Open Letter To The Sanders Sides Fandom
Okay, this is kinda a long one but stick with me? It’s important.
If you watched a movie, and the only character of colour was the villain, that would be a bad time. Same if the villain was the only gay character, or disabled character - but all of these films have definitely happened in the past! Society’s view of what makes a fictional villain has always been coloured by real-world prejudices.
Remus’s villainhood may be arguable (and I’m not interested in arguing about it on this post) but he is undeniably an antagonist of the Sanders Sides series. More importantly for our purposes, he is explicitly associated with things which are gross, upsetting, and societally unacceptable.
I’m not the first person to point out that in fan-art, Remus is often the only side drawn with visible body hair. Me and some other people have recently discussed the same pattern cropping up with other traits: things like uneven teeth, excessive sweating, a large nose, or acne. All traits which society’s image of beauty generally tries to exclude.
To some extent, it’s good that people are drawing those traits, because they’re too often ignored by artists! But at the same time, it can really suck to be a person who has one or more of those traits in real life, and to see yourself only ever represented in fanart as the socially unacceptable one.
As you can imagine, it can feel real close to being told “these things about you are things you should want to hide about yourself, just like Remus is for Thomas” - especially since people with those traits are often explicitly told that very thing by society’s beauty standards! Even if the Remus in question is in an AU where he’s one of the good guys, it’s impossible to escape the connotations we all have for him in canon.
Stepping out of my lane a little, I can’t help but wonder what any fanders with facial birthmarks or scars have to say about these being common depictions of human Deceit. On the one hand, it’s another form of representation which is often skipped over - but on the other hand, Deceit has his own set of negative associations, including manipulativeness, deceit, and villainy. Again, it can be deeply hurtful to only see yourself as the villain.
To some extent, the original sin here lies with the canonical character designs. Remus is designed to look gross, and society has a certain view of what that means. But Deceit in particular plays into an old, old trope of villains with prominent facial asymmetry - and that trope is inherently, implicitly tied to society’s bias against people with facial disfigurements. I’m sure that link was unintentional on the part of @thatsthat24 and @thejoanglebook - it’s not something that society often talks about, and I didn’t think about it much before I saw this excellent pair of videos by The Princess & The Scrivener. But the mistake still happened, and now we as a fandom have to collectively decide how we’re dealing with it.
So what now? Well, I’m not going to pretend there’s an easy answer.
First of all, don’t freak out. A lot of people (including me) have played into one or more of the above tropes, and if you’re one of them, I am not saying you’re a bad person. This is a complicated issue, not a black-and-white one, and just because I want us to think more about how and when we include this kind of representation doesn’t mean I think this fandom would be better with no representation at all.
As always, one of the best ways to make your representation of societally-disapproved-of traits fairer is to include more of it, on a wide variety of characters, so that the implications are not always the same. That might feel strange at first - but please bear in mind that no-one is immune to society’s biases, not even you. If something feels “out of character” for a hero character but fine for a villain one, you should always question where that impulse is coming from.
If you do decide to assign a trait like this to only Remus and/or Deceit, you can help to mitigate the potential harm by making sure not to connect these physical traits with the negative personality traits of the characters. No-one’s personality is determined by their physical appearance, even if our fiction loves to pretend otherwise.
Most importantly, if someone questions you on how you’re representing your villains and/or the dark sides compared with the heroes/light sides, please listen to them with an open mind. No-one is above constructive criticism, and getting defensive doesn’t help anyone.
TL;DR: Representing traits that society considers unattractive is not good representation if you only ever include them on villain characters.