#being a TERF and writing a series with no female friendship it’s all just a bit sus isn’t it jkr

[whinlatter]

Besides Hermione and ginny are there other female characters in the books that you like?

Yes!

(I always feel like such a loser answering a question like this truthfully because my honest answers tend to be: yes I love that character and thinking/reading about that character and here’s nine hundred reasons why! Even if I don’t like a character, because they’re evil and/or contemptible, I tend to find them super interesting and love reading about them. Not a female character, but I wrote that I didn’t like Draco much recently and @indigo-scarf sent me a meta about the Hand of Glory that helped change my mind. I was like ffs I finally thought of a proper character I didn’t like and now I find him quite compelling. So I guess we’re back to just me not liking… Grawp, I guess? I do, in life, tend to like things and find them interesting, though so it’s almost always harder for me to think of things I don’t like. Nauseatingly positive, that’s me).

Just off the top of my head: some of the baddies — Bellatrix and Narcissa — get some of the best fic writing done about them that I absolutely lap up (Petunia, too! I’ll read a Rita or Muriel or Umbridge fic if there’s good ones going.) I love love love Andromeda fics, I really like Tonks, I think Molly gets a far far harder rep than she ever deserves, Angelina is golden, Cho deserves the world, Fleur’s a boss, I love Parvati/Lavender’s whole energy throughout (I am a girl who giggles and I like to be represented), Pansy is clearly interesting for all the ways she’s hurting and as a lens into the gender politics in pure blood circles… there’s so much to say about so many. I’m writing McGonagall a lot at the moment and having so much fun with it. And honestly, what Jily authors have done to make Lily into a rich and brilliant character after the scraps we were given of her in canon is truly so impressive, so now I adore Lily… I think about the women of the series a lot, tbh. One of the things I want to do with Beasts is write female friendships, both moments of joy in them and also conflict, and build them into a series that lacks them, or at least relegated them to the sidelines in deeply problematic ways.

I will say, though, that I think the female character I have had to work hardest on to get, and to write, is Luna. I’ve always found her difficult to write without cariacturing her, and her allegiance to her dad, while understandable from a grief perspective, is kind of sus in some ways (the man… is a conspiracy theorist). But I knew I wanted to include her in Beasts, because she’s clearly important to Ginny (and Harry), and after a lot of thinking I feel like I have a postwar arc for her in the scope of that story that’s compelling to me to write and hopefully will be to read. That writing is really helping me find more steady ground thinking about her as a character.

#thanks for asking anon i loved thinking about this! #writing female HP characters is important and a valuable corrective to a series where misogyny runs quite deep actually #being a TERF and writing a series with no female friendship it’s all just a bit sus isn’t it jkr #ask #beasts

[goblin-gardens]

cw Rowling’s transphobia - I understand if you don’t want to engage further with the topic, but would you want to talk about the ways it sunk into hp? Or is there a good post or article to direct me to? I am trying to unlearn hp’s impact on me - not your job! - I only ask because I went searching myself, and only found lists of recent examples out of her stories.

No problem, nonny! I can’t think of any specific article or anything, but I’m always happy to write a rambling bit of nonsense about my own opinions!

(disclaimer: JKR wasn’t actually my biggest fantasy influence as a kid-- that was probably Mercedes Lackey or Tamora Pierce (both writers with their own issues) and Ursula K. Le Guin-- so I don’t have much nostalgia for the HP stories themselves, more nostalgia for my friendships that included things like reading books or seeing movies together. I know these books are very, very important to some people, but I’m actually not one of them.)

OK so. The biggest clear “A Transphobe Wrote This” signal I can recall is the descriptions of Rita Skeeter. Her evilness and duplicity is telegraphed by her “mannish hands” and over-exaggerated makeup, and if I recall correctly she’s one of the few female characters whose facial or body hair is ever mentioned. One has to wonder if JKR was using these signifies of “imperfect“ femininity (that plenty of real cis women exhibit!) only as indications that Rita wasn’t to be trusted, or if she was actually.... writing her version of a transgender woman. (I think the 1st one, but still.)

