[ SECRET POST #4243 ]

[case]

⌈ Secret Post #4243 ⌋

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

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Notes:

Secrets Left to Post: 01 pages, 07 secrets from Secret Submission Post #607.
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

[fscom]

06. https://i.imgur.com/2r7uE4o.png

[(Anonymous)]

Wish fulfillment. Hermione is probably the biggest example.

[(Anonymous)]

Hermione was always supposed to be black, it has nothing to do with wish fulfilment. Nothing on the book suggests she's white.

[silverr]

Wish fulfillment… in the sense that it is reasonable to wish to have characters like oneself as the hero/main character now and again.

[(Anonymous)]

This reminds me that I'm dreading the casting of the potential The Raven Cycle tv series (if it ever gets made).
Fandom is really set on Ronan being black (which has a few unfortunate implications tbh), despite being explicitely written as white in the books. I recently re-read them and took notice of it, because I thought it was another Hermione case of 'everyone knows but it's not 100% in the text (I know there is that 'white as a sheet' moment, but I understand that people can talk that one away).

I actually wouldn't really mind if they cast Ronan as POC, but I'm really dreading the wank if he isn't.

[(Anonymous)]

The author has actually come out and said that she's actually uncomfortable with people headcanoning/racebending Ronan as black, particularly when it's JUST Ronan, not anyone else:

http://maggie-stiefvater.tumblr.com/post/122356938116/i-debated-about-posting-about-this-because-its-a

[(Anonymous)]

Near as I can tell, with Harry, specifically, it comes from the fact that some fans just one day up and randomly decided that James must have been Indian, on the basis that 1) there are Indians living in England and 2) Rowling never explicitly said that James wasn't Indian. Therefore HE WAS DEFINITELY INDIAN AND DISAGREEING OR FINDING THIS REASONING A LITTLE WEIRD AND/OR LACKING MEANS UR AN EVIL RAAACISSSTTT. So of course Harry must also be Indian. (Because Potter is the most Indian surname ever, I guess?) Don't tend to see these folks talk much about the Patil twins tho.

With Hermione, there's some justification for "Hermione is black imo" given that she's played by a black actress in the play, which is intended to be canon. Still stupid when people throw fits that others disagree with them, ofc.

[(Anonymous)]

"Some people are assholes about it" doesn't actually conflict with "it's an interesting and valid textual interpretation" though

This nonsense about ~~~~JUST WOKE UP AND DECIDED ONE DAY~~~~ bugs me

[(Anonymous)]

I remember there was some reasoning for Harry being Indian that made sense when I last read it. I wish I could remember it... but for the most part I stick to the easy way of just seeing the characters like their movie counterparts.

[(Anonymous)]

For both hermione and harry, I think the main starting factor was the way their hair is described. Bushy, messy, bothers the (british, white, staid) Dursleys in harry's case, only smoothed by huge amounts of potions/product in Hermione's (ie relaxers) and POC fans found something relatable in that, and then things snowballed from there.

one of the big meta posts about Desi Harry mentions that if Harry were biracial, having his mother's green eyes would be much more noticeable, and that makes sense with everyone commenting on them All The Fucking Time. The most interesting evidence to me was that whenever Harry is dreaming/having visions from Voldemort's POV, the narration always points out Voldemort's paleness (pale skin, pale hands) as if that were something surprising to Harry or othering somehow. And Hari is a common Indian name, I forget what potter was supposed to be the anglicized version of.

anyway, I don't think it comes 100% out of nowhere. obviously JKR didn't think of it in the 90s, but it makes sense within the text and it's fun to imagine.

[(Anonymous)]

Are there other fandoms besides HP where people racebend characters? None of my fandoms do this.

[(Anonymous)]

It's a pretty big thing in the Homestuck fandom.

[(Anonymous)]

X-Men. Magneto is often drawn very, very dark skinned.

[junee]

I don't think it happens much anymore, but around the time the Avengers first came out I would occasionally see someone draw Bruce Banner with skin noticeably darker than Mark Ruffalo's.

[(Anonymous)]

Pretty much every fandom that is popular on tumblr will have characters get drawn as a different race, trans, with freckles, and fat or all at the same time.

[(Anonymous)]

Les mis does a lot. It’s more common in book fandoms.

[(Anonymous)]

People love doing this with anime characters who are clearly Japanese, because if they're not dark skinned they're not "real" POC.

[(Anonymous)]

I think it's more common in fandoms where thoughtless authors(1) did not include a main character of color. It's really glaring in Harry Potter, where you have to dig deep to find CoC...I think the Patil twins are the only overt ones, and they are such minor characters.

(1) Look, I love JKR's writing, and she's not a bad person...but she's sucks when it comes to race and always has, like many English people.(2)

(2) I say English in a judging way, because I would understand it more if JKR came from, I dunno, Poland, where basically everybody is white. That's just not true in modern day England.

[(Anonymous)]

It's always funny to me when it's done to anime characters.

[feotakahari]

Well, not every anime character is Japanese: http://digimon.wikia.com/wiki/Henry_Wong

[(Anonymous)]

I think it's cool if it takes into account how it'd appear the setting or characters beyond a palette swap, but it's real weird to me when it overtakes the canon representation, especially there's a canon design.

Here's one of my favorite examples: https://i.imgur.com/prCZ9qx.jpg

[(Anonymous)]

IDK, I don't think it's any weirder than the way that some ships take off rather than others

[(Anonymous)]

From a in-world perspective there is no reason at all to make Harry Indian, but from a fandom POV, if you are trying to add more non-white representation, you might as well go for the main character. Go big or go home, you know?

[(Anonymous)]

see the thing for me is that personally, I really enjoy racebending/genderbending art, and I think it's a fun and creative way to find a different angle from which to look at the characters. The issue in the Harry Potter fandom is that a lot of people have decided that their racebending headcanon is exactly the same thing as actual real canon, and will attack others or call them racists or throw temper tantrums if someone disagrees with that.

I think making Hermione and Harry not white is ethnocentric

[(Anonymous)]

It's mostly Americans who do this. It's Americans who make Hermione black and Harry Indian. They don't seem to understand that prejudge is not always linked to skin color. JK Rowling is from the UK, a place where it's the ethnic differences between people that divide them. Both Irish people and English people are the same shade of human but there is a lot of divides between those peoples. There's also the fact that the book was in part a World War II allegory having Muggleborns be a stand in for the Jews and a lot of Jews are very pale people. There's an uncomfortable habit of folks from the "woke" lot who conveniently forget about Jewish people and their history of oppression, but that's another topic for another day.

"Hermione and Harry face opposition from their societies or their home lives, they must be not white!" It's so narrow minded and speaks to the mind set of an American who nothing about other cultures.