In 2012, the fan cast were all white actors- Andrew Garfield for Remus Lupin, Ben Barnes for Sirius Black, Aaron Taylor Johnson for James Potter, Karen Gillan for Lily Evans. However, as the years progressed, fans pointed out that all the actors chosen as face claims were much too old to play the role of characters who died at 38, 36, and 21 respectively. As the Marauders fandom had another wave of popularity with All The Young Dudes in 2020, fans started to use younger face claims who were young enough to be in their late teens and early 20s, and they also began to racebend characters like James Potter and Sirius Black. Making James Potter Desi and making Sirius Black East Asian offered much more nuance to their characters. However, thereâs also been a rise in Harry Potter edits using the original fancast- the all white one. I think this is a reaction to the diverse fan casts that have been used in edits over the last two years- white fans are uncomfortable no longer seeing themselves in every character, so theyâve reverted back to the 2012 fan cast.
The fan spaces are predominantly white, which is evident by the fans who make TikToks with their own faces instead of their faceclaims. The racebending of James Potter and Sirius Black, however, has shown that those who do identify as South or East Asian do carry power in the fandom, and they are able to bring their own experiences into the fandom. For example, making James South Asian and making Sirius East Asian can offer more nuance and power to the canonical events in the Harry Potter texts, like Jamesâ in-laws being rude to him and abusive to his son was because of their race, and Siriusâ family uses shame and guilt to manipulate their children because of the shame cultures that are so prominent in East Asian countries. The experiences that Asian fans have had in the real world have influenced so much how they view the Harry Potter texts, and therefore it also influences their transformative content they produce as well.Â
I really believe that JK Rowlingâs anti-trans statements are the reason for such a removed and yet passionate fandom. One fan wrote in my survey that they believe âmost of the fandom is already so disconnected from canon⊠Also I donât care what JKR thinks or says about anything or any of the characters.â Of the 315 participants, 73.6% of them joined the fandom after 2019. As the fandom grew during the pandemic, the canon has become less and less relevant. The most popular fanfictions on Archive Of Our Own are All The Young Dudes, Manacled, and Crimson Rivers. While AU fics are common in every fandom, it is no surprise that these fanfictions donât have any canon ships (except for Jily in All The Young Dudes). After June of 2019 (when Rowling first tweeted her support for a self-proclaimed transphobe), there was a huge increase in the amount of fanfictions written- the number of fanfictions written for the Harry Potter fandom on AO3 alone was 179,457 on June 1, 2019. As of May 6, 2023, there are 410,766 fics written- and counting! Fanfiction has become a way for fans to completely transform the canon that they have felt betrayed by, and create their own stories.Â
What do you think about this? Do you have any thoughts? If you have any questions or just want to chat, reach out to me! My ask box is always open!
After returning to the marauders fandom to study it, I was particularly interested in why fans were drawn to characters that were canonically death eaters. I understood the obsession with Regulus Black and Draco Malfoy- they were canonically children and they canonically defied the Death Eaters, but I was curious about Evan Rosier and Barty Crouch Jr. To my (pretty extensive) knowledge, all we know about them is that they're Death Eaters, they're Wizard Nazis. So why did I, in doing my research, keep finding people saying these two characters were their "babygirls"? It concerned both me and my professor, who thought it indicated a bigger problem within fandom as a whole. The ability to think that making a character queer erases them of their ties to the Death Eaters is, in my opinion, dangerous. How will this be played out in the real world? Will we see actual Nazis, or actual terrorists, or actual war criminals be called babygirls?
This is a short summary of why people said they think people "babygirl-ify" Rosekiller (Evan Rosier and Barty Crouch Jr.) from my research. As always, if you have any questions or if you want to chat about any of this, reach out to me! My asks are open
Because its fun
I truly think it has less to do with their evilness, and more to do with what we have in canon. We know characters Draco Malfoy, we know what they're like, what they've done. Then, we see something 'uncharacteristic' and it stands out, like a literary uncanny valley. It stands out, and if someone was to try, I know I'd just swipe past it. However, when you compare them to "empty vessel" name-only characters, because we don't have many fully-fleshed out evil characters in the material, it's easy to slap a babygirl sticker all over him, and be like oh its my headcanon. A popular character, with facts and details about them, will stand out when you make a new headcanon that doesn't fit inside what we know about HP. I think characters like Barty, Evan, and even Regulus, are ragdolled around and basically original by the time nearly anyone writes them. This isn't a condemnation! Just how I understand it.
