It's mostly about a very particular power fantasy. (I probably would have been all over it when I was about 14, if I'm being honest.) Most of my familiarity with it is that I binge the WTF Fic threads on FFA when I need a laugh, and the most prolific contributors are always people who frequent the Harry/Voldemort ship tag and broader Slytherin/Death Eater/pureblood apologist circles because the WTF is very, very easy to find there, and there's a lot of overlap between "wizard racists are right to be racist, akshully" fic and "Harry is secretly THE MOST SPECIAL EVER and every indication that he is a relatively normal human being is just a product of a GIANT COVER-UP BY EVIL DUMBLEDORE " fic.
What was the weird Harry Potter fic where the author spent all their time going on poorly informed screeds against modern English? I'd argue that JKR's statement that actually, magic is a simple recessive trait does this, but I'd also argue that decision, like so many others she has made lately, was incredibly stupid. Who the fuck is a pureblood apologist? That's not even a real race to be smug about.
That was the source of the winner for male Harry Potter renaming! "Of a Linear Circle," by deadcatwithaflamethrower. Also famous for being untagged Snarry. There's a subset of HP fanon that decided that pureblood wizards have a DEEP TRADITIONAL CULTURE that's being ruined by all these disrespectful Muggleborns who don't respect their beautiful history and are polluting it and that's why, e.g., Hogwarts celebrates Christmas instead of the ancient pagan festival that obviously TRUE WIZARDS who HONOR MOTHER MAGIC would observe. A lot of it ends up in tags like "Pureblood Culture" or "Pureblood Traditions."
FailFandomAnon, it's a mostly-anonymous Dreamwidth community for fandom chat and the latest hot gossip. I think it's where the driftwood of LiveJournal fandom kinda glorped together if they didn't move to Tumblr (fanficrants, kink/anon memes, fandom wank, etc)
So basically a proxy for paganism? That makes a kind of sense. (JKR worked pretty hard to say-without-saying that wizards are culturally Christian, with good reason. And again, Christmas is far older than the 1800s when they split off from muggle culture, I think) At least there's not much of a discernable pattern of actual race corresponding with blood status. Actual Factual White Nationalists in the HP fandom would be a level of cognitive dissonance I couldn't withstand.
oh no pureblood apologists are usually white nationalists. they aren't even secretive about it anymore haha i wasn't going to reply to this because i'm actually someone who likes the lord potter trope but you've gotta be really selective with which corner of the fandom you read from (i generally only read it if the author explicitly writes a black hermoine or unambiguously nonwhite harry, for example; interestingly, this genre + approach for what i'll read was how i learned about red hair and large families being a trope for jewish families), because in the same way that norse paganism has become infested, hp and the tropes of like, blood purity, family secrecy, elitism are definitely very appealing to that same group on the flip side, if you aren't in on the racist pool party going on, the appeal is like.... literally corrupting the racist pool party, actually. pretty much "oh wait you wrote these dumb rules you can't break and now *i* won? what are you gonna do now? throw out your precious traditions because *i'm* here?" (...sometimes the not-very-stealth nazi rp blogs of various hp characters (lucius is a favorite, but adult draco, and severus are up there) will have absolute bonkers meltdowns about this and yes. it is very fun.) anyway, since i'm replying: while you'll probably ready voldemort/harry at some point, if you really like the trope, snarry and drarry are driving ships for producing lord potter content, and i actually thought that voldemort/harry was something of a smaller ship compared to them. really passionate and dedicated fans but not as much content, basically?
Oh god. Well, I should have figured they'd find their way in eventually. I didn't have the impression that like, the originators of the genre with their slave contract fics and whatnot were that kind of creepy, even when they gave out of character creep vibes, y'know? Not really in the fandom, and Villainshipping has tended to baffle me... is there some relation of the shipping axis and the nazi axis, you think?
not really? or, i'm not going to make sweeping claims, because i don't actually do more than occasionally peek into those areas enough so that i know whatever their current dog whistles are, and i don't really care about the shipping politics (except to note that honestly, the more openly hateful they get, the more their shipping starts lining up with anti rhetoric, and that's not a "all antis are actually nazis" claim (although possibly a "all nazis are probably antis, eventually" claim), that's a comment about puritanical values and how shipping authoritarianism works. for the record.) i snipped a whole breakdown of the different ships that i realized you probably aren't interested in, because it was mostly just me explaining the role the 3 (five, voldemort/harry is technically 3 ships in a trenchcoat) play on the lord potter trope as compared to het ships like harry/luna and harry/hermoine and harry/ginny in the trope (we wrote articles about this!!!) because i realized it had nothing to do with the question of "but why do nazis ship one or the other" anyway i don't think the originators were creepy or intentionally creepy, no. and i mean, this is content i enjoy and think can be enjoyed without being a nazi, "it's not that hard," so like. it's a feature of nazis, not a feature of the content, imo
If you're gonna post it elsewhere im interested in reading about the role of those ships to the lord potter trope. I just think thats kinda fascinating though personally I only read Drarry kinds of fanfic
Oh yeah, I didn't mean to imply that it was the majority. It's just that as I said, my usual gateway to its weirdest versions is browsing the backlog of FFA's "WTF Tags, Summary Executions, and Author Nopes" threads, and the Harry/Voldemort anons are major contributors of Transcendentally Weird Fic. As someone once put it, "I guess once you clear the snakefucker enemies-to-lovers hurdle, you've broken so many barriers that little else will stop you?"
oh! my bad then, sorry, i had definitely read you as saying that voldemort/harry predominates this trope and i was definitely headscratching a little. that makes more sense
I love this so, so much. Yet at the same time it never would’ve occurred to me that that was a hurdle of any note. I basically had a bi awakening reading The Silver Chair as a kid. It all seems perfectly normal to me!
