fandomsecrets | [ SECRET POST #5315 ]

[ SECRET POST #5315 ]

⌈ Secret Post #5315 ⌋

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

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Notes:

Secrets Left to Post: 02 pages, 38 secrets from Secret Submission Post #761.
Secrets Not Posted: [ 0 - broken links ], [ 0 - not!secrets ], [ 0 - not!fandom ], [ 0 - too big ], [ 0 - repeat ].
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04. https://i.imgur.com/3magf23.png

There's a similar phenomenon in Star Wars. Like, the Empire and Sith are cool, and everyone should feel free to write fic about Vader or wear Stormtrooper shirts or just stan Palpatine or whatnot. I can totally get that. But the moment people start with 'well actually, the Empire/Sith had a point' I wonder if they understood the movies.

I was never as into HP as I am into SW, but I got the same vibe from Death Eaters and their fans.

Eh, I’ve seen some pro-Kylo Ren that was pretty clearly coming from “I was abused for being gay or trans.” (Actually, I’ve seen some pro-Horde in Warcraft that was trans feels, too.)

Why would being gay or trans make you pro-whiny little edgelord with a murder fetish?

It really doesn't take that much imagination to see how someone could make that interpretation happen, unless you're just stuck in fight mode.

(no subject)

(Anonymous) - 2021-07-25 22:15 (UTC) - Expand

(no subject)

(Anonymous) - 2021-07-25 22:19 (UTC) - Expand

How you relate to a character isn't always the most rational thing. Relatability is about how you feel, not what your mind tells you you ~should~ relate to. And it's the being ostracized and hated part that makes them relate; the reason doesn't matter. And seeing him hated so much by real people in the fandom probably makes him more relatable to some. I don't personally relate to Kylo Ren, but I've related to other characters for small similarities to myself, including the way the fandom reacted to them.

(no subject)

(Anonymous) - 2021-07-26 01:57 (UTC) - Expand

ayrt

I can see how people would identify with Kylo Ren or Anakin/Vader. What I don't get is how they go from there to, yeah genocide is cool. Or at least no big deal, I guess? Or even (when it's about Jedi) that they 'deserved' it.

I think Star Wars is far more understandable because the Jedi are written as being philosophically incapable of the type of empathy that you'd think their job required and the other political organizations are very incompetent, and the public is incredibly stupid. At that point, you're Sauron and you're like, well, at least Melkor is organized.

yeah I remember seeing stuff like that back in the early 2000s - I mostly wrote it off as dark fiction and stuck to my own interests in the fandom. But that being said, with the landscape of the internet changing so much in recent years with things like fanfics being accessible by phone alone - it's certainly easy to wonder how much of it is exploring dark fiction and how much is done with a more irl sinister undertone.

Oh, so this is still a thing? I do wonder sometimes if the OG Pureblood stans with their Dark Mark tattoos ever feel awkward about it now that they're 40.

Hah this comment reminds me of when my best friend and I were drunk-watching the (then) existing films about 15 years ago and had a conversation about "omg a Dark Mark tattoo would be kinda cool" and then we thought about it a bit, had a bit more to drink and were like "actually, no it wouldn't. It's a bit weird given what it stands for."

I'm so glad drunk!us had that moment of clarity. Though I'm still tattoo-free all these years later. I've never thought of something I would definitely permanently want on my skin.

And that's one of the major reasons I don't like Astolat's Starry fic. That and its abhorrent classism.

*Drarry

Yeah, I don't want to judge anyone for being into villains, but the HP villains just seem like such shitty and uninteresting villains to do that with. They're not interesting or operatic at all. It's not like Draco Malfoy is Doctor Doom. He's a whiny little classist, racist rich kid.

Yet another fandom thing I've literally never seen. I am glad my fandom circles are small and not very wanky.

So, I'll preface this by saying that I have not been active in the fandom for a while.

However, I must say that I have seen "muggle" used more often as a synonym for "normal people" by minority groups, than in the way you're saying. I'm not saying it doesn't exist, or that some people don't glorify the Malfoys, etc.