Aside from that most blatant thing, there’s more subtle gender stuff throughout the books, that maybe in isolation isn’t a big deal, but when taken all together gives a sense of what JKR thinks Men are, and what she thinks Women are, and how those two things are fully separate on every level, from biological to career choice to personality.

Like how Hermione, often characterized as stubborn, logical, and rules-oriented, suddenly becomes Ron and Harry’s therapist/Feelings Translator/mom on the camping trip in book 6, cooking and tidying up and telling them what their feelings mean when she’s never actually been especially good at feelings before this-- and also she’s annoying and nags the boys in a very Mrs. Weasley way, all of the sudden, and is prone to bursting into tears-- it’s as if once she Became A Woman (at 17 or whatever) her own personality is superseded by What A Woman Is.

Or take Tonks, after she marries Lupin. It’s just like, Boop! She is so fulfilled by being a wife and mom-to-be! This is what she’s been waiting for her whole life! She’s glowing! Of course I’m not saying female characters can’t enjoy marriage and motherhood, but..... Tonks says like 2 lines after she gets married and they’re only about being married. She was wild and rebellious (and queercoded) but now she’s settled down and is ready to start her true purpose: having a baby within a year of getting married and Making A Home for Lupin, who needs a calming feminine presence in his life.

The fact that every character ends the series with a spouse of the opposite gender (or who’s dead before the books start, like McGonagall’s husband) isn’t just twee “happily ever after” heteronormativity, there’s transphobia wrapped up in it too. The fact that adult women come in three flavors: “Evil and Sexy”, “Evil and Feminine But Childless”, and “Mom” isn’t just sexism, it’s transphobia too. Because in addition to being obnoxious about who they consider women, TERFS have fucked up perceptions of what womanhood is, and straight TERFS especially tie up their transphobia with a nice sexist bow on top, so even when they’re talking about cis women, they’re weird about it.

You say you’re trying to unlearn HP’s impact on you-- that’s interesting. A lot of people talk about the good they’ve taken from the Harry Potter series, how it’s taught them acceptance or bravery or to see the magic in the world. (I think that a lot of the people who say this were reading HP as they were growing up and could very well have learned these things on their own because that’s what a lot of growing up is.) Lately this sort of statement goes along with disappointment that this thing they feel is Good and a part of their own Goodness was created by someone who they now know is Bad. Let me offer you something (an olive branch? a piece of floating philosophy? some bullshit?) If these stories inspired you to be more accepting and kind, if you used them to open new doors in your own mind about what “goodness” is and how you can foster it in yourself, then that’s a positive impact and fully separate from anything JKR says or does. You are not literally made up of your long-time fandoms and formative influences and nothing else. You are more than the sum of the words you read-- you’re also your own perspective, your own insight, and your own choices.

#anyways this is all just my opinion #but i'm always happy to share that #Anonymous #long post #text wall

[bellablue42]

Myself as a writer and Death of the Author

I’m trying to write a novel, and it’s really hard. I feel like I’m not getting anywhere, I’m on my fifth draft and trying to create a lengthy enough narrative that doesn’t feel like filler. It is difficult, to say the least, and I really admire people with the ability to write quickly and well. 

But there’s a lot about She-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named going around again, and it made me think. We all know that she’s not the best person, but she is a writer, and she is a creator, and her works are widespread. And that... causes problems.

Is it ok to consume her work? How much do her opinions reflect in her work, and can we spot it? I have no idea, but here’s my best shot, as an aspiring writer and a high-school literature student.

Please be warned I have no experience, and I’m kind of making this up as I go along, but here we go.

Last year, at the start of the school year, in Literature, my class watched Midnight in Paris. The movie was written and directed by Woody Allen, who is... well-known for all the wrong reasons, namely allegedly assulting seven-year-old Dylan Farrow. One of the girls in my class pointed out this fact, and my teacher nodded and said that we were discussing Death of the Author.

