This may just be my experience as an autistic person, but the kids I’ve nannied whose parent’s complain of ‘bad awful in cooperative selfish autistic behavior’ are… Not like that? At all?

Like, for example, I cared for a kid for a while who was nonverbal and didn’t like being touched. Around six years old? Their parent said that they were fussy and had a strict schedule, and that they had problems getting them to eat. Their last few nannies had quit out of frustration.

So, I showed up. And for the first little while, it was awkward. The kid didn’t know me, I didn’t know them, you know how it is. And for the first… Day and a half, maybe? I fucked up a few times.

I changed their diaper and they screamed at me. I put the TV off and they threw things. Not fun, but regular upset kid stuff.

Next time, I figured, hell, I wouldn’t like being manhandled and ordered around either. Who likes being physically lifted out of whatever it is they’re doing and having their pants yanked off? Fucking few, that’s who.

Next time, I go, ‘hey, kiddo. You need a new diaper?’ and check. ‘I’m gonna go grab a new one and get you clean, okay?’ ‘Wanna find a spot to lay down?’ ‘Alright, almost done. Awesome job, thanks buddy’.

I learned stuff about them. They liked a heads up before I did anything disruptive. They didn’t mind that I rattled of about nothing all day. They didn’t like grass or plastic touching their back. They were okay with carpets and towels. They liked pictionary, and the color yellow, and fish crackers, and painting. They didn’t look me in the face (which was never an issue- I hate that too, it fucking sucks) but I never had reason to believe that they were ignoring me.

Once I learned what I was doing wrong, everything was fine. Did they magically “”“become normal”“” and start talking and laughing and hugging? No, but we had fun and had a good time and found a compromise between what I was comfortable with and what they were comfortable with. (For the record, I didn’t magically sailor-moon transform into a socially adept individual, either. In case anyone was wondering.)

I don’t like eye contact. It’s distracting and painful and stresses me out.

They didn’t like eye contact either.

Is eye contact necessary to communication? No. So we just didn’t do it.

Was there ever a situation where I HAD to force them to drop everything and lay down on the lawn? No. So the thirty second warning came into play, and nobody died.

“But they never talked!”

No, they didn’t. And they didn’t know ASL, and they didn’t like being touched.

So you know what happened?

My third day in, they tugged on my shirt. ‘Hey monkey, what’s up?’ I asked. And they tugged me towards the kitchen. ‘oh, cool. You hungry?’. They raised their hands in an ‘up’ gesture. ‘you want up? Cool.’ and I lifted them up. They pointed to the fridge. I opened it. They grabbed a juice box out of the top shelf, and pushed the door closed again. ‘oh sweet, grape is the best. You are an individual of refined taste.’ I put them down and they went back to their room to play Legos.

“But they didn’t say please or thank you!” “But you should be teaching them communication skills!” “But!” Lalalalala.

1. The entire interaction was entirely considerate and polite. I was never made uncomfortable. I was made aware of the problem so that I could help them solve it. There was no mess, no tears, no bruises, no shouting.

2. Did my brain collapse into a thousand million fragments of shattered diamond dust out of sheer incomprehension? No? Then their communication skills were fine. Goal realized, solution found, objective complete. They found the most simple and painless way to communicate the situation and then did it.

Kids are not stupid. AUTISTIC kids are not stupid.

I’m willing to bet real cash money that the real reason the last few nannies had quit had a million times more to do with their own ability to cope, not the kid’s.

To this day, that was the most relaxed and enjoyable job I’ve ever had.

And I know I don’t speak for everyone. All kids are different. All adults are different. But in my time and experience, pretty much 95% of all my difficulties with children come from ME not being understanding enough. Every single “problem child” I’ve worked with turned out to be a pretty cool person once I started figuring out how to put my ego aside and let them set the pace.

Again, not speaking universally, here. I’m just saying. Sometimes social rules are bullshit, you know? People are people

Have you ever read an article about the study that found that teaching the parents to cope with autistic kids yields better results than other therapies? Because this is exactly what they were talking about.

this is a fantastic short term solution. but what happens when that child goes out into the real world as an adult and has no verbal communication skills and still doesn’t know how to properly transition between activities? by not teaching them coping mechanisms you put them at a distinct disadvantage compared to the rest of their peers and I don’t think that’s fair.

