I, for one, am outraged by the fact that Harry/Tonks was the popular fanfiction pairing a decade ago. That 7 year age gap is just disgusting. I can not imagine anyone finding enjoyment reading that. Nevermind the Tonks/Remus thing that, you know, is actually canon.

Seems like OP is intimidated by women being the older half of a relationship.

Anyway, let me get back to my Harry/Snape mpreg.

 

I think you maybe right. In a society where the average life expectancy is much higher, is a difference of 20-30 years (or perhaps even 40) so much of an issue? I actually think now not just Harry/Tonks, Harry/Andromeda, Harry/Bellatrix etc wouldn't even be a problem

 

You're going to have to run that one by me again, sorry. They live longer therefor there's not going to be age gaps in relationships? What...?

 

Let's set aside the specific pairings that also suffer from an imbalance of power problem (student/teacher, boss/employee etc.), because that's a different can of worms.

The main reason age-gap romances don't happen in western society is that romantic partners usually prefer to have common ground with each other. Two people usually have hugely different mindsets (maturity, life goals, etc.) when one person is just graduating college and the other is planning for retirement. Extrapolate this to the wizarding world in which people can live several centuries: Albus Dumbledore had vastly different life experiences growing up through the late 1800s (including two world wars) compared to, say, Frank Longbottom who was a child of the 1950s.

When romantic partners have a significant age-gap there's usually an assumption that the older partner lacks maturity such that they are mentally on the same page as the younger person. Alternatively, the younger person might be 'wise beyond their years' due to hardships that made them mature faster. In modern times, we struggle to understand how such relationships could be a partnership of equals.

Most of the age-gap romances I've seen in fanfic just ignore these issues entirely, but I wouldn't be opposed to reading, say, a Remus/Tonks romance that treated the problems seriously.

 

It would be pretty awkward for Harry and Tonks to hook up as Wizarding norms, as far as we see them, seem to indicate that they would have to immediately get engaged.

 

We have to keep in mind that wizards have a much longer life expectancy. For example Dumbledore lived merrily to about 150 and he didn't even die a natural Death. Simply because they have longer lives, I can easily see it not being anything special in society if there is a 20 or even a 30 year gap.

 

Genderswap Tonks is the only viable route to canonical mpreg tho

 

I don't know why there is disbelief factor when mpreg could exist in a magical world. I mean, Harry Potter using magic to get pregnant? Plausible. Harry getting hit with a curse that causes pregnancy? Plausible. I can read and enjoy it if the fic is very well-written and the mpreg itself is well-executed. One of my main issues with it is that the pregnant character tends to be nauseatingly OOC. Like, yes, I get that hormones are a thing and whatever, but come the frick on. Pregnant women don't undergo complete personality changes when they're pregnant, so why would men?

 

what if fleur laid veela eggs out of her canon-compliant cloaca

 

How do Veelas reproduce if there are no male Veela?

 

The anus is the window to the butt

 

JKR says that there are no male Veela, and we've seen from the books that Wizard-Veela couples produce half Veela children. So, where do full blooded Veela come from, and how do they get more full blooded Veela?

 

The anus is the window to the butt. I was very clear.

 

When a mummy veela and a daddy human love each other very, very much...

Though that leads into the thorny territory of cross species breeding. We know its possible between humans and various humanoids. But where are the limits. Could a veela and a giant have a baby? Or a goblin and a centaur?

 

The common fanon explanation I keep seeing is that there's no such thing as a "part-veela". If you're a girl born to a veela mother, then you are veela, period. I guess the idea is that it's a magical hereditary trait, so it always breeds true with female offspring. The idea of part-veela is usually portrayed as ignorance on the part of lay-wizards and witches in fics that use this concept.

As for Harry/Tonks, it's not that strange. Bigger age differences in relationships are actually very common, IRL, though it is usually older-male/younger-female (there's actually been a scientific study or two that have shown that, in western societies anyway, most women are much more attracted to older men until the women reach somewhere in their mid-thirties, when they generally flip to being attracted to men in their age range, or even younger). Hell, though it doesn't really qualify as a relationship, per se (more of a friends w/benefits scenario), I lost my virginity at 18 to a 26-year-old woman. And I'm far from the only one in a similar boat. It's really not as outrageous or as uncommon as you seem to think.

 

There are a lot of issues with jbern and TLIL, but age and consent on Harry's part aren't really one of them. You read the story, I presume, so you know that he has the memories of his father and the lived experience of a married mid-20's parent rather than those of a 14 year old. The two big concerns with regards to consent are mental maturity/experience, and sexual/physical maturity. Mentally, Harry is a grown man trolling around having fun at a grade school. Physically he's pubescent.

If anything, I'd expect you to raise an eyebrow at how a mid-20's father and husband was smashing tight 17 year old Veela strange.

If it's physical age and not mental that matters, then I assume you're fine with time travel stories where full-grown man Harry is 13 again and starts laying pipe on his future wife, because physically they're peers so it's just adolescent exploration.

 

If Tonks turns into Daphne, it is okay.

 

There's plenty of ways that Veela could multiply without there being any male Veela. Just off the top of my head:

• New Veela are created via asexual reproduction.
  
  
• New Veela spontaneously appear under certain environmental conditions, as Dementors and Boggarts do.
  
  
• Witches can spontaneously turn into Veela under certain rare circumstances (similar to the process of becoming a ghost).
  
  
• Veela steal human babies and turn them into Veela.
  
  
• When a Veela reproduces with a Muggle their child is a full Veela; when a Veela reproduces with a wizard it is a half-Veela.

• There was only ever one full Veela, the progenitor of the species. All subsequent Veela have been progressively diluted in power.

• When Veela reproduce in their avian forms they produce full Veela, when they reproduce in their human forms they produce half-Veela.

• When Veela mate with birds they produce Veela, when they mate with humans they produce half-Veela.

• Veela are hatched out of an egg that is prepared in a specific way, much like basilisks.

• When a Veela and human reproduce, the "percentage" of the Veela heritage the child gets is random and can be anything from 0% to 100%.

 

I don't know that HJ character still looked like a idiotic kid despite the James him. I still saw him as a kid. Sleeping with the head girl, Fleur, Penelope peeping on Fleur naked seemed creepy. Would a 24 year od James do all those things? Nope Jbern failed miserably as a writer here. I would have actually have enjoyed Harry/Aimee than the superficial Fleur in the fic. She was quite the bitch. And Jbern wrote pedophilia in his Harry/Susan fic and had them sleeping when they were 15.

 

Meh. I don't think Harry/Tonks is a problem because fanfiction isn't supposed to mirror reality in the first place. Of course it would be a strange, possibly immoral relationship in real life. So what? People who write Harry/Tonks (or Harry/Snape, Harry/Narcissa, etc.) aren't actually imagining realistic 15-year-olds getting it on with adults. They're not imagining 15-year-olds at all. They're imagining themselves as fictional characters banging the characters they like in a fictional universe they like.

It would be impossible to read a realistic novel about a 40-year-old and a 16-year-old and not be squicked out. But the people (including many adult women) who write such fanfiction aren't secret pedophiles. They would loudly condemn such a relationship in real life. They're just indulging in fantasy and imposing adult personalities on younger characters. Look at the way first years talk in literally every fic. It's not realistic, because people don't identify with 11-year-olds. They're written as little adults because that's the way the writers are imagining them.

tl, dr: Most of this stuff is harmless fantasy that doesn't reflect someone's IRL values, but there IS a line: fics that celebrate pedophilia as pedophilia should be denounced by everybody. But a relationship between a 17-year-old and a 24-year-old where there are a dozen ways to hand wave the problems away? Who cares?