HONESTLY!!! so sad when you think what kind of an impact a globally-acclaimed author like herself could have made for progress in inclusion... such a missed opportunity
Love that I found you in my recommended videos for the Onceler video and your Supernatural season rot video literally today AFTER having this exact conversation of how JKR really sucks as a person and how I'm choosing to do the same thing I do as a fan of HPL's Cthulu mythos and "Eldrich Horror" while fucking loathing HPL and his shitty personality.
Ok, hear me out now. Fan fic where Bellatrix Lestrange decides to write a book about a trans sorting hat that dresses as a bonnet to commit murders due to family issues. But Bellatrix assures everyone that she wants hats to love whomever they want to. And she's not transphobic, she just bought that badge saying "Fuck your pronouns" because she thought it was neat.
"The fans already know he's gay, it would be redundant to bring it up in fantastic beasts" "The fans already know Harry's a wizard so no more magic, that would be redundant"
Yeah she just said that because the fantastic beasts director didn't want Dumbledore to be gay and she had no way to explain why her "gay" character is straight in the movie
JK Rowling: "White skin was never specified!" Also JK Rowling: "Hermione's white face poked out from behind a tree" Also also JK Rowling: consistently draws her as a white character Also also also JK Rowling: has her illustrated as white on all her books and on Pottermore Also also also also JK Rowling: has a large part in casting a white actress to play her And then there's her often blushing bright pink or red, being described as "a panda" when she has a black eye, specifying that she looked "very brown" after getting a tan on holiday, which wouldn't have been remarked upon if she was naturally brown or black, AND she said Hermione was based on herself when she was younger. This has nothing to do with being leftist or right wing, it has everything to do with her totally bullshitting her way through this stuff to try and paint herself as this woke, progressive author that she just isn't.
She said that to allow people to imagine Hermione their own way, a pov or a whatever skin colour. People making these kind of arguments look retarted to me..
@@ipercalisse579 Oh, people can imagine her however they want, I totally agree. I don't have a problem with Hermione being protrayed as black. Or Harry as Indian, as has become popular recently. Like I said above, my problem is with Joanne retconning the story to try and make it seem like she was this super inclusive author the entire time. Why, Dumbledore was gay and Hermione's whiteness was never specified! Except that Dumbledore was never protrayed that way, and Hermione's skin colour was specified and then doubled down upon with every creative decision JK ever made. It's like she wants the Good Boy Points of having been inclusive without putting any of the work in. A simple, "I am totally on board with Hermione being reimagined as black!" would have been cool, it's the claim that "oh, that was actually the case the entire time!" that grinds my gears.
Not that I disagree that Hermonie was supposed to be white. However, some black people can blush red or pink. Some of us also get "brown" when tanning. It depends on what your natural complexion is.
@@viviannovelo6166 got any source for that? only thing I heard was that she supports a british researcher who was fired last year for saying biological sex (as in the XX or XY chromosomes) can't be changed and ultra progressives went ballistic. I dislike rowling for a couple of reasons, yet transphobia isn't among them. unless there's another incident I don't know off or you can explain why the existence of biological sex is transphobic in the first place.
@Samriddhi Soperna Yes except the whole "men masquerading as trans women to invade women's spaces" thing is, in fact, a transphobic stereotype and informs legislature that actively harms all trans people. Even ignoring the fact that that's BS of the highest degree, what exactly makes a trans woman a trans woman and not a predator pretending to be trans is never clearly stated. Is it a diagnosis from a mental health professional? Because while most trans people do pursue a formal diagnosis in order to start medically transitioning, many either don't have plans to medically transition or can't afford to see a professional. Is it how they look or dress? That's just gatekeeping. So either JKR is misinformed and won't back down and process new information or is actively buying into harmful stereotypes. Either way, "She said men masquerading as trans women are the issue." is not a defense, it's a further indictment of her opinions.
@Samriddhi Soperna That's not a real issue. It's like saying you're not an anti-Semite, it's just the people who secretly run all the worlds banks and media that are the issue.
@Samriddhi Soperna only if you ignore her essay called terf wars(some attempt to be tongue in cheek?) You know where she directly equates allowing trans people would result in them attacking people. Because yes someone whos out to attack someone is totally going to be held back by a sign
What Rowling could have said: "Overall, I did a really shoddy job of including diverse and canonical representations of people of color in Harry Potter. I tried to create a world where anyone could be anything, and I inadvertently excluded some people from that world. Although that wasn't the intent of my actions, I cannot ignore that it was the result. Going forward I will do better, and looking back I will consider my work with fresh eyes. Anyone can be Hermione." What Rowling actually said: "I nEVeR SAid sHe waSN't blACK"
honestly, that would have been the best way to say it, it's clear, informative and shows Rowling is understanding and willing to grow the only problem is it doesn't fit in a tweet...which we all know she's awesome at
There was never any need to clear anything up in the first place, most characters in HP are Caucasian, so what? Most people in Britain are Caucasian, where's the controversy again? The books didn't take place in Nigeria or something.
@@madmusic341 the problem that is the only east asian character's name is cho chang (cho isn't even a name btw), the main irish character's primary character trait is making things blow up, the main black character doesn't know his blood status because his dad left when he was a baby, the bank is run by greedy, sneaky, hooknosed goblins, etc oh also she's a terf
I think that that was more because there was no description of her before she became a prominent character, so the movie people casted her, then when she became more important, she was given a description, and they had to change her actor to match.
@@adiveler Well, actually she's already gotten herself involved in this conflict since she's making those types of comments, except she's on the side that's commiting genocide lol.
Rowling: Wizards used to crap wherever and magic it away. Fans: Absolutely not. That is not canon. A bunch of college kids who spent most of their musical budget on a giant candy bar: Hufflepuffs are particularly good finders. Fans: Yes. Accepted as canon.
They actually didn't buy the candy bar if I remember correctly. In one of their livestreams I think they said somebody gave it to one of their parents but they didn't want it so they gave it to the starkid, who also didn't want it, so they used it as a prop.
@@fortunatecookie probably spanish speakers as myself, since seeker in Spanish is "buscador" that can be translated back as "finder"... It's just my guess.
31:31 the "Snape projected his hatred and jealousy of James onto Harry" tweet as a defense of Snape is wild. Why yes, projecting your hatred and jealousy of a classmate you didn't like 20 years ago onto his 11-year-old son DOES make you a bad guy!
right? like in what universe is hating a child bc u wanted his mom back in high school and she married a different dude and had him instead a sympathetic motivation? like, even if u just hate the kid bc hes a snotnosed little smartmouth that at least has smth to do with him as opposed to resenting and bullying him for old drama he wasnt even alive for
I never understood how people saw a grown man talking out his hatred of a man who had bullied him as a teenager on a literal eleven-year-old boy as somehow being okay. And even then, what about literally every other child in Hogwarts? What did THEY do wrong for Snape to be awful to them? What did Neville do wrong? Snape was an immature, selfish man-child and was never actually a good man, he just didn't let the child of the woman he had been hung up on for years even after she wanted nothing to do with him, had a husband and DIED a decade ago, get murdered by evil that adults (including Snape) should've protected him from because HE WAS A CHILD.
She could've talked about Dumbledore's sexuality in the books, easily. Rita Skeeter literally writes a book about his secrets, including the possibility of him having accidentally killed his own sister, but nothing about a torrid romance with magical Hitler?
J.K. Rowling embodies what I like to call "Suicide of the Author", when an author shows so little respect for their own work that they effectively torpedo any credibility their Authorial Intent would have.
"J.K. Rowling embodies what I like to call "Suicide of the Author"," Love it! I think authorial intent should be the default interpretation unless there is solid reason not to trust this interpretation.
@@EinFelsbrocken Guy has so little faith in his own stories that he sells the rights for a one-time payout then gets butthurt when people who _do_ care turn it into a critically acclaimed billion dollar franchise!
I actually find it really disturbing that so many people are so receptive to this comment on this channel in particular. You know, not too long ago, for some reason TH-cam's algorithm recommended to me a video of a little white girl who was asked by a cashier why she wanted a black doll. Evidently the news made a big deal out of it because it went viral on social media. I must admit, on premise I was skeptical that it even happened, but after reading this I'm not sure why I was.
@@futurestoryteller The black Hermione issue is not that black actress is playing her in the Cursed Child or literally anywhere in any iteration of the story. It should probably be taken as the norm and I would be trilled if it does. The problem is her claiming it's been true in the books when there were literally descriptions of her pale or white face in the text and not in the context of shock or fear. That's giving a rich white woman an honor she doesn't deserve by going along with her supposition that "she never specified Hermione's race" and she always meant to be a minority, it wasn't hard to actually do the right thing but she didn't and wants credit for it.
@@HotaruRea I've had this conversation too many times. I'm not going to sit here and pretend to be swayed by Rowling's late stage assertions, but I'm not going to pretend to be psychic either. Skin color is just not the determinative factor of race in the west. Most of the black women I worked with were as white as I am.
When you Google this you instantly get a website that insists definitive proof of Hermione, an entirely fictional character's, race because of how they _perceive_ Rowling's initial drawing of her.... Stating that the description of Hermione as "very brown" in context suggests she got a tan over summer. So let's back up here. Her racial background is not discussed, her skin color is described as both pale, and brown, at different points, and she has wild frizzy hair. Has it ever occured to *_anyone_* that Hermione is mixed race? Biracial. "Black" _because_ she's mixed. I can't imagine how mixed-race heritage relates in any way to Hermione's character, can you? That's a real headscratcher...
Hey, remember that time Pottermore stated that Wizards used to defecate anywhere they wanted and they would use magic to make their crap magically disappear?
Sarah Z Ahhh, me too. I think it’s best if JK Rowling just stops messing with the HP storyline and cuts ties with it. If it’s not broken, don’t fix it you know?
Yesss. And I actually do think someone (weren't other people writing with JK? So it didn't have to be her) watched musicals and thought hmm there's is something about this
I feel like if JK Rowling really cared about making sure that certain aspects were canon she could just write additional short stories. The Dumbledore is gay thing is the easiest example because Dumbledore is one of the most interesting characters because of his past. All she has to do is write and publish a short story from Dumbledore's perspective about Grindlewald. That could be very interesting, confirm Dumbledore's status as gay, and serve as promotion for the Fantastic Beasts movies.
I always really enjoyed the little commentaries that Dumbledore gave to the stories of the Tales of Beedle the Bard charity book, and it would have been really cool to see a full book with his voice, perhaps also rationalising his sometimes questionable choices from his perspective. But especially yes, also just canonise the fact that he was gay and make it more human and expanded and dynamic, instead of this one-note external add-on which, when given without explicit context in the books, really doesn’t add anything to his character except to make some iffy (and kinda homophobic) insinuations about his relationship with Grindelwald.
It's a shame reading hopeful comments after the release of the last movie lol. She's flushed this series down the terf hole and refuses to acknowledge criticisms of her obviously token characters.
If Rowling wanted Snape to be viewed as a flawed hero, she should have been more careful to write him that way. I agree that Snape’s behavior towards Harry and Neville is an abuse of power, and straight up paints him as a morally bankrupt human being.
Not just harry and neville. He was horrible to herimone too. When draco gIves herimone huge beaver buck teeth. Snape coldly says I see no difference. I hate snape and don't see him as a flawed hero that Rowling wants people to see him as
also the only reason he joined the order was bc Lily died and he was sad bc the girl he called a mudblood died. and I do agree with people on the point that if Neville were the ‘chosen one’ he would still be a death eater. his only motivation was a one-sided high school crush on a girl that he was horrible to. but he is ‘flawed and actually a good guy’ also the fact that a boggart’s purpose is to show somebody’s greatest fear (spiders, voldemort, Sirius, snakes, dead loved ones, etcetera) and Neville sees Snape is just so messed up. ;like sure, we’ve all had bad teachers, but are they our worst fears (and in a world where Voldemort has killed, and from a boy who’s parents were so tortured by Bellatrix Lestrange that they went mad) in the entire world? ;and he was so rude to everyone in their first year. ;we’re talking about literal children. ;he was horrible to everyone, and jk wants us to view him in a positive light. (I didn’t have time to proof read this, so sorry in advance lol) by the way, I love your points about abuse of power, which isn’t commonly brought up in snape arguments, at least from what I’ve seen. EDIT: i hadn’t finished the video when I wrote this, so please forgive me for any repeated points. ::))) thanks :)
Yep. Rowling clearly didn't think any of this through: Why is it even good spying for the double agent to behave so openly bigoted?! Isn't his narrative that he's fooling Dumbledore by pretending to be good? If I were Voldemort I'd have a lot of questions about Snape's openly hateful behaviour: "Why the fuck does Dumbledore trust you, like, at all?!" There's also the flawed narrative of the "poor" Snape being horrendously bullied for no reason by the Marauders, which doesn't work entirely: We are - for some reason - supposed to forget that Snape (enthusiastically) joined the Death Eaters, who's main platform was killing or enslaving Muggleborns like Snape's supposedly best friend Lily. There's also the assault of Mary McDonald by Mulciber (who specialized in the imperius, I shudder to think what he did to her), which Snape thinks was "a laugh". As my final point there's the labeling of Snape's possessive obsession with Lily as some kind of wonderful portrayal of love, which is just, no! Try to think of a person that you truly and deeply love or care for. Now imagine they had a child, who was loved by them deeply, but is now an orphan. How would you treat that child?! Would you spit on the memory&wishes of the person you care for and treat their child poorly just because the kid reminds you of their long dead husband? "I didn't get the girl, therefore I will mistreat her progeny!" It's just such a wonderful love that Snape has for Lily, amazing!
