#sbds

Recently I was ripping a bunch of SBDs, so I decided to make my own comp of them! Some of them definitely aren't super silent, but those are just louder whispers from my ass!

i fucking hate when he’s conceptualised as this dramatic, over-the-top-angry, unreasonable manchild. actually, no. even one of those traits for him annoys me so much. people can write him however they want but atleast have the decency to slap an ooc tag on it if ur gonna butcher him that badly because he’s !!! not !!! like !!! that !!!

the only time he shows an ounce of ‘melodrama’ (and i have issues w that term) is during the shrieking shack which he waited over a dozen years for in hellish conditions. he’s probably starving, half delusional, and definitely a combination of angry and terrified out of his mind. he’s been single-mindedly focused on one task, has probably used it to fuel himself through all material and psychological obstacles, and now that it’s in front of him, of fkn course he’s not gonna wait around for tea and crumpets to be served.

every other instance we have of sirius is him being cool, collected, logical, and rational as fuck. i recently read the ‘padfoot returns’ chapter in gof for mc purposes and by god, i fell in love with him all over again. he’s so terrifyingly competent?? the way he’s gone through some of the most horrific trauma in the entire series, and his mind is still so sharp? his memory is impeccable? the way he joins dots and comes to conclusions? not just that, but he’s one adult who listens to and trusts the trio, treats them like children with the weight of the world on their shoulders, actually seems to see them without rose tinted glasses on.

and his entire speech about crouch/the ministry/snape???? this is not someone who mindlessly hates slytherins. fucking hell, he was giving snape the benefit of the doubt in that chapter. ‘i don’t think dumbledore would hire him if he was really on the other side’ (paraphrased) and this is where he makes the point about observing how someone treats their inferiors. sirius has so many layers and he’s such a complex character and he’s so wonderful in his own right it annoys me sm to see him dumbed down into this- not even 2D but massively ooc version of him. and again, like, i don’t mind ooc at all. i read tons of ooc character fics! it’s great and super fun! but for the love of god tag it that way.

and back to the being dramatic thing. this man lived in the same set of tattered robes, in caves, feasting on rats, generally not giving a single fuck. he tore chicken straight off the bone. lived on the run, breaking into people’s houses and roaming around as a dog. he’s not going to freak out over a broken nail or shriek or jump around for anything. when faced with a hostile molly weasley or a curious harry asking about his family (a sensitive topic) he chose to rely on cool answers and clipped tones, not outward explosions of anger. ugh. so much nuance, and it’s all gone just like that.

My take on things is this: You can think Sirius is ‘dramatic’ AND recognize that he was level-headed and logical in situations when the trio contacted him for adult advice. There are a number of ways to balance those two things where you don’t reduce his character to (as you out in your tags) “Drama Queen Sirius Black,” but instead point out that a person can still be logical and enjoy their dramatics in situations where stoicism isn’t necessitated, you know?

There’s also a lot to be said for the fact that our introduction to Sirius comes after over a decade in prison, which quite obviously has impacted him, as it would anyone. Even if he was more dramatic or reckless in his youth, there’s ample evidence in the books that in most situations where his actions are directly connected to Harry/Harry’s livelihood, he’s doing his best to be cautious and thoughtful. He wants to be a good godfather to Harry, even if his last experience doing so was when he was a 21-year-old (which is a totally different experience than it may have been if he’d had a full 12 years post 1981 to learn what full-time parenting looks like).

The quote you referenced is a good example there too—he spent every year from 22-34 in prison, it’s not as if he was given much of a chance to experience a normal sense of maturity and adult responsibility before he was imprisoned. Obviously there was a war going on, but he didn’t get to, say, tacitly do his taxes and complain about the government over his morning tea during that time. He was just…stuck.

We don’t get much about azkaban as a prison (beyond some of the obvious descriptors), so there’s no textual evidence to say that he couldn’t have been developing other skills while there or having meaningful conversations with other prisoners about the world outside, but at the end of the day, he was still stuck. Even if he was reading the Prophet every day, there’s a hell of a difference between reading about the world and engaging with it, and an even larger one between reading about major historical events and taking part in them.