Okay, first off, I don’t want you to feel that I skimmed your argument and chose to disagree on principal. I feel that I have read and understood your point of view, and am actively putting thought into composing a thoughtful response that conveys my perspective on the subject.

You have asked me what happens when an autistic child “goes out into the real world as an adult and has no verbal communication skills”.

The thing is, there are many adults who live perfectly well without verbal communication.

There are adults with hearing impairments who can’t verbalize their intentions.

There are adults with anxiety disorders who can’t verbalize their intentions.

There do, in fact, exist autistic adults who can’t verbalize their intentions.

I would not personally agree that forcing a child or adult to talk out loud -when it very obviously causes them stress, or when they are unable to do so- is a coping mechanism.

I would argue that a coping mechanism is something that one does to alleviate their own stress, not the stress of others.

 Just as well there are, right now, at this very second, any number or real-life adult autistic people who actually do, at this minute, have a hard time transitioning between activities. I’m sure you could ask them what that’s like and you’d get a great number of autistic adults who do exist in the real world willing to tell you.

I’d like you to ask yourself, and I sincerely don’t mean to be condescending, a really quick question:

Is the problem Them, or is the problem You?

Furthermore, is there even a problem at all?

What I mean for you to ask, is: Is there a problem, or did you create one by being unwilling to compromise what makes you, personally, comfortable? 

Are they doing something wrong, or are you valuing tradition over someone’s health and wellbeing? 

Which is more valuable to you, in a society?

No child is ready to walk out and live life as an adult in the ‘real world’. That’s why they’re children. Raise them, whoever they are and whatever that means, into an adult who’s confident and kind. Let them speak to people who understand them, not just people who’ve studied them, because there is a difference, and children need more than anything to not feel alone. Everything else is secondary.

A point I hear a bunch is “autistic people need to learn how to communicate with everyone else”

A communication problem

Communication problems require (at minimum) two people to happen.

Yes it’s good for autistic folk to understand how non-autistic folk communicate

But it’s just as important for not autistic folk to learn

It’s almost like communication requires both people to work together.

It’s almost as if most of these communication “errors” arise because non autistic people flat out refuse to learn how to communicate with us, whilst demanding we communicate only how they dictate.

A lot of us know how to communicate nt just fine. (And I say just fine, but I mean: while enduring physical pain and stress). But they can’t be assed to use 3 calories to try to understand how -we- communicate. It’s just ableism wrapped in ignorance, wrapped in laziness. 

build-a-sirius

based off of this post (x)

Can you pass me the bottle?

I know it’s super exciting!

Do you remember what we did with James?

2 D A Y S L A T E R

And here he is. I know, I know. One of my best works.

I’ll see you in another episode of Recipe for Marauders

Sirius gif is obviously from TT (@asktheboywholived)

Kids.  Teenagers.  As someone staring 40 in the face lemme tell you a thing.

You are going to be horrified and embarrassed at some point by the shit you are doing now.

And you are going to wish with all your might you’d done more of it.  

You’re gonna wish you had more selfies, more photos, more videos being dumb with your friends.  You’re going to wish you’d had your hair even higher or your shoes even sparklier.  

Go.  Document the shit out of your ridiculous life.  Fuck trends but if you wanna be trendy, go all in.  Fuck in-groups and subcultures but if one sings to you, do it all.  Be exactly as cool or punk rock or goth or fandom or country or hardcore or hip hop or whatever, and don’t let anyone tell you differently.

Just don’t hurt people.  That’s the only thing you’ll ever genuinely live to regret.

@palejoke tagged: #I mean no offense but why a 40 y/o on the hellsite

I think I have talked about this before, but because life doesn’t end at twenty or thirty or forty or fifty and thinking that folks are going to fall out of social media or that there won’t always be someone your age and my age and twice both of our ages interested in [insert anything, ever] is a very limiting worldview.  

Somewhere there is a sixty-five year old who unironically loves Taylor Swift’s music and a fifty-two year old writing Superwholock fanfic and a ninty year old who absolutely lives for the next episode of Archer and a seventy-one year old that can kick anyone’s ass in k-pop trivia.  There will always be these folks, and all the Internet has done is give fans of all ages a chance to interact in a way that they never had before.