Snape was an asshole it's true but that was known. Even when James was making fun of him as a child when Lily tries to help he calls her a mudblood. He has irrational anger and it's because of being made fun of his whole life. Snape isn't just an asshole though if you think about it. Even though he hated James he honored the fact that James saved his life once. Even though Lily hated him he cared about her enough to give his whole life to Dumbledore to be a spy for him against Voldemort. Being a major part of how Voldemort ended up gone by giving Harry the information to end it all. He is severely flawed but a hero nonetheless.
Actually that brings up an interesting question. Did Hogwarts always have flush toilets and a modern sewer system or was it renovated; and if it was renovated how did they not find the massive secret snake pit under the bathroom sinks?
@@admiralgaius9796 The book implies that the plumbing and secret cavern were there since the initial build. Salazar most likely would have had to fight the other three tooth and nail to incorporate a muggle-style plumbing system. The others were all for taking dumps on the floor and making it disappear.
rewatching this after sarah released her jk rowling transphobia video, and i just want to add...in her manifesto (gOD) jkr complains about and compares trans women to incels. meanwhile she's been defending snape for literal years, her own incel creation. so.
honestly!!! the idea that even one person not only retained a story i created, but also thought of it when theyre not reading? and gained some meaningful attachment to someone i created? and then used their freetime to explore a story that i created in their own unique way bc they care about it? that shit is extremely flattering.
Absolutely. I used to write fanfiction, and the greatest moment I experienced in five years of doing it was when someone decided to make a fan illustration of something I'd written. I couldn't get over how incredible it was that someone liked my plot and versions of characters enough to make something based on those instead of the source material. If I had originally created those characters and that world, I wouldn't have been able to get the stupid grin off my face for weeks.
My sole ambition in life is to get a piece of fanfiction written about my characters one day. Even if it's terrible. Just the idea that people are invested enough to create something based on what I made is mind blowing. I don't get how anyone can think it's an insult
J.K. Rowling tweet - "White skin was never specified." J.K. Rowling book - "Hermione’s white face was sticking out from behind a tree." J.K. Rowling interview answer - "But, yeah, Hermione is a caricature of what I was when I was 11..."
I'm not saying that JK's intention wasn't for Hermione to be white (she doesn't have a problem specifying Angelina Johnson's skin colour several times over), but the whole "Hermione's white face" thing doesn't prove much because earlier in the same book (Prisoner of Azkaban) she also writes that Hermione's face looks "very brown". If people want to interpret Hermione as a person of colour they aren't going explicitly against the original text.
She backtracked and caved to PC culture and sjws. Either she thought there was no harm in it or she was afraid to be thrown under the bus in the media as a racist excetera excetera for not having certain groups represented in her books. So the answer is ,well yes, technically the author should be the final Authority. However if the author's words ,intent and content constantly very ,it's open season on interpretation. All you have to do is look at JK Rowling's very own concept art to know original intent for each character. Hermione included.
Reading the books, I always imagined Hermione as mixed race. Her struggles with her bushy hair were what made me think this way. Even after Emma Watson was cast, I still read Hermione as black or mixed black with something else. I was not offended by the black Hermione. But maybe, we all like to see ourselves in stories, and I saw my blackness in her just as many white kids are offended to discover that the character they relate to might not be as relateable as they originally imagined.
One problem I have with this is the “history of fanfiction” bit, which overlooks the fact that for thousands of years, nearly all writing was fanfiction of historical or mythological characters.
@@LoveK1 Uh. All real bro and if you see, everything to the t has come true. I wouldn't bash such a historical document that can be explored for ages upon ages and with proper linguistic knowledge and language skills you van unlock more of its secrets. Bagvaghita. Read it.
Makkaru112 wow, someone's butt hurt. Also, Armageddon is in the bible, that hasn't happened yet as far as I'm aware. I'm not a biblical historian so I'm not going to debate about everything else but I don't think literally everything in the bible is true, for example most Christians I've talked about it to seem to see Noah's Ark as a metaphor, not something that literally happened.
@@Makkaru112 That still doesn't discourage the image of the bible being able to be classified as a fanfiction since it was his 'fans' that wrote it down with biased views and all and not an unbiased third party. www.vice.com/en_us/article/8gvpj5/the-bible-is-nothing-but-jesus-fan-fiction study.com/academy/lesson/the-bible-as-a-historical-document.html#:~:text=We%20can%20classify%20most%20of,important%20to%20their%20religious%20beliefs.
When I was in high school, I was psychologically bullied by my vice principal. When I worked at a different high school ten years later, he was praised at a teen mental health seminar for “getting it.” I had to leave the seminar early due to a massive panic attack. But anyway, yeah, Snape was fine. NO COMPLAINTS FROM ME!!
I just want to say that I can relate hard to this. In 4th grade I had a teacher who completely mentally destroyed me. Yet, somehow, she won teacher of the year when I was in 5th grade.
I relate... too much. I don't give a damn about teacher motivations and their "traumatic backstories". The teachers that bullied me in school damaged me and they probably shouldn't have been working with children. Snape's redemption arc? I bought into it for the first few years because I was still a child and internalising much of my experiences. As an adult that is significantly more mature, Snape's redemption arc is a joke. His wangst story line is just that. Wangst of the author.
It’s crazy how when you’re a kid you don’t realize how wrong it is because you’re taught to trust the grownups. Looking back, I can’t imagine treating a child the way I was treated, but I never said anything because I thought it was my fault. We need to start teaching kids that their feelings are valid, and that grownups are flawed human beings who don’t know everything.
JK Rowling: Every young wizard has to be assigned to a certain particular house. You can choose your own house but you have to be really brave to do it Also JK Rowling : IDK I'm not sure about these trans people
Hot take: the Harry Potter books were really objectively flawed, which is a shame because there was a whole lot of potential in the world that was made.
additionally - the books were super flawed and, while JK Rowling did create the world they operate in, the fan communities are responsible for sifting through those books and picking out the elements that are actually good/comforting/worth giving attention to - everyone is in love with what fans have brought from the series, not the series itself
I think "Harry Potter in 2020" said it best: The logic of the wizarding world is held together by duct tape that comes apart at the first bit of scrutiny.
If you draw a circle someone might interpret your circle to not be a perfect circle which obviously stands for the imperfections omnipresent in Human Creation and how the artist is trying to make a point on how humans ever strife for perfection but often dont succed or even noticed that they have in fact not reached it yet. Is it still a circle? A square? Or maybe just overanalyzed bs? I think both believes have their merits and can be nonsensical in certain situations.
@@realstonehead3436 That's a lot of words to say nothing. No offense. I know you're trying to sounds smart or make a witty remark, but honestly, less is more.
@Anon Ymous I am just saying that beeing only in one camp wont help and I wasnt trying to just "sound" smart. I just wanted to show how some interpretations can be bs in order to showcase that sometimes the authors intent should be listened to. Ps didnt expect anyone to read this anyway :P
You assume that I wouldn't want to watch a four-hour critique of J.K. Rowling and Harry Potter, but you would be wrong lmao. I would absolutely watch that.
Yeah. I can totally get why she wouldn’t want to make that (I can’t even imagine how un-fun that would be to make), but I can’t fathom how she thinks no one would want to see that.
Exactly. No decent person would be upset at you switching Hermione to be black, but instead you decided to retcon it and pretend you were actually super woke the whole time. It’s ridiculous
@@uhuh936 She could have easily avoided this issue by saying "while I didn't write Hermione as a black character, I welcome the decision the cast a black actress to play her" she might have even gotten some of those woke points she was desperately after
Gay representation in the 21st century: - Um, Gaston’s henchmen whose name literally translates to “the fool” is gay...but like, not too gay...he just has jokes about him and Gaston’s relationships that can be read as them being lovers...and I guess he dances with...a man...by accident...in one frame of the movie... YOU’RE WELCOME, LGBTQ COMMUNITY!!! - Dumbledore gay but, y’know, let’s never say it in the actual work...THIS IS THE REPRESENTATION YOU CRAVE!!!
On the subject of Hermione's portrayal as black in the cursed child: I always saw that as during the auditions Jenny Jules just stood out as a talented actor who was fit to play Hermione. Get representation points was probably a small part of it, but I never Jules' casting as nothing more than a way to seem progressive. If Rowling just tweeted out how Jules was the best fit for Hermione's character and her race isn't a reasonable criticism of the play, everything would be fine.
Especially since (A) we're all aware that theater is representational, not literal, and (B) we have Rowling's own drawings of Hermione, who is very clearly white. Like, it doesn't matter who's cast if they're good for the part, but to say "Oh, but I NeVeR sAiD sHe WaS wHiTe!" is just so... well... I feel the phrase "virtue signaling" is overused, and yet...
I think part of the problem stems from “default character settings,” where if an author doesn’t specify a character’s ethnicity, sexuality, or gender identity, many take that to mean the character is straight, white, and cisgender (and often male if sex/pronouns aren’t clear either). So, when an author does not specify these details, they should be completely up for debate by the fans. Fans asking the author afterwards, to me, reflects that the writing should have clarified those details IF they were integral enough to the character for the author to have a stance on it. I think it’s important for writers on the whole to start indicating details that they consider important to the character. If a character is straight, then don’t be silent about that detail and think readers will just assume this. “Default character settings” is already a problem in media; unspecified shouldn’t automatically mean traits mentioned above. Unspecified should be the realm where fan interpretation can flourish. Touching on Hobbs’ rant, “I want you to read it exactly as I wrote it,” that means a writer is thus responsible for writing in clearer details if they don’t want fans to interpret something differently.
you've hit the nail on the head. a big issue about never specifying is that a lot of people will default assume the above characteristics, even if the author never intended it that way
@@happywithdrawal - It’s part of a wider issue where the “default settings” are considered “normal,” while anything else is considered an anomaly. Obviously, this is a problem that needs to be addressed, and an important place to start is our entertainment and media. Have cishet, white, and/or male characters identified as often as trans, bi, Brown, and/or female characters, and unspecified as free reign. Readers need to unlearn “default settings,” but many writers are equally responsible for perpetuating the harm.
"Snape did a few good things, but as a whole, he's a weird incel dick, and the good things he did don't make up for like... child abuse." - Sarah Z, 2018. Best character summary for Snape that I have come across.
@Doctor Snake Eater I don’t think the character himself would argue against anything other than being an incel. People That piss on him have this notion that he thought himself to be some courageous, righteous person when all I got from the entirety of the character and the ending itself was Snape acknowledged himself as an irredeemable piece of shit. Some people that love him after the ending over glorify him sure, but the people that hate him have the mentality of “I’ve hated him for six books I’m not going to stop no matter what the seventh says or the author.” Hell, even for my case, Draco Malfoy can suck eggs for eternity. So even I’m not innocent in that regard.
@@KiSwordsman "People That piss on him have this notion that he thought himself to be some courageous, righteous person " I've never heard anyone say this. "Some people that love him after the ending over glorify him sure, but the people that hate him have the mentality of “I’ve hated him for six books I’m not going to stop no matter what the seventh says or the author.”" The seventh book and the author were never going to paint him in a light that made up for all the bullying he did, and his general dick-iness. Snape was a horrible person from the start of our introduction to him, throughout the books, and all the way to the end of the explanation of his back story. By the time it was all over, there was nothing that was good enough to excuse what he did. Side note: Draco Malfoy was a douche, but as we've seen (and unlike Snape) he became a better person - even though I dislike JKR, I am appreciative that she didn't just make him a clone of Snape. The Malfoys loved each other so much they defied Voldemort. Snape loved Lily, but not enough to defy Riddle... until he didn't get what he wanted from her. Different stories. Just saying.
@MK Rowe _“I’ve never heard Anyone say this.”_ Good for you. I have. _“The seventh book and the author were never going to paint him in a light that made up for all the bullying he did and his general dick-ness”_ Clearly, that’s not universally true. And this proves my point. The sixth (pity party) and seventh book for me would never make up for what a bigoted little piss-ant Draco was... And here we are... _“Snape was a horrible person...”_ And where does Snape excuse what he did? Where does he think he’s a good person? I’ll wait... _“Side note:”_ Draco Malfoy became a better person when things weren’t going so great in regard to the books. I really saw it as a way to garner sympathy for a kid in over his head. Hell the same can be said for the Malfoy’s as a whole. They were in with Tom until they realized it wasn’t all it was cracked up to be. So the notion that they loved each other so much that they defied him is funny because it wasn’t until Tom was full on crazy flakes that it became a thing. Snape loved lily and defied Tom the second that Tom target her by going to Dumbledore. Kind like how the Malfoy’s were behind Tom until Draco was in his sights. Different stories with similarities. Just saying. And really the person that deserves the most credit for that is Narcissa. After that where is it shown that Draco became a better person? A head nod to the gang at the train station 19 years later? I’ve never said Severus Snape was the best or even generally a good guy. However, he appeals to me because he doesn’t either. He knows where the fault for what happened lies, (himself) and didn’t do what he did to “make up,” for anything.
Jowling K Rowling: *rolls dice* Peeves was actually *throws dart at board* a metaphor for *spins game-show wheel* Rodney King and the 1992 LA riots the whole time definitely
That scene in the book horrified me, he was so needlessly cruel, how anyone can turn around, especially the author and say secretly he was a good guy all along and we have to feel sorry for him because he was bullied, like no, he was a bully himself, plain and simple.