Death of the Author is an interesting topic. It holds that an author’s intentions and background should have no impact on interpreting a text. It is interesting, and it is really bloody hard to do.

Keep in mind that if you pick up a book by a relatively famous author, you will know something about them. If you take Mrs Dalloway, for example, if you’ve ever heard of Virginia Woolf, you will doubtless know that she was a writer and that she committed suicide, even if you know nothing else. The fact that she did commit suicide will influence the way you read Mrs Dalloway.

If you read Lady Lazarus by Sylvia Plath, for example, you will probably know that Plath was not mentally healthy and committed suicide by sticking her head in an oven. And that will influence the way you read Lady Lazarus. If you read any of Lovecraft’s work, you will come to the conclusion that he is a racist. It’s not hard to figure out.

Death of the Author means separating these facts from the way you interpret a work. It is really hard, trust me.

Because we look for links, everywhere we look for these links. We know that Sylvia Plath committed suicide, so when you read Lady Lazarus, you make connections. Go read Lady Lazarus now, go read it knowing that Plath committed suicide, and keep that fact in mind. Here’s the link: https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/49000/lady-lazarus

Now read it again, and try to forget it, all the connections you made knowing that Plath stuck her head in an oven. It is really hard to do, because you know, and you remember. Death of the Author is forgetting the context of the author, forgetting their impact on the text.

Here’s a thing, I write a lot. Like, a lot. Not published, obviously, but I write about as much as I read, and that is a lot. And I believe, that when you write, you put a bit of yourself into it. It doesn’t have to be obvious, maybe just the way you connect to a character, or your views on a topic. I can’t say I don’t do this - my main character is an asexual lesbian who panics a lot and loves her girlfriend. Her competence doesn’t come from me, but the gender, the sexuality, the panic? All of that is inspired by, you know, me. My experiences, my opinions. I am conscious in my word choices, I’m trying not to use gendered language for the soldiers, because they are men, women, non-binary, genderfluid and others, all together, so my main character can’t call them her men, they are her soldiers. It’s hard. I’m aware that I have biases, and my reading experiences are usually texts that ... do not do this. 

Sorry, I’m rambling, and no-one wants to know. 

But I as a writer, put a bit of myself in my work. And I think that’s what makes Death of the Author so hard to do, so hard to remember. 

And now onto HER. I can’t remember what brought my attention to her in the first place, maybe a post about a Harry Potter tv show?

The problem about JK Rowling is that she wrote Harry Potter. And Harry Potter is... huge. The problem is that we grew up on Harry Potter. 

Looking back, there are big problems with the series; plot holes bigger than my fist, a lack of original plot lines, and little creativity. Harry Potter is a mishmash of already well-established genres and archetypes, and it... doesn’t fit together particularly well. 

(Take Dumbledore, at once the mentor archetype from the fantasy genre and the authority figure in the boarding school genre. The problem is that being both causes a bit of dissonance. He mimics the typical ‘wise old mentor wizard’ from fantasy, like Gandalf, but he is also a school headmaster. He is a grandfatherly teacher who takes an interest in the son of two of his past students, nothing particularly new, but at the same time, he’s a figure out of legend, an incredibly powerful man, both magically and politically. It is hard for my brain to fit them together well because they are two different archetypes and they don’t mesh. They belong in different genres, because the way he is written can’t seem to decide which one he is. I might write more on this later if anyone’s interested)

But Rowling’s a TERF. And she’s been on Twitter and said all sorts of bizarre things about the odd mish-mash of genres she’s created. I’m not really a fan of Harry Potter anymore, I grew up with it. I have seven books in a shoebox under my bed. I have read far better books, I have read many, many books with more interesting stories, better internal consistency and characters with actual depth, who don’t need fandom to be interesting. 

And yet I still have all seven books in a shoebox under my bed. It’s hard. I genuinely liked the books - when I was twelve. I’d sooner recommend the Discworld books by the late great Sir Terry Pratchett than Harry Potter, and not just because of HER. They’re better books. Harry Potter is average. 

