[ SECRET POST #4293 ]

[case]

⌈ 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.

Comments

[(Anonymous)]

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.

[philstar22]

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"?

[(Anonymous)]

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.

[(Anonymous)]

the token asian was named cho chang

[(Anonymous)]

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).

[(Anonymous)]

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.

[(Anonymous)]

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

[(Anonymous)]

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 ?

[(Anonymous)]

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.

Harry spends a huge amount of time throughout the series building a deep personal relationship with Dumbledore and having many non-scholastic conversations with him not limited to scholarly matters, and then after Dumbledore's death spends a substantial amount of time learning about his life and upbringing.

Come on, are you serious with this? Yes, it probably would have been weird in the second or third book, but are you really telling me that it would have been completely wild and inappropriate in Deathly Hallows, a book where Dumbledore's connection to Grindelwald was already a significant plot point? Come ON.

And surely we are past assuming everyone is straight by default ?

His sexuality was unspecified, that's not the same as assuming that he was straight by default.