Olivia Jones This is such a bizarre and reductive way to not only look at fictional characters, but real life humans as well. His past is not an excuse of his actions, but a rationalization of them. To casually write off and disregard what is one of the most complex and gray characters in the series all because “he was kinda mean that one time” is a weird way to approach fiction in my eyes. Snape isn’t a good person, that’s kind of part of it.
@@MrStarman926 I was just using that as an example, there are multiple times Snape was needlessly cruel in the book. I am not complaining at the character, I like interesting and complex characters, I can dislike a character in a book but know they are necessary for the story or the plot. My problem is rather fans of Snape and even Rowling at times who despite Snape's behaviour justify his actions, even blaming the other characters for not 'understanding him', for example the amount of hate James gets at times for 'bullying' Snape even with evidence he was doing the same (in fact both were in the wrong, but for some reason Snape is constantly excused). I am not disregarding a character because 'he is mean' I am disregarding others justifying his actions as right.
Olivia Jones Okay, then I misunderstood what you meant, I’m sorry. I definitely agree with you that wholly defending Snape for the reason of “he was good at the end” is a way too simple way of looking at the character and how they function in the story. I wrongly assumed you were just doing the exact opposite of the blind Snape fans.
She did specify Hermione's skin colour in a few places. Even if she didn't, Hermione was still clearly intended to be white as there are several side characters who have "black" as one of their identifying features. Why explicitly describe these characters' race but not the race of the female lead? Could it possibly have something to do with her being part of the prevalent race in UK? It's great that she supports an actress who gets attacked over an irrelevant feature, but claiming that Hermione didn't have skin colour is just disingenuous.
I have no investment in Hermione being white, but I feel that Rowling is being dishonest about always imagining her as black. Any time we get any indication about Hermione's skin color, it always seems to imply that she is a white girl. Plus, I mean, she's white on the book covers. Weird oversight there, Rowling. Prisoner of Azkaban, Chapter 21 “One moment, please, Macnair,’ came Dumbledore’s voice. ‘You need to sign, too.’ The footsteps stopped. Harry heaved on the rope. Buckbeak snapped his beak and walked a little faster. Hermione’s white face was sticking out from behind a tree. ‘Harry, hurry!’ she mouthed.
David Andersson Yup. 1.) all the black characters in HP are described as black, with the exception of Lee Jordan, who is described as having dreadlocks. 2.) JK Rowling specifically requested that Dean Thomas was cast as a black boy, as at that point none of the books had described him as black yet. Oddly enough, she did not insist on Hermione being cast as black. 3.) all illustrations for the books, including the ones depicting Hermione as white, were approved by Rowling. Emma Watson’s casting was approved by Rowling. She has had MANY MANY MANY opportunities to make sure Hermione was portrayed as black - in her own books, through her tight control on the movie casting and through the illustrations that she had to approve. She did not take any of those opportunities.
She did not envision the character as black. You are misunderstanding what Rowling said. She simply stated that she didn't have a problem with the choice of actress who was chosen to play Hermione in the Cursed Child, and those comments that were intended to counter widespread criticism at the time of a black actress being cast in the role. At no point did Rowling say that Hermione was black.
JK also had a hand in casting the actors for the films. If Hermione was truly intended to be a black girl she would've told them to cast a black actress considering she was able to get them to not cast any non-British actors.
@@rocketcon not true. Yes, it would've be great for her to say "I might have envisioned her as white but I support her being casted as black as well" but that's not what she did. Instead she explicitly claimed that she never specified it in her books which is a blatant lie and that deserves to be pointed out.
D'you hear about the one between Hogwarts Castle and the Giant Squid? It exists. Pretty well written, too if I remember correctly but not something I'll read more than once. And even that once was just to say I did...
@@wolfjackle I saw a Voldemort/Giant Squid once! I don't remember the content but I remember reading it just for the shear delight of it existing. I still laugh thinking about it.
wolfjackle YES! I remember that. I don't think anyone could forget that - like, it had to do with the squid having sex with one of the towers or something right? Along with Draco/Apple and those few Hermione/Peeves ones, though admittedly Hermione gets paired with EVERYONE. And I vaguely recall something about the Whomping Willow - was it with the flying car? HP smut fanfiction yo, lol.
remember how jk rowling said there was only one magic school in asia despite it being a massive continent and also it's literally called "magicplace" in japanese and the pottermore website has a horrible mispronounciation of it?
@@SorowFame I mean, it's the internet, so chances are that it already exists. I'd guess that if we are running the main 3 still, Hermione, as a muggle-born witch, would be the protagonist, works well since she is new into the magical world. Ron would be endgame, but early on she pines for others and potentially Draco at some point, though Lockart would still work well. Ginny might be more prominent as her proverbial lancer, given how opposite they are. Cho could be the required exchange student from China, as in cardcaptor sakura, who has more going on. I would guess Pansie Parkinson would have to serve as rival, can't think of any other female slytherin student. Either quidditch takes a back seat or a plot line has her either get into it or try to and end with her realizing she is strong in a different way, this arc could bring ginny into the fold as her quidditch foil. All the while they fight first hogwarts horrors, then voldemort henchmen and eventually a season finale cliffhanger where he comes back.
@@willowarkan2263 I was thinking more just set in the same world but those are some interesting ideas, one question though, what would Harry be? I don’t think you mentioned him. Or is he just not in it?
As a Harry Potter fan, I will always be grateful to Rowling for writing the original book series.... for what she actually WROTE. Not for the continuous and each time even more ridiculous statements that made me progressively lose respect for her as an author... Also, I hate to say it, but... can we please get a REAL screenwriter to save the next Fantastic Beasts movie?
She lost me right when she started making absurd comments like "Dumbledore is gay" and "Hermione is totally black". Like, no. First of all, you would have cast Hermione as black in the movies and -as a commenter for one of my posts said- you would have depicted her in the cover art as black. But guess what? She is white. Which pissed me off bc of how tokenized black Hermione is. Clearly, this was just made to cover Rowling's hide from upset SJW fans. And if Dumbledore was gay, SHOW DON'T TELL! Ughhhh...I want to facepalm so hard rn.
@@MrGrimjaw You clearly never understood any of her books, which were against the sort of racism you demonstrate in your post. Were you a wizard, you'd be screaming "mudblood" left and right.
"This video is a metaphor for the Cuban Missile Crisis." Alright, getting to work. The Harry Potter franchise represents the uneasy peace between the Soviet bloc and their communist allies and the United States and NATO. It's initial success represents the lessening of tensions, while its later failures represent the ever-deepening chances for global nuclear annihilation. JK Rowling represents general Communist leadership, with her positive effects representing the Soviet's major role in winning WWII, and her negative effects representing the turn to nationalism and paranoia against the West. JK Rowling's tweets symbolize the Soviets stationing nuclear weapons in Cuba, and fan outcry represents the US being pissed about that. As such, This video represents the peace talks that ultimately ended the crisis. Does that make Sarah Z JFK? Maybe.
But that doesn’t work. The Soviets moved nuclear missiles into Cuba as a defensive maneuver in response to the US aggressively moving missile into Turkey. If anything JK Rowling is the United States who following their success in WWII became arrogant and began making aggressively bad moves to preserve their own influence. Her tweets represent the countless coups the US Staged and the decision to escalate tensions between the US and the USSR by moving missiles into Turkey. And The Cursed Child represents how close the US and USSR came to global Nuclear War during the Cuban Missile Crisis.
@@blixer8384 you make a valuable point. My brain still associates Soviets = Villains despite me knowing its it's more complicated than that, so I assigned that role to her but you are actually accurate.
@@blixer8384 The US reaction also offended Canada, leading this country to continue its diplomatic relations with Cuba. I guess that this would represent Rowling trying to get closer to her fans by answering to their critics by not fixing her attitude in relation to their complaints.
Honestly, I believe that when a book/series is in the process of being written, it's the authors solely because they are not done with it. It's like raising a baby. When you get the idea, it's conception; when you're writing your drafts, it is then a newborn; when you go to a publisher for that first book, that's finding a school; when you raise that book series until it's an adult, that's it finding its place in the world while still being under the author's rules. As soon as that series is complete, then it goes off and stakes its own claim to the world without the author being a helicopter-parent...which is what J.K. Rowling became. Of course, the author may still defend the books as need be, but the book is on its own. Unless, of course, it's a couch potato and just will not go and get a job.
But even as your child grows up they interact with other people, learn lessons and make mistakes, do things you wouldn’t expect, etc. As soon as you let someone read your work, they come to it with their background and personality and now they have a new experience with your work. Even if you put the story down and come back to it later, you are a different person now and the “you” who was the author is gone. So the story is only the author’s because that is how we have chosen to write our copyright laws, but no art belongs entirely to one person.
@@songbanana8 Well…yeah, that's the book going to school. It's still my work as the author, since I'm still responsible for raising/writing it. But once it's done, and I'm not writing it anymore, it's off in the hands of fandom adulthood. That is a fair point with copywrite (…hehehe) laws though. I wasn't thinking it in that way, but yeah, by law, it's only the author's till the time is up. Also don't ask why I answered this so quick. It's quarantine and I have nothing to do. 😔
I was curious how Starkid got away with their Harry Potter musicals, but damn I'm glad they did. They did more for the lgbtq+ community then rowling ever could
I still love Harry Potter and I still admire J.K. Rowling. What she's done with her life. BUT I don't care about her shit she says about Harry Potter universe, so I don't look it up. I don't follow her on Twitter. I don't seek articles about it. I don't go to Pottermore. I keep the image of her story as it was delivered to me when I was 9. And you know what? I am so happy with that.
Yes, me, too. She's destroying her credibility. I just hate that she feels the need to recreate the characters to fit her agenda today, which is also evident in Fantastic Beasts.
I’ve just thought, after years of people demanding to know, “What happens next? What happened during?? What else do we not know about the characters???” it seems perfectly logical that she’d start dishing ridiculous stuff to throw people off. So when I see this disingenuous meme get kicked around... * * * * * * Nobody: * * * Absolutely Nobody: * * * JK Rowling: Dumbledore had a wild sex life! * * * ...I call BS. Have I validated this conjecture? Nope. For the sake of integrity, should I? Maybe, but that would go against abstaining from the JKR clickbait. In my corner of the communications profession, I do see the all the memes, as well as when something noteworthy happens. If Rowling spends an afternoon with children battling terminal illnesses, I’ll cave and read about it, because I’m a total sucker for wholesome news. Going down the rabbit hole of all the things that others have the bandwidth for (not to mention A/V talents that I lack)? I’m gonna just agree with everyone in this thread. I’m much happier keeping all that info at a stiff arm’s length.
By the way, she lied about Hermione's race... She drew pictures of the characters, and every time she drew hermione, she was clearly white (there were black characters in the same image).
Did she ever explicitly say that Hermione was intended to be black? The tweet included in this video was her saying she’s not bothered by black Hermione, which I think is a perfectly okay thing for her to say, but if she said she intended her to be black from the very beginning, then that has to be complete BS. I’m really curious, does anybody know?
@@monkiram No, she never said Hermione was black all along or that that was her intention. She just said that in the actual book, her race wasn't specified, so it was OK if the play cast her as a different race than the movie did. The closest the book got to describing her race was one passage where she was sitting outside and it said she was "very brown" and one passage where she got scared and she had a "white face", which are both obviously idioms in the same way "she turned green with envy" wouldn't mean she was legitimately green. I think it's obvious that Rowling intended Hermione to be Caucasian in the books, but since it was never explicitly stated, if the play was just going off of what was actually in the books and not off of Rowling's "intentions", it's perfectly fine.
@@SarahZ I think its in the books that it was mentioned that she had a pale skin. And the scene where she was stated to be "very brown" was after she visited Australia(I believe) with her parents in the summer. Now personally, I dont see a tan on my black friends, or when I go to the beach, I can see white girls have tanlines due to their straps not being perfectly still, but with a black girl, I dont see the straps leave tanlines(or they all tan topless, or somehow their straps stay perfectly still). So its pretty much certain that her skin, as described in the books, is at the very "best" light brown and at the "worst" neon white(which I personally viewed her, as she is a massive bookwurm the first 3 books and probably rarely went outside the library in her spare time). But obviously, for her character story over the harry potter books(not including the ending), her skintone was pretty much irrelevant. As her family in the wizarding world is pretty unimportant overal. Personally I take issue when a role gets changed in race out of nowhere. For example: in Hairspray, you have 2 options: the standard black people for the american version, or red haired irish people for a british version(or in the rarer cases: the local, historically discriminated minority), but Tracy needs to be the color of the local majority, no matter what. Now, I went to a local play where they thought the best person to portray Tracy, was a black girl, but her dad was white, and her mother, was white, and the host of the regular show was black. They still went for the "negroday" set up, which was utterly ridiculous, as the set up was that no black people were allowed on the show, yet Tracy was. You can see how the entire conflict now seems meaningless. She is black, and dances with a white group under a black host, then tries to mix white and black on tv because she feels that black people should be free to dance on tv whenever they want. Except that she achieved her goal by getting on the show herself in scene 3. My point must be extremely obvious by now, but that just shows that when skincolor matters for a story. Now, in Hermoine's case, she married ron, and she had children with red hair. I'd like to point out, that genetically seen, this is extremely hard. You would need at least 1 parent having the red haired gene to have it yourself. Red hair is far from being dominant. Black and asian people tend to not have that gene, which is why it normally tends to be linked with white people, as the gene has originated and spread heavily. Odds are about 10% at any given moment that a white person carries a gene for red hair. For black people, you would pretty much need a red haired carrying individual to be your (grand)parent, and then you'd have between 12-25% chance of having that gene yourself. Having 2 redhaired children points out that she has that gene. Being black in 2017 and having the recessive gene for red hair, is almost as rare as gold.