Before BBSes and the Internet and Usenet and the World Wide Web and fanrings and forums and social media, those people would just love it in their own way, in the privacy of their own homes.  But now anyone can make an Ao3 account or a basic fansite or tumbl about whatever they want, and sometimes you’re gonna learn those people are old but they still get it, and sometimes you’re going to find out those folks are still kids, twelve or fourteen at the oldest, and marvel at their maturity and skill and attention to detail.  

And that is rad as hell, that is fucking incredible, that is… whatever the kids are saying these days, hah.

As a sidenote, once, about a decade ago, I decided to email one of my favourite authors before she bit it … she was pushing 90 at the time. ( … she’s still alive now). Anyways, we got to having a long discussion, because I shared my deadname with her late husband, and I actually had quite a long conversation with her. The part of the conversation I’d like to share with you about this now pushing 100-tear-old author isn’t that she developed a liking for her breakfast eggs from her honeymoon in Vienna, or that her Husband would sometimes steal her drafts to read them as soon as he could, or that she superglued a potted plant to her bookshelf to watch her orange cat try to knock it over and fail. Nono, I mention this to bring up what she would do as a writing exercise whenever she didn’t feel like writing her serious work. In short, erotic darkwing duck slashfic. You can find it online.

This is the greatest addition this post has gotten so far.

I LOVE THIS FUCKING POST.

I love all the posts written by older fans, with their insight, and their generous attitude towards young fans, and young fanfic writers, and young fanartists. 

Older fans who patiently explain to whomever questioned the validity of older fans participation…

that it’s older fans running the AO3 servers and the entire OTW organization;

Older fans most often writing the actually well written fanfic; 

Older fans planning, organizing and executing massive cons;

Older fans who write out fandom history dating back to pre-internet so that history can be known and preserved and enjoyed;

Older fan lawyers enforcing Fair Use laws pro bono to keep fans from being sued for creating fic or art or any other media;

Older fans behaving well with life-lived-and-learned healthy boundaries;

or conversely dealing out smack-downs to those not behaving well be they older trolls or naively inexperienced younguns;

Older fans letting fans of all ages remember that zany enthusiasm is not the province only of the young - it is the province of humanity. 

And we’re right there loving being human with you.

All of this, but they’ve all covered that, but here’s the thing:

I hate how little of my teens and early 20s are recorded. I hate that I don’t have more photos and that I didn’t go harder on the aesthetics I loved. I am jealous of today’s teens because I didn’t have a smart phone to easily take photos and videos of myself and my friends. I hate that there are no video clips of me in my back yard in every pink piece of clothing I owned and pink glitter makeup singing “Popular” from Wicked, accompanied by a boom box, with the sound of my friends recording me giggling in the background because I was hamming it up. I remember it, but there’s only a couple of still photos that I don’t know where they are anymore, because they were taken on an actual *camera*. I’m sad that there are no photos of me in my little snug tank tops and oversized camo print cargo pants, with punk-ish wrist cuffs I borrowed from a friend who was a lot more heavy metal than I was, making goofy “hard rock” faces at the camera and trying not to laugh.

And at the time, lord I even thought I was lame and all that but now? I really wish I had embarrassing silly pictures of myself spending time with people if only because the main memories I have of being a teenager was being depressed and sad and lonely, because I was those things, but not all the time. And having those things would be such a wonderful reminder that as depressed as I was, there were still good points, there were still people in my life sometimes, I still had fun and goofed off and did silly things just to do them.

Treasure yourself. Document yourself and throw yourself into the things you love with reckless abandon. Even if you look back and are a bit embarrassed by it later, you’ll still regret not doing it when your older anyway.

love yourself and love your life (the good parts of it anyway) and love the things you love.

“why bother writing bisexual characters if they just end up in a m/f relationship”

my dude

my guy

my pal

stop talking forever

Oh I have never reblogged faster in my life

Watching my bi friends’ identities get erased when they‘re in m/f relationships makes me think it’s even MORE important to write bi characters in m/f relationships and then be REALLY BLATANT about the fact that one or both of them is bi.