People started to realize that Regulus was an interesting character himself, rather than him being a bratty younger sibling to Sirius. Therefore he had to have friends, so we started to see a surge in Evan and Barty. In the early Reggie appreciation era (early 2022) we saw quite a bit of Bartylus, but that has died down as people like to think of Jegulus as their endgame now. I also think that fanfiction greatly shapes the minds of the fandom, especially well written popular ones. The first and most prominent one that Rosekiller character appears in is Just Lovers (like we were supposed to be) on ao3 by bizarrestars. Here, they are playful and sarcastic best friends of Reggie who help him through his lil emotions. Everyone loved them so much that the zar (the author) gave us their own lil intermission of it.
Because it's fun! I really don't think it's deeper than that. People started liking Regulus and then they decided that his friends could be nice too, and then they decided that his friends could be queer or even dating each other and they could be babygirls and who cares it's just fun. I'm not a big Rosekiller shipper and I'm more of a Wolfstar girl lately (but that's just because most of the Jegulus fics are sooo poor quatlity, like yes I know that Regulus is mean, but if you make him an absolute ass with no redeaming qualites I'm not gonna want them to get together) so I might not have the most insight on this, but I don't really with there's a deeper reasoning here other than the fact that it's fun.i guess because people just wanted to see them as "normal teenagers" like the marauders, like to remember that before they became death eaters they were boys as well doing stupid things and getting in trouble like everyone else did, and also because they fit well into regulus' potential circle of friends, idk i like the idea that the three of them (evan, barty and reg) were friends in school and then they took different paths where regulus "got" his redemption arc and the others just went insane following voldemort's ideals, i guess i just love angst and it would be a tragic story of how their friendship ended tbh
For a long time we had very few Slytherin students in the Marauders era, and whether we like it or not Slytherin is the most popular house of Harry Potter, people love characters with tragic pasts and dubious morality and also they are characters with very poor description and easy to shape in their personal desire, I don't think that's wrong, but I have no interest in them as characters, to me they're just irrelevent, occasionally appearing in my ideas for fanfics I'll never write, usually as future death eaters
i think the current fandom is less inclined to read/write self-insert fics or OCs, and evan and barty are essentially blank slates that authors can overlay whatever personality they want to that will help fill out their story. also, itâs fun to add characters to the slytherin house during years we donât know much about. also x2, most fics arenât writing about them killing people and enjoying it. i donât think the fact that they were death eaters is the reason people are babygirl-ifying them or wanting to ship them.
this is a very interesting question, and i havenât thought about it in these terms. personally, as i mentioned briefly in the last question, i hate babygirl-ification in general. i donât like the way that it infantilizes men, and despite the fact that in this case theyâre fictional, iâve seen it happen with real people several times (dan and phil, crankgameplays, even markiplier a little bit). it has very weird connotations and i just donât vibe with it at all. heâs not your softboy cinnamon roll babygirl, heâs a man in his 20s. itâs just odd to me, and iâm FTM transgender, so iâve seen it happen to trans men too and it just feels gross to me. like iâm not softboy cinnamon roll iâm just. a guy. i am literally just a guy. but like in general i hate the concept of babygirl-ifying anyone, as for it being characters without a redemption arc, i think itâs because they got popular in a fic where they were never evil in the first place. i could be wrong, but from what i noticed barty and evan only became liked characters in Just Lovers, which is a no-voldemort AU, meaning they were never death eaters. and they were given nicer roles in the story to serve the plot and further regulusâ character development. like they only got a better reputation because the author needed them to for the plot and they were in a setting where that made sense, and ever since then theyâve been big characters. like i donât think itâs necessarily about them in canon at all. i think people liked who they were in that one story and it just kind of exploded from there and now theyâre being written with redemption arcs in other works too. and really, i donât see anything wrong with that. i will say i am Not A Fan of those AUs where someone joins the death eaters to save someone else, like james joining for reg, i refuse to touch them. thatâs icky to me. but yeah idk. i donât like babygirl on the whole, i think itâs gross and infantilizing and weird, but as for why these characters are getting that treatment, i think itâs literally just because of a fic they read where they were interesting characters and werenât morally reprehensible and itâs snowballed from there.