Let's be honest, Hermione is a white girl because, besides Rita Skeeter, she is the closest character to represent JK Rowling (in an idealised way) in the book. I know that here there would be a problematic Freudian interpretation, but, for starters, just take into account that Hermione has Rowling's favourite animal as a patronus. What do you expect from a person who willingly concealed her female name in order to not bias the readers' perception of her work?
Her view of British students was that of pale white people and occasional gingers. At least for main characters, that worked quite well. Even though I admit, Black Hermione would be interesting to see due to her sassiness.
Can we acknowledge the fact that the "candy from the trolley" lady I canonically an immortal demon who tries to murder students for sneaking off the train? Like, I know she didn't write that. But. It's there.
I’ve sort of suppressed all knowledge of that book. Everything outside of the first seven books (with the possible exception of the first Fantastic Beasts movie) is just so strange that it seems to make up its own separate canon.
I remember reading that scene and half-hoping/half-expecting it to be another of Harry's dreams. Why can't the old lady who gives treats just be a sweet old lady who gives kids treats? Why does she need to be a murderous demon who punishes students with death if they try to get off the train? How would Hogwarts even explain that to the parents of the dead child? "Oh, sorry Mr and Mrs Thompson. Bobby was feeling a little train-sick and wanted to get off the train, so our immortal demon killed her. Oopsie!" It definitely makes the wizarding world seem a lot less magical than it should be :/
I got to admit even if she didn't originally plan it making the lady on the train who was selling sweets into some sort of monster that catches child who try to escape the train was actually not that bad of an idea or at the very least it was not as bad as all of that SJWish stuff that J.K Rowling tried to insert after the fact.
The two things I can buy was intended from the start were Dumbledore being gay and Nagini always being intended as a human. For Dumbledore, well yeah, there are things the publishers doesn’t allow the writers to include, however the issue with that is that by the seventh book, she was one of the most influential writers in the world and had a lot more sway and freedom. So why not include mentions of Dumbledore’s and Grindelwald’s relationship in Rita’s book. Would’ve been perfect, to get some proper representation of a major gay character, throw some more dirt at Dumbledore (from Rita’s point of view) and humanise Dumbledore more. Not only did Dumbledore have his own Ron who Harry never knew about, not only was Dumbledore into the dark arts and controlling muggles, not only did Dumbledore have a brother and sister, he dated the most evil Wizard, second only to Voldemort. For the Nagini, well, she put a lot of meaning in names. Nagini seems to stem from Naga which are a sort of snake/human hybrids. So why not? Was just never relevant to include in the story. But yes, it’s a little bit ill advices when thinking through the implications. The rest... for fuck sake JK...
@@spirithawk6580 pottermore twitter published that wizards and witches didint use toilets at first but when they would GO they would just use a spell to remove it. It stated that they later started to use muggle ways to go to the toilet. Basically they grossed everybody out with non important facts.
JK Rowling always was a condescending hack writer, as far as I can tell. Her stories aren't that great to begin with, if you start analysing it, and her personality, from what you can read from her tweets and such, is insufferable.
legit don't understand why Rowling *hasn't* said this one though - so many fans took that interpretation from the books and would have supported a canonization... but nope, a white character was actually black, and Sirius is confirmed "not gay" 🙃
@@daisymay156 Reminds me of this comment I saw once where a Twilight fan said Sirius Black was a ripoff of Twilight's Jacob Black even though Sirius was created before Twilight was even a thing. The person commenting also thought that because Sirius's surname is Black that somehow meant he had to be black. Even though surnames don't determine races.
Disagree with you on the Hermoine is black observation Most people dislike this not purely because they are left (you deserve no credit due to lack of representation) or Right (cultural Marxism agenda) but because she is so disingenuous. You can tell by the fact that her primary book covers which featured Hermoine depicted her as caucasian, she approved Emma Watson to be the actress to portray Hermoine for the whole Harry Potter Movie Franchise and her original sketches, that she drew herself, depicted Hermoine as a white girl. JK obviously had an idea on what Hermoine looked like and now she's just back tracking in order to try and earn brownie points
JK Rowling herself even drew pictures of Hermione as white. So it's ridiculous for her to claim that Hermione was always supposed to be black, and anyone who interprets her as white is wrong. How hard is it for her to say something like "yep, Hermione was always intended to be white, but if you had a different interpretation while reading, then that's ok too." She doesn't need to pretend to be some diversity queen. It's embarrassing at this point.
To be fair the cursed child was garbage regardless of whether Hermione was white or black. It was still trash. I’m not saying that one can’t have an opinion, but the fact that people are so up in arms about it just seems rather silly compared to the other crap that was introduced in that play. I mean death eater Cedric? Really?
Benny James can y’all please remember they weren’t willing to risk little white girls not connecting to the only girl that gets as much screen time as the protagonist? They didn’t want to lose any potential fans so they went with a “”safe”” option. 🤔
I agree. It sounded terribly disingenuous. She could've said that hermione's race was irrelevant to the character, but no, she goes around saying she was ”woke” the whole time
J.K. Towards fans: “You can’t interpret characters other than how I wrote them!!!😡” J.K.: *changes writing to fit her own interpretation of characters after the characters have already been written about*
arabella-grace brown I think this person is referencing the fact that JK hates fanfiction about HP, even though she’s essentially writing fanfiction about her own series now
If JKR replied to Twitter questions with more "Maybe!" and "You decide!" Rather than man-handling interpretations of open ended subjects, maybe I would actually want to read the books and engage in the series rather than avoiding it for all these years. Also, screw that nasty transphobe, ick.
Or if she prefaced each statement with , “personally, I feel that . . .” There’s nothing wrong with having an opinion, as long as you recognize it as such.
And about the whole “Dumbledore wouldn’t have have told Harry about his sexuality, that would be out of character”-yeah, true, but one of the main plot threads in Deathly Hallows is Harry learning about Dumbledore’s past and coming to grips with the kind of man he really was )because a huge part of growing up is seeing the adults you looked up to as 3-dimensional for the first time) and it would have been /so easy/ to have either 1) his letters to Grindelwald be explicitly romantic 2) have Rita Skeeter write something like “he was totally crushing on Grindelwald therefor he was evil” which would have been very in character for Rita with her whole smear campaign or any number of things. It would’ve tied in with the point of seeing your role models as adults for the first time and becoming an adult yourself, been in character, and been better rep. Anywhoo great video, I know I’m late to the party but this is very nuanced and informative
I mean, Rita Skeeter does basically say "he was totally crushing on Grindelwald and therefore he was evil". She describes Grindlewald's duel with Dumbledore with: "People may be forced to conclude that Grindelwald simply conjured a white handkerchief from the end of his wand and came quietly!" ...and then later in the same chapter heavily insinuates that Dumbledore was sexually abusing Harry. It's super gross that the only real evidence of Dumbledore's sexuality comes from coded homophobia quoted from a character who's a transmisogynistic caricature but whatever we know Rowling was a homophobe
It's this weird WASP thing of equating homosexuality as overtly sexual; for example, telling a same-sex couple not to hold hands or engage in light PDA because their are children nearby, even if a heterosexual couple could engage in the same without issue. Grindelwald can't be Dumbledore's "great love" or boyfriend, because that'd be "too much to tell a child."
Speaking of Skeeter, that woman who fakes her way into getting what she wants and has metamorphose powers... is described as having a masculine figure and is probably a trans woman :)))))))))
On the topic of the changing relationship of the HP fanbase with JK, I remember when I first started reading fanfiction in 2012 (that was when I turned 11, so I did miss a lot of the earlier movement just due to youth), many of the stories had those huge disclaimers at the top, which have largely fallen to the wayside for those newer to the fanfiction community as fanfiction becomes more prevalent. In HP fanfiction disclaimers, there were frequent references to "Jo, our queen" or "My favorite person Jo", etc. This is no longer the case. The fanfiction authors who still write disclaimers very rarely acknowledge JK in any way at all, and if they do, it's frequently with the attitude of "You all know I didn't' write Harry Potter, if I did, it would be this fanfic, not what JK wrote". I do find this culture shift very funny, and I think when you transition between websites you can clearly see what I mean. I started reading fanfiction at the tail end of fanfiction.net's major popularity and status as THE fanfiction site. With the rise of AO3, you see a lot of new authors who've only been writing int he past 3 or so years, who don't use disclaimers, who call out authors who they don't agree with in long notes at the beginnings and ends of stories, and who frequently post completely original works under the guise of fanfiction (just using character names and nothing else) in order to cultivate a fanbase. Idk, cool shit and a funny shift in culture. P.S. I wrote some damn good fanfiction back in the day. Like, it was total cringe, but I was 11-13, and people definitely thought I was much older. Fanfiction and fan culture also helped me become so much more active online and has made me a lot more competent with technology than I ever might have been otherwise. not to mention, my general typing speed, skill, and writing speed and skill, have improved so much as a result. So to everyone in these communities, please remember to be welcoming to the dumbass twelve year-olds looking for a place to belong. By mocking kids on the internet for BEING kids on the internet, you're actually being pretty harmful to your own fandoms and subcultures. You need a second-generation, let these kids discover themselves and participate, for the longevity of fan culture in general.
@@iluvearth99 Nah, honestly didn't know of her before this video. ...but I might've just looked up Vampire Chronicles on AO3 and read a short fic just to be able to say that I have.
I have read fanfiction from Teen Wolf, Daredevil (the show), Merlin, Pacific Rim, Star Trek and have watched none of the original content (I will eventually get to some of them some day hopefully).
Arunima Tiwari I have seen five episodes of Daredevil and yet have read a few hundred fanfiction. Who needs canon when fanfic understands the characters better?
It would actually be reasonable to flip a coin to determine the gender of any character for which their sex is insignificant to the narrative, and I have considered whether or not I should do this many times.
In an interview she once said something like “nope, xy isn’t gay, Dumbledore is gay”. I can’t remember the exact phrasing, but she said it as if only Dumbledore could be gay. I’ll link the interview if I find it
@@plasticfrog4533 I remember watching an interview on youtube, she was with Radcliffe, I think? He asked about Dumbledore, and she said that she always thought Dumbledore was gay, but didn't feel it was something she needed to say, because it wasn't really necessary to the plot, or might have detracted from it. (People insert their own meaning where there is ambiguity in a work, many just thought Dumbledore and Grindlewald were friends, while others thought their relationship was, ahem, _deeper._) She also said that there was a line in the script for deathly hallows part two, in the "it looks like king's cross" scene, where Dumbledore reminisces about some woman who was his love interest. And she says she just sort of. . . wrote on the script "dumbledore is gay" and gave it to the writer, who took the line out. The more public announcement came later.
Irving IV I also saw that interview, If anyone reading this want‘s to watch it: th-cam.com/video/IprmyN9mEsk/w-d-xo.html I read the books before I found out that she had outed Dumbledore and to be honest, as a queer person, I tend to notice when someone is written as queer (not always tho), and I never noticed anything with Dumbledore. That’s why I was also a bit upset, because I thought she did it for publicly. I just hope she includes him „being gay“ (a lingering look into Grindelwalds eyes with swelling music or something like that would be good enough for me) in the new movies.
The Tolkien example doesn't work because it is actually ABOUT death of the author. He was fine with people having different interpretations of his work, he just had an issue with them putting that interpretation on him: hence why he prefered applicability to allegory, one being a choice the reader makes, the other being an unequivocal and undeniable statement about the author's intent. Tolkien was fine with you saying it was about war, he just wasn't fine with you saying that's what he was saying. And as the difference is between readers claiming they know what the author wrote and what he meant to write, and Tolkien was encouraging the former, I don't think it's fair to say the reader can impose their own interpretation on him.
I believe that, fundamentally, the author decides the meaning of the story and what is canon...at the time of writing it. Which is to say, while JK Rowling is free to write the story in whatever way she wants and attach intent to this, that does not mean we have to believe her when she tries to retcon the story and act like it was this way all along.
But what about Professor Mcgonagall having a different birth date in the year than in the new Fantastic Beasts? I agree that she is free to say something was that way all along and that as the audience we don't have to believe that, like Dumbledor having a new brother that never came up when we learnt about his family history but the Mcgonagall matter is a mistake and, from what I've heard, J K Rowling has tried to hide this by removing Mcgonagall's birthday from Pottermore since the film came out.
@@kerrie6084 I agree with you. That was indeed a mistake, but it happens with many authors, I suppose. G.R.R.Martin talked in an event about how he changed the sex of a horse in the middle of a chapter. It was a silly mistake, far less important that McGonagall's birth date, but it represents how hard it can be for a writer to keep track of every single aspect of his narrative. It was a mistake, but I still admire her very much. What she did with the Harry Potter series changed forever the history of fantasy literature. I belive she deserves some slack. ^ ^"
@@romaosoares5195 I agree mistakes can happen, I guess it's just that from J K Rowling intricate plots and the fact that the information was online makes it worse because she's known for doing the opposite of simple mistakes :)
@@romaosoares5195 According to rumor, the "Game of Thrones" book series has become so complicated that GRRM himself is hopelessly confused, and he can no longer finish writing a single page without consulting with a small cadre of hardcore fans who have an encyclopedic knowledge of GoT. That old fat fuck will die before he ever finishes the series.
Rowling’s first mistake was confirming The Cursed Child as canon. Her second mistake was thinking she was a screen writer. Too much creative control without oversight and respect for the previous Potter films. Example, George Lucas and his Star Wars prequels, though I like them, they could have been better.