Sorry it’s kind blurry, but all the grey texts are @credence-needs-a-hug go follow her and she’s writing what happens after they stop texting *this is the start of a series*

What Fanfiction Puts Me Through

((OOC:I just went through a whirlwind of emotion reading a piece of fanfic, where I decided to capture my reactions during that time. These are in no particular order. Thank you to fanfic authors for making me feel a wide range of emotion. You deserve so much ❤️)).

Finding that fic

Finding the bleephole character

When you’re just too frustrated with how stupid everyone is

The Twist

When there’s the trope that separates your fav characters (p.s. love it and hate it)

Keep reading

There we go

i solemnly swear to reblog this post every time it shows up on my dash

Ey yo true fax

I forget that people think Sirius Black is straight… 

*causally moves arm from around boyfriend*

*stands at the door like the two gay uncles who have invited you over for their christmas celebration*

*insert campy ‘reunited and it feels so good’ lyrics*

Like, how can you look at Sirius “You know the man you truly are, Remus! This heart is where you truly live! This heart! Here! This flesh is only flesh!” Black and think ‘yes. that is one straight heterosexual male my friends. Straight as an arrow, that one. Nothin’ gay here guys. Only the straightest of the straight can clutch the heart of their not-boyfriend and look into his eyes while begging him to remain human for a moment longer”…..

Look i dont wanna sound like a Fandom Mom or whatever but what do you think women over 25 or so are supposed to do? Do u really think theyre supposed to drop all their interests and just talk about taxes and marriage or whatever? It seems like 25+ year old fanboys do not receive this kind of “ooh cringe” reaction either. There are guys in their 40s with comic book collections and shit and people might think theyre a nerd at worst, not a freak who shouldnt be trusted

Thank you. Because, here’s the thing, I literally tried that. And this sounds really dramatic but it kind of ruined my life for a long time.

Once I got out of grad-school and started working, at exactly age 25, I figured it was time to get serious because I was “too old for this stuff” and frankly I was afraid of being judged. 

I sold all my comics, I stopped reading fanfiction, I stopped playing video games. All of it. It’s not that I never, ever watched anything “geeky” or spent a weekend binge-reading a kink-meme, but when I did, it was rare and I’d feel guilty about it like it was time wasted. I’d keep it all to myself, you know? And without any kind of inspiration, I eventually stopped drawing. After all, I didn’t need it for my “serious job,” so why bother? Unfortunately, my former skill is so atrophied now it’s nearly lost, but worse than that, it’s stressful now instead of the thing I loved to do for most of my life.

What was I doing instead? Well, I’d work my miserable, toxic job, come home and worry about how far behind everyone else I was, and how weird I was compared to all my colleagues. I’d go out with people and do the things they liked doing, but I only pretended to. But I’m not great at that and pretending to be someone else ate me alive. Unsurprisingly, by 31, my anxiety and depression was not in a great place, and I fuckin’ snapped. Not just because of this stuff, of course, but it honestly contributed. I quit my job and left town.

Suddenly I was completely alone, no job, no friends, and no reason to pretend to be someone else. So, I started doing all the things I’d given up. I read all the fanfiction I wanted, I bought a Playstation and an SNES and played them for hours. I bought back every comic book I loved, watched every Marvel movie I missed, and caught up on my favorite characters. I started traveling around just going to cons for the first time (NYCC, GeekGirlCon, DragonCon, etc). In fact, at @geekgirlcon and DragonCon especially, I saw groups of women who were 60+, just fucking enjoying things, and it made me feel so much better about my future. I’m not even joking, I literally cry every time I think about it, because I never realized how scared I was about aging in a world that thinks I’m already a decade too old for the things I love. Suddenly, that wasn’t so scary. 

And then I just stopped pretending that I wasn’t into this stuff. I mean all of it, even the stuff no one understand, even the stuff people openly make fun of, even smutty fanfiction. 

And look, I’m not saying this cured my depression, or that everything is perfect. For one, I picked a city that’s awful for geeks and I’m trying to figure out where to move and how. For another, I lost six years of making like-minded friends, and it’s hard to find them now because we’re all so worried about being judged and online – the space that was always a refuge for me as a loner weirdo growing up – is now apparently a Children of the Corn. But I’m happier here, actually fucking liking things, than being the unobjectionable robot woman I’m apparently supposed to be. 

