HEY J.K.R-DOGGS IMMA LET YOU FINISH BUT I GOT SOME REAL PROBLEMS WITH YOUR RACIAL ALLEGORIES
impossiblebreakfast:
I’m just going to open here with a simple fact:
I love Harry Potter.
And I know you’re thinking yeah, well, I found this post so I pretty obviously —
No.
Stop.
I love Harry Potter. I found Harry Potter as a clinically depressed mixed-race seven-year-old, and it changed me. I couldn’t tell you what my life was like prior to that day at BJ’s Wholesale Club (please hold your dick jokes until the end of the lecture) when my mother finally bullied my tiny little hipster ass into picking up that one wizard thing that everyone was talking about, not even if I wanted to tell you, because it’s there even in memories it can’t be. Wasn’t I reading it just before that one seizure I had when I was three? Wasn’t I playing Dueling Club with my brother that one time right after I turned five and my mother caught us sneaking around on the roof? I’m pretty sure I had at least one barbie named after Angelina Johnson…
Read More
Hey, I just read your essay about racism in Harry Potter, and I’m going to admit right now that yes, I’m white, so no, I don’t get it. Not the way you do, and I’m lucky for that. I was also not a big Harry Potter fan. I read them for the first time as an adult, and a lot of things squicked me very badly about it; one of the biggest of which was the magic-centric assimilation and the vanishing/tokenizing of individuality. No one had a heritage, a religion, anything but occasionally an accent. The Muggle world was erased, creepily, even for those who grew up there. What’s the function of a rubber duck? *shivers*
Anyway, I’m writing you because I wanted to offer you something. For me, it started as a dare, but it’s become a major labor of love for the last four and a half years. I re-wrote Deathly Hallows from Neville’s perspective back at Hogwarts, and it’s exploded into a subfandom, three novels, 100+ one-shots, and 400+ pieces of art. It’s called the Daydverse (named after “DAYD”, the short form of the first novel, “Dumbledore’s Army and the Year of Darkness.”
Yes, it is still primarily about white people, that’s regrettably the playing field she gave us. But in getting to add and expand as much as I have, there has become a hell of a lot more diversity and room for not only PoC to exist, but to be seen and loved and explored and embraced as fully-fledged characters without whom the ‘verse would be so much shallower…and the Muggle-borns get to keep their culture, too, as the Creevey brothers in particular would happily attest. And yes, most of it’s in the expanded 'verse, not as much DAYD itself, but that’s because DAYD is about a 17 year old sheltered white cis straight boy kind of getting fist-fucked by life into adulthood, and there is a learning curve. And no, it’s not perfect, but if straight white boys think they have to be perfect or only write their own, we get…well, this mess. And I’m always willing to listen.
Go to my Deviantart (thanfiction dot deviantart dot comm) and peruse the Daydverse folder. Go to my Tumblr and peruse that. Check out the first novel and maybe the 'verse, and maybe, I hope, I can offer you a little bit of the magic back, even if it’s in a more adult world with a little less sparkly ponies. Not to play Great White Savior, to “earn cookies”, or to pretend that what I write is “post-racism” or beyond critique. Just because I’ve gotten letters from all kinds of PoC, people of size, people of faith, people of differing sexuality, etc. who have said that it mattered to them.
Again, it’s not a “perfected” Harry Potter, or, God forbid, a “Harry Potter For Politically Correct People”. It’s just something loosely based off of Harry Potter that at least makes a fucking attempt. And sometimes, when you’ve gone vegan because of the horrors of animal abuse in the meat industry, even a tofu dog might have its place.
Thanks for your time (I’ve thrown in an excerpt from Chapter 1 of DAYD below)
***
Ginny scowled up at him from where she had been using her wand on the sprained ankle. “You’re not suggesting that we should just roll over?”
“Or that we let ourselves be punching bags in the style of the brilliant Mr. Finnigan, I hope,” added Lavender.
“I don’t know what I’m suggesting,” Neville admitted. Then he looked at Seamus again, a thought occurring to him. “I’ve wanted to ask you, what was that hex you used on Carrow? I didn’t recognize it. Is it something Harry taught you personally?”
Seamus blushed, adding an overall pink tinge to his multi-colored features. “Nah, it’s not even approved. I shouldn'ta done it.”
Colin’s eyes widened. “It’s like an Unforgivable, then?”