this fandom can be really egotistical at times tbh. now that zar has stepped back from the fandom, people are more worried about not being able to read their fics anymore, rather then their well-being (i've literally seen people BEGGING on tiktok for docs of their writing,,, they literally took down their fics because they were not comfortable with people reading them anymore (you are crossing boundaries, people!),,, get a grip).
known fandom authors / fanart artists are put on a pedestal and treated like a celebrity and like they hold the almighty truth. you do realize that these people that give you content through your devices are people too, right? they go grocery shopping and they listen to music and they go to sleep the same way that you do, and just because they happened to blow up on xyz platform does not give anyone the right to cross their boundaries and ask things from them literally just because.
and don't get me wrong, i love it that people enjoy reading and looking at fanart and whatnot, but it's important that the creator feels the same way, because you can't have an enjoyable fandom experience if people constantly ask things for you and criticize your work to bits. you don't like the way someone wrote a certain character or a certain scene or anything else? do it yourself, or look for something that has specifically what you are looking for. stop demanding things from artists, and don't pressure them into doing things they don't want to. you have to realize that these people create content for free and put it out for people to enjoy. for free. and yet people are still ungrateful and hateful of content they paid nothing to see.
a thing that fandoms in general seem to not grasp is that content creators likely create content the way they see it and the way they like it, because they like it. if you don't like it, it's that easy to click off instead of sending hate mail and of demanding a certain thing be written / drawn the way you see it. and it's one thing to request something, and one thing to demand / pressure someone into something.
recently, so many people are driven away / taking a break from this fandom for this exact reason. popular content creators are praised to the point that the people who consume their art seem to believe that they are not human anymore, and unpopular content creators are driven away because nobody engages with their creations. don't get me wrong, engage with whatever you want, but it's disheartening, seeing people be acclaimed while nobody interacts with you.
(also, @sunshinemarauders did a thesis on the subject of harassment and this kind of behavior in fandom, and the rates are absolutely alarming. for more insight on their research, you can check their account to see the data and the conclusions.)
like previously mentioned, fandom is supposed to be an enjoyable experience and some people are ruining the fun of other people. stop it. please realize that your actions have consequences.
These anonymous submissions come from a survey I published several weeks ago where I asked for fans in the Marauders fandom to share their experiences with me. I was overwhelmed with the results, and this is, in their own words, some of the submissions I was sent.
I was around before Rosekiller and Jegulus were popular and I loved them and got death threats for liking them?!?! I also got death threats for not reading Zars writing and I've been told countless times my writing should be deleted bc it's not like his :)
I was sent death threats for shipping rosekiller. This is mainly an issue iâve seen on marauders twitter though, where fans can essentially try âcancelâ you for different opinions you have. I feel a lot more comfortable and safer on tumblr.
I had someone sending me extremely hurtful messages in private saying a couldnât Kin Regulus black because Iâm trans and that Iâll never be a real boy so I should stop trying
Yes I was in a group account a long time ago and someone made a joke about Tom Felton and we all got doxxed and threatened some more than others
harry potter tiktok in 2020 was really toxic and i also got a lot of hate for engaging with hp at all given jk rowling being a piece of shit
If we mean the broader term as the Harry Potter fandom, I got some rude messages after mentioning Hogwarts Legacy positively.
They told me I should kill my self for liking (and make art of) characters created by a transphobic bigot and other similars
i got death threats đ
Lots of anon hate and death threats
Someone misgendered me over an opinion
People defending JKR and being transphobic
was threatened by doxing by a jily fan on tumblr in 2020 during the first jegulus week joke
They told me I should kill my self for liking (and make art of) characters created by a transphobic bigot and other similars
Another friend of mine got death threats for headcannoning Regulus to he acesexual. They were told to kill themself, etc.
