#i will defend sirius until the day i die i'm sorry but i truly do not think there is anything anyone could ever say to change my mind

[rollercoasterwords]

the uwuification of side characters is an epidemic truly, especially on tiktok. i don’t know how and why people have taken literal death eaters and erased everything about them that made them morally grey. there are characters that exist that are already not morally grey. and i completely agree that i think it’s the fact that people do not actually like the morally grey part of the characters and want them to have a redemption so bad. for example on tiktok there has been a huge rise of sirius hate and turning him into the villain for the prank or for leaving regulus, but then saying barty, evan, and regulus are the good guys and lifting them up. which again, people can dislike and like whatever (even if disliking sirius is just tasteless) but it’s strange that they erase these essential parts of the characters that are morally grey and instead turn sirius into a villain for example. it truly just shows their desperation for redemption and the fact that they fear the perception of these characters as morally grey. and i won’t get into the huge issue on how people hate on sirius and how angry that makes me bc that’s a whole other mess that i don’t need to annoy you with. but yeah basically i just wanted to say i 100% agree with you. i always love reading your posts, sometimes it seems like you’re the only person in this fandom that gets me

yeah i mean! again i want to make it clear that i don't think this is like. some Grand Moral Battleground like i don't think it's wrong of people to decide they want to turn any of these guys into their little ocs it's more just that. i personally find it confusing to select very dark characters and erase that darkness such that it is functionally nonexistent, because i'm just kind of like...why were you interested in the character in the first place? like what drew you to a character who is portrayed as a bad person if you dislike portraying them as a bad person?

and i mean. i get that a lot of it was basically just oc characterizations of these characters becoming popular fanon via the way virality works with fic + tiktok, and so i do think a lot if it is more like...these ocs that share a name with canon characters are what's becoming popular, and not the characters themselves. and again, there's nothing wrong with that--i just personally don't think i will ever really be interested in them!

but yeah the bit that i do think merits more discussion is like. whether this uwuification is indicative of a larger trend of people feeling as if they can only like characters who are Morally Good. and of course i think there is room to discuss like...the technical aspect of writing and what it means to completely divorce fanwork from the source material, whether or to what extent it flattens characters when we strip away their flaws, etc etc, but i think any conversations about the technical aspects of whether we think writing is better or worse when it comes to fanfic should only ever be had in general (i don't think it is ever ok to negatively and publicly critique specific fics, as i've talked about before) and should only ever be had with the understanding that at the end of the day it doesn't actually matter whether fanfiction is "good" by these technical measures, because you don't have to read anything you don't like and developing writers deserve a safe space to experiment and play around and have fun.

so like: on the whole, have fun doing whatever you want with the characters, but if a character you like doing Bad Things feels like a personal attack or a fundamental reflection of your own morality, that's something i think u should pause and examine for a bit. call me crazy but i think that even in our escapist feel-good hobby outlets it is sometimes worthwhile to reflect.

and the sirius stuff! i think i have seen some of the takes u are referring to and it makes me angry every time >:( which AGAIN if someone wants to make sirius the villain so that they can make regulus + his death eater sidekick friends the good guys there is nothing fundamentally morally wrong with that, people can do whatever they want, etc etc. however just on a personal level i love sirius so so so so much that anytime i see sirius slander i am overcome with a blind rage and forced to confront the fact that there are simply so many people out there who do not understand sirius like i do <3 but honestly the worst crime to me about taking something like the prank or sirius running away and deciding that sirius must be the villain in that situation is just the fact that people think there needs to be a clear villain in the first place, which goes back to the whole issue with viewing characters through these black + white moral frames and is, above all else, boring.

#ask #ranting and raving #i will defend sirius until the day i die i'm sorry but i truly do not think there is anything anyone could ever say to change my mind