But I think some of it not so much about the rich pureblood thing, as wizard = allegory for "the other/outsider", and anti-muggle wank is more code for anti-dominant culture. And some of there dark fics are power fantasies in a way.

I'm sure your take on things happens too, even though in the context of the actual stories the wizarding world *is* the dominant culture that has to be protected from being overrun by the genetically inferior muggleborns. But there has always been a vocal minority of fans who just really want to be Junior Death Eaters.

It just seems weird to position the fabulously wealthy, snobbish, socially well-connected and powerful ones as the 'outsiders'

Some people just inappropriately project onto villains.

That's the power fantasy of it....like, "what if it made me powerful to be different, rather than make me feel small".

the word Muggle itself pisses me off. I think it sounds derogatory.

it's so prominent in fic, such that I could pick a CANON SHIP, and half the fic streams into pureblood supremacy of various sorts. I do think that reads as a gap in OG novels, in that most of how discriminatory purebloods are characterized are focused specifically on their hatred and the rest is either reasons for sympathy or straight up nothing. Like, there are genuine reasons to feel empathy for Draco (and therefore people like Draco) and I could see how this would turn into justification for his attitude wholesale.

And there are simply people who are keyed in enough to narrative to understand it (i.e. this is good v. evil) but contrarian enough, again for I think understandable reasons, to reject narrative control on their responses.

But I'm gonna be honest and say that having known enough southerners, some of these pureblood supremacists are projecting real-life distressing social and moral decisions back onto the characters whose positions they respond to most. They understand that there is a social more telling them some aspect of their upbringing is no longer acceptable in toto, and they read these pureblood characters and glom onto them in response.

I had a friend who was (probably still is) as good as a Snape wife. I wasn't allowed to say I liked how he was written and how Alan Rickman played him but that I still didn't like the character. I was wrong Wrong WRONG all the way. She really got turned on by that pure blood Death Eater Snape is the biggest woobie hero of them all shit.

Nowadays, she's a local politician for the extreme right wing AfD, thinks that Germans are the best in everything they do and jews and blacks etc. are somehow inferior. I'm sure all of that's just a coincidence ... /s

I'm extra wary these days of people who make excuses for the stuck-up pure bloods, Death Eaters and the like.

I really never liked the purebloods, Death Eaters, or the named Slytherin characters at all. And not just because they were evil, elitist, scumbags. Which they generally are.

It's because 1. The antagonists in Harry Potter are honestly pretty weak and paint-by-numbers in the way they're written. And that doesn't bother me in the case of Voldemort, because he's too over the top for me to hate even if he's not that interesting. But all the rest are just too unpleasant, and reminiscent of real bigots in a way that I can't enjoy at all. And the appeal to sympathize with characters like Draco and Snape felt hollow, because I acknowledge that they have sympathetic qualities without feeling the least bit sorry for them. I still like Harry Potter, but the villains are the worst part to me, and that might be why I prefer the first 4 books. The villains were there of course, but there was more adventure and fun discovery that had nothing to do with them.

And 2. The reason they have such an prejudiced attitude makes no sense in story. There has never been any proven indication that magic was being weakened by have muggleborns and other "impure" witches and wizards into the wizarding world. Even pureblood families sometimes had children born with no magic capabilities. And the fact that magic users can be born into families that have little to no magical lineage means that the breeding of a user means nothing. I know real life bigotry has no real basis other than hatred, and maybe that was JKR's point with the pureblood supremacists. But if that was her point, it's even weirder how anyone can come out thinking the Death Eaters are in the right with their goals. Although I don't have anything against people who like them the best as characters, just the people who jump from that to "Maybe magic genocide would be something I could get behind if I was a wizard in this world".

Back when the series was still being written and the fans were still giving JKR way too much credit, a decent number of fans glommed onto Slytherin because they were sure that the story was going somewhere deeper with them. This prompted the usual “the heroes are the real bad guys because” speculations and justification of their prejudices as the logical position, etc. There was also decent overlap between this group and the “Ew, Weasleys are poor white trash” contingent, so take that as you will.

Then it turned out that for the most part, Slytherin really were just a house of self-serving bigots who were ambitious to the point of sociopathy, but by then the Slytherfen were committed to the cause.

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