These anonymous submissions come from a survey I published several weeks ago where I asked for fans in the Marauders fandom to share their experiences with me. I was overwhelmed with the results, and this is, in their own words, some of the submissions I was sent.
I, and as a lot of other people, have seen some people not even respecting the fact that Peter is canonically fat, and some people getting mad about fancasting/drawing on fanarts (unfortunately, when some editors, cosplayers, fanartists, try to bring diversity, and their own pov on characters, it creates useless discourse) other characters as fat when they weren't "canonically fat" so therefore there's no use representing them fat.
the skinny fancasts for peter rub me the wrong way (also the fact that people sympathize with his character more when the fancast is conventionally attractive than they do when the fancast is more in accordance with canon is. very interesting). heâs canonically a plus-sized person, and making him skinny just feels really weird and gross to me.Â
This is often an issue with the source material, but I see it particularly bad when you see how a larger-in-canon character is portrayed vs "attractive thin" characters. I've seen it directly in how people react to plus sized lily, or any of the other marauders girls, and in slightly less, the lack of art surrounding pettigrew.Â
A great example of it is that I've never come across a story where James is described as anything but tall, lanky, skinny, or muscular. He's seemingly not allowed to be fat, which is weird. Peter is canonically short, heavy set and evil, James is chronically tall, skinny and good. That's not even getting into the weird fat phobia we see tied to Lily and how her wright is apparently tied to her worth and intelligence.
Iâve seen fans being fatphobic when it comes to Lily Evans fanart. Sometimes an artist will draw how they see Lily and then people will flood the comments claiming that âLily isnât fatâ and just overall having that mindset of all the marauders characters being stick thin ?
a lot of people never want to ship peter with anyone, or concider him attractive because he is fat, also many people hate the idea that lily could be fat (which is fanon to me) or alice, and most of the most beloved characters people would never dream as portraying as fat
People fancasting Peter (the only canon plus sized character) skinny and saying "he's better that way" or shaming other fans for making different characters plus sized when they werent before.
Idk if this counts but I think people hate Peter largely because of his body type, and whenever heâs presented as a character worthy of attention heâs depicted as skinny???
iâve seen a fair number of people saying they donât hc lily as plus sized because they want her to be âprettyâ (things along those lines)
i mean thereâs the erasure of fat ppl and that sucks but also if people hc/draw characters as fat, people in comments can just be so mean
People overlooking Peter (canonically plus-sized character) and giving him fancasts that aren't plus-sized.
These anonymous submissions come from a survey I published several weeks ago where I asked for fans in the Marauders fandom to share their experiences with me. I was overwhelmed with the results, and this is, in their own words, some of the submissions I was sent.
There has been lost of push back against fans using POC fan casts for various characters
weird reactions to desi james or east asian sirius!!
I have seen people get upset when characters are fancast as non-white actors (like dev Patel for James)
Clash of opinions about fanon Hermione being black
I have seen lots of racism towards people's newer fancasts, as all the OGs (ben barnes, andrew garfield, aaron taylor-johnson, etc.) are white and some people are trying to change that!
I saw a fanart one time, where james had a darker skin (he was latino) and someone commented that it doesn't suit him
I draw Sirius black as Asian and Iâve gotten quite a few racist comments about this and Iâve seen a lot of racism about desi James. Also when BIPOC people cosplay characters that people think are âwhiteâ
People tend to cast characters as white, and sometimes I see people getting mad someone is fancasting a non-canonically black character as black or as a person of colour (I've seen some good black Remus, non-white Lily, non-white Peter fancasts, and yet, there is still peope being sooo mad about it like??). Sadly, I think a lot of people can tell about the fact that fancasts are often discussed and hated for no reason when they're not white or whatever, when it's basically just a fancast, that goes against the "canon" a bigot (JKR) made up.
the first thatâs coming to mind is people fighting against the interpretation/portrayal of characters as poc (most often james bs i think heâs most popularly hced as desi but also others) either that or just straight up gatekeeping
Only the general feeling that the white characters are more interesting and loved than any of the characters of color. Racebending seems token, like nobody wants to be exclusionary but also don't have the comfort or confidence to make that diversity ring true in terms of cultural resonance. By cultural resonance I don't only mean make them ethnic but to portray and discuss or casually mention the postcolonial personhood or third culture kid experience as applies.
