Trying to figure out how to post a Project Hail Mary edit I made recently but it's just a little above 500MB so Tumblr won't let me upload it rip ;-; I thought I might be able to imbed a Google Drive link but alas. I am just not tech literate enough for this I fear.
HELLO YOUR HARRY POTTER FIC IS SO AMAZING CAN I MAKE FANART OF IT PLEASE :DDDD
Um yes please??? If you feel called to do so I would be beyond honored??? Anyone who wants to make anything inspired by any of my present or future writing is more than welcome to do so. It is the highest compliment above all compliments to me that something I made would inspire you to create. And if you do end up making fanart, I would very much love to see it!! <3
I've never posted any of my edits before but I've been in a total obsession spiral over Project Hail Mary for the past couple weeks. These two are everything to me. Song is How Do You Talk To A Star by Everybody's Worried About Owen!! :)
I've been getting a few comments and dms about my prolonged absence, so I just wanted to reassure everyone that I am still alive and working on tttp lol. I know I've gone like 2 ish months without updating before, but I'm still a ways off from the next update, so I thought I'd give people a little progress report!
I've been slowly picking apart some larger plot issues in my long-term outline, and deciding what the next arc is going to be once we switch back to James's POV. I'm just now digging into the meat of the next chapter, but I've mostly been taking it easy these past couple of months. My personal life got really busy out of nowhere, so I was focusing on that for most of April. I also wanted to take a bit of a longer break so I don't get burned out on the story. I went through the last few chapters very quickly, and I'd like to pace myself better in the future. I love this story very much, so I don't ever want to lose my passion for it!
I've never really posted a multi-chaptered fic like this, especially one I was uploading while it was being written, so I'm still learning how to balance keeping up with my audience's appetite (you guys like this fic so much!! I'm still bamboozled by that every day!!) and also keeping the hobby fun for me. You'd think that would be easy, but I get mean to myself over very little provocation, so I have to actively fight to, you know, enjoy things that I enjoy doing. Please picture me at a nice, relaxing picnic making a strict itinerary so that I don't become Overwhelmed by Doing The Picnic Correctly. This is how I do literally everything in my life adfjkakdfjalsf. Anxiety is a hell of a drug!
I also have another project I'm working on rn that I've been wanting to write for several years, so I'm sort of in the swing of that atm. Don't worry, I'm still planning on updating tttp as soon as possible! I don't have an exact timeline on my next update, but if it makes the wait any easier, I plan on uploading two chapters at once >:) I still have very big plans for this fic, so don't expect it to go away any time soon!
That said, I hope no one would be disappointed if I maybe started uploading a second fic in tandem with this one? I might do an alternating chapter thing so that I'm able to do both stories justice... much to consider. I haven't even finished the first chapter of this hypothetical 2nd fic, but who knows! Anything is possible! Totally hypothetical, but what's the crossover between Jeverus fans and people who play Dragon Age? For no particular reason lol.
Anyways, I did not mean to ramble this much, but I really should have expected that of myself lmao. Thank you all for being patient with me! I've gotten some jokes about me secretly being a famous writer or something (no seriously, that's a thing multiple people have accused me of, which I find hilariously improbable), but this is my first real time publishing my writing, so I'm learning as I go. Thank you for bearing with me <3
Much love and all the best wishes to anyone who reads this!! xoxo
first of all, I love your fic and you are so talented. I appreciate that you take your time writing and I feel like you have such an insightful and confident way of tackling the characters and expanding them into new possibilities. It’s a joy and I hope you are proud of the work you put in. Second, I am so intrigued by the way you have James set himself against dumbledore in a way? I last read the books ages ago and won’t re read them frankly but Dumbledore occupies an archetype I’ve always really struggled with, this classic fatherly mentor who is meant to embody everything good except for having like maybe one or two barely explored flaws who then gets to set moral terms and judge everyone else. I find it very intriguing that as opposed to Harry (who your James resembles a lot in some ways lol) your James is so quick to draw on his nerve and need to enact heroism to do the opposite of what Harry does, not deify Dumbledore but instead defy him. I am really looking forward to seeing how that strand develops. Best of writing luck to you, thank you for the joy you bring! 💗
Tysm!! Dumbledore fascinates me, I could spend hours talking about how contradictory his character is. I do think he genuinely wants to do the right thing, but he's willing to make these extremely costly sacrifices to achieve his aims without consulting anyone else's opinion. I think his greatest flaw is that he believes he's always right, and he won't allow anyone to check his power. All of his secretive and convoluted plans DO WORK to defeat Voldemort in the end, but at what cost? Could that cost have been lower if he explored other options? Why does he have the authority to decide what is worth sacrificing for the Greater Good and what isn't?
