If Lupin And Tonks Had Survived The Battle Do You Think Their Relationship Wouldve Lasted

If Lupin and Tonks had survived the battle do you think their relationship would’ve lasted

i love this question. this isn't something that gets much discussion within the remadora fandom.

i lean toward no. i think lupin and tonks would have had a very difficult time of it after the war for a lot of reasons.

it's hard to say exactly what the political/legal/social landscape would have looked like in the first few years after the battle of hogwarts, but i think it's reasonable to think that even if the legal status of werewolves changed immediately (doubtful), their position in society would be much slower to shift. (it's worth pointing out, because in lupin-centric fics it usually gets glossed over, that it makes sense to be afraid of werewolves! werewolves are dangerous!) so, after the war, lupin is likely still unemployable and kind of a pariah. it's likely that tonks will have lost friends over it, and would be treated differently at work and in any social spaces where people know who her husband is. probably also very difficult for lupin to participate in the public/social aspects of parenting, and school-age teddy is likely to see social fallout from this, too.

those things alone are a huge strain on a relationship, and then there's the fact that lupin is likely to continue agonizing and self-destructing over them. everything he feared their relationship would mean for tonks & teddy is still going to be true. lupin is deeply traumatized and has a ton of maladaptive behaviors toward other people that are clearly evident in canon (manipulativeness, dishonesty, keeping people at a distance, bottling his emotions - and this is the tip of the iceberg that's visible in the books, you can certainly extrapolate a lot more) and i think it's unrealistic to imagine that his epiphany in the last book changed all of this. dude needs therapy, probably a lot of it. being in a relationship with lupin would fucking suck.

meanwhile, tonks is quite young, and canon suggests she has idealistic views about love. she's experienced a huge amount of change in her society, her career and her personal life in a very short time, she's definitely traumatized as well, she's got a baby, she's probably the sole breadwinner, AND she's got all of lupin's issues—psychological and social and health and supernatural issues—to deal with. that is a LOT. sooner or later, once all the big feelings of a new relationship start to die down, staying together is going to be a ton of hard, ugly work for both of them. even healthy partnerships would struggle to survive stuff like this—and i don't think lupin and tonks' relationship seems particularly healthy.

divorce isn't really ever mentioned in hp canon, so who knows what options lupin and tonks would feel like they had, but if they did stay together i feel like they'd be in for some very unhappy times.

i should say, and i think this is evident in my work, that the doomedness of lupin and tonks' relationship is one of my favorite things about it. as much as i like them as characters and feel very real huge feelings about the way things went for them, i wouldn't change the fact that they died, nor do i really enjoy imagining a happy ending for them. the brevity and irony and cruelty and mistakes and regrets and wasted time, and the crater of grief they would have left in the lives of the people who loved them, are all part of what makes their little window of time together fascinating to explore.

that said, don't think it would have been such a tragedy if they made it through the war and broke up. especially if they could still amicably co-parent and move on with their lives. sometimes a relationship is beautiful and special and important and worthwhile, and then it runs its course and ends. most relationships are not lifelong relationships. i don't regret the time i spent with people i used to love, nor do i wish i'd stayed in the relationships that fell apart. sometimes people give each other a few years of love and joy and that's enough. remadora, as a story, is a great reminder to savor what you have, and make peace with the things you don't, because right now might be all there is for you.

Fic rec: A silly but very in character Riddler fic involving a confrontation with hypothetical rat emoji discord mods. 🐀

With the encouragement of @dementedlollipop and @indihpblog, I have actually posted some Riddler fic! 😳

I doubt it would be interesting to most of you, but if you want some Dano!Riddler crack, check it out here!

Amor Fati - Tom, Harry, Severus, Determinism and Choice, Duty and Freedom and Stuff

A vary bombastic title, for a post I am sure is to be somewhat incoherent and wildly inaccurate, but please bear with me (and listen to the song in the link!).

The HP universe (and arguably, ours) is clearly deterministic in some sense, since the existence of prophecies and time turners assumes this. So, we must accept that there's such a thing as Fate, even if "our choices show what we truly are." (Dumbledore seems of the mind that character is destiny, and I agree).

This, Fate, is something Tom Riddle had rebelled against as soon as he found out he was a wizard if not before, in his denial that everyone - even wizards - must die.

The rebellion against death extended to thinking he could even use death as a tool for his own ends in making Horcruxes, using Inferi, and… Imma just assume, being liberal with threats of murder and publicly using murder to make a point.

Then, when the prophecy came, he rebelled against it too (or maybe he thought Destiny had singled him out to win by giving him fair warning), by setting out to murder an infant. Not to give him too much credit for this, but on his way to do it, he did resist the urge to kill a Muggle child, so I can't imagine he had slaughtered defenseless babies left and right for the hell of it. At least, not too much.

