fuck it, i'm gonna say it. the 99.9% of the "maraudersā fandom" is ableist to Remus Lupin. as a chronically ill person, it's jarring to see how this character is treated. at least sn*pe fans acknowledge their bigotry and outright call him a "killing machine" and say that he should be excluded from society. but people who claim to be his fans never acknowledge how ableist they are
so i want to clear some things up.
1. if you sexualise his disability (the tall horny strong possessive werewolf thing) - that's ableist
2. if you write him as a super cripple ( give him enhanced hearing or smell/strength) - that's ableist
3. if you make the cause of his low self-esteem to be facial scars - which he doesn't have in canon and which are also still conventionally attractive - and center his self acceptance journey on his looks and not his disability - that's ableist
4. if you write about his loving parents being horrible to him/abandoning him/ dropping him off to orphanage because "it makes more sense than parents loving their disabled child" - that's ableist
5. if you grotesquely exaggerate his transformations/ injuries (write trauma porn) to show how much he suffers from his condition (when in reality he wouldn't struggle as much if not for the structural ableism) - that's ableist
6. if you cure him, because he " doesn't deserve this" and think it's not possible for him to have a happy life with his condition - that's ableist
7. if you make him and his disability two different entities and make his condition into a separate basically sentient being - that's ableist
8. if you change his personality, make him angry and rude, because you think thats the only way a disabled person can react to their discrimination and trauma - that's ableist
9. if you treat his disability as a whump/angst fodder, an excuse to write sad and shocked reactions of able-bodied characters to his condition - that's ableist
10. if you write able-bodied characters comforting him by saying discrimination and prejudice he experiences is wrong because he is kind (not like other werewolves, of course), implicitly stating that not being discriminated against is something you have to earn by being a good person and he is actually comforted by this - that's ableist
11. if you write instances of him experiencing bigotry only to focus on how sexy the characters, confronting the bigots are (or try to make the situation in any way erotic) - that's ableist
and that's just off the top of my head and only canon universe and just major points
AUs are much worse
12. if you erase his disability because "it's a muggle AU/ i don't know how to write disabled characters!!!" - that's ableist
Remus is canonically disabled. he has a magical disability in a magical world/should have a normal disability in muggle AUs. Remus shouldn't be disabled only in 40 fics out of 40000. he should be disabled in every single one. disabled!Remus shouldn't even have to be a tag like green-eyed!Harry isn't a tag, because - duh. it should be the default.
also, Remus specifically has an invisible chronic illness (physical disability) and disabilities aren't interchangeable. moreover, he became disabled in his early childhood which is another important thing. ppl who are disabled from birth/early childhood have fundamentally different experiences from ppl who became disabled later in life and formed an able-bodied identity/mindset. thatās 4 (!) aspects that need to be kept in mind.
"it's not that deep" yes, it is. the treatment of disabled people is horrible both in real life and in fiction and this fandom sure loves to talk about how progressive they are while always disproving this with how they actually act. disability is not just a "version of a character", which you can engage with if you want to and erase if you don't. if don't know how to write disabled characters - read, research, ask us questions. but don't erase characters' canon disabilities.
p.s. if you're thinking about giving Remus animalistic features (strange ears, fangs, claws, yellow/amber eyes) or writing that there's something feral/animal about his appearance (that's called dehumanisation) - don't do that shit.
