fandomsecrets | [ SECRET POST #3935 ]

[ SECRET POST #3935 ]

⌈ Secret Post #3935 ⌋

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

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[Stitchers]

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[The Dectectorists]

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[iZombie]

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[Bob Saget]

Notes:

Secrets Left to Post: 01 pages, 07 secrets from Secret Submission Post #563.
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.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

A single art work? Yes, I find it impossible and hard to believe.

A fan work, like a long fic that goes into the required AU that builds up the character as a minority with the culture and experiences to back that up? I think that's possible.

I don't mind Miles Morales or Kamala Khan. But they're leagues different from turning Bruce Wayne black, changing nothing else, and saying he could have been black all along.

Same anon.

I also think it's significant to point out there is a difference between a headcanon and an AU. If you want to AU Harry as Indian and back that up with AU changes, I have no problem with that. If you "headcanon" Harry as Indian, you're saying it's possible, or a valid interpretation of, canon.

And I hate to say it, but it's an extremely white-person view and white-person experience to think that any minority child could go, what, 7+ years? without his race ever being brought up to him in any significant way.

In my opinion, a headcanon being a valid interpretation of the text doesn't require that it be the most plausible interpretation of the text.

And in my opinion, it's not a valid interpretation because again, it's only a white person who would say "this character of a minority race can totes go from 7 years old to 18 years old and never have his race brought up to him or impact his life or make it different from the average Britisher in any significant way."

That's the luxury of being a default speaking.

+1. Yes, that's it exactly. AUs make sense. As headcanon applied directly to the text it's thinner and makes even less sense than shaved toilet paper, and it also requires Rowling being absurd levels of clueless.

I'm not willing to go so far as to say that a PoC couldn't or don't fantasize this, especially if they're of a majority country, but I think the relationship to that fantasy would be complicated since well it's an English story. Even my fantasies tend to have some kind of tenuous relationship with reality even if it's in direct opposition to it.

The only other thing I can think of is maybe that the other Anon is using 'headcanon' in a non-standard way.

I think the relationship to that fantasy would be complicated since well it's an English story.

but phrasing it this way seems genuinely problematic to me, because the fact that it's English is not the reason that it's an improbable interpretation of canon. There are POC in England. In fact, there are textual POC English characters in Harry Potter.

Original anon.

Yes. Which makes it all the more awkward to say "Harry could've been South Asian all along" when everyone else is pointed out and he isn't.

IIRC Dean's race isn't explicitly pointed out? At least not in the first book? I haven't read it recently to check, though, so I could be wrong on that.

Dean is also a seriously minor character and equating him to Potter is kinda ridiculous, honestly.

'Hey Bob who featured for like 1 page out of this 20 chapter book and had like 2 sentences to say could be black without affecting his plot! SO WE CAN TOTES MAKE THE MAIN CHARACTER THAI AND IT'S THE SAME RIGHT'

Spoiler: it's not the same

I think there's a difference between comparing book canon and movie canon. JKR had many years after the books to retcon everything she wanted to retcon for the movies - and if you'll notice, while she made a whole bunch of side characters POCs, for something like a total of under 10 minutes of POC spoken lines in the whole HP film franchise, it wasn't anyone major.

Remember when she said book Hermione could totally have been black? I think her heart's in the right place and she's trying to be inclusive, and it made a lot of people feel good, but I think she's also either forgotten what's in her books or isn't aware that her texts as written just don't believably support that for a whole lot of minority people.

Book-canon POCs like Cho Chang and the Parvatis were obvious; you'd know they were POC as soon as you read their names.

...What a strange thing to read into my comment. Why would I say there's no English PoC when that is obviously not the case? That's fucking silly.

What I was saying is that I cannot speak for PoC in countries in which their specific race is the majority, because that has never been my experience, but PoC in England do not get to float along in a majority white boarding school, however magical, and never have to have even a single fleeting thought about race or not have a single racial/cultural experience whether their feelings about it are positive/negative/neutral.

So again, that leaves us with dark skin headcanon = writer is just that shit at what they do or it was never part of the text in the first place, especially since as you pointed out, there are other textual PoC in HP.

different anon here but tbh 'same main trio but OMG HARRY WAS MAYBE SOUTH ASIAN ALL ALONG AND IT doesnt really do fuck all story wise' strikes me as very similar to 'DUMBLEDORE IS TOTES GAY OKAY just because it never showed up and we only have word of rowling and he didn't do shit and if you didn't know, it wouldn't matter'...

except worse because like, it feels like awkward pandering. see! we gave him a darker skin colour and didn't actually address anything else! how progressive! praise me for my awareness that different skin colours exist.

at least with the gay thing it's like, okay, that's something I can SORT of see as due to social issues existing but not actually coming to the fore, plus it sort of did affect the Grindlewald stuff (it fleshed out or added to the backstory) but something as visible as skin colour and race is quite something else. Harry being nonwhite doesnt like make the story better or explain stuff in canon, it rather contradicts it.

what I would LIKE is stories about - oh, OCs or whatever - people in hogwarts who are minorities, stories of what minority or migrant wizards are like, adapting that magic to UK boarding school magic which is honestly rather latin based (don't tell me wizards in china use fucking latin for their spells, the pronunciation would be so astonishingly bad), things that actually EXPLORE stuff.