I think the massive difference between Harry and James is their upbringing. James was raised in a Light family that thinks very highly of Dumbledore, but James was also raised very privileged. He too has a bit of that "I'm always right" thing going on. He also has room to kind of assess Dumbledore more critically and acknowledge his flaws because he has a broader support system.
Harry comes into the magical world abused and ill informed, and he takes Dumbledore almost entirely at his word on everything he says. Who else would he trust? Harry is in a much more vulnerable and impressionable position, and I think he comes to deify Dumbledore, like you said, because he really didn't have many other positive role models to look up to. James, on the other hand, had a childhood that was very safe and gave him a lot of opportunities to assert his independence, so he's not as suspectable to hero worship in that regard.
I am thrilled to hear that my writing brings you joy!! Thank you again for the super kind words <333
Severus allowed himself to gloat a little, “You are too predictable, Potter.”
Potter’s eye twitched at the word predictable. “Oh, yeah?” he said dangerously. The tone washed Severus’s self-satisfaction away in an instant, replacing it with cold fear. He barely had time to think before Potter was moving at him. Severus leapt back, his wand jumping into his hand— Wait, no, Potter wasn’t coming toward him. He was— What—?
In a twist of magic so fast that Severus’s eyes failed to process it, Potter’s form grew from a sitting human to a massive, towering deer.
“Jesus Christ—!” Severus choked, his heart pounding out of his chest. He was nose-to-nose with the deer. It snorted, rearing its great head back. Severus squashed himself against the railing to avoid its giant antlers. The deer’s visage distorted, and as quickly as it came, it was replaced with a madly cackling Potter.
Chapter 10 of the time turner paradox by @cinnabunbunny 💕
James claims the person he hates most is Severus and then claims he is telling the truth. I want to bang a gavel before his nose and say ORDER IN THE COURT! and hold him in contempt until he explains this ashshgdhfhfhj anyway! I hope you had a marvelous birthday and please know I love your fic and I am obsessed with it. I greatly look forward to James Potter’s POV so we can finally see what the hell he thinks he’s doing here. It’s transparent but also simultaneously the mystery of the century (tm), and I’m on tenterhooks about it.
Hehehe, James has lots of Big and Complicated feelings about most things, but especially Severus Snape! Tragically for us all, he is literally the worst communicator on planet earth rip. Tysm for the kind words, I have been terribly sick today and this ask cheered me greatly :) I am also looking forward to getting back into James's POV, and I'm currently reworking my outline for his next arc to make it even juicer >:)
A post unrelated to tttp for once, but today was in fact my birthday! Here's a glimpse of the birthday cake I've been having for the past 5-ish years. Same recipe, same candles, same baker (my dad.) Happy April Fools from the April Fool herself! (This is not a joke post, April Fools is actually my birthday lol /gen)
Hello, I just want you to know that I re read that last scene you posted between Severus and James CONSTANTLY. I am in awe of how emotionally satisfying and cathartic it manages to be even with one of the major POVs obscured and even as it depicts Snape having a bit of a breakdown. I think it takes a rare talent to recognize/utilize/communicate emotional fulfillment to the reader in the moments where characters fall apart and there is maybe the least catharsis for the character. You really do it beautifully there and I love that scene with all my heart. Thanks for your words. I hope your life is beautiful right now and that you are taking care of yourself.
Constantly?? O///O Omg that is so flattering, I'm kicking my feet over here aaskfdjalkfsjl. I had no idea the tension between them was going to boil over in that scene until I started to write it out, but it just felt very natural. James has been slowly chipping away at Severus's walls in the past couple chapters, but not in a way that really built any trust between them, so it felt right to have Severus lay out some real cards on the table and immediately feel super regretful about it.
Now we're in this interesting spot where they've both kind of given the game away; James all-but admitted he enjoys spending time with Severus, and Severus all-but admitted he is afraid James's ridicule. I'm quite pleased with this set up going into the next chapters, and I'm really glad the scene captured you like that!! I'm honestly winging all of this. I just sort of go ham in Google Docs until the scene Feels Right lol.