I don’t expect anyone to actually be interested in this, or have gotten this far, but because I’m having feelings about turning 36 on Monday, I just want to tell anyone who is about to turn 25 that you should just tell people to go fuck themselves. It’s your life. You’re going to offend people no matter what you do, at least choose the direction that makes you happiest, because those people certainly aren’t going to pay for your fucking therapist bills, are they? 🦖

This is gonna sound weird to you guys, but when I first started writing fanfic and sending stories to fanzines to be published back in 1991, in my first fandom all of the fans and writers and editors and readers I met were shocked that I was 17 because they were all in their 30s, 40s, and 50s. I was the outlier. I was an aberration.

Wanna know when young people started discovering fandom en masse? In the mid 1990s, when AOL got their internet gateway.

All the folks who ran fannish mailing lists and conventions and published ‘zines and posted fanfic online were over 18, because email and IRC and Usenet and FTP sites and listservs were primarily used by adults because they were almost exclusively college students, government employees, and academics. And the users of gated communities like BBS, GEnie, Compuserv, and AOL all skewed older. Only Prodigy was actually aimed at kids, because prior to the mid-to-late 1990s, children weren’t getting online until they went to university.

And what kids found was the fandom that adults had built online, after being a part of it offline for decades.

Even when FFN was launched, the people who initially posted there were the same people who had been posting fanfic to the internet for a decade: THE GROWN-UPS.

So the idea that we’re meant to put away childish things is hilarious, cos for most of our lives, fandom was not a part of our childhoods. It was a part of our everyday adult lives.

Look, anyone who tells me I should drop fandom because I’m over 25 is going to get laughed out of the room, because you know what age I was when I first discovered organised fandom existed? 

I was 26.

I started writing fanfic (or at least, I started writing stories that I labelled as fanfic, rather than just “stories”) at about age 30.  I’m in my late forties now, and I have no interest in dropping fandom.  I especially have no interest in dropping fandom because some brat who wasn’t even born when I started putting my fanfic online wants to try and sell me their internalised misogyny.

I was twenty-three when I found fandom; in all the important ways, it decided the course of my life.  

I didn’t even know I liked tech; for my first fic, I needed a webpage, it was ugly, so I opened it to look at the code, saw my first html, and fell in love.  Now I’m an analyst who tests programs for statewide and even national use.

I didn’t know I liked people; I thought something was wrong with me, that I seemed to always say the wrong thing, that I seemed to think wrong.  Instead, it just turns out how I think is just fine; there are so many people like me and I still meet them to this day.  

I didn’t know I could make and maintain friendships, short or long term; as it turns out, not a huge problem.  I make and maintain friendships of almost two decades and still made new friends as of this year.

When my son came out to me as gay, I was ready for the question he wouldn’t ask that I had to answer right then; I love you.  Of course it’s okay. And why the fuck are you awake and messaging me at three in the goddamn morning?  YOU HAVE SCHOOL TOMORROW.  Without all the friends who told me what they needed that day for themselves, I’m not sure I would have known that was something he needed to hear.  Without my friends, I wouldn’t have known to even expect–much less how to answer–a thousand questions (at least) he had, and where to have him look for more.

(Also didn’t hurt fandom was the one place I could be sure was all the happy ending gay love stories any gay child would need to read and knew exactly where to send him.  Fuck knows the pro version still isn’t exactly thick on the ground though it’s getting better.)

When I first started, I was mentored by an older woman in her forties-fifties, and on her webpage she had a log of all this shit she’d done just in the last year; traveled to hang out with fan friends, all the fic she wrote that year, all these people she met, this wonderful life.  She posted to all these sites, and she posted to mailing lists her opinion and argued without fear or self-consciousness.

All I could think is I want to be her.

At twenty-three, I couldn’t imagine it would be possible for me. I’m forty three, and as it turns out, I underestimated myself; it’s even better.  

Something you activist kiddies should keep in mind with all the “lol a thirty-year-old in fandom doesn’t she have dishes to do” nonsense is that it’s not only generally misogynist (not sure why you struggle with that one, it’s 101-level, but okay), but it is specifically designed to thwart women’s power by separating you from potential networks.

