[ SECRET POST #6370 ]

[case]

⌈ Secret Post #6370 ⌋

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


01.



__________________________________________________



02.



__________________________________________________



03.



__________________________________________________



04.



__________________________________________________


















































05. [SPOILERS for Genshin Impact]

[OP caption: Secret because I normally sympathize with the Fatui!]



__________________________________________________



06. [SPOILERS for In Blossom (cdrama)]




__________________________________________________



07. [WARNING for discussion of JKR/transphobia]



__________________________________________________



08. [WARNING for discussion of childhood sexual abuse]

















Notes:

Secrets Left to Post: 00 pages,00 secrets from Secret Submission Post #910.
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

[fscom]

07. [WARNING for discussion of JKR/transphobia]
https://images2.imgbox.com/7e/c4/4JZaMxsy_o.png

Transcript by OP

[fscom]

Transcript: idk man, there's lots of interesting conversations we could have about this series as a work of fiction.
but nobody's willing to have them now because the fiction has become a proxy for the author's rancid politics.

i want to know an actual good way to address the house-elf thing in a fanfic!
but nobody who agrees that the house-elf thing is bad is willing to write for this setting anymore because jowling kowling rowling decided to become the queen of transphobia.

(if i had a nickel for every time i had to drop something i loved because the creator was a terrible person i'd have two nickels. but this secret's about harry potter, not [REDACTED].)

[(Anonymous)]

I dunno, I kind of think we had a lot of those conversations in the aughts, before we realized what a whackaloon jowling kowling rowling was (I am stealing that, just so you know).

OP

[(Anonymous)]

Possible! I was a lot more oblivious back then, so I must have missed them... and/or actively ignored them because I was a lot more thin-skinned about criticism of Things I Liked back then. Hard to remember, I was a kid.

and please do steal that it's one of my favorite bits

[(Anonymous)]

I think that looking back, there was a lot of questionable morality in the HP books. The way Rowling wrote about the house elves is a good example.

[(Anonymous)]

it's just weird places like fs. I totally have HP discussions with normal people.

[(Anonymous)]

I don’t think that’s true. I know several people IRL that won’t even talk about Harry Potter anymore because of JKR. I think it depends on a lot of factors because I know plenty of people who still will. Nationality, gender identity, and age all play a part in that. The age thing is more about the social climate the person grew up in. My younger friends don’t care but the ones who grew up in the 70s and 80s and are LGBTQ+ care a lot.

[(Anonymous)]

What normal people have noticed a problem with the house elves? What normal people wouldn't be confused and be utterly Watsonian about it ("but that's just how their species is, they can't help it, why are you criticizing that!")?

And this coming from someone who kinda does think we should chill a little and be able to be Watsonian ourselves sometimes about the house elves and certain other things the fandom HAS discussed to death in years past.

[(Anonymous)]

When the books were still being published, most readers assumed that the House Elves would either be freed or free themselves and there was widespread confusion when it turned out that Dobby was just a weirdo for not wanting to be a slave anymore. A smaller subset of mostly normal readers who know the folklore that JKR was borrowing from were already annoyed that she specifically added slavery to the house elf/brownie mythos, but still expected her to do something with it besides make a point that actually some slaves don't want to be free.

There were a lot of "normal people" who read Harry Potter when it was still new who managed to be a little bewildered by how some of the subplots played out despite their normality.

[(Anonymous)]

I always felt like the house elves were one of the biggest encapsulations of the issues with JKR's worldbuilding. You could see where she wanted to go for the whimsical folklore-based idea of them being like brownies, but she also wanted Dobby as a character to be enslaved and she wanted Winky to be upset about being freed. So she decided that okay, house elves like being slaves and Dobby was just weird because she couldn't think of a way out of it, when a stronger writer would have realized the better answer is to just have Hogwarts be *paying the house elves.* Maybe the Whomping Willow excretes a magic sap that's useless to wizards but like gold to house elves, so they all want to work at Hogwarts and become rich. Winky meanwhile is the weird one who wanted to keep being enslaved. It's simple and fixes a thorny issue that didn't need to exist, but JKR didn't want to think that hard. (And in general I think a lot of HP's worldbuilding problems can be boiled down to she started writing a simple fantasy for children where you don't think too hard about the setting as long as it's charming, but then when things got more mature and serious she didn't pivot the worldbuilding to match.)