“Not even!” Seamus started to shake his head, then thought better of it and closed his eyes, moaning softly before he spoke again. “It’s one of the old ones from my Nana – Gaelic. All the Ministry-approved spells are off of nice, proper, respectable Latin, you know, but the Celts had their own brand of magic, even if it got pushed off as all backward. It’s mostly died out now, but some of the old ones still remember a bit here and there, mostly hexes and jinxes and the odd witch’s charm, you know, for tellin’ what kind of baby you’ll be having and the like.”
Parvati looked suddenly fascinated, sitting up very straight and tossing back her heavy black braid. “My grandfather was a Fakir in Bombay, he used to tell us that there was all kinds of magic we would never learn at Hogwarts – he tried to have us sent to India to learn – but when our parents refused, he taught us a few spells. Padma can even control snakes.”
Ginny gasped. “She’s learned Parseltongue?”
“No, she can’t talk to them, only make them do what she wants.”
“Great!” Seamus grinned. “Tell her to make that big one You-Know-Who’s got eat him.”
Parvati gave him a look of exasperation. “That’d be nice, but it’s just little ones – normal ones – like cobras and adders. And I know a few French spells from one of the boys from Beauxbatons.”
Excited now, Lavender leaned over the back of the couch. “Anthony Goldstein comes from a family of wizards that go all the way back to the Essene scholars, I bet he knows some stuff in Hebrew. Vane’s always going on that her family are genuine Rom – those are gypsies – and Ernie’s family was so deep in the Clan wars that they didn’t start going to Hogwarts until a hundred and fifty years ago, so maybe he has something like Finnigan, old Gaelic magic.”
“His’d be Erse , not Gaelic. We’re not the same, and we whipped Scotland at Quidditch last year.” Seamus pointed out defensively.
Neville and Ginny stared at one another, startled by this sudden burst of exotic spell knowledge that had broken out, and then Ginny giggled. “I don’t know about you, Neville, but I feel rather plain all of a sudden.”
He couldn’t help grinning back. “Yeah. I mean, my family’s just been, you know, wizards. Normal old British wizards. Tut tut, conjure you a cuppa?” He put down the bowl and waved his wand, summoning an empty teacup from across the room and lifting it to her in an extravagant motion, pinky broadly outstretched.
DAYD and Diversity
HEY J.K.R-DOGGS IMMA LET YOU FINISH BUT I GOT SOME REAL PROBLEMS WITH YOUR RACIAL ALLEGORIES
impossiblebreakfast:
I’m just going to open here with a simple fact:
I love Harry Potter.
And I know you’re thinking yeah, well, I found this post so I pretty obviously —
No.
Stop.
I love Harry Potter. I found Harry Potter as a clinically depressed mixed-race seven-year-old, and it changed me. I couldn’t tell you what my life was like prior to that day at BJ’s Wholesale Club (please hold your dick jokes until the end of the lecture) when my mother finally bullied my tiny little hipster ass into picking up that one wizard thing that everyone was talking about, not even if I wanted to tell you, because it’s there even in memories it can’t be. Wasn’t I reading it just before that one seizure I had when I was three? Wasn’t I playing Dueling Club with my brother that one time right after I turned five and my mother caught us sneaking around on the roof? I’m pretty sure I had at least one barbie named after Angelina Johnson…
Read More
Hey, I just read your essay about racism in Harry Potter, and I’m going to admit right now that yes, I’m white, so no, I don’t get it. Not the way you do, and I’m lucky for that. I was also not a big Harry Potter fan. I read them for the first time as an adult, and a lot of things squicked me very badly about it; one of the biggest of which was the magic-centric assimilation and the vanishing/tokenizing of individuality. No one had a heritage, a religion, anything but occasionally an accent. The Muggle world was erased, creepily, even for those who grew up there. What’s the function of a rubber duck? *shivers*
Anyway, I’m writing you because I wanted to offer you something. For me, it started as a dare, but it’s become a major labor of love for the last four and a half years. I re-wrote Deathly Hallows from Neville’s perspective back at Hogwarts, and it’s exploded into a subfandom, three novels, 100+ one-shots, and 400+ pieces of art. It’s called the Daydverse (named after “DAYD”, the short form of the first novel, “Dumbledore’s Army and the Year of Darkness.”