My life is actually stupendous atm, as I am about to go on a trip with the platonic loml to celebrate my upcoming birthday! I've been beyond excited about it for months. I really appreciate the kind words and the well wishes, and I hope you have something positive in your life right now that you're looking forward to just as much. Much love from me to you!! xoxo
Just saw the BTS on TTTP, and I have to gasp in awe because I thought I was the only person that writes out a bunch of dialogue (yes, sometimes even the whole chapter) with barebones stage direction. It just works? Seriously, it’s such a unique way of writing and I am so surprised someone else does it! Okay, now on to actual questions:
How much of Severus’ asshole behavior do you think is learned vs innate? In the same vein, how much of James’? Do you see James’ parents adopting Severus too when they eventually meet (to Sirius and Severus’ horror)? Will Severus ever get a good nights sleep and realize just how badly his sleep deprived self has fucked up his life (cause he’s got a standing daily meeting with James Potter of all people)? Will James ever learn how to be a normal person about the people he loves? Will these bisexual disasters actually get together or just burn their lives down on repeat so the other might have some light?
Feel free to ignore some/all of these questions lol. I’m just a curious soul.
Omg, twins!! :DD It makes me so happy someone else does this lol. It's actually a technique I developed while working on this fic. I've loved writing my whole life, but I haven't really like..... done a lot of it? My inspiration has always been incredibly fickle, and for a long time I struggled with motivation to actually get my ideas on paper. Part of that is me being an insane perfectionist and being very self-conscious about doing my hobbies Correctly, which puts a damper on the urge to write.
Making this fic has been such a game changer for me. I was just so passionately in love with the idea that I pretty much forced myself to come up with ways to get through writer's block so I could keep working on it. It's one of the few pieces of writing I've ever published online because I just knew that THIS was the one I was going to make it all the way through.
I can't describe the feeling I had writing the first chapter, like this story was going to change my whole life. Well, a year later, I was right!! I've learned so so much about myself as a writer while working on this fic that I think it's set me on a totally different trajectory. I used to think I'd never be able to write professionally because I couldn't make myself actually get anything done, but now I'm like......... perhaps one day lol.
Anyways, sorry for the rant, I just love talking about writing, and I really only get to do so with my mom lol. To answer some of your questions, I don't actually think anyone is an asshole innately. I think James has been over-validated throughout his life, whereas Severus was under-validated. They're both products of their environments in different ways.
James grew up being told he was the specialest boy who ever lived, but he was also raised with a strict moral code, so he grows up to be like, mean girl judgmental. He really believes he's Right About Everybody and treats them accordingly. If he thinks you're evil, he has to be the big important hero to vanquish you. But if he LIKES YOU, you're pretty much in for life, because his love is such a powerful force that he is willing to forgive you almost anything. He's a hypocrite with a big heart, and I love him <3
Severus, on the other hand, has been treated as inferior for his entire life by literally everyone around him. His father, his peers, society at large. He's the classic radicalized underdog with a chip on his shoulder. He thinks he deserves something from the world that he's not getting, so he lashes out at people that have what he wants. Instead of processing anything in a healthy way, because he just doesn't have the tools to do so, he turns the cruelty he experiences back on other people. It's the only thing he knows.
In that way, I think James and Severus are both extremely understandable. How could someone who has been taught that cruelty is survival put that aside? How could some who has known nothing but love and Light empathize with the exact opposite? Except, plenty of people break those cycles. Plenty of people who suffer turn around and treat others with kindness instead, and plenty of people with privilege use that privilege for good. Neither of them are the "perfect, morally correct" versions of their archetypes. They're both sort of the worst people their upbringings could have made them atm, which is what makes them so similar despite being so different, and what, imo, makes them more interesting than the alternative :)
As for your other questions, well, I fear answering those would veer into spoiler territory, so I shall leave you with this: the literal fate of the world depends on these two getting their shit together, and they're still going to find a way to do it in the most ass-backwards way possible adfjalfjdasdl.
Tysm for asking me questions btw, I literally love answering questions /gen. I hope you have an amazing day/night/whenever you read this!! xoxo
I cannot BELIEVE it’s been a full year since I uploaded the time turner paradox!! I’m blown away by how much support I’ve received, so to anyone reading this, I can’t possibly thank you enough. I wanted to do something special for today, so I decided to do a little “behind the scenes” thing for the chapters I’ve uploaded so far! I’m going to go into my brainstorming, outlining, and writing processes, as well as some of my inspirations for the fic :3
Spoilers for chapter 11 below the cut, as well as chapters 1-7. If you aren't caught up, beware!