You think men just somehow magically get powerful as they pass into adulthood?  No.  They are mentored by, they get given chances to move up from, they learn from older men in their social networks, including in predominantly male “fannish” space.  Power, knowledge, opportunities move through those networks–and don’t kid yourself, they are primarily masculine networks.  By narrowing your networks to women within one or two years of your age, the “lol thirty-year-olds” rhetoric cuts you off from resources you might use to get stronger.  That’s a feature, not a bug.

Just the other day, I was in a room full of older fans that included a Nebula-winning author, an agent for a (different) Hugo-winning author, two tenured professors in radically different fields, and a member of the Foreign Service.  You’ll make your own friends in fandom (I did; one of my closest is 15 years older than me, and, my, did I learn from her), but these are the kind of resources available to you there.  Misogyny wants you to despise and avoid older women because it wants you weak.  Is this really something you want to play along with?

#reblogging for @harriet-spy’s excellent commentary#its NOT AN ACCIDENT#that we disown our mothers and foremothers#it’s how they keep us weak#its how they destroy our networks#fandom is the best old girls network in the world

All true and important but I want to especially share for @harriet-spy’s addition, which is something I don’t see talked about very often!

I can go into more depth some other time, but functionally, in an extremely real way, fandom got me where I am in life as an adult woman. The people I know— UNREAL talented, skilled, brilliant people, who took me under their wing, and helped gas me up, and from whom I learned everything— I met those people through or because of fandom. And without them I wouldn’t have a job or a career, thus: without FANDOM I wouldn’t. I mean that literally.

The way people talk about fandom as though it’s seperate from “real life” does both it AND “real life” a disservice. Fandom isn’t contained by the internet and conventions, it’s a community— one that doesn’t go away when you get older, in fact, one that gets stronger. And trust me, a relative success story, when I say that realizing that will make your whole life— professional life to personal life to fandom life— better.

we’re going to have to call smut ‘lemons’ again, aren’t we? 

LEMONS!? WHEN THE FUCK WAS THIS?!

oh you sweet summer child 

I actually made this a button last convention

Gaud I remember when it was lemons, I feel old now

explain pls

No

What are lemons??

I don’t own the copyright to this, others own the show. All I have is this saaaad little computer and a sketch pad. ^-^ Please don’t sue! I don’t need anymore stress!

Please R&R!!!!!!!

No flames. >///<

lol this story contains slash! Don’t like don’t read. Rated M. AragornxLegolas. lemon. Lololol ^-^ NO FLAMES OR I WILL KILL YOU WITH MY STABBITY SPORK OF Death! -__-

#this post made me age ten thousand years.

A/N: Things are probably going to be very OOC but who cares, It’s my fic, I do what I want! MUAHAHAHA!

Things story is lime but it might get a little lemony in later chapters ^.^ R&R no flaming!!! I don’t own the characters

The ghost of citrus past…🤣

Here’s some Wolfstar to celebrate Pride!  I’m sure Sirius dragged Remus out but they’ll both enjoy it with some smoochin

Reblogging for Pride month! I’m gunna draw a new one this year too

PRIDE MONTHHHH! ❤️🧡💛💚💙💜🖤

Yume this is stunning, as always.

Imagine the advances to wizarding society if Sirius Black had lived…

After the war, Sirius would have had a huge inheritance from parents he wanted to spite and a lot of leisure time to find good uses for it. We could have had…

1. Fleamont House: A house - perhaps even a heavily renovated 12 Grimmauld Place - where Hogwarts students can stay over breaks if going “home” wouldn’t be good for them (i.e., students like Sirius, Harry, or Tom Riddle).

2. Rest for Regulus: A seemingly bottomless grant awarded to the Auror department with the goals of:

3. Justice for All: A lobbying organization dedicated to pressuring the Ministry to improve their legal system, most notably,

4. Gentle Jails: Working in close collaboration with Justice for All, Gentle Jails builds small, secure, and humane (in particular, dementor-free) holding facilities for suspects awaiting trial. Gentle Jails funds their construction projects with donations, thereby cutting through all financial excuses the Ministry has for only using Azkaban to house suspects.