It is? I'd be more likely to assume Irish Catholic. I mean, I'm not saying I don't believe it IS a Jewish stereotype, just that I didn't know it was.
yeah so, personally, i'd put money on jkr having meant it to be an irish catholic stereotype, and it only accidentally happening to be a once-common but now no longer really remembered stereotype for jewish people. basically, as i understand, there was a period of time where people really fervently believed that things like red hair were a sign of cavorting with the devil, and so the connection was less "jews actual facts have red hair" and more "we hate jews, we think red hair is a sign of evil and secret devil worship because reasons, therefore it makes total sense to accuse you of being secretly jewish" art history wise, this apparently connects to like, why judas can be found with red hair in contrast to the rest of the apostles? which is cool to know anyway, for clarity's sake: i don't think jkr wrote the weasley's as secretly being jewish! i think this was accidental on her part, and that the authorial intent was definitely to have them being irish catholics. however, hp fandom being hp fandom, and the general set up elsewhere of "we're living in secret because the muggles keep persecuting and killing us," someone did go and play connect the dots, and there's a smattering of a few fics where the weasleys are now doubly persecuted, both as wizards against muggles, and jews in a culturally christian (but won't come out and say it) wizarding culture. they're interesting, but i'm not like, married to this interpretation, and i don't think it's antisemitic of anyone if they didn't "pick up on it" reading hp (since there was a fandom callout post to that effect circulating at one point) however like, not strictly tying red hair to jewishness, but red hair absolutely still gets tied to devil worship every once in a while? same with left handedness. so i wouldn't be surprised if there are like, still people who actually believe in the "all red heads are secret jews, regardless of their actual families and upbringing" thing. prejudices run deep and all that i am not actually what the forum etiquette right now on linking sources is, but i will say that a) jewish online magazine talk about this every once in awhile, so you can find these with a quick google search and b) wikipedia does have a bit on this with sources as well, if you want further reading
I'm pretty sure the red hair allegedly equals devil worship, or at least unlucky, idea was also used to dump on the Irish, so yeah, I knew that one. I didn't know "Jews have lots of kids" was a stereotype, but I guess sex-crazed is another negative stereotype which gets applied to lots of groups. Interesting to know! I wonder if I'd know more of these if I lived in an area with any Jewish people, I don't think I've ever actually known any in person.
As far as I know, we don’t have any standard etiquette about that? People might take exception if you demanded they read an article to participate in the conversation in lieu of explaining your position because “watch this five part series or I won’t discuss this with you” is an annoying internet debate tactic, but that’s not what you’re doing at all. You aren’t gatekeeping the conversation using assigned reading or watching. If people ask or you think it would be helpful, I can’t imagine it would be a problem to link to sources in a discussion thread unless you like, intentionally linked to a site with malicious code, or maybe if the article were a featured piece on bigots-r.us presented as a reliable source.
Hmm. This feels subtly wrong to me. It's a valid read that wizards are/were persecuted, but it's also a valid read that wizards... aren't persecuted. Their own narrative is that they aren't persecuted - they just don't want to be bothered. Now that could be easily read as the speaking characters projecting a bit, and an argument over whether they were, would be, or could be persecuted is viable. But in many ways... basically, the wizards are a secret society answering only to themselves, completely above the law, disinterested in the concerns of the common people, holding the strings of government - remember the Minister of Magic giving orders to the Prime Minister? -, hoarding secret knowledge, manipulating public opinion (through outright mind control), employing horrific methods to ensure their own secrecy, etc, etc. The wizards aren't hiding in basements - they're the Illuminati. Of course, these two narratives are tightly linked, due to... basically, the Inquisition conflating the former with the latter, but the reality as presented on the page is closer to that kind of 'Secret Conspiracy'. And when you add explicit Jewishness to it, I dunno, it kinda gets weird. It's possible I'm just odd, and projecting my general dislike of Masquerades, especially in the way Harry Potter (the series, though also the person) so blithely accepts enforcing it by any means necessary, when every explicit note on 'why even do this' is a varyingly polite 'because we're better than worrying about what the fucking degenerate imbeciles think' - because, after all, that's what the word 'muggle' meant IRL - a contemptible idiot. The only word for the group is an insult. (Well, prior to Fantastic Beasts - at least 'No-Maj' is technically neutral for all its horrific awkwardness.)
I'd also bring up Mythcreant's "Oppressed Mages" discussion here; to distill the relevant quote, "how do you oppress a people who can shoot fireballs from their hands?"