But we loved them. 

And Rowling’s a TERF. Her views on trans people are... not okay, by any measure. I don’t have words for ... how great the cognitive dissonance is. She wrote a series, a seven-book, eight-movie series, about the power of unconditional love. Over a million words, just under 20 hours about acceptance and tolerance. And yet she doesn’t believe that trans women are women. 

The problem is that it is hard to apply Death of the Author. Once you know that JK discriminates against transgender people, it is hard to read Harry Potter without remembering that. 

Then you get into other issues about how all of the endgame couples are straight. And Dumbledore’s only gay when the series is ended. And there’s a lack of diversity in the books and the movies. And once you start reading into it, it gets ... iffy. Because it’s not meant to be read into, not meant to be analysed. It’s a children’s series. But it’s problematic, not for the things it says, but fo the things it doesn’t say.

The thing is that SHE is impressive. As a writer, at least, not as a person. Because it is hard to write, and she managed an extensive, relatively-coherent storyline across seven books, released over ten years. But her first book got rejected, again and again. 

Her net worth is somewhere between 650 million and 1.2 billion. And she earns all that money off a book series whose main themes are friendship and love. And she’s a TERF.

I can’t say I hate her - I don’t know her. She might be a genuinely nice person, but she’s a TERF. She doesn’t believe that trans people are the gender that they say they are. I cannot understand how you can believe that, but. She does, apparently. She wrote so much about love conquering all evil, and friendship saving the day, but she doesn’t think that trans women should be allowed into female bathrooms.

I hate her ideology. 

Go read Discworld instead. Think about Death of the Author, then read Night Watch. It’s a great book. Or go read Good Omens, because Pratchett co-wrote that. 

The thing about Discworld is that you can tell what Pratchett thinks is worth paying attention to. Small Gods is primarily about religion, about belief, and about people. The last one is the most important, because Pratchett believed that the greatest thing you can be is human and kind, and he’s right. The witches on the Discworld are... perhaps not nice, but they are decent, and they are fundamentally people. They are human, and they are kind, and that is what makes them good people. 

The thing about Harry Potter is that “Muggle” sounds like a slur. There’s all this attention paid to the whole “mudblood” thing that people forget that behind all the blood purity nonsense - which sounds a lot like eugenics - the purebloods, the rich entitled kids, believe that non-magical people are less than animals. The Wizarding world is stuck in the Middle Ages, not even the bloody Renaissance. Human history has passed them by. It is so hard now to read Harry Potter without finding problems, like how all the magicals are fundamentally stupid, how a literal one-year-old is praised for supposedly killing an extremely powerful mass-murdering psycopath. A one-year-old. The Wizarding World is not a functional society, and it’s not meant to be. It’s not meant to hold up to scrutiny.

Look, Harry Potter is average, at best. Ask me for good kids books and I will point you in a dozen different directions, and I will point you in a dozen different directions - but not there. 

Because Death of the Author is hard. Not taking the creator’s intentions and background into account when interpreting a work is hard. You can know that an author is queer, or a person of colour, or of a certain religion, but once you know it, it is hard to not see it. 

You see, all the main characters in Harry Potter are white. They’re also all straight. Everyone not Harry Potter is flat. There is very little depth to anyone in those books, because they don’t matter. Hermione is defined by her relationship with Ron because her relationship is the most debated part of her character. Ron - in the movies at least - is seen as stupid because he is written stupid, he is written as comic relief. Book-verse Ron is a strategist, but that’s only really shown in the first two books. They’re not written with depth, they don’t need it. Harry’s the protagonist, Hermione’s the smart one, Ron’s the dumb-but-loyal comic-relief best friend. Ginny is the love interest, Luna’s the crazy one, the twins are comic-relief pranksters. Draco is the racist antagonist, Voldemort is a more extreme mass-murdering version. There are exactly zero trust-worth adults in a whole seven-book series, there are three? characters with depth in the whole series, everyone else is defined by a role and a single characteristic.

