fandomsecrets | [ SECRET POST #3360 ]

[ SECRET POST #3360 ]

⌈ Secret Post #3360 ⌋

Warning: Some secrets are NOT worksafe and may contain SPOILERS.

01.

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02.

[Niche]

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03.

[Rush Hour 1, 2, 3]

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04.

["The Bride Was A Boy" manga]

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05.

[J.K. Rowling]

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06.

[Pretty Little Liars]

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07.

[Twin Peaks]

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08.

[The Walking Dead/The Flash]

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09.

(GIRLS)

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10.

[The Grinder]

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11.

[Pokemon]

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12.

[Lord of the Rings]

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13.

[Babylon 5, Tolkien, Star Wars, Harry Potter]

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14.

[Star Wars: The Force Awakens]

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15.

[Pete Seeger]

Notes:

Secrets Left to Post: 02 pages, 032 secrets from Secret Submission Post #480.
Secrets Not Posted: [ 0 - broken links ], [ 0 - not!secrets ], [ 0 - not!fandom ], [ 0 - too big ], [ 0 - repeat ].
Current Secret Submissions Post: here.
Suggestions, comments, and concerns should go here.

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Am I the only person who likes Harry Potter who is just like "oh, she did a new thing. Huh, that could have been better. Oh well"????

Like, fucking hell, people.

I'm of two minds: firstly, yeah I agree she could have done it better/more creatively/with more research (but hell that goes for all of the schools), but secondly, she was screwed no matter what she did. It's such a sensitive topic that no matter how much research she did about Native American mythology, someone would have complained (even if that complaint was that her act of using it at all was appropriative), and if she didn't use it at all, she was ignoring/neglecting/overlooking them.

She might have won by just saying "it's a mystery" and letting the reader fill in their own blanks, but then again, I can imagine people crying foul on that too: "OH it's too HARD to include our MYTHOLOGY?!?!?" and so on.

Would definitely have been people who minded if magic was a "white people" thing only.

It's canonically not - there are black and Asian characters in the books and movies. The Native American thing is so much harder to get right though.

It would have been a lot easier just to say that in the Potter-verse the Indian Wars were far more conclusive than in reality and that they are now just a sad footnote of history as another group hunted and driven to extinction and that nowadays nobody knows how their magic works. It would still spark rage, but a different, more inwardly divisive within Native American advocacy groups, kind of rage altogether.

I don't mind if effort is presented and it isn't absolutely perfect, but it doesn't look like she tried very hard.

A lot of the magic in her world has always been whimsical and silly, with made up names and without deeper meanings. Putting extra effort in for Americans is patronizing at best (oh noes those dumb yanks with their easily hurt feefees, must tread carefully!) and, ironically, racist at worst.

It's not about the greater american culture - I won't be upset if she calls M&Ms something totally different, but I don't see how her shallow post about "Native American" magic helped without a little more proper research.

I mean seriously, the "most powerful spell that causes instant death" is a slightly bastardized version of "Abra Kadabra". Rowling has NEVER tried very hard at all with taking the magic of her world seriously.

Yeah, I think she was damned if she did, damned if she didn't, honestly. At the same time, some things needed way better research, and I would not have gone there with the skinwalkers.

But TBH, that was also the only thing that really raised my eyebrows, too.

I would have used the skinwalkers, but I would have done it to deliberately disabuse people of the notion that there ought to be such a thing as secret knowledge. If you see any group touting the idea of forbidden or restricted knowledge then you can bet your boots that at the bottom of it is some sort of grubby little powerplay, and that ought not to be allowed.

So an already marginalized people who have been shit upon for the entire length of this country's short existence aren't allowed to have anything for themselves? They have to tell you all their secrets? When those secrets have been taken and taken and taken to enhance the cultures of everyone but their own? Struggling for just a bit of power over our own lives is not the same thing as secret societies that rule half the western world.

We don't have to tell you everything.

(no subject)

(Anonymous) - 2016-03-17 01:41 (UTC) - Expand

(no subject)

(Anonymous) - 2016-03-17 05:05 (UTC) - Expand

In a more sane world, we can talk about how a work isn't perfect without jumping to, "SHAME SHAME SHAME ON HER!"

nobody would have taken the people who complain about having to fill in their own blanks seriously though.

JK Rowling's fuck-up is way more influencial offline and in non-fandom spaces than a few whiny fans

I think it would have been safer for her to not go there tbh.

Not that I'm saying it's bad she tried, but just in terms of backlash? Yeah. Safer not to.

"No-maj" is the only thing about it that really bugs me personally though (although I haven't done much research on the skinwalkers thing, apparently that's really offensive to some folks)

Honest question - why does no-maj bother you? The only critique I've heard is that it's not creative, which is valid, but I don't really understand being bothered by unimaginative terms.

(no subject)

diet_poison - 2016-03-17 02:02 (UTC) - Expand

(no subject)

(Anonymous) - 2016-03-17 12:54 (UTC) - Expand

Na, I've seen quite a lot of people not caring.
There seem to be a few groups:

1.) The people who now think she's the devil and HP is ruined FOREVER, wanking all day, jumping on everything
2.) The ones genuinly sad and insulted
3.) The people who have had problems with her writing for ages now but were always rebuked cause she was the untouchable QUEEN, finally able to air out all their grievances (many of them in a reasonable tone, some of them not)
4.) Those who don't care

3) While I've been sick, I've been binge-watching the movies (I missed a chunk of them during grad school.) The first four follow the cycle of Life at Hogwarts/Harry Gets a Plot Device. Repeat that three times for fall, winter, and spring and you have a year. Not that bad of a structure.

Then we hit Half-Blood Prince and Deathly Hallows which is whiplash trainwreck on top of a trainwreck of Harry Gets a Plot Device, all of them leading in different directions. And since everyone is doing their job expertly it doesn't quite suck, but it definitely feels like Rowling was juggling too many chainsaws with no way to get them all down safely.

That's not really her, though, that's the movies. They cut out a lot of stuff in the beginning that didn't seem that important, but by the end there was so much that was important (some of which was introduced in the earlier books but cut from the movies) that they seemed more disjointed.

I never realized how hard I fell into #4. I liked the original books, was active in the fandom through the fist four or five of them, but now? I have no idea if this new Native American magic thing is from a new book, short stories, or just tweets or something. And I find I really don't even care enough to check it out.

No reason for that, I don't hate her or think she's horribly evil or something, I just... don't care anymore.

I just like overanalyzing shit, but I'm neither surprised nor super offended by this.

("No-Maj", however... yeesh)

I get where you're coming from, but it could have been SO MUCH better if she's put forth some effort. It's a shame when really great subject matter is shoddily treated by an author you respect.

NO. And I say this as an American. I DON'T CARE. Feedback is fine but the weeklong meltdown is tiresome.

That's me, yeah.

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