fandomsecrets | [ SECRET POST #4293 ]

[ SECRET POST #4293 ]

⌈ Secret Post #4293 ⌋

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

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05. [SPOILERS for Castle Rock]

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06. [SPOILERS for Deadpool 2]

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07. [WARNING for discussion of rape/assault]

[Buffy the Vampire Slayer]

Notes:

Secrets Left to Post: 00 pages, 00 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.

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We're going to act as though POC and LGBTQ people didn't exist in 1997?

I'm not saying the books are abhorrently wrong as they are, they're a bit of a relic, but wake up.

literally no one is pretending that or proposing to pretend that, what they are saying is diversity was not as much a topic in the public consciousness in 1997 as it is in 2018 and that is why an author back then might not have paid as much or any attention to if their book is diverse as they might have with the current awareness

it's not hard to grasp when you're not being deliberately obtuse

Well... ayrt may be referring to a secret thread just yesterday where actually, someone was arguing Hogwarts was representative of the UK's population in the 90s:

https://fandomsecrets.dreamwidth.org/1890176.html#cutid1

Which is a silly argument, of course.

...okay, yea... that's fair then

I think that's totally reasonable! I think that was also a flaw of the times - not one that JKR was uniquely responsible for, but it's still not a good thing about the books - and it makes it hard to generally give credit for JKR as being a champion of diversity, which arguably some people have tried to present her as.

That would be an inappropriate way to act, considering POC are in the books and a lead character was confirmed to be gay.

lmao how are the books in any way a relic. They could well be released today and literally no one would throw a fit about it.

Probably true, but I'm not sure if that's an argument in favor of the books being up to date, or the current climate not being as enlightened as one might wish. :(

This sounds so trolly I don't even know how to reply lmao

The POC characters in the books are pretty much as tokenistic as it gets, while the central characters driving the whole narrative are all white. And Dumbledore is not gay in the books. Dumbledore's gayness is primarily extrinsic to the books themselves.

That's not to say that this is something unforgivably wrong. But it's just not true to say that the books are paragons of diversity and certainly not true to say they would look that way today, by our standards.

This. I actually don't necessarily have a problem with the books being what they are. But her trying to claim retroactively that they were more diverse than they are? That I find questionable. Why can she just say "woops, sorry, my books weren't diverse because of when I wrote them and I just didn't think of it then, here are some ideas for how the universe could be more diverse"?

What even? Tokenistic? Why? Because they weren't the three leads? Bull. Their racial diversity may not be huge, but it's pretty much on par with most Western young adult fiction even today, and frankly, it's not demographically unusual for the setting (private English boarding school). There is absolutely nothing wrong with Rowling's cast as they are. She's allowed to have white leads.

Dumbledore not being explicitly confirmed as gay in the narrative doesn't mean Dumbledore wasn't gay in the books. She wrote him as gay, therefore, he's gay.

the token asian was named cho chang

Tokenistic? Why? Because they weren't the three leads?

Well, the South Asian characters were named Padma and Parvati Patil, the East Asian character was named Cho Chang, and neither them nor the inner-city Londoner black kid had much agency or role in the plot beyond comic relief and/or short term romantic interest. They were tokenistic in much the same way that Seamus Finnegan - the comedic Irishman named Seamus who talked with a wide brogue - was tokenistic.

And, again, that's not a problem in and of itself, it's just not correct to call it "diverse".

Dumbledore not being explicitly confirmed as gay in the narrative doesn't mean Dumbledore wasn't gay in the books

If he's not gay in the books, he's not gay in the books, regardless of what was in JKR's mind. That's pretty much what "in the books" means. His gayness is extrinsic to the books (confirmed through things that JKR has said) not intrinsic to the books (confirmed or reliably indicated through the text of the books).

The leads are white (sort of, Hermione isn't white in the text, although Jo definitely pictured her as such) because Hermione, and to a smaller extent Harry, are self-inserts of Jo (she said so herself), and Jo is white, and Ron is basically her childhood best friend, who was also white.

And this means diminishing the importance of having him be a redhead, which some people in Britain still hate.

The leads are white (sort of, Hermione isn't white in the text, although Jo definitely pictured her as such) because Hermione, and to a smaller extent Harry, are self-inserts of Jo (she said so herself), and Jo is white, and Ron is basically her childhood best friend, who was also white.

That's fine! It's not a problem. It's just not particularly diverse, especially by contemporary standards, which is the standard that anon had set out.

And this means diminishing the importance of having him be a redhead, which some people in Britain still hate.

cmon now

What do you mean, he wasn't gay? The kids at the centre of the story didn't think about the teachers as having sexual identifies but that never means the teacher hasn't got one. And surely we are past assuming everyone is straight by default ?

(no subject)

(Anonymous) - 2018-10-06 02:24 (UTC) - Expand

Part of being a writer includes communicating clearly what you want for the reader to understand. If you have to use media coverage of public appearances to clarify what you really meant, you probably failed in writing that work.

Especially when some of the people confused are your own scriptwriters who are doing a deep read of your work.

There are fucktons of "confirmed bachelors" in the English literary and cinematic canon, few of them are worthy to be considered part of the LGBTQ canon as well.

Also, there's at least one character in HP who can easily be read as having gay subtext but is canonically confirmed to be straight (Lupin)

so saying that the subtext is inarguable seems a little much

(no subject)

(Anonymous) - 2018-10-06 03:07 (UTC) - Expand

No, we are going to act like LGBT people would not have been allowed in children's literature in 1997, because that's true. eg: Scholastic banning KAA from saying a char was a lesbian in the mid 2000s.

(POC were, and they definitely are in HP. Harry's first girlfriend was Asian and his first sort-of-date was Indian for heaven's sake)

No, we are going to act like LGBT people would not have been allowed in children's literature in 1997, because that's true. eg: Scholastic banning KAA from saying a char was a lesbian in the mid 2000s.

The series was not written in 1997. Philosopher's Stone was published in 1997. Prince and Hallows were published in 2005 and 2007, respectively.

And JKR had some pretty fucking considerable leverage to say the least.

Marvel had an explicitly out lesbian in one of their teen titles before Deathly Hallows. Harper Collins had gay parents. Simon & Schuster had gay penguins. Heather Has Two Mommies and Jenny Lives With Eric & Martin were from the 1980s, nearly a full decade before Philosopher's Stone.

Because comics for teenagers are literally the same as a children's book series.

(no subject)

(Anonymous) - 2018-10-06 05:01 (UTC) - Expand

(no subject)

(Anonymous) - 2018-10-06 11:30 (UTC) - Expand

Scholastic wasn't the only publisher of children's literature back in the day. I'm not saying they weren't big guns in the children's lit world, but it's a little weird to argue that no LGBT characters were possible because a single publisher banned them.

Yes, JKR the billionaire in 2007 would have been totally helpless against her mean publishers if she'd wanted to include anything in her last HP book, which came out a decade later, after the franchise was one of the world's most popular. You can tell how hard they were on the author basically funding their entire company by that point by how well-edited and tight the last books are.

This. Rowling could've done whatever she liked, given the success of that series. Her publishers would've been idiots to refuse her and they certainly wouldn't have been able to bar her from writing LBGQT characters. Because, you know, she could just take those characters and that extremely profitable likely bestselling book to a publisher who WOULD be okay with it. The very idea of Rowling being censored by her publishing company is preposterous. I assume it's coming from someone who knows very little about how the industry works.

(no subject)

(Anonymous) - 2018-10-06 19:51 (UTC) - Expand

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