[(Anonymous)]

You have a point. The people I'm talking about are interested in characters and are more of a fanon people anyway not caring about canon that much. Canon's been discussed to death anyway. I still remember the Snape reveal in book 3.

[(Anonymous)]

Same here. Almost everyone I know IRL is fine with discussing HP, and we're all firmly left-leaning people living in a relatively left-leaning part of a relatively left-leaning country. A lot of us still love HP.

Rowling is nowhere near the worst person whose art I still enjoy, frankly.

[(Anonymous)]

Spoilers: if you think she's "nowhere near" the worst person whose work you enjoy, you're not as left-leaning as you think. And I'm willing to bet your so-called left-leaning friends are the same.

You can be the leftest lefty and like and discuss HP, but only if you don't support it financially in even the slightest way.

There are plenty of creators who are worse than JKR, but not by any significant margin. Some creators have killed people. That's worse than anything JKR has done. But though JKR has not killed anyone directly, but she's used her platform to help the passing of policies that have killed people, and that's not too much better.

[(Anonymous)]

She supports women and pays all her taxes. Def not the worst.

[(Anonymous)]

I feel like especially with the house elves there was a lot of discussion and exploration in fic going on back in the LJ years.

[meadowphoenix]

yeah i feel like houseelves, and hermione by proxy, were a discussion from the jump of SPEW being a canon thing.

[(Anonymous)]

The only real way to address the house elf thing is to just tear it out and replace it like it never happened the way it did. Because otherwise you have to flirt with the fact that a majority enjoy being slaves, and there's no real way to work around that in a way that isn't uncomfortable as all hell at best.

[(Anonymous)]

It's sci-fi. Magical talking pets are not that rare. Magical creatures that surve humans are common.

[(Anonymous)]

First of all, it's fantasy, not sci fi. Second, can you give an example of a sentient magical creature that happily serves humans where it's not an obvious cautionary tale/intended to be a fucked up scenario?

[(Anonymous)]

I feel like I've seen it addressed in fic many times, not usually as the main plot, but sometimes as a significant subplot. Symbiotic magic comes up a lot. Sometimes it has something to do with the differences between elf and wizard magic. Sometimes it's just that Britain's really corrupt - other places have them, but they pay them and treat them decently. I remember a fic that was about an elf uprising in the offing, but I don't remember the name of it. There are literally over half a million Harry Potter fics just on AO3, so I'm thinking there are thousands that have addressed issues with house elves (and/or goblins, squibs, werewolves, bullies, magical contracts, blood purity, student safety, the general intelligence of the wizarding population, etc.).

OP

[(Anonymous)]

Oh, I've seen it addressed, I just haven't seen it addressed well. This secret was inspired by a fic that did it really badly.

[(Anonymous)]

We went over this in the aughts. A lot.

For the record I think it's a useful lesson in the importance in listening to the oppressed when trying to help with their oppression. (There are tons of things to do: creating spaces that provide support and meaning and reasurance to fired/free elves, legislating punishments for abuses against house elves even if the elves won't press charges, perhaps a 3rd party retirement fund that wizards who utilize house elf labor need to pay into that can be tapped to support elves in trouble.)

But instead we have a well meaning teenager blundering into a problem and culture she does not understand and causing offense and stress. No wonder she isn't met with success.

But like, that takes a charitable reading and there's no reason to extend that grace any more. (Except that it's more interesting but whatevs)

[(Anonymous)]

This. There was an opportunity in there for the whole SPEW thing to be a cautionary tale about white-knighting. But instead of "Nothing About Us Without Us" we got "Actually, it's just that mean slave-owners don't deserve to have slaves."

[(Anonymous)]

It probably is the right reading, not just the charitable one - it looks like a simple 'save the opressed!' situation to the idealistic young Hermione, but things don't always work out so simply. I never felt that Hermione was shown to be wrong in her feelings about the House Elves' situation, just going about it with insufficient understanding. I would hope that she would make efforts to look into how the House Elves were originally bound into service to the humans of the wizarding world and how it could be undone, with the benefit of more knowledge and diplomacy.

[(Anonymous)]

Her impulses were good! For a human! And hopefully the future of SPEW involves a lot of talking to the House Elves and learning to understand their culture/views/needs and getting House Elves involved.

Ironically she needed to do more reading.