Yes, it is still primarily about white people, that’s regrettably the playing field she gave us. But in getting to add and expand as much as I have, there has become a hell of a lot more diversity and room for not only PoC to exist, but to be seen and loved and explored and embraced as fully-fledged characters without whom the ‘verse would be so much shallower…and the Muggle-borns get to keep their culture, too, as the Creevey brothers in particular would happily attest. And yes, most of it’s in the expanded 'verse, not as much DAYD itself, but that’s because DAYD is about a 17 year old sheltered white cis straight boy kind of getting fist-fucked by life into adulthood, and there is a learning curve. And no, it’s not perfect, but if straight white boys think they have to be perfect or only write their own, we get…well, this mess. And I’m always willing to listen.
Go to my Deviantart (thanfiction dot deviantart dot comm) and peruse the Daydverse folder. Go to my Tumblr and peruse that. Check out the first novel and maybe the 'verse, and maybe, I hope, I can offer you a little bit of the magic back, even if it’s in a more adult world with a little less sparkly ponies. Not to play Great White Savior, to “earn cookies”, or to pretend that what I write is “post-racism” or beyond critique. Just because I’ve gotten letters from all kinds of PoC, people of size, people of faith, people of differing sexuality, etc. who have said that it mattered to them.
Again, it’s not a “perfected” Harry Potter, or, God forbid, a “Harry Potter For Politically Correct People”. It’s just something loosely based off of Harry Potter that at least makes a fucking attempt. And sometimes, when you’ve gone vegan because of the horrors of animal abuse in the meat industry, even a tofu dog might have its place.
Thanks for your time
(I’ve thrown in an excerpt from Chapter 1 of DAYD below)
***
Ginny scowled up at him from where she had been using her wand on the sprained ankle. “You’re not suggesting that we should just roll over?”
“Or that we let ourselves be punching bags in the style of the brilliant Mr. Finnigan, I hope,” added Lavender.
“I don’t know what I’m suggesting,” Neville admitted. Then he looked at Seamus again, a thought occurring to him. “I’ve wanted to ask you, what was that hex you used on Carrow? I didn’t recognize it. Is it something Harry taught you personally?”
Seamus blushed, adding an overall pink tinge to his multi-colored features. “Nah, it’s not even approved. I shouldn'ta done it.”
Colin’s eyes widened. “It’s like an Unforgivable, then?”
“Not even!” Seamus started to shake his head, then thought better of it and closed his eyes, moaning softly before he spoke again. “It’s one of the old ones from my Nana – Gaelic. All the Ministry-approved spells are off of nice, proper, respectable Latin, you know, but the Celts had their own brand of magic, even if it got pushed off as all backward. It’s mostly died out now, but some of the old ones still remember a bit here and there, mostly hexes and jinxes and the odd witch’s charm, you know, for tellin’ what kind of baby you’ll be having and the like.”
Parvati looked suddenly fascinated, sitting up very straight and tossing back her heavy black braid. “My grandfather was a Fakir in Bombay, he used to tell us that there was all kinds of magic we would never learn at Hogwarts – he tried to have us sent to India to learn – but when our parents refused, he taught us a few spells. Padma can even control snakes.”
Ginny gasped. “She’s learned Parseltongue?”
“No, she can’t talk to them, only make them do what she wants.”
“Great!” Seamus grinned. “Tell her to make that big one You-Know-Who’s got eat him.”
Parvati gave him a look of exasperation. “That’d be nice, but it’s just little ones – normal ones – like cobras and adders. And I know a few French spells from one of the boys from Beauxbatons.”
Excited now, Lavender leaned over the back of the couch. “Anthony Goldstein comes from a family of wizards that go all the way back to the Essene scholars, I bet he knows some stuff in Hebrew. Vane’s always going on that her family are genuine Rom – those are gypsies – and Ernie’s family was so deep in the Clan wars that they didn’t start going to Hogwarts until a hundred and fifty years ago, so maybe he has something like Finnigan, old Gaelic magic.”
“His’d be Erse , not Gaelic. We’re not the same, and we whipped Scotland at Quidditch last year.” Seamus pointed out defensively.
Neville and Ginny stared at one another, startled by this sudden burst of exotic spell knowledge that had broken out, and then Ginny giggled. “I don’t know about you, Neville, but I feel rather plain all of a sudden.”
He couldn’t help grinning back. “Yeah. I mean, my family’s just been, you know, wizards. Normal old British wizards. Tut tut, conjure you a cuppa?” He put down the bowl and waved his wand, summoning an empty teacup from across the room and lifting it to her in an extravagant motion, pinky broadly outstretched.
http://www.fanfiction.net/s/4315906/1/Dumbledores-Army-and-the-Year-of-Darkness