The marauders fandom: a spiralling descent into magical tragedy.

by Sirius_Blacks_Vinyls

Summary:

A guide to the marauders fandom for newbies.
Congratulations, you've fallen into the fandom where everybody is hot, traumatised or dead. Or all three. This is a possibly helpful, definitely chaotic, guide to the marauders fandom - ships, tropes, headcanons and the emotional damage waiting for you at every corner. Welcome to hell (it's glittery).

Notes:

This is absolutely not a fic, it’s a mildly unhinged yet shockingly factual guide to surviving the Marauders fandom on Wattpad and AO3, compiled through years of lurking, questionable research methods, and the collective trauma of witnessing fanon evolve into full-blown lore. Expect strong opinions, chaotic energy, excessive use of the word “fanon,” and occasional roasting (affectionate… mostly). Sirius Black would like you to know he personally bullied me into writing this, James provided snacks, Remus did not approve any of this, and Regulus is silently judging from the void. Feel free to comment with your own experiences, headcanons, or things you want added — I’m documenting the chaos, not creating it. Updates will appear whenever I remember this guide exists. Enjoy, and please take nothing personally unless I say it personally.

Chapter 1: Who were the marauders and why are we all obsessed?

The Marauders were, canonically, four students who attended Hogwarts in the 1970s: James Potter, Remus Lupin, Sirius Black, and Peter Pettigrew. They called each other by the nicknames Moony, Wormtail, Padfoot, and Prongs — names they etched onto a magical artifact of their own creation: the Marauder's Map. This map showed the exact location of every person in the castle at any given moment.

You might be wondering why they had those nicknames. The answer? Animagi.
(That's a human who can willingly turn into an animal, for you Muggle-borns.)

Remus, aka Moony, was a werewolf.
Sirius, Padfoot, could transform into a dog.
James, Prongs, became a stag.
Peter, Wormtail, turned into a rat (and would later act like one — foreshadowing!).

The four of them were also known as the legendary pranksters of Hogwarts — Fred and George Weasley even looked up to them.

But the Marauders fandom doesn't revolve solely around those four. Fans have dragged a host of barely-mentioned side characters into the spotlight — and we've collectively decided they're icons.

Enter:

Regulus Arcturus Black (Sirius' tragic younger brother),

Marlene McKinnon (queer punk Gryffindor chaos),

Mary Macdonald (Lily's best friend and resident badass), and

Dorcas Meadowes (killed by Voldemort, but we made her immortal anyway).

Here's the thing: most of these characters were only mentioned once or twice in the original books — sometimes not even with dialogue. So what did the fandom do?
We made up everything.
Their personalities. Their relationships. Their aesthetics.
We built entire emotional universes out of scraps.
And it's glorious.

Some of the core themes of this fandom include:
✨ found family
✨ queer love and queerer pain (seriously, this fandom is so gay — I think there are maybe four straight ships in total)
✨ war and resistance
✨ youth destroyed by trauma
✨ loyalty, betrayal, and sacrifice
✨ and most importantly: we were just kids energy

And, of course, the fandom motto:

"What if we made it sadder, gayer, and prettier?"