It is so hard to look critically at Harry Potter and not see everything that relates to Rowling. It is problematic as a series, and problematic as content created by a TERF. It is problematic as literature in the first place. It’s written as a kids book, but for all its ‘adult’ themes, it can’t stand up to scrutiny.

This got long - I got a bit carried away. Sorry.

Tell me what you think, tell me your opinion. I’d love to discuss this with you because it so hard to write about. Argue with me, tell me I’m wrong. Tell me I’m right if you think I am. Have I said anything problematic? Please lets start talking about this because it’s interesting and a difficult topic, and I think we need to start looking closer at authors and content creators. 

#i didn't wake up today to write a long meta post #but i did anyway #long post #meta #Harry Potter #Death of the Author #please debate more with me #harry potter is problematic and here's why #this has no cohesion to it #please give me feedback #i apologise for shitty writing #this had no plan #sorry

[lilylilym]

Just read a long piece by someone who overexplains their friendship with LGBTQ people and their fluency in Japanese culture to kinda suggests that even though Hange is nonbinary using she is fine. The reasons being gender is not definitive and a lot of nonbinary people use she/her. And that nonbinary is western centric.

Hello, i am a nonwhite Asian nonbinary person who uses she/they, and I have gender trauma when a character that was almost one hundred percent gender ambiguous presenting with canonically gender neutral pronoun’s gender identity still being debated. Yall are misgenderint Hange if y’all can’t once in a while sprinkle some “they” or “he” into the sea of “she.” Also WIT Studio presenting Hange as female bodied does NOT take away nonbinariness since, y’know, assigned body does not dictate one’s gender identification? If the author insists on everyone using gender neutral terms for Hange that meand ALL THE CHARACTER RESPECTS HANGE’S GENDER IDENTITY SO WHO ARE YOU TO NOT DO SO?

No amount of LGBTQ friend will get yall out of this misgendering shenanigan. Also I would also like to invite some of yall insisting on misgendering the one (1) nonbinary queer character to ask yourself: why the investment? What drives this desire to have Hange as a woman? When AOT has a sea of very well written women characters who present AND identify as women?

I’m not saying TERFS, but I am gesturing towards it if y’all UNDERSTAND what nonbinary means and fucking STILL making excuses on why you are reading Hange as female. For those who are like, well, I’m into Hange as a femme person, let me assure you, NONBINARY PEOPLE CAN STILL BE FEMME AND PRESENT FEMME but please yall gotta respect the gender neutral identity. Don’t debate the gender of Hange. Because if they are a woman, you won’t need to make arguments about their gender. No one is arguing about the gender of LITERALY NO OTHER CHARACTERS in the series, so stop it.

Don’t be trans and queerphobic. Remember when Isayama was answering the question about Levi’s type? And he said “I didn’t know that Levi is into women. He likes tall people.” REMEMBER THAT? That means as long as Levihan is canon, they are also canonically queer. Please. This shit is important. Some of the readers might be thirsty for Levi, fine, me too respectfully, go ahead and imagine his ass with yourself or whatever, but please don’t displace your heterosexuality into Hange.

This has been frustrating to write. And if you frustratedly ask, “or what? Am i transphobic/queerphobic if I keep misgendering Hange?” The answer is yes. I am not joking. I firmly say what I say and if the label makes you feel so attacked and you want to defend yourself, remember it’s very easy to not have to defend yourself by respecting Hange’s gender neutral pronoun. And no, I am not hurting you or exerting unreasonable dominance or, this is my favorite, “police” gender because I am not the one insisting on the wrong pronouns for anyone.

“Hange’s character is otherwordly!!! It’s whatever we imagine it to be!” And you want them to be cis? That’s your otherworldly vision? Nah, you know that aint it. Just make peace with others’ identity even when they don’t match yours, it’s fine. My queer ass is not out here hating on Eremika Jeankasa Armin Annie and all the straight couple there are in AOT. You can do it too, I believe in you.

#hange zöe #hange is nonbinary #please #degendering hange