Nah the problem with Lucas was that he had an entirely different world in his mind than his technology and base allowed. he should have just booted a new franchise (possibly within the same universe) and it would have been a lot better. the only reason he gets so much hate is because his worlds don't match anymore, that's the big problem there.
Liam - True to a degree, however a key component missing on the prequels was the brilliant editing team that cut the first trilogy into classic movies we all loved. Marcia Lucas, George’s first Wife was part of the editing teams credited and uncredited. She and her partners won an Oscar for best editing on A New Hope, she was also nominated for an Oscar in editing for American Graffiti also by George Lucas. George didn’t have such a talented team for the prequels editing the movies into films just YES MEN. That’s what I meant by no oversight.
Well... but that's my point... to a degree. the prequels got mostly unedited Lucas doing exactly what he wanted. But the fans don't realize that, they think the original trilogy was also Lucas just doing what he wanted. I can imagine if he actually made the prequels shortly after the sequels things would have turned out far different... but not closer to what he wanted. You see this with the new movies where they just revive tropes from the original trilogy instead of expanding on the world Lucas was intending to build, that's what makes them feel empty. Given the resources Lucas wanted to build a far bigger world in which he would essentially tell a story of a fantasy space jesus heavily influenced by asian culture. Lucas too is a far better world builder than he is a writer of stories. if you just block out the original trilogy and the new movies but you keep the licensed old canon books and series like the clone wars you will see that the intent suddenly is to go in a totally different direction. but because of the original movies he was always going to write himself into a corner. There's several writers that suffer from this when they do their foreshadowing wrong or when they try to do a prequel. Actually even within the starwars universe : Starwars Rogue One was actually a good movie at it's core... but not at it's ending. it had an interesting setup, it had the retro feel but also expanded the world.. the only problem is every character introduced in Rogue One had to be eliminated by the end of the movie because they don't exist in the actual original movies. This then is easily compared to the problems Rowling has, because she too has set up a world in a very specific manner with very specific rules that she originally used to build that world, the changes she's now making outside of her written words don't work because they don't connect anymore.
Liam - I agree with what you stated. However from my view, to make sense of your vision, one takes advantage of good people in their field while translating your vision to film. You need the right mix to produce a successful film while maintaining creative control. George had a vision with his prequels, however I think he wore too many hats in making them. He still could have made them better if he didn’t try to do it all himself. That’s what Rowling is doing now. She’s a great writer but is she a great screen play writer? In film making getting the right pieces to help fashion your vision without sacrificing too much of what you want, makes a great film. I think both bit off more than they could chew thinning the line between good and mediocre.
Ultimate Softie That would be a bad idea. If you should write another book in the series and it resembled one of the fan fics - even in the slightest - you could be sued for plagiarism. It’s tough enough with easy internet access, but inviting it into your home would be disastrous.
Some well known screenwriters and directors have assistants screen their email for them, because even if they accidentally read an idea sent in by a fan, and later a similar idea was shown in their movie or TV show, they could be sued. There have been cases in which the director or screenwriter had the idea first, and then it was suggested by a fan, so then they couldn't use the idea.
I can't believe you would do this, I'm sorry Sarah, but you're 100% wrong here. Everyone knows that "10 Things I Hate About You" is the best Shakespeare fanfiction.
This is a spectacular video. I was engrossed the whole way through. I don't think I've ever watched an entire 30min+ video without speeding it up or skipping... except for this one. You are so well-spoken and the way you discuss things is informative and really interesting :)
Well duh. Rowling's increasing alienation of her progressive fans echoes the fledgling relationship between the Soviet Union and the United States following World War II, with each successive announcement escalating the tensions in a manner that recalls the stockpiling of nuclear weapons by both world powers.
On Rowling and Fanfic: A friend of mine worked for Pottermore and part of their job was to read through, and summarise, Harry Potter fanfic for Rowling. I wouldn't be surprised if a lot of these "reveals" came from those fanfic summaries.
It's just like with the casting for The Cursed Child. I am sure that in her mind Hermione was white when she first wrote her but when she saw the casting for the play she went "huuuum interesting.". If she were honest she would have said "I don't have a problem with this interpretation of the character" if she was self-aware too she could have added, "Hermione wasn't like that in my mind but this interpretation is fine". BUT NOPE! That response would have given all the WOKEY points to the play for being diverse so instead, she said it was actually HER idea to have Hermione be "not so white" so that people would be giving HER wokey points. She is basically taking interpretations that she finds interesting and instead of being honest and acknowledging that she didn't see things this way at first, she steals that interpretation and claim it was her ideas all along so that people will praise her. She has a huge ego. It's so huge in fact that it stops her from realizing that some of those interpretations are actually very troublesome. She doesn't want to see that because the wokey points look too good but at the end of the day, she's the only one actually seeing those wokey points because most people despise her new additions.
Eli N.S i 100% agree. i think black hermione's a great idea and it's awesome if people see her that way (especially all the black women saying they were empowered by her as kids), but she obviously was MEANT to be white and it's stupid for jk rowling to pretend otherwise. the correct course of action would have been just to go "i wrote her as white, but it's cool if you saw her as black" and not,,, whatever this is
im one of those "love the series, hate the author" type of harry potter fan, of whom i know there are a lot, and the whole ordeal really saddens me. this is a brilliant video though, thanks for making it :)
I understand you completely. If only she just deleted her twitter and actually wrote new books... although her writings will probably be affected by her stances nowadays... Like Black female president of magic US in (my guess) 30's.
Dean Goldenstar the 20s, and actually i don’t mind that in theory, i’m always for representation, i just think the character, as well as the rest of the movie, was poorly written
I will also add that HP series is even unintentionally... ASKING for fan fiction. Its a very open world. Where writers seemingly just gravitate towards writing their own stuff within the world to again. As you said too.. HELP THEM WITH THEIR WRITING. Training wheels.
I am working this weekend and needed some entertainment to binge. I found your channel and I've watched nearly half your content in a single night. I literally love you. Subscribed and early awaiting your next video.
The Tolkien example is strange: Tolkien's definition of "allegory" was basically "the author meant for this to be a symbol (for, say, a World War), therefore that's the only valid way to interpret it." Tolkien himself was basically a proponent of Death of the Author: he's fine with you interpreting his writing however you want, as long as you don't insist that A) that was how *he* intended it to be read, as the author, and therefore B) that's the only valid way of reading it. His word for *reading* something as an "allegory" for something else (as opposed to trying to read authorial intent into it and using that as a cudgel of authority) was "applicability". His works were "applicable" to things like the World Wars, the experience of PTSD, etc., and they were free to do so. He'd be entirely fine with people reading Frodo's experiences as him having PTSD, as long as you didn't insist it was allegory (again, to use his definition of the word) - that Frodo has PTSD, that Tolkien intended that Frodo has PTSD, and anyone who doesn't interpret Frodo as having PTSD is Wrong because they disagree with the Allegory being used by the Author. From the man himself: "I think that many confuse applicability with allegory, but the one resides in the freedom of the reader, and the other in the purposed domination of the author.” Tolkien himself is against the author dictating the One True Way to read or interpret their works, and he applies this standard to himself. The most he'd say were things along the lines of "that wasn't what I meant when I wrote it", which was emphatically not meant as "your interpretation is wrong because I wrote it, and I know what I meant when I wrote it". Tolkien believed, as he says, in "the freedom of the reader" over "the domination of the author".
Tolkien's disdain for allegory (as he used the term) is similar to the sort people have for hamfisted political cartoons, where they literally label what everything is intended to represent so the audience doesn't Get It Wrong. The sort of blatant, beat-you-over-the-head-obvious symbolism that can *only* be read one way (as a metaphor for whatever the author intended). He basically thought that that was a tool used by hack writers, and that more nuanced, realistic (or "historical", as he put it) would be validly applicable to many different things, depending on reader interpretation. To provide the rest of the above quote: “I cordially dislike allegory in all its manifestations, and always have done so since I grew old and wary enough to detect its presence. I much prefer history - true or feigned- with its varied applicability to the thought and experience of readers." If you read Frodo's experience as being plausibly PTSD, Tolkien would applaud you for it (whether that was what he deliberately meant when he wrote it or not). You thought about the work and applied it in a way that's reasonable and plausible, rather than detecting the author's Glowing Neon Sign indicating the Correct Symbolism. He was tired of people insisting, for example, that the story was intended, by him, to be read solely as all one big allegory for World War Two (and that the Ring was an allegory for the Atomic Bomb), and included a foreword to that effect, explaining what he would have done if he *was* writing such an allegory (again, using his definition, where the author clearly and specifically intends for this thing in the story to solely represent this specific real-world thing or event): "The real war does not resemble the legendary war in its process or its conclusion. If it had inspired or directed the development of the legend, then certainly the Ring would have been seized and used against Sauron; he would not have been annihilated but enslaved, and Barad-dûr would not have been destroyed but occupied. Saruman, failing to get possession of the Ring, would in the confusion and treacheries of the time have found in Mordor the missing links in his own researches into Ring-lore, and before long he would have made a Great Ring of his own with which to challenge the self-styled Ruler of Middle-earth. In that conflict both sides would have held hobbits in hatred and contempt: they would not long have survived even as slaves. " You may note, for example, that the Free Peoples are a stand-in for the Allies, that Sauron is Hitler and Mordor is Germany (which then becomes occupied by both Isengard and Gondor), that Saruman an Isengard specifically (and only) represent Stalin and the Soviet Union, etc. This is the sort of allegory Tolkien preferred to avoid.
EXACTLY. I'd say that Tolkien definitely put his own experiences about war into stories, but he never intended it to be compared to, or directly inspired by, the wars. Write what you know and all that.
Pseudo Nym that’s exactly what I was thinking. When she got the the authorian intent and death of the author bit, all I could think of was «I don’t think you understand what an allegory is.» Also, I just noticed your psuedonym is literally Psuedo Nym.
I was okay with the example (although I don't know if she meant it this way) because I interpret that discussion as people forcing authorial intent of allegory upon Tolkien as their interpretation. In that some people wanted Frodo to directly represent Tolkien, or the Shire to directly represent England, so even if Tolkien was a DotA proponent, people's interpretation was to create a narrative of authorial intent. Although, I'm not sure how authorial intent/DotA are applied in terms of the interpretation including intent, so this might be an incorrect reading. Sorry if this comes across as really stupid! (Also, in terms of allegory, I've usually found C.S Lewis to be my go-to example).
As Jenny Nicholson noted, we know that Rowling didn't originally write her world to be diverse because we've all seen what happens when she tries to add diversity.
26:27 Exactly Sarah. Nagini being a snake Voldemort took as a pet in Albania and later turned into one of his Horcruxes to symbolise his relation to Salazar Slytherin was fine. There was no need for "Oh yeah she was really a witch with a blood curse who permanently became a snake." A Maledictus is just an Animagi who ends up trapped as whatever animal they turn into.
Allow me to amend some of my earlier statements in this video and instead state, unequivocally, Fuck JKR
Sarah Z came back to rewatch this masterpiece and was so happy to see this pinned ❤️ fuck JKR and fuck TERFs 😁
queen shit
fuck terfs
HONESTLY!!! so sad when you think what kind of an impact a globally-acclaimed author like herself could have made for progress in inclusion... such a missed opportunity
Love that I found you in my recommended videos for the Onceler video and your Supernatural season rot video literally today AFTER having this exact conversation of how JKR really sucks as a person and how I'm choosing to do the same thing I do as a fan of HPL's Cthulu mythos and "Eldrich Horror" while fucking loathing HPL and his shitty personality.
“The sorting hat was trans” that aged like milk
oof yeah
@@SarahZ The whole situation only makes the sentence better in my opinion.
Ok, hear me out now.
Fan fic where Bellatrix Lestrange decides to write a book about a trans sorting hat that dresses as a bonnet to commit murders due to family issues. But Bellatrix assures everyone that she wants hats to love whomever they want to. And she's not transphobic, she just bought that badge saying "Fuck your pronouns" because she thought it was neat.
Rowling: Not on my watch.
It's fun watching this in the future innit
"The fans already know he's gay, it would be redundant to bring it up in fantastic beasts"
"The fans already know Harry's a wizard so no more magic, that would be redundant"
did you just describe most of the first movie? XD
@@janamaderova548 I guess so, yeah XD
Yeah she just said that because the fantastic beasts director didn't want Dumbledore to be gay and she had no way to explain why her "gay" character is straight in the movie
@@jacobgiles8425 he's not straight in the movie. He's still clearly in love with Grindelwald (the mirror scene). They just didn't delve into it a lot
that's obviously not the same thing
JK Rowling: "White skin was never specified!"
Also JK Rowling: "Hermione's white face poked out from behind a tree"
Also also JK Rowling: consistently draws her as a white character
Also also also JK Rowling: has her illustrated as white on all her books and on Pottermore
Also also also also JK Rowling: has a large part in casting a white actress to play her
And then there's her often blushing bright pink or red, being described as "a panda" when she has a black eye, specifying that she looked "very brown" after getting a tan on holiday, which wouldn't have been remarked upon if she was naturally brown or black, AND she said Hermione was based on herself when she was younger.
This has nothing to do with being leftist or right wing, it has everything to do with her totally bullshitting her way through this stuff to try and paint herself as this woke, progressive author that she just isn't.
She said that to allow people to imagine Hermione their own way, a pov or a whatever skin colour. People making these kind of arguments look retarted to me..
@@ipercalisse579 Oh, people can imagine her however they want, I totally agree. I don't have a problem with Hermione being protrayed as black. Or Harry as Indian, as has become popular recently.
