, her fifty pets, and his fifty orphans.

But I think for the next playthrough I want to play as Gale who romances Karlach because I'm a sucker for a tragic ending. He sacrifices himself to destroy the Elder Brain, she burns up one day later... Has anyone done this? Would I still get an epilogue? What's their ship name?

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Sometimes I think this fandom forgets that the Marauders and Snape are boomers. I just saw an "rip Lily Evans you would have loved Dolly Parton" post and like... Dolly Parton began her career in the 60s. Lily most definitely would have listened to "Jolene" as a 13 year old kid. And as a fanfic writer myself, I don't want to unnecessarily dunk on anyone's hard work, but it is a pet peeve of mine when I search for fics set in the Marauders era during the 1970s and the characters all sound like they are heavily involved in 2024 tumblr discourse. These kids would have never heard the term "genderfluid." They would call themselves transsexual or a butch dyke and there would be 212% more cigarette smoke, just everywhere. Fuck there was a designated smoking area at my boomer parents' high school for students and so long as the parents signed the permission slip the kids could go there and smoke. This was incredibly common (at least in American high schools) pre-1980s. Like, I can see the Evans family playing a game of lawn darts, Mr Evans with a beer in one hand, a cigarette in his mouth, throwing highly dangerous lawn darts that would eventually be recalled because of all the deaths it caused. Severus Snape had most certainly absorbed lead from the leaded paint in his house. Nobody was going to call the cops on any abuse they might see going on in the Snape's house because its the 1960/1970s and "how Mr. Snape disciplines his son is his business." War rationing had just ended 6 years before Snape, Lily, and the Marauders were born. Mental illness was extremely taboo, dyslexia wasn't really recognized in schools or talked about until the 1980s, after the Marauders had graduated, a lot of people were still calling PTSD "shell shock." For Muggles, there was no real DNA testing (it was in its infancy), no cellphones you had to pray there was a payphone nearby, and you wpuld talk to a telephone operator. It wasn't until 1966 that the UK switched to an all-digit telephone numbers. Before then instead of an area code it was a central office in every city/region that used letters. So if Lily, as a six year old girl, wanted to talk to her grandma in Manchester, her mother would have dialed something like MAN-9126 (I actually have no idea what Manchester's central office code was lol, this is just an example). Cokeworth is likely a Victorian mill town, and the major push to replace outdoor plumbing with indoor plumbing didn't start until the 1960s. Severus would have most likely spent his early years without indoor plumbing while living in a rowhouse built in the 1860s. Tubs would have had to be filled by hand, laundry scrubbed by hand and hung out to dry, he would have used an outdoor toilet and considering he is in a poor urban area he most likely would have shared this toilet with his neighbors in the other rowhouses.

These characters' story are shaped by the time they lived in, and sometimes I think the fandom doesn't realize how different the 1960s and 1970s really was.

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You know, as much as I love the idea of Lucius going full sugar daddy buying Severus new clothes like he's Julia Roberts in Pretty Woman, but I don't think that's actually how it happened. I think Severus rocked up to his Death Eater meeting one day with an old duct-taped pair of his dad's steel-toed boots poking out of his Death Eater robes and Lucius hissed at him, "I know that's you under there, Snape. What the fuck are you wearing?" And Lucius HAD to buy Severus something appropriate under his robes because he was a goddamned security risk.

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The Sign of the Four

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Whether it was author's intention or not (fuck JKR anyway) there is something deeply suspicious about how Hogwarts operates. Snape is thought of in-universe as being a genius for crafting his own spells (and I am the biggest fan of his, this isn't a dig on him but at Hogwarts in general) but really all he did was play around with Latin translations. It's not genius, it's logical. Hermione even says in the very first book that wizards aren't good at logic, but Severus is. He created a logic-based puzzle in POS, he thinks critically about the textbooks he was given as a child, and he was apparently one of the few to realize "hey, this all just Latin. If I say other words in Latin will they work the same as spells?" And he really shouldn't be alone in coming to this conclusion. Wizards are not incapable of logic, Hogwarts is deliberately handicapping them.

Now, I don't think Latin was intended to be a magical language. Otherwise every time a Roman wizard spoke bushes would be turning into chickens or whatever. I think it is a placebo, a tool to help wizards focus because Latin "sounds magical" to English speakers. Hence why they focus on silent casting at higher levels because Latin isn't actually needed. Regardless, why isn't Latin an official class at Hogwarts? Why are there no literature or writing courses taught? The only arts-based class they have is music. I think because all of these classes would be essential to creating your own spells and that's dangerous. It's easier to keep control of a population when you know the counter curse to stupify, but a lot harder when they're just making shit up on the fly (especially adult wizards who can do it silently).

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Forgive the ignorance because I am not actually a part of the OCs That I Named After the Marauders fandom, but I never see Kingsley Shacklebolt in the line up when Marauders stuff pops up on my dash - a man who, for all intents and purposes, appears to be around the same age as Snape and the Marauders, but I do see Dorcas Meadowes, a woman we know literally nothing about except when she died, when for all we know she could have been Dumbledore's age during the first war.

