various and sundry, weird fandom comparison

[salinea]

Happy birthday stanayitnuh ! ♥

Sometimes Fandom really does puzzle me. But, I've been recced at quibbler_report and hogwarts_today so very much yay of the OMGBBQ-jumping-up-and-down kind.And let's not whine about the lack of comments.

Otherwise, having lots of fun discussing Remus' character here. Where I also started that Slytherins were not selfish :D

I know I tend to have a much darker interpretation of Remus than most people, and I probably go a bit too far with it, but I do think that a lot of people go overboard in the other direction (lots of fanon!Remus annoy me ^^)

Actually I could spend some time sporking fun at fanon!Remus in many ways (Saint!Lupin who is ever so good and kind and sacrificing; Bookish!Lupin who's shy and the smartest kid of his class regardless that James and Sirius were canonically just as smart or smarter; Alpha Wolf!Lupin with the super sense of smell to detect lies and horniness and who likes to bite his SO to mark his dominance - this one is more amusing than annoying - and so on ^^)

It's not of course that I think that Remus is an evil character. He has many qualities. He shows kindness to Harry and Neville, he's a very good teacher, he's courageous and selfless enough to fight in the Order despite how much the WW treats him badly.
But I do think he's got lots of failings, and I find that his failings make him much more interesting. And most of them are about how he deals with other people.

In many ways Remus reminds me of Anthy Himemiya from Shoujo Kakumei Utena, which I know is a weird parallel to make, but here.

Both Anthy and Remus are characters who are easily underestimated. They don't wear their (quite real and substantial) strength and powers on the outside. They often themselves dismiss their own ability outright. Anthy even appears right out to be a victim. Remus also often appears to be unjustly picked on. This appearance has a lot of ground in reality. Anthy is ill treated by her brother and most of the Duellists. Remus is prejudiced against because he's a werewolf. But it's also slightly biased. Both Anthy and Remus are masters of passive aggressiveness : Anthy's the one who orchestrates most of the duels (and through that a lot of the abuse she takes), Remus has lots of fun needling Snape through out PoA. But their passive aggressiveness are also a results of who they are. They both belong to a category of people who are rejected and discriminated against : Witch and Werewolf. Because of that they cannot afford to show aggressiveness or anger directly. They're not allowed to. So they keep their smiling, pleasant mask on. They use people because they don't have much choice to do otherwise. They're both very good at misdirection. They rarely lie outright, but they're very good at omitting crucial facts.

And they're of course desperate for the people who do accept them. Remus' cherishing of his friendship with the Marauders leads him to be a silent witness and a helper to their bullying of Snape and whatever other rule breaking their did in Hogwarts. That's relatively minor. However failing to report that Sirius was an Animagus and about his knowledge of the passage ways in Hogwarts while he thought Sirius was dangerous murderer because he doesn't want to disappoint Dumbledore is NOT.Anthy helps and lets her brother manipulate, use and abuse various people through out SKU, she obviously recognizes these things as wrong (she initially obviously doesn't care much about them because 1/ she's been excluded and ill treated by this society for a long time, why should they matter to her? 2/ in many cases she actively doesn't like these people, especially true for Saionji and Nanami, she softened the blow considerably for Miki which I believe she simply likes more) but do them nonetheless for the sake of her brother, because he's the most important person for her.

I think these almost fuzional relationship with the persons they care more is significant for both Anthy and Remus. Funny fact, we're told by the creators of each series, that these characters are Pisces, and that's a trait of character common to this Astrological Sign.


On another subject altogether, funny link about Pluto's demission as a planet (awww, poor Pluto XD)

ETA: Last, LJ seems to be very irregular about sending me mail notification of comments. I do receive most notifications, but if I check, I can see there's a few comments for which I've never received any. And it's been a few weeks now and I receive not late notification either, so it's starting to piss me off.

Comments

[laurus-nobilis.livejournal.com]

I always thought that the problem with Remus's reasons was his own lack of self-esteem, not that he's being patronizing, but I see your point. He's being idiot for thinking she'll just give up because he says so. About Tonks, though... I didn't see her as wimpy at all, and it surprised me to find so many people in fandom who did. I think she had a lot of perfectly valid reasons to be depressed (not only that Remus didn't accept her, but even if that was the only thing, why shouldn't she feel bad about that?) and yet she still tried to do her job, and managed it pretty well all things considered. But I guess that's one of those things where we'll never agree. :)

I never really thought about an unsuspected betrayal, and now that you mention it, it's a lot easier for me to think of characters who wouldn't do it than those who would. Hmmm. I think that if it happens, it won't be one of the really main characters, but it can't be someone too obscure either or else we wouldn't care. Perhaps a Weasley? Fred and George seem harmless so far, but they can be very creepy sometimes. And it would be a real shock for Harry (and mostly everyone).

[etrangere.livejournal.com]

It's difficult to explain the thing about Tonks. She's a character I like and I don't like when she portrayed as weak in fics, but when you read HBP it's hard to make sense of her behaviour. If the depression was blamed on something else than the thing with Remus it would sit better (she's in a stressful situation, it's understandable that she'd have trouble with that), there's the fact that her sadness is so strongly linked to a loss of her inherent power (disempowering much?) Maybe I was never much sympathetic with characters who follow their object of love like a whipped puppy much because I remember having the same reaction to Eowyn in LotR and I was 13 when I read it ^^
I did think her outburst at the end of HBP was somewha disgraceful. She kept pushing and between DD's death and Bill's agression and the publicness of it all, it was a bit weird.

That said I still like her a lot as a character. And I love when fics make more sense of her behaviour. Sadly, I don't think that was what JKR had intended.

Oooh Fred and George are an interesting idea. They're such tricksters I could see them being unreliable.

[laurus-nobilis.livejournal.com]

The way I read it first, I understood that the thing with Remus was on top of the stressful situation, and that was why she was so depressed. But when I read HBP for the second time, I realized that most of the hints point only at the romantic thing, so I can see your point. That's one of the reasons why I don't like how Jo handled it.

But I'm glad you still like Tonks herself. I've seen too many people complaining that she's a disgrace to feminism or something, as if one fictional character was supposed to represent Jo's views on women... *sigh*

I thought of the twins because they've already done a few things that are almost cruel. Just like MWPP, they can get out of hand sometimes...