A comment on my fic about making it a âracial jungleâ, saying that it wasnât accurate for the time period even though representation of races otherwise had no significance in the fic
theres is a lot people that will fight tooth and nail for exclusively white maruaders (in terms of fancasts) and they slander other people in the fandom for using more diverse fancasts such as desi james or black evan
I've seen it in passing, especially towards POC writers/people who HC characters who were not diverse in canon.
People not wanting desi Potters in art or otherwise
One Harry Potter fan got mad at me for drawing James (and Harry) dark skinned
GOD THE FRIKIN FANCASTS. They really don't matter that much and everyone makes it such a big deal. To me at least- representation only really matters if its real. If there's fat Peter, darkskin Dorcas, desi James, or Japanese Sirius/Regulus in a fanfic, that is the representation of that. It doesn't need to be reflected in a fancast used in an edit. Personal opinion but annoying as fuck I just wish everyone would enjoy the fact that someone spent time pouring over numerous tiny clips from many different TV shows and movies just for fun, and other people getting mad that they didn't use a person that literally doesn't exist angers me to no end.
mostly just a complete ignorance of POC identities. sometimes poc characters are ignored in favour of white characters. but also, even when POC are centered, i often see like a lot of fetishization and stereotyping and it's just... not good...
thereâs a lot of jewish people in the fandom that have pointed out antisemitism within the fandom a few times. i am not jewish, and i cannot speak on the issue, but thatâs something iâve heard a lot. iâve also seen the whitewashing of fancasts for characters like mary and dorcas who are widely accepted to be women of color, so that feels weird to me, but i think? thatâs everything iâve noticed or heard.
i've seen racism thrown to black creators, poc fancasts, and at myself for being arab and head-cannoning the black brother as arab.
There was a black dude cosplaying remus and their were people saying remus wasnt a N-word but it was a white person saying it
I have seen some fans respond in a racist way to Black fans who have called out the racism in the way in which Black characters are written and portrayed in the fandom.
These anonymous submissions come from a survey I published several weeks ago where I asked for fans in the Marauders fandom to share their experiences with me. I was overwhelmed with the results, and this is, in their own words, some of the submissions I was sent.
There was a situation on TikTok where a popular marauders creator told people who made transfem Sirius content to block him or comment so he can block them because it made him dysphoric, and while it wasnât his intention, it made a space where people felt comfortable being wildly transmisogynistic towards the headcanon and creators
Lots of sexism towards female characters and I've been called misogynistic slurs like bitch and c****
Even in this form, there is explicit fetishization of MLM relationships over WLW. That is the biggest thing I have seen, besides people hating Lily because she is an AFAB character shipped with James at the height of Jegulus.
It's mostly just fans ignoring/villainizing female characters in the fandom in order to elevate male characters. I haven't really seen sexism directed towards the fans, just the characters.
I was about to answer this question before again X) Anyway, there's some sort of misogyny I "experienced" indeed. Not directly as I said, but more because I write fanfiction, and so I see the misogyny in the fanfiction system (and I saw no one talking about it). When you want to tag for a fic with a wlw ship, the tags are... barely existent. The "[character] is a Little Shit", or "[character] needs a Hug" (you know, these types of tags), to quote the famous ones, they are sometimes not even a thing for the women. It really shows I think a lack of presence and development of the women characters. It is very hard to tag women in fanfictions (here I'm talking mostly about ao3, which has the most developed tagging system I believe). That's not it, but this is more subjective, maybe: the amount of hits are NOT the same. That's crazy. For an AU I wrote, a series of one shots, so the same universe, the same tags (it was a spy AU and basically, the one shot is like a slice of life, telling about a mission, it's a details but so you'll understand better), the same concept, the same things (more or less) happening, the same length... etc (you get it), well for all this, I'll have 1K hits for the boys, and barely 100 for the women. It's not even about the kudos, it's really ... how people are not really willing to click on fics with only women :/ I've seen this on a lot of fics about women (them having less visibility), and I'm sure some other writers could agree on this. (sorry I really ranted X) I wanted to give details).