And finally, his personal favorite, the first one to be founded, the most heavily funded, the one that gets the most of his personal time and attention…

5. The Moony Institute for Lycanthropic Studies: A multidisciplinary research and applications powerhouse dedicated to improving the lives of people affected by lycanthropy.

The research division includes:

The applied research and services division works in a tremendous and ever-expanding variety of ways, including:

The Moony Institute became much larger than Sirius ever envisioned, and it had tremendous impact on the lives of people with lycanthropy all over the world. A surprising number of donors came forward to keep it afloat and non-profit (even the Black fortune couldn’t do it alone forever!). It created a lot of jobs, and preferentially hired werewolves to fill them. So much of the staff has lycanthropy, in fact, that many offices shut down altogether around the full moon! (Which is fine, because their clients are in poor shape at that time too.) It brought Sirius endless joy to put his bigoted family’s money to use improving the lives of “half-breeds,” especially because it was all inspired by his half-blood friend.

Finally, although he may never hear of it since it’s a Muggle charity, but if he ever found out about the Innocence Project, Sirius would be a regular and generous donor.

(Obviously these headcanons rest on the assumption that he experienced some personal growth, which I think is entirely possible if he had time to heal from Azkaban and got to spend more time with Harry and Remus.)

Bringing this back cuz its one of my favorite posts

Letters

This was based partially off my sad angsty Wolfstar Christmas prompt that @captofthesswolfstar put out. Considering a part 2, let me know!

~

Re,

I didn’t do it.

Please, I didn’t do it.

I wasn’t the secret keeper. It wasn’t me, please, it was Peter, I wasn’t the secret keeper, I would have rather died then betray them.

Please.

I didn’t do it.

~

Re,

No response?

Thanks a lot.

Remus, Re, please, you have to understand, it wasn’t me. Look…I….

Just please, it wasn’t me. I promise you. I swear on my life. I swear on what we were before.

We were something, weren’t we?

Sirius

~

Re,

You’ve given up, haven’t you? You think it’s me.

Honestly, I think that’s worse then being locked up here, in this hell hole. Knowing that you’re out there and you think it’s me.

It wasn’t. It wasn’t me.

Do you want me to spell it out for you? I didn’t fucking kill them. I never fucking betrayed them.

Jesus Christ. Open my goddamn letters, Re. Please, answer me!

~

Re,

It was during the war. You were off, at one of those werewolf encampments. God, Re, you know what it was like. We didn’t know, Remus, we didn’t know who to trust. And you were gone for so long and I think…

I think it was easier, to believe that you were the spy, then think it was actually someone underneath our own noses.

And I knew the logical choice. They would have all thought it was me, wouldn’t they? Sirius Black, James Potter’s best friend. Everyone thought it was me.

I would have never given them up Re. I would have died for them. I was prepared to die for them, to be tortured, I was prepared to never see you again. And I was so damn clever, I thought they would never suspect Peter. I was to be the scapegoat, to take the brunt of the agony, and Peter was to keep them safe. We all thought you were the spy, Re, it broke my heart, but all I wanted was to keep them safe.

You would have done it too.

Sirius

~

You’re never going to read these, are you?

You’ve already given up.

Though, what did I expect? Why did I think we were any different?

Fuck you, Remus. You don’t even care that I’m dying in here.

~

I told myself I’d stop writing to you.

And here I am, 5 months later, pouring my heart out on a piece of greasy wrapping paper.

That’s all we get, you know? Watery soup, a loaf of hard bread. They wrap it up in parchment, toss it into the cell. There’s no ink, so I use my blood. The quill is easy - the owls sometimes drop feathers.

They have me locked up, in maximum security. West side of Azkaban. Sometimes, I’m able to slip the letter into the mail cart that comes by every now and then.

It’s so quiet. I hate the silence, lingering and unending. They say everyone goes mad in the end. I’m possibly already mad. Always have been.

Please write back.

Sirius

~

Remus,

Christmas Day. It’s stupid of me, but some small part was still praying that you would come.

I still have those tattoos, you know. I have that enchanted one, of the moon cycles, on my forearm. I watch it, and every time it’s full, I pray for you.

Not to God, because he never did anything for us. I don’t know who I pray to, but I hope you’re safe.