I have nothing against the main cast being white also. it's a very white story, that's fine! but making someone who is really rather white somehow not white is not the same at all as actually thinking about or exploring issues of race and ethnicity.

oh yeah, obligatory 'I am PoC AND ALSO a closeted queer' so I would actually venture say I might know a thing or two about how easy it is to hide ur gay and not ur race.

To be clear, I'm not disagreeing with any of that.

I just think that there's a difference between a headcanon being an implausible reading of the text, and it being actually in conflict with the text. And I think the kind of thing that you are pointing out has to do with the former and not the latter. It does not directly conflict with the headcanon, but it does make it a very unlikely reading and almost certainly not intentional.

I agree with you there is a difference. It's that to me, it reads as the latter and not the former as you suggest.

A significant and intentional lack of significant factors, changes, or events can be just as telling as there being piles of them.

If a character never has a single issue with money, paying for anything, or feelings of financial insecurity, it would be a conflict to headcanon them as constantly poor. If a character never has any scene where their race or culture or how others view them as non-default comes up in a span of so many years, it would be a conflict to headcanon them as a minority since they lack that universal minority experience, especially so when the text points out other characters around them are minorities, when they are.

I just don't agree that it makes it an impossible or invalid interpretation of the text. If we're arguing about what the most likely interpretation of the text - what is the One True Deal with the text - I completely agree that your argument is powerful and probably irrefutable. I don't really care that much about which interpretation is most probable, though, or One True. I don't have a problem with dealing with multiple conflicting headcanons, even. Maybe not at the same time, but. You don't have to believe that a headcanon is the single correct interpretation of the truth to adopt it and use it.

Also, I would hope that anyone doing a headcanon like this is going to be able to go through and find some textual features that they can point to and link to the headcanon and make use of in that sense.

We aren't arguing about what the most likely interpretation is. I don't care what interpretation is most probable, either. I simply don't see Harry the Indian boy as a possibility, based on my experiences as a POC and the experiences of every other POC I know. If there is a shared POC experience, it's being treated or confronted with the fact that you're non-default and non-majority, and if that never, ever happens, that's... simply unbelievable to me.

Again, it's like telling me that a boy who has never wanted for anything or stressed about how to pay anything, for whom money has never been an issue, has been poor all along.

We'll just have to agree to disagree.

different anon here.

when you say 'harry's totally readable as south asian its a VALID EVEN IF IMPROBABLE READING OF CANON' you are asking me, a poc, an obvious minority in places like the UK, to believe in a world set in the 90s with no discernible differences to ours besides magic school to believe that SOMEHOW, an obviously and visibly south asian or some sorta nonwhite bloke would never at all even once ever think about this or reflect on it while hes SURROUNDED BY WHITE PEOPLE and that it wouldnt affect him or how he thinks at all and that beyond everyone else being blind about his race, HES totally ignorant of it as well.

yeah no thats just directly conflicting lul.

I mean look, parvati and padma patil exist. I dont ask for the same kind of thing for them, but significantly enough, this is because they are not main characters.

I'm definitely not asking you to believe anything at all about the text. I'm not saying it's the only approach to the text, or one that should necessarily be particularly compelling to you. All I'm really saying when I say that it's a valid interpretation of the text is that it doesn't directly contradict the text.

If I'm defending anything, it's the ability of other people to adopt different interpretations of the text.

and what I'm saying is that in order for me, a PoC who's experienced what it's like to be a minority in a majority white country and school, to see it as a 'valid interpretation of the text' I would basically have to ignore my own lived experiences and knowledge of what it's ACTUALLY like to be someone that doesn't look like other people, stands out in an obvious way, gets noticed for being visibly different and has to process and interact with that and say that it's totally valid that WE CAN JUST IGNORE ALL THIS HAPPENS...

while hey, guess what, canon itself has obvious visible minority characters that everyone seems to just be overlooking instead in favour of painting Harry Potter brown and calling it a day.

it's not even 'not compelling', it's bordering on offensive.

I mean can we explore the problematic nature of makign Mr MC brown and thinking this solves anything or is somehow A Good Deed, instead of focusing on the fact that all the actual poc characters are both minor, and minorities, and engaging in a real actual discussion about the depictions of nonwhite people in fantasy?

Making Mr Potter into Mr Patel addresses none of these issues and even worse, is sort of overlooking and ignoring actual PoCs in canon. It's like if someone who's Asian was like 'hey, the depictions of Asians in this series kinda suck, can we do something about that' and you go 'okay let's PRETEND that the MC is asian and has a Magical Special blessed Life where no one around, INCLUDING HIM, ever notices that he's not white. there. I fixed it for u. stop complaining.'.

THIS FIXES FUCKING NOTHING lol

Anon that is responding above.

I enjoy your oceans of salt.

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