And thus, the absolutely ordinary baby got a Fate of his own and became the chosen one.

The importance of choosing what had been decided is discussed in HBP, and Harry is proud that he understands it. It’s committing to and choosing the fait accompli that turns it all around,  and Voldemort loses repeatedly for his failure to understand this. He uses and punishes others instead of looking inward and understanding some things are beyond his power, and that it might even be a good thing. He uses his own people as human shields and they lie to him; quite possibly, in murdering Severus in front of Harry he had done the only thing that could make Harry want to see what Dumbledore’s killer (and his parents’ killer, in his mind) had to say. And Harry makes the only choice available to him, fully understanding the consequences.

And then we have the man who chose to live the worst version of his life, and then chose death when he could have saved himself, the opposite of what nearly anyone - but especially Voldemort - would have done. He wasn't a human shield, he was a willing protector. The man walked on a razor’s edge for his entire adult life, always plausibly good or plausibly bad to outsiders, but fully cognizant of the truth internally.

Severus had once unwittingly condemned his only friend to death and then was forced to pull the trigger on his other only friend, in a horrifying variation on the theme. Eternal Recurrence, anyone?

But… you have to mean the Unforgivables, or they don't work. You have to mean it, or it has no meaning. Ultimately, no one could force Severus to do anything. He recognized his own wrong choices and he chose every step of the way to make amends.

“Some are born great, some achieve greatness, and some have greatness thrust upon them.” - Shakespeare, because why wouldn't I invite the comparison :eyeroll:

I’ll argue that Tom was born great and that Harry had greatness thrust upon him – and Severus was all three.

I like to think that he lived up to the Nietzschean ethos of Amor Fati - never delusional about his reality or his prospects, and all the same, he lived his life by his values and embraced the consequences. What a stark contrast with Voldemort, who seemed so desperate to style himself as a Nietzschean Uber-mensch, striving and not realizing that denial of reality, selfishness, and abject cruelty are not the hallmarks of great figures but of children.

Voldemort constantly demands recognition and service from others, like a child, unknowingly living out his trauma of infant abandonment in the process of being revived by Peter Pettigrew. He lacks self-awareness and reflection to the point that you have to wonder how free he ever was. Severus is a servant, and constantly referred to as such. As Voldemort’s true servant, he gets the plot going – but from the moment he makes a genuine choice and is no longer merely a vehicle or vessel, he succeeds and ascends his “servant” status (think "Dumbledore's pet" versus Dumbledore's man"). I love the idea that Voldemort died thinking Severus’s last words were “My Lord,” when in truth they were a request to be viewed as who he was.

And the last memory he gave ended with: Don't worry. I have a plan.

This exemplifies that choice and duty are absolutely not opposed.

To make up to you for this post, here’s a beautiful song that I think conveys the message well.

“It was I who invented them — I, the Half-Blood Prince!”

(Raffle prize for @snapientia)

I’ll never stop drawing these two. NEVER.

A few notes from our DMs that are relevant to wider discourse:

The boxing of POC characters as a monolith is something that is prevalent irl as well.

For example, on reality dating shows such as the Bachelor, there is a huge discrepancy between the number of white leads vs POC leads. Even when the average audience states they’re on board with a POC lead, said lead must still caveat to the status quo. Those who question it—discussing racism within the franchise or problematic behavior—are called to be disassociated from the show. (There was a wonderful Variety article published last year on this).

Another episode which points out the realities POC face in the entertainment industry is “Indians at Work” from the Master of None Netflix series. The Indians who auditioned for a certain role needed to adopt a stereotypical accent for the role. Furthermore, one of the people who auditioned received a leaked email about how the show would accept only one Indian actor. In this, the actor is stuck with either fitting a stereotype in order to pursue opportunities or to fight back against an unjust system where the opportunity would be lost.

The same episode later introduces a new producer who is “progressive,” and is interested in the original actor who auditioned-but to play a role in a spinoff of “Fresh off the Boat.” While the new producer may be “progressive,” the idea of their spinoff—which would still require stereotypical portrayals—and new methods of inclusion only serve to feed the same loophole. In that, it reminds me of people who register as “liberals” and tend to “vote correctly,” but have no concept of systemic racism.

An observation: I wonder if the same people complaining about inclusion ruining their fantasy shows are the same people who are ok with POC actors appearing in fantasy as long as it fits their racist narrative?

If you’re ok with the people of Mereeen being brown ( a city conquered by the white Danerys Targaryen), but not ok with Corlys Velaryon. And ok with the Hadradim (who are rooted in Orientalist stereotypes) but not ok with Princess Disa, you need to ask yourself some hard questions.