Writing process
Brainstorming
Behold, the great sticky note skewer. These are all of the sticky notes I used while brainstorming for the lore/worldbuilding of this fic (for now, anyway.) I always copy down my notes into my outline google doc, but sometimes writing stuff down helps my brain work through writer's block. I used to keep composition books, but I discovered sticky notes, for whatever reason, were SUPER helpful in speeding through large plot arcs while outlining. I wanted to keep them even after they’d been digitized, so I asked my dad if I could steal a receipt spike he got at the thrift store. Now, it lives on my desk!
I have a decorative corkboard next to my desk, and this is the only functional thing on it. I kept forgetting what calendar years corresponded to the Marauders’ school years lol. The little scribbles to the side are the word count for various segments within chapters. If I feel like a chapter’s pacing is a little wonky, I compare the word count for each segment separated by the little hourglasses ⧖. Ooh, btw, I totally got the idea for hourglass scene dividers from cyclical by cuips_not_cute. It’s a very, very good Stranger Things fanfic, and easily one of the best time travel fics I’ve ever read (and I have read……. A Lot….. of time travel fics……. lmao.)
Outlining
As you can see, some of my chapter outlines are super brief. Sometimes I figure out what scenes I want as I’m writing! But other times I plot them out beat by beat. The first chapter I just wrote out without an outline of any kind, then I started kind of plotting a few chapters ahead. It wasn’t until chapter 4 or 5 that I starting plotting out the entire fic. Chapters that I plan ahead in detail tend to be chapters that involve a lot of heavy plot threads that I need to keep track of for later, whereas chapters I just sort of free-style are ones that surround one specific plot point, and the rest I can kind of fill out based on vibes. I also cut things out sometimes, like James exploring the Restricted Section in chapter 2 (I spent way more time pre-funeral in that chapter than I expected), or Peter helping James experiment with the time turners in chapter 4. I write a LOT every chapter, and stuff can’t always make it in lol.
I plan VERY far ahead with my chapter titles lol, though I do change my mind sometimes. As such, I'm only going to give you a glimpse of the next two, teehee >:)
Writing
So I have a very specific writing process for most scenes. I'll write out all of the dialog for a scene, sometimes for a full chapter, and then fill in the dialog tags/action/exposition around it. I just find dialog easiest, so if I’m staring at an intimidatingly blank page, I do that first, and it usually helps me feel out when I want the scene to be. The little brackets [] indicate where a dialog tag will go. I don’t waste time on that when trying to get the flow of a conversation down. If I have a specific line/action note I don’t want to forget, I’ll toss that in brackets as well.
Really the only times I don’t do dialog first are if I have a long section I know will be exposition or an action scene. I like to do everything in order, because I like knowing what comes before a scene before I write it. If I’m struggling to find the pacing of a scene, I’ll end up jotting down the rough beats either in a comment or in the body of the doc itself.
Inspiration
The very first chapter of fic was like, an amalgam of countless daydreams I’ve had over the past five years, but here are some things that really made it the beast it has become:
Death Grips by Etta Marcus!! The song that started it all. I had this idea bouncing around for YEARS, but I don’t know if I would have ever gotten it on paper without this song. I opened a google doc on a vacation at my aunt’s house and wrote out half of chapter 1 in a single sitting, while listening to this song on loop. My writing playlists are now so dominated by her music, she was almost the entirety of my Spotify wrapped last year. I think I listened to her whole discography on loop for months straight, so she’s really responsible for the first like five chapters of this fic lol. Chapter 3’s title is also from a song of hers called Hide & Seek!
My favorite time travel fanfics, from various fandoms, which made it my favorite trope of all time (not a full list, I could not possibly name them all, and CERTAINLY not in order, because I could never rank them):
Severus Snape - The One Who Walks in the Shadows by Shinehiro — MY FAVE SNAPE FIC OF ALL TIME. PLS READ IT. The LORE. Ugh, I reread this biannually. So, so good.
