[ SECRET POST #4290 ]

[case]

⌈ Secret Post #4290 ⌋

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

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Notes:

Secrets Left to Post: 01 pages, 21 secrets from Secret Submission Post #614.
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)]

Eh. Seems like there are legit eyerolls to be had over Rowling's revision of the HP universe/characters to be more diverse than it initially appeared. I don't hate it, but I don't think it's amazing.

[(Anonymous)]

I don't get this. Being more diverse than it originally appears seems to only apply to two characters: Hermoine who could have been black and Dumbledore being gay. Neither appears in the original books that way. In neither case is it problematic. In the case of black Hermoine, while I think it's a stretch to say Rowling wrote Hermoine as anything other than a white English girl, it's not only acceptable that a black actress was cast in the play, it's pretty cool to be that inclusive. In the case of Dumbledore, sure, it'd be nice if she had explicitly made him gay in the narrative, but it also wasn't exactly necessary, either. Plus, apparently Dumbledore's homosexuality will be shown in the new movies after all, so, cool.

But what your criticism really sounds like to me is resentment that she's putting more POC into the universe at all, as though she should keep it mostly white because the original books were pretty white. How is that even fair? Rowling shouldn't be inclusive?

[(Anonymous)]

I don't think the criticisms are about Rowling being inclusive. They're about tweaking canon after the fact to seem more inclusive than it appeared originally.

[(Anonymous)]

DA but are the critics implying they would prefer JKR to keep being non-inclusive? Because... that's more true to her original series? Or something? I'm legitimately confused.

[(Anonymous)]

I think it's the attitude and framing of it that annoys people, where she acts like it was written that way all along even though it manifestly wasn't.

[philstar22]

This. I don't have a problem with any of the revelations per say. But I get the feeling she's kind of full of herself and doing it for kudos. She makes it seem like it was always that way, but it wasn't. TBH, I think she misses the heyday of fandom and is trying to recapture that feeling of being worshiped by millions of fans. It's a little creepy.

[(Anonymous)]

You are surely going overboard.

Like literally by accusing her of doing it only for the kudos you are saying she should only be writing white people? And "the kudos"? C'mon. She should be including non-white people by accident and pretending she's colorblind?

[philstar22]

No. It is how she's doing it. I think it is great that there is more diversity. But I find the way she's doing it questionable and question her motives. It's the way she writes them and the way she talks in interviews. Like, it was totally this diverse all along and so I should totally get the same credit as someone who wrote diverse books to begin with.

[(Anonymous)]

A better tactic JK could have taken was one taken by Maggie Steifvater when she belated realized and regretted that she'd written a book featuring solely white people: "I'm sorry, that was not good on my part and I should have done better. Racebend them if you wish (as long as it's not just the angry violent one) even though I wrote them white, and I will try to do better in my future books."

JK trying to pretend it was her master plan all along is what rubs people the wrong way. Just own up to it and try to do better in the future.

[(Anonymous)]

If she wanted to hype fandom back up then she should have written another book about the Marauder's days at Hogwarts which seems to be what pretty much everyone wanted.

I guess she's saving THAT ONE for a rainy day.

[(Anonymous)]

This. It's not really confusing at all.

[(Anonymous)]

No, I don't think that's it. I'm skeptical that you're truly confused about that and not simply coming up with a totally unlikely and unreasonable strawman.

[(Anonymous)]

So please explain to me what the critics want. Like, what would make them happy? Or at least not so annoyed?

[(Anonymous)]

I can't speak for all of them, but the comment re: Maggie Steifvater's approach doesn't sound like a bad start. An acknowledgement that yeah, the series could've been more diverse than it was, and Rowling is now more aware of such issues than she was at the time and she'll keep that in mind for future works. But that's a pretty obvious answer and I'm puzzled that you truly needed me to clarify it, since there are echoes of that in this thread and likely in the same places where there's criticism of how Rowling actually handled it.

32K+ notes

[(Anonymous)]

http://unsahikable.tumblr.com/post/178528408952/literally-how-hard-would-it-have-been-for-jkr-to

text for those who don't want to click:

literally how hard would it have been for jkr to say something like “listen I was writing it in the 90s, I was inexperienced, I was writing from my own point of view, I didn’t realise how underrepresented a lot of people are, I wasn’t thinking about anything other than the plot, I accept that it’s a little sparse on the diversity front, I can try to be more self aware with my future works” etc etc instead of.. this nonsense

[(Anonymous)]

NAYRT but I don't understand the 'to seem more inclusive than it appeared originally' thought. Maybe she didn't have the thought Dumbledore was gay while writing the books (even though to myself and some others, it does read as that way), but stating that he is doesn't change how you or others interpreted the books. It doesn't make them retroactively progressive nor does it make them retroactively unprogressive imo.

[(Anonymous)]

JKR was 100% sure from the beginning that Dumbles was gay af for Grindy. And no one will ever convince me otherwise.

[(Anonymous)]

That doesn't change that it was written as subtext at best in the actual books. Dumbledore was not textually, explicitly, or specifically a gay character.

[(Anonymous)]

Correct. The master of secrets and lies was not an openly gay man in the original series.

[(Anonymous)]

LOL

[(Anonymous)]

My point that he wasn't written as a gay character, not that he wasn't openly gay.

If your argument is that any mention of it by anyone would have been totally anathema to the character, OK, but it doesn't change that he wasn't written as a textually gay character.

[(Anonymous)]

Creators who use bullshit "word of god" statements to put spackle on holes that they failed to address through hundreds (or thousands for movies) of hours of development are a dime a dozen these days.

[(Anonymous)]

Making a snake an Asian woman is certainly not the way the character was depicted in the books

Also, did they confirm that Dumbledore was going to be explicitly gay in future films? I thought they were still dancing around it

[(Anonymous)]

http://fairytaleasoldastime.tumblr.com/post/178480355850/what-do-you-see-when-you-look-in-the-mirror-i

If this is "dancing around it," I can't wait until we get to the full on tango.

[(Anonymous)]

+1