[trippingontheescalator]

I don't think it has anything to do with the age of snaters. When the books were first coming out, most of the kids my age (middle school) loved Snape. Now, Snape had a lot of characteristics that were popular at the time (mysterious, possibly a vampire, sarcastic, dresses all in black) that are no longer in style, but I think it goes deeper than that. Puritanism seems to be on the rise thanks to social media. When I was a kid if you had a completely off-the-wall take on a character who were you going to tell? Your small circle of friends, post it on MySpace? If somehow it did become popular in forums and various small fanfic sites (no A03, fanfiction.net is a baby) there were no repercussions for not toeing the accepted apocrypha fans created except for some needs going "well, actually, if you read page who-gives-a-fuck..." No one was going to accuse you of being a nazi or morally corrupt for liking a character. I think because social media can make fringe groups explode in popularity and the modern insistence that your morals are tied to the media you consume has something to do with it, especially as people come up with more and more outrageous claims to prove anyone who likes Snape is morally bankrupt (ex. claiming that Snape would be a pedo if Harry was a girl). No one wants to be accused of being a moral degenerate so they toe the party line.

I just post this in spanish because i was on the train and lazy to translate but i'm gonna say the same in english just for my international non-spanish-speakers fellas

Honestly, I’d really like to hear a coherent argument that justifies the constant bashing Snape gets in the fandom because, to this day, I haven’t read anything that makes me think he deserves the sheer amount of crap thrown at him. Like, what’s the worst thing he did in his life? Insult someone? Join a group of idiots and then leave? Not be able to stand a bunch of annoying kids who were always getting into trouble? I don’t know, it sounds a lot like the trajectory of your average adult to me.

[trippingontheescalator]

So, I -- a cis woman -- work in a library in an area that occasionally gets tornados during the summer. Because our library is basically designed like a fishbowl, the only room that has zero windows is the women's restroom. That is our designated shelter-in-place area and it has a little sign and everything.

Well, one rainy summer day we hear the tornado sirens and an alert comes across our phones. We decide to go ahead and get all the patrons into the women's bathroom to shelter. Luckily, we only had three patrons because it was an icky, rainy day, otherwise I wasn't sure how we would get everyone in there.

So, I go to our patrons -- two of whom are men who were 50-60 years old, one was a woman who was about 45 -- and make the announcement. They all gather up their stuff to follow me until I told them we would be sheltering in the women's bathroom. The men flat-out refused. I was baffled. Befuddled even. I explained it was the only room in the library that didn't have windows. They still refused. I explained nobody was going to be peeing in there, we were just going to hang around until we got the all-clear. They still refused. I was then getting irritated and told them that I couldn't let them hang around in a giant glass fishbowl in the middle of a tornado while the rest of us were safe in the bathroom, that was a liability issue waiting to happen, and if they didn't join us in the bathroom then they would have to leave, thinking that would finally push them into joining us. Instead, I watched them walk out into the pouring rain, the window violently whipping the trees around us, and drive off.

These men were so terrified of entering the women's bathroom that they risked getting sucked up by a tornado, and I'm not sure if that was because they were afraid of being accused of anything or what. But me, the other patron, and my coworker Jon, all hung around inside the women's restroom watching youtube videos on his phone for about an hour.

vent post. There are two stories i was told in my teenage years that even before i had a real concept of trans issues made me uninterested in discussing the supposed sacredness and safety of separated sex-based spaces.

First, when i was like 13 or 14 my PE teacher told us about a time she went to a women's public restroom, some guy was hanging out outside the bathrooms, she didn't think anything of it, went to the bathroom, and he walked in after her and like, creeped on her over the top of the stall. She was ok, she wasn't telling us this to scare us, just telling us what to do in situations like that (and iirc she was telling the whole co-ed class this, not just girls, bc it's useful for everyone), but this taught me immediately and forever that there's nothing actually keeping these spaces separate really, that anyone can be a creep in any space, and that establishing a space like that as for women only isn't actually particularly useful for safety.

Second, when i was 16 i was at an anime convention, a friendly acquaintance of mine and i ended up in conversation outside, and he showed me his bare wrist and told me he'd been kicked out. A female friend of his had stepped in dog poop outside, and between that and the stress of the convention she'd had a bit of an emotional breakdown, so being her friend, he started comforting her and ushered her into the women's restroom so they could wash the poop off her shoe together. And because he was a man who went into the women's bathroom, he got kicked out, no matter that he was doing something that was actually beneficial to a woman. Punishing a woman's friend for supporting her was supposed to... protect her somehow? This made it clear to me that a no-exceptions rule separating the sexes like that wasn't actually inherently good for everyone.

And this isn't even getting into me as a child needing to accompany my younger sister to the restroom when we were out with just my dad because she had certain support needs past the age he felt comfortable bringing her into the men's room with him. And what if I'd been born a boy, or she'd been the first born? Who's helping her then?

And of course even putting all this aside, we should always prioritize compassion and support anyway. But i never even needed to meet a trans person to know that "keeping men out of women's bathrooms" is silly nonsense. But trans people also need to pee anyway and as humans they have that right, so leave them the fuck alone. your precious women's restroom is just a fucking room with a door, holy shit give it a fucking rest, if someone is attacking you in the bathroom that's bad and if someone is in there to pee that's good and it doesn't fucking matter what their junk is or was when they were born.

a woman could have done the exact same thing to my PE teacher and it would have also been bad no matter how "supposed" to be in the restroom she was, and no one should ever be punished for helping a crying friend wash their shoe.

Anyway i know I'm speaking to like-minded folks here, i just think about those two stories literally every time bathroom gender shit comes up and it pisses me off.

[trippingontheescalator]

art #art