Ace

OKAY SO

Yeah. Remus really can't afford to not have a poker face considering that he has had to carry around a deep, dark secret all his life.

But consider: he's not actually very good at it. Remus has to lie, and at first, it's easy because no one is invested in him enough to dig deeper than surface level. But once he starts making friends and adversaries? He starts to flounder.

I mean, James and Sirius figured it out really early on, according to canon. It was stated that they spent the better part of 3 years learning to become Animagi, and they became Animagi in year 5. Which means that they found out Remus' deepest darkest secret which he guarded with his life around 2nd Year. Which means they were, like, 12/13 years old.

Snape also figured it out by 5th Year (or maybe 6th?). And in the scene with the map, I'm not convinced that Severus believed a word Remus said, so I can't exactly give him credit for having an awesome poker face there. They both knew he was lying. Snape just couldn't prove it in that moment, and so he decided to bide his time.

Later, after the war, Remus struggled to maintain work even though he was unregistered. His Lycanthropy was still a secret to the world up until the end of POA, but he couldn't keep a job because of "what he was." Which tells me that he really wasn't all that good at lying and covering himself without his friends around to help if his employers kept finding out.

As a rule, I consider Pottermore to be a sort of grey area of "sub"-canon. I see it as being on par with headcanon, so I take it all with a grain of salt. I pick and choose bits of Pottermore to incorporate into my own HCs.

I do appreciate the way pottermore expanded on Remus' family life, and I especially love the background that includes Lyall being prepared to fend off Albus Dumbledore to protect his son. I'm a sucker for the HC that Remus had good, loving parents. The rest of his life is so rife with suffering and pain, so it's just nice to give Remus something happy to hold onto. I don't mind when Remus doesn't always have great parents in fics, though, because it's not something that was ever explicitly stated in canon. I just hate when folks in this fandom go around repeating the mainstream fanon "Remus was an orphan" or "Remus had shitty parents" as if it is undisputed canon.

I also really like the background on how Lyall and Hope met and the way it ties the whole Lupin family together with Boggarts being the common thread. Lyall saved Hope from a Boggart, and they had a Boggart wedding cake topper! What a cute and quirky family! And then Remus goes on to teach DADA and his first lesson is, you guessed it, BOGGARTS! And then he taught James Potter's son how to defend against Boggarts! I love it so much, the link between Boggarts and fear and Remus' Lycanthropy and the fear/cowardice that burdens Remus as a character and—

I'm going to write a detailed analysis on this someday because I just find it so fascinating.

I'm less fond of the way pottermore retconned R*madora, and the comment that Remus made about how "Sirius got all the women", not simply because I'm not a fan of that ship but also because it willfully goes against the already-established canon trait that Sirius was not interested in girls/dating and paid them little attention. I prefer to read it as Remus feeling jealous/envious of Sirius, of the way he never even had to make an effort because he was just so effortlessly handsome and charming, while Remus felt this immense pressure to be good enough and had to work twice as just to be liked and respected (while also feeling unworthy of these things due to his Lycanthropy).

i hope you have an amazing day 🥳🥳🥳🥳💕💕💕

THANK YOU!!!!!! 🥰🥰

They then edited each their comments to add even more hate (one edit was just adding "daaaaaammmmnnnnnn" after a rant about Sirius being a douchebag)

"I love canon Remus, he is such a pathetic loser!" (Insert some obligatory reference to damp socks or wet noodles or crumpled paper towel)

Those very same people:

*exclusively posts/writes/interacts with Fanon Remus who is tall and broad and muscly and cool, often right alongside funsized dainty white twink Sirius who is at least a full foot shorter*

Me:

🤨🤔

Thank you!! It drives me insane the way this fandom pretends to be so progressive and subversive and yet the undertones are SO fucking ableist and comphet??? And yet I'm the one who is ableist for not vibing with the mainstream angry characterization of Remus (or so I have been told many, many times by Fanon Remus stans).

If that wasn't bad enough, they also stripped him of any flaw that could be perceived as emasculating. His well-established avoidance and cowardice? His insecurity and passivity? His people pleasing tendencies and self-loathing? His devotion to Dumbledore and his deep admiration (and perhaps envy) for James and Sirius? All gone. Doesn't exist. Fanon Remus is the coolest, smartest, bravest, and most capable of all the Marauders.

Even his appearance was completely altered to ensure that Fanon Remus is just oozing with raw, unfiltered masculinity. This is a topic I am especially heated about as someone who is chronically ill. I relate deeply to Remus because I see my own struggles in the ways his Lycanthropy affects him. It makes him sickly and pallid, he is described as thin and worn down, both from the effects of the disease itself and later from the struggle of keeping himself fed and housed due to the stigma surrounding it.