People saying the girls being erased is okay Bc theyâre girls
the treatment of wlw characters and ships in this fandom have been to ignore or hate on them and as a lesbian it quite annoys me.
I'm not sure if your question also applies towards characters, but if it does, yes. So many m/m fics (especially Jegulus) will villainize the women in the story to elevate the men and get them together.
iâve never seen outright sexism but the female characters are really undervalued and some fans are happy to focus on only the male characters and openly hate on the female ones
A fan was saying "shut up nobody care about them" when a fan was complaining there are barely any headcanons about the girls in a certain tik tok account
I once read a post from an old marauder fan who was basically saying trash about the new generation of marauders fans, about the «new » characters like the girls, saying that the true original story was only about the 4 boys marauders fighting for the war and that the others were shit.
Iâve been aware of fans being sexist towards other fans but also tending to be like sexist when it comes to the girls in the marauders era and essentially ignoring or âbashingâ the sapphic/wlw ships
Thereâs a lot of hate towards Lily regarding Jegulus. Iâm also not too sure if this is considered sexist or not but some view Tonks as simply a surrogate for Remus and Sirius.
Iâve seen some nasty comments about lily being a bad mother or like demonizing her for having other interests other than just raising Harry
General underrepresentation of women, blaming Lily for being âin the wayâ of Jegulus and having her as nothing but a surrogate to Harry
Just a preference to the male ships and hating on the female characters for no reason
People have a very hard time with the girls characters and giving them value outside of their relationships with the male characters ex: making likely out to be a villain when Jegulus started getting popular
I think a great example is people tearing down Lily to allow for Jegulus. Similarly, I've seen tons of stories that play into sexist and toxic stereotypes, like giving the Marauders toxic masculinity traits and glorifying them. The ever-present fat phobia (that is everywhere, not just HP or Marauders fandom) is heavily rooted in sexism as well.
Hi! The results of my survey and research are done and handed in, so I'm going to start posting them here. As always, make sure to message me if you have any thoughts of questions!
what are your opinions on barty and evan? their babygirlification, their characters, their ship, etc etc
Oh man- you're gonna wanna hear my thoughts when I put out the results of my form, which should happen sometime in the next three days..... I have a lot of opinions HAHA!!
Just finished your research. It made me rethink a lot actually and was so fun to do. Thank you really much for this brilliant idea. Hope more people see it
I am so glad you got to re-think and that you had fun! My goal was just to introduce a time to reflect as a fandom, and I'm so glad you appreciated it :)
Hi! I'm studying the marauders fandom, and I would love to know your opinions on the Rosekiller ship!! Please fill out this completely anonymous form, and feel free to spread it to your followers :) https://forms.gle/ g9SMNSG3jntg1r9F7 (connect the link, I can't send a link in asks)
hi! yes iâve already completed the survey :DD
just wondering when/if youâre going to post the results?? <3
Hi! Thank you so much for filling it out :) I'm going to post the results of this form (and my previous form) in mid-may, once my class is over and I've completed this assignment!
Hi! I'm studying the marauders fandom, and I would love to know your opinions on the Rosekiller ship!! Please fill out this completely anonymous form, and feel free to spread it to your followers :)
Hi! I'm studying the marauders fandom, and I'd love to know your thoughts on the Rosekiller fandom! If you could fill out this totally anony
Just answered your questionnaire and I have a personal (?) question, will you post your results/thesis after it's done?
Hi! Thanks so much for filling out the questionnaire! I won't post my thesis, but I will share the results! I think it'll be interesting, especially for people to see if everyone else sees certain ships or certain characters the way they do. I've gotten too much hate to feel comfortable posting my thesis, but I'm going to post the results of the form! :)
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