The ‘What Goes Around (Comes Around)’ series by Arkodian — The best time travel fanfics in the HP fandom imo, very much including my own. In my top favorite fics of all time, across all fandoms (which is impressive if you know how my fanfiction I read/how many fandoms I'm in.) It’s a classic Harry Goes Back In Time To First Year And Does A Bunch Of Politics fic. Dare I say it is the pinnacle of the genre. The politics, the characters, the world building, the plot lines……. all delicious. There’s also a Petunia + Dudley redemption in this one, which I adore!! My favorite character has to be Méabh (one of the very cool ocs in the fics), all of the Knockturn scenes/lore just make me so so happy.
The ‘A Dead Man’s Guide to Reliving Your Youth’ series by Spork_in_the_Road — The SECOND best Harry re-do fics, but only by a hair. Just as jaw-droppingly good as the #1 spot. Harry rides a basilisk through the school in this one. Enough said.
I simply have far too many Tomarry time travel fics I could recommend, so I’m just going to blast through as many as I can name — Before the Storm by orphan_account, If we could turn back time by MBlack93, in the silence by Hoppsan, and Custodarium by Tina48 are all PHENOMENAL.
The one Tommary time travel fic I would beg you all to read, however, is A Snake In The Apothecary by Sedimentary Bear. IT’S GOT EVERYTHING. Diary!Tom being a simp, amazing worldbuilding and the most unique magic lore I've EVER seen in the fandom, BAMF!Harry. It’s one of the best HP fics I’ve ever read, I implore you all to check it out.
Venturing out of the HP verse and into Stranger Things (another of my chief obsessions), there’s cyclical by cuips_not_cute, which I mentioned earlier. I’m way pickier about time loops than full time travel aus, but this one is absolutely stellar!
Going back to my roots, I'll Die to Care for You by thehufflepuffhobbit is one of my old classics. The Hobbit fandom is what first got me into time travel fics many, many years ago. God, do I love Thorin Oakenshield x Bilbo Baggins so inconceivably much. They BUILT me.
In the same vein, I remember To Fix What Was Broken by hobbitoutoftime being very good. I haven’t read either fic in a good long while, but those are my two classic Thilbo time travel fics :)
The loml forced me to watch Arcane and it changed my life. No spoilers, but that final Jayvik scene? Yeah, that’s extremely relevant to this fic >:)
And ofc, lest I forget, ALL OF YOU WHO COMMENTED ON THE FIC OR SENT ME ASKS ON TUMBLR!!! I refresh my inbox daily. Nothing has inspired me more than your takes on my writing, your analysis of my characters, and the sheer insanity that so many of you have enjoyed my silly fanfic!! You guys are my BIGGEST inspiration, always <333
And that’s me, folk! I can never thank you all enough for the unfathomable support. Here’s to another year of tttp! Big things coming soon!! Much love to everybody xoxo <33333333
Please do not apologize for being verbose, I’m so happy for that answer and it offers such a great glimpse into your thinking about your characters. Thank you for it!! Lily and Eileen leaning on each other in the dead Sev timeline makes me cry, and I am so sooooo excited to see James start to develop his thinking a bit beyond the assumptions passed down from his parents. It makes total sense for James that a system and worldview in which he can thrive and be supported is still a system and worldview that ultimately restricts him. Your James has this amazing capacity for agency and really lives up to everything alluded to in canon, just this very Aries character propelling himself recklessly beyond limits. In a way of course Sev is also just as transgressive but in a totally different way, it feels like in his case it’s much more out of necessity and a lack of support. I totally don’t think you’re victim blaming Eileen at all, btw, I think it’s wholly believable that someone who endures and endures a horrible situation would maybe lack the ability to switch into defense mode, even for her son.
I fear apologizing needlessly is one of my worst habits whoops lol. I'm over here kicking my feet that my response pleased you, and I am equally delighted by your own insights into my characters.
I literally adore when people take things I subconsciously thought about characters and put them into words wayyyy better than I ever could have. Like saying that James's worldview both supports and restricts him is SO spot on. You calling him an Aries is super funny to me because I am actually an Aries myself lol, I hadn't realized he and I shared a zodiac sign, though I'm like the opposite of reckless myself. I do think my intense emotiveness bleeds into James a lot. I love writing from Severus's POV, but he's very analytical and it is also super fun to write James, who is very emotionally driven.
