[ 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)]

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)]

Man, I can't imagine how embittered you'd have to be to think like this. But it seems it's a prevalent opinion.

[philstar22]

Actually not bitter at all. I don't care about Potter anymore. I enjoyed my time in the fandom, but it just doesn't interest me anymore.

[(Anonymous)]

Dude, she's an author of a popular YA series, not a saint. There's literally no reason to believe she is impervious to common human failings.

[(Anonymous)]

I don't think she's a saint or impervious to human failings.

I do think all the JRK negativity is a little pathetic.

[(Anonymous)]

I guess if you interpret fairly mild (and civilly expressed) suggestions in this thread that JKR might have dodgy motives for claiming greater diversity in her canon than what was apparent at the time is truly that negative... well. It does seem like this is being extraordinarily sensitive about criticism being leveled at JKR.

[(Anonymous)]

+1

[(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)]

What the fuck though. JK Rowling did nothing wrong. She did have non-white presence in her original books, even if they weren't the leads. But that's 1000% okay. She has literally nothing to apologize for because it's okay that her leads were white.

It's also 1000% okay that her new stuff is featuring more non-white people.

[(Anonymous)]

But this character isn't new. Adding a new POC character is great! Pretending like she planned for the actual literal evil pet snake to be an Asian woman all along and get diversity points that way, though, is not great.

[(Anonymous)]

Both of those things are true.

I think we're talking more about the times when she retroactively canonicizes diversity, like with Dumbledore and now Nagini.

[tree_and_leaf]

I still think that, even though Dumbledore's sexuality isn't explicit in the novels, we're meant to read Rita's comments about his relationships with Grindelwald and with Doge as insinuating that Dumbledore is gay, because that is exactly how tabloid journalists used to talk about closeted gay men in the 80s and 90s when they weren't one hundred per cent sure they would win a libel suit. And, of course, we discover that virtually everything Rita says in her biography is based on truth, albeit spun to look as bad as possible.

So Dumbledore is an odd one for me. It's not quite strong enough to count as full canonical representation, but on the other hand it seems to emerge quite organically from canon and didn't feel pasted on or like it came out of left field (which the Nagini thing does).

[(Anonymous)]

Nobody should ever take tactics from Maggie Steifvater. For anything. It's like suggesting taking a tactic from Cassie Clare.

[(Anonymous)]

Nor should they take tactics from Rowling.

[osidiano]

Wait, what? What's wrong with Maggie Steifvater? All her posts seem pretty reasonable and down to Earth, and I didn't think she was plagiarizing anyone's fic the way Cassie Clare did. Did I miss something?

[(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