I really thought you might come, Re. I really thought you would.

Sirius

~

FUCK YOU.

YOU LEFT ME IN HERE TO ROT. YOU LEFT ME TO DIE. I BET YOU’RE HAPPY NOW, YOU BACKSTABBING PIECE OF SHIT. WHAT MORE DO YOU WANT FROM ME. I’M DYING IN HERE, AND IT’S LIKE THOSE YEARS WE HAD WERE NOTHING.

~

Sorry about that last letter, Re.

Oh, what the fuck, what am I saying? You never read these anyways.

But just in case, I’ll write.

The dementors are hell, Moony. They…I don’t know. It hurts when they come near. I see things, Janes and Lily dead on the ground, you screaming and transforming, Peter laughing, my mother. They bring strange dreams as well - once I swore I saw you in my cell. You were screaming, and when I looked, they had carved out your eyes and replaced them with balls of pure silver. They gleamed in the darkness, and I couldn’t do anything but watch you scream and scream and scream.

I still love you, Re. I know you don’t. I’ll keep hoping, anyways.

Sirius

~

The full moon is tonight Remus.

You’ll get this letter a while after, when all the mail has been checked for curses and weapons and that sort.

It hurts, Re. It hurts, to know that you’re transforming, that you’re in so much pain and I can’t do anything about it.

I remember one night, when we were helping you transform. It was just after the moon set, and you were -

Oh fuck it. You’re never going to read these, are you? What are these letters, but just somewhere where I can write, something I can confess in while slowly going mad in a prison cell in Azkaban?

You were curled up, on the dusty floor. You were so pale, and along your back was three long gashes. They were deep, almost down to the bone, and they were leaking blood everywhere. But all I can remember was watching you, how even in unconsciousness you were quiet, stifling your groans of pain.

That’s all. It’s all I can hold onto.

~

There’s a memory that keeps coming up.

It’s strange - I think the dementors are messing with my head. I keep hallucinating, keep dreaming. It’s hard, to distinguish reality from slumber.

When I slice open my arm, it doesn’t hurt anymore. When I swallow the soup, I don’t feel full. When I walk, I can’t feel the stones beneath my feet. They are cracked and bleeding, but I can’t feel that either.

In this dream, we’re together. We’re always together, in these hallucinations. We’re in the Forbidden Forest, against a tree, and we are kissing. I don’t know why, or when, but all I know is that we were together, my fingers tracing up your spine and your hands in my hair. It was shoulder length, and you kept pulling on it, winding it around your fingers.

It’s the small things that bother me, wondering if they actually happened.

Hope you’re doing okay out there.

Sirius

~

I think I fell in love with your eyes.

I loved how they glowed in the sunlight, like honey over rocks. I loved how they gleamed when you laughed, how they fluttered shut when we fucked. I loved your lashes, soft like butterflies against my cheeks. I loved how they scanned over textbooks, how you blinked several times before falling asleep.

You were always so peaceful when you slept. It was funny, you never seemed like you were having nightmares. I-

~

Hey Re,

I haven’t written to you for a while now, I think. Days stretch in here, unending like the sea outside of my cell.

Sometimes, if I stick my hand out, I can feel the rain.

You always loved the rain, Moony. I remember asking you why, once long ago. New beginnings, you said. Rain symbolizes new beginnings.

New beginnings. A thousand drops of water, for all the futures that we could’ve had and now never will.

God, I’m rambling now. 5 years in Azkaban will do that to you.

They say it’s been 5 years. Or has it been 6? It’s too hard to tell, what’s real and what’s fiction.

So, new beginnings Re. I’ll stop writing. You never read them anyways.

I love you. I’ll never stop. I think that’s what hurts, the possibilities, the what if’s.

We could have had a life together, Re. I’m sorry if I fucked it up.

I tried my best, I really did. I tried, and now I’ll live with the consequences.

Goodbye, Re. I’m letting go now. I’ll always love you, here in my little cell. Find someone better, Re. Bury me, forget about me.

I’ll never.

Sirius.

I like this and forgot about it.

If you live long enough you see the same stories with different people (a Sirius raises Harry AU comic)

bonus under the read more:

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this comes from my very staunch headcanon that remus broke sirius out of grimmauld place at least once