I've been working very hard on the next chapter, and in doing so, I've been reading some Gothic literature as research (because you can't tell me that Severus Snape does not read Gothic literature.) My mom has this big, gorgeous collection of Edgar Allen Poe's works, and there's this one quote from a short story of his that really made me think of both Eileen and Severus. "It was hope that prompted the nerve to quiver -- the frame to shrink. It was hope -- the hope that triumphs on the rack..."
Something about how even the most cynically driven pursuit of survival is a form of hope. I don't know that either Severus or Eileen Snape would call themselves hopeful people, but what else is the endurance of decades of abuse but the hope that triumphs on the rack?
I am re reading your fic and I really like the little glimpses you give early on into the parents and their different dynamics with the kids (esp Eileen and Lily and Euphemia and James’ friends). Do you have any thoughts on why you chose this particular take on them, and any headcanons to share about them?
YESSS I HAVE SO MANY THOUGHTS ALWAYS.
Ahem. Normal level of enthusiasm. Hello! One, I am awed and flattered every time someone mentions rereading my work, as I am shocked enough anyone bothered to read it the first time. It just tickles me pink you liked it enough to go back for seconds, so thank you!! I tend to go with slightly different interpretations of characters for every fic I write, because I like examining different versions of people within different plots. For this fic, I tried to balance some of the more fanon-accepted tropes for the Snapes and the Potters, but also bring some nuance that I always look for as a reader myself.
I'll start with Eileen since she's going to be very different next time we see her in the story. The funeral scene comes at a point where she is at her most raw and open, so we see parts of her character that might be more subtle under other circumstances. I wanted her to have this layer of dignity and strength under a jumpy exterior, much like her son. We're going to be getting into the Snape family dynamic in a few chapters, so I don't want to spoil too much, but weirdly, Eileen at the funeral was Eileen at her best.
Severus's loss was obviously devastating for her, but I think in some ways it was also a push to take back some control over her life. After all, what else did she have to lose? In the current timeline, without this huge, tragic event to kind of force her out of her shell, we'll find her very much stuck in an unhappy, abusive marriage that is slowly driving a wedge between her and her son.
There are a lot of versions of Eileen and Severus's relationship in various incredible fanfics across the web, but here's my take on them: I don't think Eileen is the kind of amazingly brave person to put herself directly in Tobias's path to direct his abuse away from Severus. I also don't think she's a really bad parent or anything. She's complicated. She loves her son, but she's stuck in this really horrible situation that keeps her very beaten down. I don't want it to sound like I'm victim blaming her at all. Tobias is her sole source of income and financial security. She gave up the magical world and her family to be with him, she has no other safety net. I think she feels very resigned with her life, and she doesn't have a lot of fight in her. She's the kind of person that just takes whatever the world throws at her. That takes a lot of resilience, but it also means that Severus grew up in a tumultuous and unsafe home because his mother never really stood up for herself (or him.)
He ends up taking refuge with the Evanses. He spends as much time at their house as possible. He becomes practically a part of their family. I think Eileen adored Lily when she and Sev were growing up. Here's this bright, kind-hearted girl making her dour son light up. What a relief it must have been to see her make him smile for the first time in years. But I think Lily didn't spend as much time in the Snape household as Severus did in the Evans household, so Severus kind of becomes distant from his mother. Maybe she feels like he's chosen this other family over her, and even though she doesn't blame him for that, she feels like she's lost him a bit. By the time Lily and Severus split, maybe Eileen feels like she doesn't really know her son at all. That's sort of the starting point we're at in this timeline where Severus is alive, and therefore Eileen has no impetus to really take charge, not having had this horrible wake-up call to her own helplessness in the wake of her son's death. Pre-time travel, I think Eileen and Lily took a lot of comfort in each other as two people that lost someone that was already lost to them ;-;
I also have a LOT to say about the Potters omg. I wanted to strike a balance between showing their status as old money purebloods and showing how genuinely tight-knit they are as a family. Potter Manor is meant to feel homey and warm, but it's maybe a little more polished than the Burrow, for example. Euphemia is elegant in her cashmere shawls and speaks in a posh cadence, but she also doesn't worry about tracking in dirt from her garden. Fleamont is an extremely successful potioneer with a keen eye for business, but he also has this obvious spark of mischief that he passed on to his son. They adore their son, so much so that he doesn't really grow up with limits. James could get away with murder in that household. Sirius basically does.