Like I said above, my problem is with Joanne retconning the story to try and make it seem like she was this super inclusive author the entire time. Why, Dumbledore was gay and Hermione's whiteness was never specified!
Except that Dumbledore was never protrayed that way, and Hermione's skin colour was specified and then doubled down upon with every creative decision JK ever made. It's like she wants the Good Boy Points of having been inclusive without putting any of the work in.
A simple, "I am totally on board with Hermione being reimagined as black!" would have been cool, it's the claim that "oh, that was actually the case the entire time!" that grinds my gears.
Not that I disagree that Hermonie was supposed to be white. However, some black people can blush red or pink. Some of us also get "brown" when tanning. It depends on what your natural complexion is.
@Maisoon Fayyaz When was she ever described as being brown aside from after getting a tan on her holiday in France?
@@viviannovelo6166 got any source for that? only thing I heard was that she supports a british researcher who was fired last year for saying biological sex (as in the XX or XY chromosomes) can't be changed and ultra progressives went ballistic.
I dislike rowling for a couple of reasons, yet transphobia isn't among them. unless there's another incident I don't know off or you can explain why the existence of biological sex is transphobic in the first place.
I am waiting for the day JK Rowling announces that the "JK" actually stands for "just kidding".
my reaction,to when she said how Witches and Wizards went to the bathroom before indoor plumbing. She must be JK.
Every time I see the JK by itself, I think "just kidding". I prefer to type JKR as a result.
@@mischarowe "Just Kidding 'Round" Rowling.
It's Joanne Kathleen, right?
Are you JK, JK? I'll see myself out. JK.
jk rowling really said “dont be afraid to come out of the closet under the stairs” and then called all trans women predators
Literally tho
@Samriddhi Soperna Yes except the whole "men masquerading as trans women to invade women's spaces" thing is, in fact, a transphobic stereotype and informs legislature that actively harms all trans people. Even ignoring the fact that that's BS of the highest degree, what exactly makes a trans woman a trans woman and not a predator pretending to be trans is never clearly stated. Is it a diagnosis from a mental health professional? Because while most trans people do pursue a formal diagnosis in order to start medically transitioning, many either don't have plans to medically transition or can't afford to see a professional. Is it how they look or dress? That's just gatekeeping. So either JKR is misinformed and won't back down and process new information or is actively buying into harmful stereotypes. Either way, "She said men masquerading as trans women are the issue." is not a defense, it's a further indictment of her opinions.
@Samriddhi Soperna That's not a real issue. It's like saying you're not an anti-Semite, it's just the people who secretly run all the worlds banks and media that are the issue.
@Samriddhi Soperna only if you ignore her essay called terf wars(some attempt to be tongue in cheek?)
You know where she directly equates allowing trans people would result in them attacking people.
Because yes someone whos out to attack someone is totally going to be held back by a sign
@Samriddhi Soperna are the dogs in your neighborhood going crazy right now?
What Rowling could have said: "Overall, I did a really shoddy job of including diverse and canonical representations of people of color in Harry Potter. I tried to create a world where anyone could be anything, and I inadvertently excluded some people from that world. Although that wasn't the intent of my actions, I cannot ignore that it was the result. Going forward I will do better, and looking back I will consider my work with fresh eyes. Anyone can be Hermione."
What Rowling actually said: "I nEVeR SAid sHe waSN't blACK"
honestly, that would have been the best way to say it, it's clear, informative and shows Rowling is understanding and willing to grow the only problem is it doesn't fit in a tweet...which we all know she's awesome at
There was never any need to clear anything up in the first place, most characters in HP are Caucasian, so what? Most people in Britain are Caucasian, where's the controversy again? The books didn't take place in Nigeria or something.
@@madmusic341 the problem that is the only east asian character's name is cho chang (cho isn't even a name btw), the main irish character's primary character trait is making things blow up, the main black character doesn't know his blood status because his dad left when he was a baby, the bank is run by greedy, sneaky, hooknosed goblins, etc
oh also she's a terf
@Kelly Corless she's a *W H A T*
@@DarylStreete a transphobe
Remember when the first 5 movies made Lavender Brown black, but once she was a main character J.K Rowling made her white?
Pepperidge Farms Remembers
God 12 year old me didn’t even notice that the first time she watched it and now any time I watch those movies I cringe any time she’s on screen
I think that that was more because there was no description of her before she became a prominent character, so the movie people casted her, then when she became more important, she was given a description, and they had to change her actor to match.
1. Rowling didnt direct the movies.
2. Since she was considered an extra, she was played by a different person in each movie.
Tea House her race was never referenced before order, only then was she described as white so the characters actress was changed
@@harrypotteravenclaw I still think it wasn't necessary to change her, even if the books specified. Just imo
JK Rowling, we are begging, Potter *less*
JK Rowling: I never said the Weasleys weren't Palestinian.
she'd never hop on that train since she calls people denouncing Israel anti-semites.
@@TheHmcykbux That's a pretty smart thing to do, since hoping in that conflict - won't end well!
Ron is a furry
Ron is a single black mom
@@adiveler Well, actually she's already gotten herself involved in this conflict since she's making those types of comments, except she's on the side that's commiting genocide lol.
Rowling: Wizards used to crap wherever and magic it away.
Fans: Absolutely not. That is not canon.
A bunch of college kids who spent most of their musical budget on a giant candy bar: Hufflepuffs are particularly good finders.
Fans: Yes. Accepted as canon.
What the hell is a Hufflepuff?
hufflepuff pride 💛💀
They actually didn't buy the candy bar if I remember correctly. In one of their livestreams I think they said somebody gave it to one of their parents but they didn't want it so they gave it to the starkid, who also didn't want it, so they used it as a prop.
Finder?
@@fortunatecookie probably spanish speakers as myself, since seeker in Spanish is "buscador" that can be translated back as "finder"... It's just my guess.
31:31 the "Snape projected his hatred and jealousy of James onto Harry" tweet as a defense of Snape is wild. Why yes, projecting your hatred and jealousy of a classmate you didn't like 20 years ago onto his 11-year-old son DOES make you a bad guy!
right? like in what universe is hating a child bc u wanted his mom back in high school and she married a different dude and had him instead a sympathetic motivation? like, even if u just hate the kid bc hes a snotnosed little smartmouth that at least has smth to do with him as opposed to resenting and bullying him for old drama he wasnt even alive for
THANK YOU!!! I'm lowkey exhausted by the Snape worship by some fans. He was never an overall good dude
@@alim.9801 JK wants people to worship Snape. Glad the fans see him as a shitty person.
I never understood how people saw a grown man talking out his hatred of a man who had bullied him as a teenager on a literal eleven-year-old boy as somehow being okay. And even then, what about literally every other child in Hogwarts? What did THEY do wrong for Snape to be awful to them? What did Neville do wrong? Snape was an immature, selfish man-child and was never actually a good man, he just didn't let the child of the woman he had been hung up on for years even after she wanted nothing to do with him, had a husband and DIED a decade ago, get murdered by evil that adults (including Snape) should've protected him from because HE WAS A CHILD.
She could've talked about Dumbledore's sexuality in the books, easily. Rita Skeeter literally writes a book about his secrets, including the possibility of him having accidentally killed his own sister, but nothing about a torrid romance with magical Hitler?
Underrated comment
burymeinpink «I didn’t want to pry into personal matters!» Said Rita, never.
burymeinpink that made me chuckle
@@Gormathius That is literally all she does, how did she not know about them?
Lonly Wanderer is that rhetorical? I hope it’s rhetorical, because I have no idea.
J.K. Rowling embodies what I like to call "Suicide of the Author", when an author shows so little respect for their own work that they effectively torpedo any credibility their Authorial Intent would have.
AeronArcana Like Metallica, or George Lucas.
@Mr Norrell Peter Jackson is forgiven by Tolkien fans because the Hobbit wasn't his fault
"J.K. Rowling embodies what I like to call "Suicide of the Author","
Love it! I think authorial intent should be the default interpretation unless there is solid reason not to trust this interpretation.
Andrzej Szapkowski...
@@EinFelsbrocken Guy has so little faith in his own stories that he sells the rights for a one-time payout then gets butthurt when people who _do_ care turn it into a critically acclaimed billion dollar franchise!
"she's a hilarious tweeter"
me: *chuckles nervously in future*
Future is a weird place to be
Jk was trending today, not for good reasons tho
@@bryanwhite2020 yeeep. Not a great look for her.
I’m not on twitter what’s happening with jkr
@@janiakapoor8611 th-cam.com/video/m-rh-N4eFDU/w-d-xo.html
“White skin was never specified.”
“Hermione is based off me when I was 11”
Wut
JK Rowling: I am Michael Jackson.
I actually find it really disturbing that so many people are so receptive to this comment on this channel in particular.
You know, not too long ago, for some reason TH-cam's algorithm recommended to me a video of a little white girl who was asked by a cashier why she wanted a black doll. Evidently the news made a big deal out of it because it went viral on social media. I must admit, on premise I was skeptical that it even happened, but after reading this I'm not sure why I was.
@@futurestoryteller The black Hermione issue is not that black actress is playing her in the Cursed Child or literally anywhere in any iteration of the story. It should probably be taken as the norm and I would be trilled if it does. The problem is her claiming it's been true in the books when there were literally descriptions of her pale or white face in the text and not in the context of shock or fear. That's giving a rich white woman an honor she doesn't deserve by going along with her supposition that "she never specified Hermione's race" and she always meant to be a minority, it wasn't hard to actually do the right thing but she didn't and wants credit for it.
@@HotaruRea I've had this conversation too many times. I'm not going to sit here and pretend to be swayed by Rowling's late stage assertions, but I'm not going to pretend to be psychic either. Skin color is just not the determinative factor of race in the west. Most of the black women I worked with were as white as I am.
When you Google this you instantly get a website that insists definitive proof of Hermione, an entirely fictional character's, race because of how they _perceive_ Rowling's initial drawing of her.... Stating that the description of Hermione as "very brown" in context suggests she got a tan over summer.
So let's back up here. Her racial background is not discussed, her skin color is described as both pale, and brown, at different points, and she has wild frizzy hair. Has it ever occured to *_anyone_* that Hermione is mixed race? Biracial. "Black" _because_ she's mixed. I can't imagine how mixed-race heritage relates in any way to Hermione's character, can you? That's a real headscratcher...
Hey, remember that time Pottermore stated that Wizards used to defecate anywhere they wanted and they would use magic to make their crap magically disappear?
I want 2 die
Sarah Z Ahhh, me too. I think it’s best if JK Rowling just stops messing with the HP storyline and cuts ties with it. If it’s not broken, don’t fix it you know?
Park ChimMin what did they really say that?
Technically, it's really practical in the outside
And yet, they have this ancient chamber of secrets with all the castle plumbing that they supposedly never needed
Starkid is more canon to me than Cursed Child any day
Yesss. And I actually do think someone (weren't other people writing with JK? So it didn't have to be her) watched musicals and thought hmm there's is something about this
(s)Quirrelmort>Dumblewald
@@sweatyskeleton7390 preach
We Stan Scarfy
Horcrux Zefron will always be canon to me
Catholic Church, 1517: only our interpretation is correct.
Martin Luther: naw fam. ever heard of death of the author?
Lmao
Wait...
Oooh, spicy. I like it.
Lol. Brilliant.
Mmm history, I like it
I feel like if JK Rowling really cared about making sure that certain aspects were canon she could just write additional short stories. The Dumbledore is gay thing is the easiest example because Dumbledore is one of the most interesting characters because of his past. All she has to do is write and publish a short story from Dumbledore's perspective about Grindlewald. That could be very interesting, confirm Dumbledore's status as gay, and serve as promotion for the Fantastic Beasts movies.
yes!!! that woud have ben amazing
That is a brillian idea.
I always really enjoyed the little commentaries that Dumbledore gave to the stories of the Tales of Beedle the Bard charity book, and it would have been really cool to see a full book with his voice, perhaps also rationalising his sometimes questionable choices from his perspective. But especially yes, also just canonise the fact that he was gay and make it more human and expanded and dynamic, instead of this one-note external add-on which, when given without explicit context in the books, really doesn’t add anything to his character except to make some iffy (and kinda homophobic) insinuations about his relationship with Grindelwald.
It's a shame reading hopeful comments after the release of the last movie lol. She's flushed this series down the terf hole and refuses to acknowledge criticisms of her obviously token characters.
i havent even watched the latest fantastic beasts movies.. just sad
If Rowling wanted Snape to be viewed as a flawed hero, she should have been more careful to write him that way. I agree that Snape’s behavior towards Harry and Neville is an abuse of power, and straight up paints him as a morally bankrupt human being.
Not just harry and neville. He was horrible to herimone too. When draco gIves herimone huge beaver buck teeth. Snape coldly says I see no difference. I hate snape and don't see him as a flawed hero that Rowling wants people to see him as
also the only reason he joined the order was bc Lily died and he was sad bc the girl he called a mudblood died. and I do agree with people on the point that if Neville were the ‘chosen one’ he would still be a death eater. his only motivation was a one-sided high school crush on a girl that he was horrible to. but he is ‘flawed and actually a good guy’ also the fact that a boggart’s purpose is to show somebody’s greatest fear (spiders, voldemort, Sirius, snakes, dead loved ones, etcetera) and Neville sees Snape is just so messed up. ;like sure, we’ve all had bad teachers, but are they our worst fears (and in a world where Voldemort has killed, and from a boy who’s parents were so tortured by Bellatrix Lestrange that they went mad) in the entire world? ;and he was so rude to everyone in their first year. ;we’re talking about literal children. ;he was horrible to everyone, and jk wants us to view him in a positive light. (I didn’t have time to proof read this, so sorry in advance lol) by the way, I love your points about abuse of power, which isn’t commonly brought up in snape arguments, at least from what I’ve seen. EDIT: i hadn’t finished the video when I wrote this, so please forgive me for any repeated points. ::))) thanks :)
Yep. Rowling clearly didn't think any of this through: Why is it even good spying for the double agent to behave so openly bigoted?! Isn't his narrative that he's fooling Dumbledore by pretending to be good? If I were Voldemort I'd have a lot of questions about Snape's openly hateful behaviour: "Why the fuck does Dumbledore trust you, like, at all?!"
