remux:

so noah (@mrcutio) and i were talking about the whole “lycanthropy is a metaphor for hiv” thing in the wizarding world and like? remus lupin absolutely should never have been straight and here’s fucking why;

• considering both the marauders’ era and the aids crisis happened literally at the same time, making that kind of metaphor automatically becomes something you should treat very, very carefully in general, let alone as a straight author. 
• especially if you’re only gonna make ONE of the significant characters of the series a werewolf
• but then comes fenrir fucking greyback right
• who creeps into 5 year-old remus lupin’s bedroom at night and. bites him
• essentially turns his life into a constant nightmare and violates him the most deeply fundamental of ways
• (do u see where im going with this)
• like no one can deny the obvious p*dophilic/non-consensual vibe that whole setting gives off. it’s just there
• but then he’s given a whole pack of big bad gays guys to follow him and attack children and turn them because like. of course he does?
• so lycanthropy is HIV. and there’s a group of unethical, immoral people going around contaminating innocent bystanders with it. ok
• then you introduce remus and you don’t even give the reader the benefit of the doubt about his sexual orientation and shove a girlfriend right at him in a very clear, very direct, very meaningful “He Is A Straight, Moral Man” display
• and like that’s?
• that’s precisely the rhetoric homophobes were sprouting back in the day
• that gay people were spreading the disease, that we were the root cause of the problem, that we were infecting them
• and you’re gonna make remus john lupin
• the only morally right, lovable (hiv-positive) werewolf in the books
• a heterosexual man
• and that? that is deliberate