[ SECRET POST #4029 ]

[case]

⌈ Secret Post #4029 ⌋

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

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Notes:

Secrets Left to Post: 02 pages, 30 secrets from Secret Submission Post #577.
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)]

idk man, there are points where i raise my eyebrows at her, but this isn't one of them. she's supporting the casting and... well. a lot of racists used the whole "but she's not explicitly black in the books" thing as a point of attack. if i were her, i'd also shut that shit down by going "actually, it's not specified at all, but certain features actually leave plenty of room for interpretation".

that being said, i've heard that dean thomas was supposed to be explicitly black in the books, but her first editor made her nix the sentence that described him as such because it was 'distracting' or something. (i've also heard that the sentence was added back into... either a later edition or into the us version, but i don't know about that.) point being: it's '97 in british kids' book publishing and shit be shady.

[(Anonymous)]

JK had a say in the casting. She really liked Emma which was part of the reason why she was picked.

[tree_and_leaf]

it's '97 in british kids' book publishing and shit be shady.

Indeed - not just on race, either. One of the things people forget about the Dumbledore controversy is that 'Section 28', which forbade the promotion of homosexuality as acceptable in schools, was only repealed in 2003 in England and Wales, and it absolutely did have a chilling effect on what publishers were willing to put out, at the time and for some years afterwards. Case in point: at school in the nineties, the library had a bunch of 'after school special' type books exploring problems teens might be going through. None of them touched on homosexuality at all - even the ones about living (or dying) with HIV+ status and AIDS were all really really careful to be explicitly No Homo - it was always blood transfusions or one night stands with someone who was absolutely unambiguously of the opposite sex. I did read the portrayal of Dumbledore in DH as gay at the time, and I remember being mildly and positively surprised that she went there, even in the form of hints, in a high-profile YA book.

(Which is not to say she couldn't have handled talking about her intentions with the character better, and it's not to say that she didn't fall into some dubious narrative patterns with the way she did it. I'm not arguing she was hugely brave, either. But - still, I was surprised to see it. The world has moved on a hell of a lot on that score and sometimes it's hard to remember just how much).