There's also the flawed narrative of the "poor" Snape being horrendously bullied for no reason by the Marauders, which doesn't work entirely: We are - for some reason - supposed to forget that Snape (enthusiastically) joined the Death Eaters, who's main platform was killing or enslaving Muggleborns like Snape's supposedly best friend Lily. There's also the assault of Mary McDonald by Mulciber (who specialized in the imperius, I shudder to think what he did to her), which Snape thinks was "a laugh".
As my final point there's the labeling of Snape's possessive obsession with Lily as some kind of wonderful portrayal of love, which is just, no! Try to think of a person that you truly and deeply love or care for. Now imagine they had a child, who was loved by them deeply, but is now an orphan. How would you treat that child?! Would you spit on the memory&wishes of the person you care for and treat their child poorly just because the kid reminds you of their long dead husband? "I didn't get the girl, therefore I will mistreat her progeny!" It's just such a wonderful love that Snape has for Lily, amazing!
how snape abuse them
Snape was an asshole it's true but that was known. Even when James was making fun of him as a child when Lily tries to help he calls her a mudblood. He has irrational anger and it's because of being made fun of his whole life. Snape isn't just an asshole though if you think about it. Even though he hated James he honored the fact that James saved his life once. Even though Lily hated him he cared about her enough to give his whole life to Dumbledore to be a spy for him against Voldemort. Being a major part of how Voldemort ended up gone by giving Harry the information to end it all. He is severely flawed but a hero nonetheless.
My own unwanted interpretation is that Salazar Slytherin was an ahead-of-his-time plumbing and bathroom design genius.
Actually that brings up an interesting question. Did Hogwarts always have flush toilets and a modern sewer system or was it renovated; and if it was renovated how did they not find the massive secret snake pit under the bathroom sinks?
@@admiralgaius9796 The book implies that the plumbing and secret cavern were there since the initial build. Salazar most likely would have had to fight the other three tooth and nail to incorporate a muggle-style plumbing system. The others were all for taking dumps on the floor and making it disappear.
@@IAmKillEveryone like that time JKR said wizards don't poop they magic it away?
That's why he hated muggles and muggleborns. They just crapped everywhere.
*Canon*
rewatching this after sarah released her jk rowling transphobia video, and i just want to add...in her manifesto (gOD) jkr complains about and compares trans women to incels. meanwhile she's been defending snape for literal years, her own incel creation. so.
I’m so glad someone else said it
I'd be honoured if anyone did fanfiction or fanart about my work.
honestly!!! the idea that even one person not only retained a story i created, but also thought of it when theyre not reading? and gained some meaningful attachment to someone i created? and then used their freetime to explore a story that i created in their own unique way bc they care about it? that shit is extremely flattering.
I think fanfiction and fanart are definitely marks of success
@@slightlyoffensivedadjokes that's such a cool way to say it
Absolutely. I used to write fanfiction, and the greatest moment I experienced in five years of doing it was when someone decided to make a fan illustration of something I'd written. I couldn't get over how incredible it was that someone liked my plot and versions of characters enough to make something based on those instead of the source material. If I had originally created those characters and that world, I wouldn't have been able to get the stupid grin off my face for weeks.
My sole ambition in life is to get a piece of fanfiction written about my characters one day. Even if it's terrible. Just the idea that people are invested enough to create something based on what I made is mind blowing. I don't get how anyone can think it's an insult
J.K. Rowling tweet - "White skin was never specified."
J.K. Rowling book - "Hermione’s white face was sticking out from behind a tree."
J.K. Rowling interview answer - "But, yeah, Hermione is a caricature of what I was when I was 11..."
I'm not saying that JK's intention wasn't for Hermione to be white (she doesn't have a problem specifying Angelina Johnson's skin colour several times over), but the whole "Hermione's white face" thing doesn't prove much because earlier in the same book (Prisoner of Azkaban) she also writes that Hermione's face looks "very brown". If people want to interpret Hermione as a person of colour they aren't going explicitly against the original text.
Alex Victoria She was also described as resembling “half a panda” when she had a black eye, blushed the color of a pink dress...
very true, if she is going to be imagined as a PoC she can't have very dark skin
She backtracked and caved to PC culture and sjws. Either she thought there was no harm in it or she was afraid to be thrown under the bus in the media as a racist excetera excetera for not having certain groups represented in her books.
So the answer is ,well yes, technically the author should be the final Authority. However if the author's words ,intent and content constantly very ,it's open season on interpretation.
All you have to do is look at JK Rowling's very own concept art to know original intent for each character. Hermione included.
Reading the books, I always imagined Hermione as mixed race. Her struggles with her bushy hair were what made me think this way. Even after Emma Watson was cast, I still read Hermione as black or mixed black with something else. I was not offended by the black Hermione. But maybe, we all like to see ourselves in stories, and I saw my blackness in her just as many white kids are offended to discover that the character they relate to might not be as relateable as they originally imagined.
Tbh the majority of fan fics I’ve read about Harry Potter are infinitely better than what Rowling has tried to add in the last couple years
Preach!
Ikr?!
@@eaflower hmy!
Fanfic authors are sometimes legitimately good. Some are trash, but some are actually amazing.
Does anyone have any recommendations?
One problem I have with this is the “history of fanfiction” bit, which overlooks the fact that for thousands of years, nearly all writing was fanfiction of historical or mythological characters.
The Bible is even one example of that.
@@LoveK1 Uh. All real bro and if you see, everything to the t has come true. I wouldn't bash such a historical document that can be explored for ages upon ages and with proper linguistic knowledge and language skills you van unlock more of its secrets. Bagvaghita. Read it.
Makkaru112 wow, someone's butt hurt. Also, Armageddon is in the bible, that hasn't happened yet as far as I'm aware. I'm not a biblical historian so I'm not going to debate about everything else but I don't think literally everything in the bible is true, for example most Christians I've talked about it to seem to see Noah's Ark as a metaphor, not something that literally happened.
@@Makkaru112 That still doesn't discourage the image of the bible being able to be classified as a fanfiction since it was his 'fans' that wrote it down with biased views and all and not an unbiased third party.
www.vice.com/en_us/article/8gvpj5/the-bible-is-nothing-but-jesus-fan-fiction
study.com/academy/lesson/the-bible-as-a-historical-document.html#:~:text=We%20can%20classify%20most%20of,important%20to%20their%20religious%20beliefs.
@@Makkaru112 you sound like a very angry Jesus fanboy/fangirl, geez, the christian fandom do be wilding the days
When I was in high school, I was psychologically bullied by my vice principal. When I worked at a different high school ten years later, he was praised at a teen mental health seminar for “getting it.” I had to leave the seminar early due to a massive panic attack. But anyway, yeah, Snape was fine. NO COMPLAINTS FROM ME!!
I just want to say that I can relate hard to this. In 4th grade I had a teacher who completely mentally destroyed me. Yet, somehow, she won teacher of the year when I was in 5th grade.
@@CeceliaIsAWeeb That's awful. :( I hope you're stayin strong!
I relate... too much. I don't give a damn about teacher motivations and their "traumatic backstories". The teachers that bullied me in school damaged me and they probably shouldn't have been working with children. Snape's redemption arc? I bought into it for the first few years because I was still a child and internalising much of my experiences. As an adult that is significantly more mature, Snape's redemption arc is a joke. His wangst story line is just that. Wangst of the author.
It’s crazy how when you’re a kid you don’t realize how wrong it is because you’re taught to trust the grownups. Looking back, I can’t imagine treating a child the way I was treated, but I never said anything because I thought it was my fault. We need to start teaching kids that their feelings are valid, and that grownups are flawed human beings who don’t know everything.
your experience doesn't reflect the whole world
"I mean, I never said that Snape WASN'T a 3-legged pansexual pink hippopotamus." ~JK Rowling
„I only said he had black greasy hair and dark eyes, hippos can wear wigs ya know“
Lol
And black
@Stephen Patterson Snape was a hipo? in the moives he looked human to me
Literally. And for all we might know, Seamus could be half dragon. I mean, he causes explosions of fire right?
Top three takeaways:
1. That was then
2. This is now
3. The Sorting Hat was trans
JK Rowling: *ACTUALLY*
JK Rowling: Every young wizard has to be assigned to a certain particular house. You can choose your own house but you have to be really brave to do it
Also JK Rowling : IDK I'm not sure about these trans people
hilarious irony bc Rowling is now a terf
Silly Simic I see you are a person of culture
Silly Simic Rest In Peace scarfy
Hot take: the Harry Potter books were really objectively flawed, which is a shame because there was a whole lot of potential in the world that was made.
additionally - the books were super flawed and, while JK Rowling did create the world they operate in, the fan communities are responsible for sifting through those books and picking out the elements that are actually good/comforting/worth giving attention to - everyone is in love with what fans have brought from the series, not the series itself
@@daisymay156 that's a strong case for "the intent of the author is meaningless"
*The work speaks for itself*
Realistic take - Rowling is objectively bad writer who accidentally struck gold and never knew how to handle the material.
I think "Harry Potter in 2020" said it best: The logic of the wizarding world is held together by duct tape that comes apart at the first bit of scrutiny.
TRUE I've seen a lot of flaws in the story that shouldn't exist or maybe fix the thing a little so it's way better
14:50 George Martin is so against people writing GoT content that even HE wont write any GoT content
If I draw a circle but intended to draw a square, I still drew a circle.
well said bro
If you draw a circle someone might interpret your circle to not be a perfect circle which obviously stands for the imperfections omnipresent in Human Creation and how the artist is trying to make a point on how humans ever strife for perfection but often dont succed or even noticed that they have in fact not reached it yet. Is it still a circle? A square? Or maybe just overanalyzed bs? I think both believes have their merits and can be nonsensical in certain situations.
@@realstonehead3436 a more intelligent response to be sure
@@realstonehead3436 That's a lot of words to say nothing. No offense.
I know you're trying to sounds smart or make a witty remark, but honestly, less is more.
@Anon Ymous I am just saying that beeing only in one camp wont help and I wasnt trying to just "sound" smart. I just wanted to show how some interpretations can be bs in order to showcase that sometimes the authors intent should be listened to. Ps didnt expect anyone to read this anyway :P
You assume that I wouldn't want to watch a four-hour critique of J.K. Rowling and Harry Potter, but you would be wrong lmao. I would absolutely watch that.
So will I man. I will totally watch that. Gimme all the salt.
Will absolutely find a way to take the day off work and get all my snacks ready.
Ailith Twinning same. And as soon as I'm done with it I replay it to see what I missed while I was nodding along.
Saaaame. I love great analyses of things, even if they hit 4 hours or something.
Yeah. I can totally get why she wouldn’t want to make that (I can’t even imagine how un-fun that would be to make), but I can’t fathom how she thinks no one would want to see that.
"Hermione's race was never specified in the book."
Literary from one of the books : "Her WHITE face."
Plus in all of JK Rowlings drawings of harry, ron and hermione, hermione is drawn as a white character
Exactly. No decent person would be upset at you switching Hermione to be black, but instead you decided to retcon it and pretend you were actually super woke the whole time. It’s ridiculous
@@uhuh936 She could have easily avoided this issue by saying "while I didn't write Hermione as a black character, I welcome the decision the cast a black actress to play her" she might have even gotten some of those woke points she was desperately after
this! and on some of the covers, she’s literally white
“The whomping willow was a bottom”
Power bottom specifically
They don't call it the "Whomping" Willow for nothing.
This actually made me lol
THEN WHY IS IT CALLED THE WHOMPING WILLOW (sweeps the papers off my desk in frustration)
Nobody:
JK Rowling: Snape was actually gay for James all along, but James was 0w0 for the Marauders and the gang all yiffed in the Whomping Willow.
That's basically what tumblr thinks of Harry Potter
I've literally probably that fanfiction
Hairy Potter
This is the most cursed shit I've read in a while
Great, please don’t say that again
Gay representation in the 21st century:
- Um, Gaston’s henchmen whose name literally translates to “the fool” is gay...but like, not too gay...he just has jokes about him and Gaston’s relationships that can be read as them being lovers...and I guess he dances with...a man...by accident...in one frame of the movie... YOU’RE WELCOME, LGBTQ COMMUNITY!!!
- Dumbledore gay but, y’know, let’s never say it in the actual work...THIS IS THE REPRESENTATION YOU CRAVE!!!
Unnecessary........periods........make........your.......comment.......much........better
Pixelpro
Ellipses, not periods.
@@haggisa I see no ellipses.
Mk. Rowe
Look closer you must.
- Yoda
@@haggisa The joke has gone over my head.
I’m pretty sure I speak for the fandom when I say “JK Rowling has been disowned from the HP community”
On the subject of Hermione's portrayal as black in the cursed child:
I always saw that as during the auditions Jenny Jules just stood out as a talented actor who was fit to play Hermione. Get representation points was probably a small part of it, but I never Jules' casting as nothing more than a way to seem progressive. If Rowling just tweeted out how Jules was the best fit for Hermione's character and her race isn't a reasonable criticism of the play, everything would be fine.