I think that’s analysis of “he’s basically still a 22-year-old” is probably one of the better arguments for a sense of impulsivity, because that would definitely be an adjustment for anyone to make, but even STILL, we see so much evidence of him trying to be a reliable and responsible person for Harry that it seems like a bit of a character assassination to only ever say that he was dramatic.

: o

i love this!! i’m a sucker for people more articulate than me (which is,,,most everyone lmao) actually putting this into proper words. you’re absolutely right that enjoying dramatics doesn’t have to take away from logical thinking (after all, i don’t think anyone would deny that snape wasn’t one for the ~drama while also being very competent at the same time). i guess it’s just that i don’t see even that kind of penchant for it in sirius in the first place, but that could definitely be a me thing.

i have a lot of thoughts about him being ‘stuck’ in azkaban and the kind of effects that would have on a young adults psycho-social development, so yes, that part would probably give the best rationale for impulsive sirius which makes it all the more weirder that it’s never used. only the DoM fiasco, being in hogsmeade, and molly/hermione’s words are. i don’t know if this is my sirius apologism showing but i feel like even him being stuck as a 22yo isn’t fair, considering how much we actually see from him in terms of showing responsibility, conflict management and response to trauma, dealing with children etc, especially in gof. his caginess in ootp can be attributed to factors outside his maturity/impulsivity levels too imo.

I completely agree that the big deal made out of his ‘recklessness’ and ‘impulsivity’ in OOTP were completely out of the blue. What really frustrates me about that is also that neither Molly nor Hermione ever apologize for their comments or behavior. I’d have liked to see Molly acknowledge she was unfair to Sirius, because she was panicking about her family being in danger, or Hermione acknowledging that she was passing judgement on Sirius because she had no idea what she was talking about when it comes to PTSD or trauma. Fans are quick to forget that she’s equally as clueless about how to deal with Harry’s PTSD in OOTP, but somehow all of this disappears in time for HBP, and everyone ‘moves on’.

The only person who truly understands Sirius (as much as he can, when dealing with his own trauma) in OOTP is Harry. Remus’ nonchalance at keeping Sirius imprisoned in a house with his worst childhood memories is also baffling. Actually, Harry’s reactions are most often a parallel to Sirius’ reactions - Harry running after Bellatrix, like Sirius went after Peter, after the death of the only family they had. But, Harry’s actions or reactions are always portrayed in a heroic light, they are always because of his love, or saving-people-thing (an oversimplification from Hermione that also frustrates me). JKR’s bias in her portrayal of Sirius is obvious, and fans seem to have run with the caricature they made of Sirius in the movies and in Hermione and Molly’s OOTP words.

hello anon! 💜 you and me both, tbh. i hadn’t quite realised how many people were disgruntled with sirius’ fanon self so its quite fun for me to see all these interpretations.

re the DoM, i thought this was a wonderful post analysing why it wasn’t reckless of him to go, like u said.

re the other things, definitely—loyalty, love, trauma, and grief make up so much of his core traits/responses. people like attributing selfishness/recklessness/immaturity to his decision to go after Peter but i don’t agree with them tbh. he’s just lost his james, he’s in a haze of grief and anger and guilt, and along comes a person who takes his godson on the orders of someone who’s the leader of their side in the war. why wouldn’t sirius, who’s deferred to the order before (harry’s bday), listen? especially when it gives him a chance to go after the traitor? it’s not a stretch, or arrogance, to think he’d be (the only one) capable of catching peter—no one else knows about the switch *and* the animagus thing, after all. it’s entirely possible for him to think about it in terms of neutralising a threat tbh. and iirc, he didn’t even go after peter to kill him or wtv? i’m pretty sure it was firstly a ‘how could u do this’ endeavour but also he’s morally against that kind of violence, isn’t he?

and yes! it frustrated me sm that the narrative itself justified molly and hermione, even when they’re categorically wrong (atleast imo). i’m pretty sure sirius’ arc (and james, to a lesser extent) is why the ‘show, not tell’ thing has made such an impression on me because jkr told us a whole lot about sirius but showed the exact opposite and that’s led to this clusterfuck of a canon characterisation lol.

you lovely anon, i think you’ve given me a new criteria now. this one’s a bit more objective than ~bad vibes~ too.