I think the Potters 100% adopted all of the Marauders. Anything their son loves, they love just as hard. But Sirius is special. That's their second little boy. The Potters canonically tried for a long time before they had James, but I think they always wanted a large family. I could see Euphemia maybe having had a few miscarriages. She's just a really maternal person, and Sirius is in such desperate need of someone to love him properly. She and Fleamont see him as their own, absolutely no different that they see James. They wanted more kids all their lives, and James brings them home another child to dote on, and they just fall to pieces giving him anything he wants. All Potters love and love HARD. The downside of that is that these absurdly wealthy and privileged children now have two unconditional hype-men in their corners that make them think they can do no wrong.
I'm really looking forward to poking into the more complicated parts of the Potter family dynamic. Fleamont and Euphemia are very loving parents, but they aren't perfect. They sure as shit needed to discipline their kids more, or maybe they wouldn't have turned into such unrepentant bullies. I'm especially interested in James's prejudice against Slytherin. Where did that come from? Kids repeat what they hear, and James is spouting anti-Slytherin rhetoric at eleven years old on the train ride to Hogwarts. Maybe the outwardly open-minded and accepting Potters have some prejudice of their own. I think he probably overheard his parents say a lot of stuff akin to "Gryffindor = Light magic = being a good person."
This creates an unintentional pressure on him. Yeah, they would love him no matter what, but kids are sensitive to perceived expectations. He's a Potter, and Potters are Gryffindors. Potters are Light mages. There is, in fact, this mold he feels the need to fit into, though I don't think was ever a problem for him until recently. It's not that I think his upbringing made James insecure, I think it was the opposite. He loved living up to those expectations, and he was good at it. It was never a struggle for him to fit into this mold set out for him. But ultimately, this superiority complex led him to being a massive bully, and pretty damned prejudiced to a whole house of people, so these heroic ideals he was raised with have a bit of an underbelly.
It isn't until he starts reflecting on his behavior towards Severus (and dabbling in Dark magic to bring him back to life, but that's neither here nor there) that he starts feeling like these ideas of Goodness and Righteousness are restricting. He's def going to have to start deconstructing some of the things he picked up from his parents. Even though the Potters are a very loving family, they still unintentionally passed down some baggage to their kid, as I think all parents do. When we get back into James's POV, he's going to be grappling with some of these ideas.
Overall, based on my current outline for the fic, we are going to be seeing more of both the Potters and the Snapes, but they aren't going to really be in the spotlight. They're more background motivation for James and Severus to examine things about themselves/each other. As much as I would love to dive into Literally Every Corner of my character's lives, I have....... so many plot lines....... to fit into this fic...... so some stuff with have to remain implied. I am def going to dedicate some space for their families though, because I think them having very different backgrounds is one of the biggest draws about Jeverus. They will absolutely have to tackle that baggage to get to anything approaching a healthy relationship. While Eileen + Tobias and Euphemia + Fleamont might not themselves get ton of screentime (pagetime? word... time?), I have found some fun ways to make the family dynamics plot relevant, so I will have an excuse to flesh them out a little more in the fic itself. As you can tell, i have a Lot Of Thoughts about this all adjfakfjdklafjsk.
Thank you so much for triggering this unskipable cutscene, I put literally so much thought into every character I write (they are on my mind literally 24/7) and it makes me so unspeakably happy to have an excuse to infodump about them. I'm sorry this was insanely long, but in my defense, my asks are titled "button that makes me talk." I fear receiving overly verbose responses is a risk you take with that :P
I sincerely hope you have a great day/night/whenever you read this, and tysm again for enjoying the fic!! Mwah, xoxo <333
Do you have any face claims for your James/any images that bring to mind what he looks like? young Severus Snape to me has always basically looked like John Cale in that picture with Edie Sedgwick, but I don’t really know how to picture James. Your James is probably my favorite James I’ve read so figured I would ask if you are picturing anyone specifically when you write him. Peace and love, thank you so much for your work! ❤️
I honestly don't really follow celebrities, and I'm really bad at holding an image of someone's face in my mind, so I always feel totally unqualified to pick face claims/fan casts when I'm writing. However!! I can recommend some excellent fan artists that really capture how I see James. Both @jackcryptid and @empty96myth2 draw James really similar to how I picture him in my head :) I'd include some examples here but idk how either of them feel about people reposting their art, but you should def check them out! All of their stuff is super super cool. Peace and love right back at you, my dear <333 Tysm for the kind words!! xoxo
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