I'm Glad Sirius Went To Azkaban

For me, it’s all the popular ones in the current fandom. They all create a version of Sirius that feels sanitized of his complex original traits. I don’t have an issue with the fics themselves—they’re great contributions to fan writing—but I take issue when fans are so influenced by these characterizations that canon appreciation gets sidelined.

I love reading fics, so it frustrates me that so much focus in this fandom is placed on these fanon versions, and that the popular fanfictions available often feature these portrayals. Most fics you find now include them. I wish more people writing Marauders fics would focus on canon. I’d even read a Jegulus fic if it portrayed the characters well. I just find it strange that this fandom has such a huge divide in how it interprets its characters. It feels weird to completely strip them of their personalities but still call them the same names.

How do they think Sirius Black is portrayed in fanon?

Who is this referencing? Crimson Rivers Sirius or Choices Sirius? ATYD Sirius or TCOPTP Sirius? Only The Brave Sirius or KYD Sirius?

I don't really understand.

It's like a cult who creates an imaginary enemy and fights them with wooden swords. Or the enemy is children. It's worrying. I hope they get well.

This man has been gaslighted his whole life.

Something about how Snape says in anger about his first time going to the Shrieking Shack, "Saved? Saved? You think [James] was playing the hero? He was saving his neck and his friends' too!" (DH)

Something about how Snape tells Harry in exasperation in his second time in the Shack, "I have just saved your neck; you should be thanking me on bended knee!" (PoA)

Then something about how Snape dies from a neck wound on his third time in the Shack, doing the exact opposite of saving his own neck, while "Harry remained kneeling at Snape's side"... (DH)

I was thinking about Luffy not wanting to be a hero when I realized something.

His very simple yet insightful line, "heroes share their meat, I want all the meat", very clearly shows that heroes make sacrifices. He doesn't want to make sacrifices. Perhaps it's because he's been the sacrifice himself.

Garp is a hero. He's cool too. But he was hardly present in Luffy's childhood. No matter how much he'd get beaten by his grandpa, I bet he'd still rather have him around than not ("being alone is worse than being hurt."). Yet Garp very clearly makes a sacrifice here. Being a marine being a priority over his grandson in the absence of the child's father.

Later, after Enies Lobby, he finds out that Dragon is a revolutionary. Literally a hero of the people. What's he done? The cost he paid for a greater good? He sacrificed Luffy.

So, while Luffy loves really deeply and fights for this love, he would rather have a death grip on his precious ones by being a pirate than let go and sacrifice and become a hero.

This may very well just be me looking too deeply into it, but the idea of Luffy being the sacrifice just did something to my insides that is hard to explain.

My logical brain agrees, but my heart can't help but support unethical haterism. To some degree it will always slip, unfortunately...

On ethical haterism in fandom & how to be an ethical hater 

Being a hater (sharing negative opinions about tropes, ships, characters, and trends in fandom) is fun and often tempting. Being a skilled and ethical hater is even more fun, though difficult to achieve. 

(This is pretty HP focused. While all fandoms have an unethical hater problem, HP fandom has a particular dynamic where people are quick to feel guilty about fandom participation due to jkr being awful and then project that guilt onto others by trying to identify other people in fandom as being ‘bad’ so they can feel ‘good’ in comparison.) 

Number one question: Are you enjoying yourself? If you’re not, then stop. You cannot be an ethical fandom hater if you yourself are not having fun and are instead making yourself miserable by being a hater. None of these other factors are relevant if you’re not having fun. Take a break from fandom and go outside instead.  

The next consideration is space - public vs private and the specifics of social media platforms. 

You’re almost always being an ethical hater if you’re bitching and laughing in your friend’s DMs. You’re never being an ethical hater if you’re on Tiktok or another algorithm based platform where people cannot avoid your content showing up on their pages. Discord servers and tumblr posts are where it gets complicated. Make a good faith effort to make sure anyone who wants to avoid your hater content is able to do so via appropriate tagging or sticking to approved channels within the discord server. 

Next: humor

If you’re being mean, you better be very funny. If you’re not funny, you probably can’t get away with being mean. Be less mean. 

The best of ethical haterism is creative and funny and active. It is about creating and enjoying yourself with friends more than it is about tearing others down – even if you are mocking people and ships and characters! 

A useful question to ask: could a reasonable person with a different opinion from you find what you’re doing funny? (This is different from: can the absolute worst, whiniest, most sensitive person in fandom find what you’re doing funny?)

