[ SECRET POST #6755 ]

[case]

⌈ Secret Post #6755 ⌋

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


01.



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03.
[X-files/Inside Reagan]



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04. [OP warned for discussion of menstruation, not sure if that merits a general content warning, but here's a note]




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05. [WARNING for discussion of abortion]

[The Alters]



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06. [WARNING for discussion of transphobia/JKR]






















Notes:

Secrets Left to Post: 00 pages, 00 secrets from Secret Submission Post #965.
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]

06. [WARNING for discussion of transphobia/JKR]
https://i.imgur.com/OHcMxwl.png

[(Anonymous)]

Weird to have two Enid Blyton secrets in one day.

If you're talking about house elves (sorry if you meant something else), I don't think she ever implied their situation was good. Yes, most of them wanted to stay slaves, but she repeatedly showed how it turned out poorly for them.

[(Anonymous)]

I mean, the situation is largely treated as the house elves being happy as slaves. She made fun of the one person who tried to raise awareness of it and Harry Potter ends the series still with one, I believe.

[(Anonymous)]

The only free elves we ever met wound up either dead or depressed alcoholics, whereas the majority of the enslaved elves were both alive and happy with their lot in life, the implication is absolutely that they're better off as slaves.

[(Anonymous)]

Yes, everything problematic about HP is that way because of JKR's grand design to make something evil happen IRL, not because she didn't think it through about how some traits she made up for a fantasy species are a bad look through the lens of reality.

[(Anonymous)]

Yeah most of the issues in her book are from things she clearly put absolutely no thought into, and that is something that can and will be criticised funnily enough because it's shitty writing.

[(Anonymous)]

So your argument is that she's just bad writer and more stupid than literal children who read her books and pointed this stuff out, so it's mean to make fun of her for it?

[(Anonymous)]

Honestly, it's so weird to me how Klowning (yeah, I'm calling her that now) easily shifts from evil genius to no-talent writer depending on what point people are arguing. Like, I know in some situations, two things can be true at the same time, but I'm not so sure that's the case here.

And I don't particularly like folks implying that just because something exists in the story, that it's an automatic endorsement from the author. Sometimes it is, sometimes it isn't. Because according to Harry Potter, Klowning apparently also supports fighting fascism. But nobody would argue that based on the harm she's doing to trans people in real life.

[(Anonymous)]

It's totally harmless she named the only prominent non-Indian Asian character Cho Chang, and totes harmless to name the One Black Guy KINGsley SHACKLEBOLT. She just wasn't thinking when she changed the brownies from being called brownies to being called house elves and they happily do labor for no pay (despite brownies clearly doing it in exchange for milk or cream) and making them give that up is heinous just because This One is Annoying and Crazy and it's REALLY just that Malfoy is terrible to work for and the teenager who wants this to stop is just Oh So Silly. And this is totes all done on accident! It's not like she's engaged in racist behavior since or something!

[(Anonymous)]

I can't believe I'm the only person who thinks muggle sounds a little like the N word....

[(Anonymous)]

It does, but in the same way that Captain sounds a little like Pac-Man.

[(Anonymous)]

you're definitely not the only one. 'muggle' sounds derogatory no matter what way you look at it.

[(Anonymous)]

The house elf thing was so unnecessary and dumb. I think she was trying to make a point about white knighting, but had already set up the slavery thing with Dobby and wasn't smart enough to either figure out a work-around or have Hermione's failed crusade be on some other group's behalf. Honestly, take out the slavery aspect and make house elves a more faithful adaptation of brownies or hobs, and Hermione's campaign actually is misguided. She could have given Malfoy literally any other magical hold over Dobby that Harry had to break.

[(Anonymous)]

But brownies have AGENCY and it wouldn't work for JK to do THAT. /s

[(Anonymous)]

I love how everyone pretends they didn't read the books when they came out without batting an eye at the house elves. Just like they pretend they didn't think it was at least kind of cool when they heard that yesterday JK Rowling told some kid at a school she was visiting that Dumbledore was gay. You're all perfect, unlike everyone else in the world who read HP.

[(Anonymous)]

Some of us can read past a year 6 level and could see how shoddily slapped together her books were back then.

[(Anonymous)]

It’s funny. The house elf stuff is exactly the kind of writing that made me start to realise she can’t actually fucking write past a child’s level of literature.

[(Anonymous)]

I was uncomfortable and thought it might pay off later. It didn't. I can admit I'm wrong.

[(Anonymous)]

You must be some kind of poser who wasn't actually in the fandom when the books came out.

There were reams of meta and fan theories trying to make this and all the rest of the bullshit meaningful while this was happening in real time. Most of fandom was so sure that she had to be going somewhere with all of it, that she was going to tie everything together that was going to make it better than what it turned out to be. And we got "actually, some groups of people are meant to be slaves" instead. So much of fandom was disappointed in how the series ended, but the world was fun and the bones were there and ignoring/fixing the shitty parts and celebrating the good parts is what fandom does best. But then JKR kept "well, actually"ing the fandom, and every time she dropped a new bomb it was a (sometimes literal) turd. And that was before she made bankrolling institutionalized bigotry her new hobby.

[(Anonymous)]

I mean I was a teenager when the house elf stuff really got large in the book so uh... yeah I did. Sorry you were dumb tho

[(Anonymous)]

..... I dunno man, both them have pretty horrific views....

[(Anonymous)]

Sure, but one of them was born in the 1890s and one was born in the 1960s. If you somehow hadn't heard of either author and were going to guess which one wrote about a group of people who were genetically-disposed to function best as slaves to the upper classes and which one founded a charity to raise money for children with cerebral palsy, you'd probably get it wrong.

[(Anonymous)]

Another thing that Enid Blyton didn't do is say that children shit themselves and magic their poop away, despite going to a school full of toilet facilities.

[(Anonymous)]

How does Enid Blyton come off as progressive? Because of George from the Famous Five (who still had to do girl stuff)? Because of her Malory Towers books where a couple of the characters eventually got jobs?

[(Anonymous)]

The latter was, sad as it is to say, actually yes progressive by the standards of the day.

Women working, or at least middle class women working, was a massive controversy right up until the very early Eighties in the UK. And yeah, that is far too late for a normal country to be having that as a controversy, but not for Very Normal Island apparently.