#we’ve been getting a lot of anti remus/wolfstar asks lately

[padfootastic]

Wolfstar stans always say that Remus was OOC IN Canon!!! I mean wtf?? delusional lol. Fanon Remus is a mary sue who suffers and pines after cruel hottie Sirius and then Sirius comes to his senses and runs after his moony, begging for scraps of his attention and ofc James is completely ignored by sirius or they fight over poor hurting remus lmao their Fanon is what is so OOC. I think they self insert into Remus so they can catch the popular Hot bad boy who they can "cure of his bad ways"

hello anon 💜 i see we have awoken to choose violence today (nice) so i’m putting this under a cut so remus fans can skip this one.

yeah i’ve seen that too and i always have to scroll past while making faces because,,,im not here to start shit lol but oh god it’s such an annoying position. like ok, i’ve called canonical behaviours ooc too (cough harry in CC cough) and it’s entirely possible i was wrong, but the remus thing is just. wilfully ignoring everything we know about him? (again: caveat here is if you don’t care about canon, then go for it w/o trying to do critical canon analyses. no harm, no foul)

but here’s the thing, right? remus as we know him in canon is a serial manipulator, liar, gaslighter, and coward. like, this has been shown multiple times. i’m not making it up. in my mind, his actions in dh were absolutely not ooc. they just followed the pattern that had already been established so far. and i feel like so much of his characterisation comes from not wanting to engage with that kind of darkness (because even acknowledging it means your dynamic is changed). i’ve read a few excellent fandom analysis posts on here, actually, about how characterisation of wolfstar has changed over the years (decades?) as the average readership/writer ship has gone from middle aged to younger. apparently, it used to be much more dysfunctional and grittier earlier, dealing with the darkness on both sides. it was interesting. but anyway, yeah, i see it happen with regulus/jegulus too sometimes (even if i can’t comment on it since i’ve barely interacted with that content) where you deliberately turn a blind eye to things because if remus is a coward or bad at relationships, then u can’t actually write that fluffy AU u want. which…isn’t fun. because fanfic is about writing all the fluffy AUs in the world ykno?

but what that’s ended up doing is completely transforming his character into someone barely recognisable to those who aren’t in that particular niche (although,,,it’s not exactly niche is it?) and just. idk. i’m rambling now lol but it just really frustrates me because i cannot escape it. and it always treats sirius so badly. remus is just the most sympathetically written character, even when he’s being an absolute asshole, and sirius can’t breathe without being whacked over the head with it. i hate how much he’s scapegoated, honestly. like, i think i’d be fine with the mary sue-fication of remus if sirius wasn’t so defanged in the process but alas, it isn’t to be.

also that’s such an interesting point because i’ve often thought the same about remus being a self insert tbh. i was talking to someone and they said something along the lines of ‘james & sirius as the hot, rich, privileged characters aren’t relatable as much as remus, who’s poor & tortured & misunderstood, so u have people flocking to the latter’ and that combined with the ‘i can fix him’ energy just,,,really shines through sometimes lol. not so much on tumblr (where i barely interact) but i’ve seen it so much in the mwpp fandom on twitter, and a bit on tiktok. it’s very projection-heavy imo (which like, not a judgement. i’m clearly a projection heavy writer too)

#remus lupin critical #we’ve been getting a lot of anti remus/wolfstar asks lately #which. not complaining. i’m just wondering what triggers it #bc sometimes i go weeks without anything like it and sometimes i wake up to so many of these in my inbox #also the ignoring certain aspect thing: again not necessarily a judgement bc i do the same with james and sirius imo #like i definitely sanitise them i think #i guess it’s just that line between hc and canon that bothers me #and not even bc i think canon is particularly untouchable but because i wanna avoid certain readings and this is the most effective way #like i’ll often seek out ooc snape for example bc him in canon annoys me #or i’ll skip past certain fics if they mention someone i like is ooc in certain ways #it’s just a useful descriptive category that’s been completely annihilated in r/s spaces #idk. does that make sense? #and i’m not saying that the grittier dysfunctional r/s is inherently better mind #i don’t think i’d have read that just bc i’m personally not into those dynamics #it was just an interesting look into how things have changed and why #yeah there’s no neatly wrapped answer here. we’re all just bitching in one corner of the room lmao #pen’s asks