Things that are never ethical haterism: 

Making accusations about individual people’s politics, values, and identities based on their preferences for ships and characters. General rule: if you (or the people you surround yourself with) are throwing out the words ‘nazi,’ ‘pedophile,’ ‘freak’ or ‘bigot,’ you’re not being an ethical hater. 

Things I have seen that are not ethical haterism and are simply asshole behavior: accusing anyone who doesn’t like femme Sirius of being homophobic or transphobic, accusing anyone who ships any Death Eater/order member ship of being a nazi, accusing Snape stans of being incels, accusing anyone who ships Snarry or any student/teacher ship of being a pedophile etc.

Note: Ethical haterism is separate from critiquing fandom trends and the influence of broader politics on how we engage with fandom. It is asshole behavior to make specific accusations of individual people based on their ships, headcanons, and art, but it is reasonable (and I’d say good!) to examine how white supremacy/patriarchy/capitalism show up in trends in fandom. 

Things that are asshole behavior and never ethical haterism: commenting rudely on fics, talking publicly about specific fics you hate, deliberately going into ship tags to start fights, making accusations, generally being unpleasant. 

The two fundamental questions of being an ethical hater: 

Is what you’re doing making fandom more fun, more creative, more engaging, more lively, more connected? 

Are you sensitive to the idea that some people might not enjoy seeing this content and want to make sure it’s possible for them to avoid it? 

That’s my theory. Thoughts?

‘She wasn’t a good mother’ great are we evaluating this character trait as one of her many facets or are we just damning her for not being the most maternal womanliest woman who ever womaned

Tired of it

Just thought to myself "can't women have a bad time in fiction without rape being involved" which really shows you how much you're in the fucking trenches if you are both a horror fan and women fan

Do you know how much strength you need to manage such a high-adrenaline and high-maneuverability broom sport? He trains frequently as well. My man might not be buff or overly big, but he is athletic and does have muscles.

He's also someone who has been in physical fights before and frequently ran from bullies as a child. He might have been scrawny and short as a child due to neglect, but he grew into a healthy, properly built physique over time at Hogwarts.

describing harry as "an insanely athletic man" while all he does is sit on a flying broom is crazy work

Not true. If you read carefully it is not hard to correctly assume the canon personalities of our characters. Sirius, who is described to have his hair falling elegantly without seeming to try, who when he's bored wishes it were the full moon despite knowing his friend is a werewolf and saying this unprovoked—bored. Then acting like a predator sensing his prey the moment he sets eyes on Severus. He was described to be one of the best students, constantly in pair with James, hexed a student in his 7th year and many more. He also let Severus into the shack without telling him what's there, endangering his life and risking Remus's future. As an adult he doesn’t appear to be remorseful about it. Remus frowns but does nothing else to stop Sirius and James from harrassing and humiliating Severus. He can be self depricating about his condition, but it's clear there's resentment towards Sirius when he says 'you might', even if he never brings it up. Peter is cheering and loving it when he sees Severus being harrassed. He openly admires James when he's playing with the snitch. He seems stressed about exams and his performance which suggest confidence issues. He doesn’t really defend himself when Sirius mocks him. Lily appears to be an emotional person, but also non confrontational because we often see her walk away from a conflict, she merely gives a "bad look". She raises her wand at James only after many attempts at reasoning with him, so she prefers to talk rather than be physical. She was described as vivacious, smart and cheeky and we can see her being able to have fun instead of caring for rules too much. She is curious and asks questions. She has tolerance for difficult personalities. There is so much more you can deduce from the text, it isn’t that difficult. So please drop the notion that "canon is non-existent" because we do have a canon foundation, the only problem is that people are lazy to engage with it critically and instead prefer to pretend their fanon ideas have canon validity. Just admit you like au's and ooc-ness.

ppl be posting shit like "I miss canon Marauders"

Babes, there is no "canon" Marauders. Most of the shit ya'll think is canon, are just old headcanons that used to be widespread before other (usually queerer) headcanons gained popularity.

There is so little information about the "canon" Marauders - and even the info we have cannot be trusted because it's usually memories, influenced by a character's bias - that trying to make a somewhat comprehensive character out of the given material is impossible, let alone 4 characters.

Everything is fanon. Everything is headcanon. And that's the beauty of this fandom.

(Ofc my favourite part is when something actually is canon via the books or movies, and people reject it as fanon.)

I never get tired of any fandom discourse. And if I ever do, I'll just block those people.

Falling in love with Harrydore is a curse because there’s almost no food for meeee 😭😭