[ SECRET POST #3778 ]

[case]

⌈ Secret Post #3778 ⌋

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

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Notes:

Secrets Left to Post: 02 pages, 36 secrets from Secret Submission Post #541.
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.

Comments

[(Anonymous)]

There's a fine line between supporting her fans and sucking up to them. Rowling tends to cross it.

[raspberryrain]

An absurdly wealthy writer has the grace to appreciate that her characters have moved into popular culture to the point that they will be reinterpreted different ways, like Robin Hood and Sherlock Holmes. And you call that 'sucking up.'

[(Anonymous)]

ayrt

That's very much a value judgment. I don't happen to share it. People's actions can, of course, be interpreted in various ways, I just don't see evidence for her being a suck up to her fans (whatever that means). She appreciates and supports them, yes. But how is that bad? IDK. I'm not even into Harry Potter, but I have enormous respect for this author.

I do think the penname thing was a mistake...not taking one, and it certainly wasn't her fault it got revealed, that was a big mess...but the bio that claimed an identity that wasn't hers to appropriate; I suppose the published could have insisted, but that seemed iffy to me. Nothing else; she puts her money where her mouth is, helping people, supporting her readers, caring. She's a good person & I support her.

[(Anonymous)]

How was Rowling "sucking up" in this case? pretty sure this tweet came right after a black Hermoine was cast in the play? if anything, wasn't she defending the casting?

[(Anonymous)]

If she had said something like Hermione is a wonderful representative of Gryffyndor and so physical appearance is irrelevant, that would have been one thing. If she had been clearly coded in the books, and later cast in the films, as black, giving young black girls a character to look up to rather than sending out a virtue signalling tweet after a color blind casting procesz cast a black actress, that also would have been another matter entirely.

It's virtue signalling, and rather hollow.

[(Anonymous)]

This. If you want to write a minority character, then for fuck's sake make them clearly a minority character in the actual canon. Don't say "oh well you can imagine them however you want" afterwards because that's just a cop-out and shows that you don't actually care except to get brownie points.

[(Anonymous)]

Maybe it's less about brownie points and more about not getting caught in the Not Far Enough But Also Too Far Whatever I Do People Are Screaming Valley?

Given, there are worse places to travel, in fic writing. It's still unpleasant territory.

[diet_poison]

What the fuck did you want her to say? "Hermione should have been white"?

[(Anonymous)]

why not just say "i think this actress will be a wonderful hermione" or something to that effect? that doesn't make any implication about what hermione's race is or isn't, it just says that she (the author) approves of the casting and people can draw from that what they will.

[(Anonymous)]

Maybe she actually likes the idea

I mean I know it's not *likely* that someone would be sincere but

[(Anonymous)]

maybe i'm still just bitter over the whole dumbledore thing, idk. it would've meant a lot to me as a gay teenager to have an actual confirmed gay character in a book series that i loved instead of finding it out after the fact. when she revealed it later on i just felt... resentful, almost? like she said it to make people happy rather than because she actually cared about dumbledore being gay. this feels kind of the same way to me.

[(Anonymous)]

You're not the only gay person in the world and we don't all need books to state "so and so was gay" to figure out that they are or be happy if the author confirms it. And for a lot of other gay kids it was probably the first time in their life they'd heard the word "gay" in a context that wasn't hateful. Get over yourself.

[(Anonymous)]

I like gay Dumbledore, but wouldn't a revelation have been a bit forced? Creating a situation for Harry to learn about his headmasters sexuality could easily have felt shoe-horned in. I mean I don't recall people talking about McGonagall's in the books (pretty sure that was it was revealed post-books, not sure.)

Then let's take into account that Dumbledore didn't share many personal things with Harry. Like Harry learned a lot more about him after he died...I supposed there could have had a throw away line in Skeeters book, but I think that would have been a bit weak.

[(Anonymous)]

See, I feel like even a throwaway line mentioning it somewhere in the books themselves would've been far better than revealing it in an interview that a lot of people might not ever even read or see. No one is saying it needs to be a huge revelation or anything. It's entirely possible to have something like that come up organically in a conversation at some point without it being a big deal, but that would make it 100% inarguable canon that can't be dismissed by the whole "It was never mentioned in canon itself so therefore it doesn't qualify as canon" argument.

[diet_poison]

How is that categorically any different than saying "imagine them however you want"? Either way it's implying that black Hermione in alternate interpretations is fine. Why does she have to be deliberately vague if she thinks it's OK for people to make Hermione black?

[(Anonymous)]

"WAAAAAH HOW DARE SHE SUPPORT A BLACK ACTRESS FOR MY PRECIOUS WHITE QUEEN HOW DARE IT NOT BE THE SUPER FUCKING ESTABLISHED VIEW I HAVE HOW DARE IT BE VARIANT WAAAAAH"

[(Anonymous)]

that is not remotely what they said but that sure is an excellent strawman you have constructed

[(Anonymous)]

Honest question: why does a character need to be CLEARLY racially coded in order to be read as anything but white? Not saying that JKR wrote the book with a non-white Hermione in mind, but why is "no race indicated" evidence of "this character is white"?

[(Anonymous)]

This is a good question. One that I can't deconstruct myself, but other than the obvious, perhaps because JK is white?

[(Anonymous)]

That assumes that a white author will only write about white characters unless specifically otherwise stated, which again comes back to the exact same question: why is a character with no racial markers assumed to be white?

[(Anonymous)]

I feel like, given the potential influence of the actual black casting, given work to a black actress and a physical visible indication that a character like Hermione could be black, it's a lot more "Better late than never" than "too little too late." Obviously it's late in both cases, it would have been great if Hermione was more clearly black-coded or explicitly in the books, but obviously JK has reexamined her unconsidered assumptions in the last decade+ and I think, given the amount of cultural influence her work has now, even if it is virtue signalling, that doesn't make her endorsement of the casting "hollow."