Especially since (A) we're all aware that theater is representational, not literal, and (B) we have Rowling's own drawings of Hermione, who is very clearly white.
Like, it doesn't matter who's cast if they're good for the part, but to say "Oh, but I NeVeR sAiD sHe WaS wHiTe!" is just so... well... I feel the phrase "virtue signaling" is overused, and yet...
Proffesor Snape was a single mother.
where's the lie, though?
Her wand was a dildo.
Victor the sorting hat was her cootch
Snape hated James because he chose Lily and not herself.
I love that video
The tragedy of Darth Rowling the Wise is not one a Wizard would tell you.
Ruining book series with tweets. Is it possible to learn this power?
Not from a metaphorically dead author
It's treason then
You sound like such a fucking idiot.
@@Auron1Roxas2 Yessss! Let the hate flow through you!
I think part of the problem stems from “default character settings,” where if an author doesn’t specify a character’s ethnicity, sexuality, or gender identity, many take that to mean the character is straight, white, and cisgender (and often male if sex/pronouns aren’t clear either). So, when an author does not specify these details, they should be completely up for debate by the fans. Fans asking the author afterwards, to me, reflects that the writing should have clarified those details IF they were integral enough to the character for the author to have a stance on it.
I think it’s important for writers on the whole to start indicating details that they consider important to the character. If a character is straight, then don’t be silent about that detail and think readers will just assume this. “Default character settings” is already a problem in media; unspecified shouldn’t automatically mean traits mentioned above. Unspecified should be the realm where fan interpretation can flourish.
Touching on Hobbs’ rant, “I want you to read it exactly as I wrote it,” that means a writer is thus responsible for writing in clearer details if they don’t want fans to interpret something differently.
EXACTLY
you've hit the nail on the head. a big issue about never specifying is that a lot of people will default assume the above characteristics, even if the author never intended it that way
@@happywithdrawal - It’s part of a wider issue where the “default settings” are considered “normal,” while anything else is considered an anomaly. Obviously, this is a problem that needs to be addressed, and an important place to start is our entertainment and media. Have cishet, white, and/or male characters identified as often as trans, bi, Brown, and/or female characters, and unspecified as free reign. Readers need to unlearn “default settings,” but many writers are equally responsible for perpetuating the harm.
Returning to this video to try and reconcile my love for Harry Potter and my hatred for TERFs.
"Snape did a few good things, but as a whole, he's a weird incel dick, and the good things he did don't make up for like... child abuse." - Sarah Z, 2018.
Best character summary for Snape that I have come across.
Still you have to hand to him. not many people have the skill to give a child a hard time because they share a resemblance to their crush's spouse
As someone who loves Snape, I can't argue with this.
@Doctor Snake Eater
I don’t think the character himself would argue against anything other than being an incel.
People That piss on him have this notion that he thought himself to be some courageous, righteous person when all I got from the entirety of the character and the ending itself was Snape acknowledged himself as an irredeemable piece of shit.
Some people that love him after the ending over glorify him sure, but the people that hate him have the mentality of “I’ve hated him for six books I’m not going to stop no matter what the seventh says or the author.”
Hell, even for my case, Draco Malfoy can suck eggs for eternity. So even I’m not innocent in that regard.
@@KiSwordsman
"People That piss on him have this notion that he thought himself to be some courageous, righteous person "
I've never heard anyone say this.
"Some people that love him after the ending over glorify him sure, but the people that hate him have the mentality of “I’ve hated him for six books I’m not going to stop no matter what the seventh says or the author.”"
The seventh book and the author were never going to paint him in a light that made up for all the bullying he did, and his general dick-iness.
Snape was a horrible person from the start of our introduction to him, throughout the books, and all the way to the end of the explanation of his back story. By the time it was all over, there was nothing that was good enough to excuse what he did.
Side note: Draco Malfoy was a douche, but as we've seen (and unlike Snape) he became a better person - even though I dislike JKR, I am appreciative that she didn't just make him a clone of Snape. The Malfoys loved each other so much they defied Voldemort. Snape loved Lily, but not enough to defy Riddle... until he didn't get what he wanted from her.
Different stories.
Just saying.
@MK Rowe
_“I’ve never heard Anyone say this.”_
Good for you. I have.
_“The seventh book and the author were never going to paint him in a light that made up for all the bullying he did and his general dick-ness”_
Clearly, that’s not universally true. And this proves my point.
The sixth (pity party) and seventh book for me would never make up for what a bigoted little piss-ant Draco was...
And here we are...
_“Snape was a horrible person...”_
And where does Snape excuse what he did? Where does he think he’s a good person? I’ll wait...
_“Side note:”_
Draco Malfoy became a better person when things weren’t going so great in regard to the books. I really saw it as a way to garner sympathy for a kid in over his head. Hell the same can be said for the Malfoy’s as a whole. They were in with Tom until they realized it wasn’t all it was cracked up to be.
So the notion that they loved each other so much that they defied him is funny because it wasn’t until Tom was full on crazy flakes that it became a thing.
Snape loved lily and defied Tom the second that Tom target her by going to Dumbledore. Kind like how the Malfoy’s were behind Tom until Draco was in his sights.
Different stories with similarities. Just saying.
And really the person that deserves the most credit for that is Narcissa.
After that where is it shown that Draco became a better person? A head nod to the gang at the train station 19 years later?
I’ve never said Severus Snape was the best or even generally a good guy. However, he appeals to me because he doesn’t either. He knows where the fault for what happened lies, (himself) and didn’t do what he did to “make up,” for anything.
Jowling K Rowling: *rolls dice*
Peeves was actually *throws dart at board* a metaphor for
*spins game-show wheel* Rodney King and the 1992 LA riots the whole time definitely
Peeves dying while high might actually explain a few things about his character.
XD
Congrats, you have the funniest comment in this thread.
😂😂😂
th-cam.com/video/LKxpwlKRQ2U/w-d-xo.html
Snape made Hermione cry and I've never forgotten that.
Snape probably made everyone cry
That scene in the book horrified me, he was so needlessly cruel, how anyone can turn around, especially the author and say secretly he was a good guy all along and we have to feel sorry for him because he was bullied, like no, he was a bully himself, plain and simple.
Olivia Jones This is such a bizarre and reductive way to not only look at fictional characters, but real life humans as well. His past is not an excuse of his actions, but a rationalization of them. To casually write off and disregard what is one of the most complex and gray characters in the series all because “he was kinda mean that one time” is a weird way to approach fiction in my eyes. Snape isn’t a good person, that’s kind of part of it.
@@MrStarman926 I was just using that as an example, there are multiple times Snape was needlessly cruel in the book. I am not complaining at the character, I like interesting and complex characters, I can dislike a character in a book but know they are necessary for the story or the plot. My problem is rather fans of Snape and even Rowling at times who despite Snape's behaviour justify his actions, even blaming the other characters for not 'understanding him', for example the amount of hate James gets at times for 'bullying' Snape even with evidence he was doing the same (in fact both were in the wrong, but for some reason Snape is constantly excused). I am not disregarding a character because 'he is mean' I am disregarding others justifying his actions as right.
Olivia Jones Okay, then I misunderstood what you meant, I’m sorry. I definitely agree with you that wholly defending Snape for the reason of “he was good at the end” is a way too simple way of looking at the character and how they function in the story.
I wrongly assumed you were just doing the exact opposite of the blind Snape fans.
She did specify Hermione's skin colour in a few places. Even if she didn't, Hermione was still clearly intended to be white as there are several side characters who have "black" as one of their identifying features. Why explicitly describe these characters' race but not the race of the female lead? Could it possibly have something to do with her being part of the prevalent race in UK?
It's great that she supports an actress who gets attacked over an irrelevant feature, but claiming that Hermione didn't have skin colour is just disingenuous.
I have no investment in Hermione being white, but I feel that Rowling is being dishonest about always imagining her as black. Any time we get any indication about Hermione's skin color, it always seems to imply that she is a white girl. Plus, I mean, she's white on the book covers. Weird oversight there, Rowling.
Prisoner of Azkaban, Chapter 21
“One moment, please, Macnair,’ came Dumbledore’s voice. ‘You need to sign, too.’ The footsteps stopped. Harry heaved on the rope. Buckbeak snapped his beak and walked a little faster.
Hermione’s white face was sticking out from behind a tree. ‘Harry, hurry!’ she mouthed.
David Andersson
Yup.
1.) all the black characters in HP are described as black, with the exception of Lee Jordan, who is described as having dreadlocks. 2.) JK Rowling specifically requested that Dean Thomas was cast as a black boy, as at that point none of the books had described him as black yet. Oddly enough, she did not insist on Hermione being cast as black. 3.) all illustrations for the books, including the ones depicting Hermione as white, were approved by Rowling. Emma Watson’s casting was approved by Rowling.
She has had MANY MANY MANY opportunities to make sure Hermione was portrayed as black - in her own books, through her tight control on the movie casting and through the illustrations that she had to approve. She did not take any of those opportunities.
She did not envision the character as black. You are misunderstanding what Rowling said. She simply stated that she didn't have a problem with the choice of actress who was chosen to play Hermione in the Cursed Child, and those comments that were intended to counter widespread criticism at the time of a black actress being cast in the role. At no point did Rowling say that Hermione was black.
rocketcon exactly I don’t know why people keep misinterpreting her statement.
JK also had a hand in casting the actors for the films. If Hermione was truly intended to be a black girl she would've told them to cast a black actress considering she was able to get them to not cast any non-British actors.
@@rocketcon not true. Yes, it would've be great for her to say "I might have envisioned her as white but I support her being casted as black as well" but that's not what she did. Instead she explicitly claimed that she never specified it in her books which is a blatant lie and that deserves to be pointed out.
“A 20k word bdsm fest between dobby and kreacher”
you can’t just... say something like that when I’m in the middle of drinking coffee
A. Morrison
😂🤣😂🤣😂🤣
D'you hear about the one between Hogwarts Castle and the Giant Squid? It exists. Pretty well written, too if I remember correctly but not something I'll read more than once. And even that once was just to say I did...
@@wolfjackle I saw a Voldemort/Giant Squid once! I don't remember the content but I remember reading it just for the shear delight of it existing. I still laugh thinking about it.
only if I can have them sodomize Winky as well.
wolfjackle
YES! I remember that. I don't think anyone could forget that - like, it had to do with the squid having sex with one of the towers or something right? Along with Draco/Apple and those few Hermione/Peeves ones, though admittedly Hermione gets paired with EVERYONE. And I vaguely recall something about the Whomping Willow - was it with the flying car?
HP smut fanfiction yo, lol.
Sarah Z: "...And the Sorting Hat was trans."
Me after finding out that JK was a raging transphobe: **Nervously laughs**
remember how jk rowling said there was only one magic school in asia despite it being a massive continent and also it's literally called "magicplace" in japanese and the pottermore website has a horrible mispronounciation of it?
yikes
You know, I suppose if she'd watched more magical girl anime Japan alone would have several. And there would be a tournament, because reasons.
@@willowarkan2263 now I want someone to write a fan fiction that’s basically a magical girl anime but in the Harry Potter world.
@@SorowFame I mean, it's the internet, so chances are that it already exists. I'd guess that if we are running the main 3 still, Hermione, as a muggle-born witch, would be the protagonist, works well since she is new into the magical world. Ron would be endgame, but early on she pines for others and potentially Draco at some point, though Lockart would still work well.
Ginny might be more prominent as her proverbial lancer, given how opposite they are. Cho could be the required exchange student from China, as in cardcaptor sakura, who has more going on. I would guess Pansie Parkinson would have to serve as rival, can't think of any other female slytherin student. Either quidditch takes a back seat or a plot line has her either get into it or try to and end with her realizing she is strong in a different way, this arc could bring ginny into the fold as her quidditch foil. All the while they fight first hogwarts horrors, then voldemort henchmen and eventually a season finale cliffhanger where he comes back.
@@willowarkan2263 I was thinking more just set in the same world but those are some interesting ideas, one question though, what would Harry be? I don’t think you mentioned him. Or is he just not in it?
As a Harry Potter fan, I will always be grateful to Rowling for writing the original book series.... for what she actually WROTE. Not for the continuous and each time even more ridiculous statements that made me progressively lose respect for her as an author... Also, I hate to say it, but... can we please get a REAL screenwriter to save the next Fantastic Beasts movie?
Agreed.
@Camve how? when shes messed the books up with her pandering to the left and demandin uk peolpe take in mulisms? when she wont ?.
She lost me right when she started making absurd comments like "Dumbledore is gay" and "Hermione is totally black". Like, no. First of all, you would have cast Hermione as black in the movies and -as a commenter for one of my posts said- you would have depicted her in the cover art as black. But guess what? She is white. Which pissed me off bc of how tokenized black Hermione is. Clearly, this was just made to cover Rowling's hide from upset SJW fans. And if Dumbledore was gay, SHOW DON'T TELL! Ughhhh...I want to facepalm so hard rn.
@@dont_harsh_my_mellow plus the books did mention hermione being white
@@MrGrimjaw You clearly never understood any of her books, which were against the sort of racism you demonstrate in your post. Were you a wizard, you'd be screaming "mudblood" left and right.
"This video is a metaphor for the Cuban Missile Crisis."
Alright, getting to work. The Harry Potter franchise represents the uneasy peace between the Soviet bloc and their communist allies and the United States and NATO. It's initial success represents the lessening of tensions, while its later failures represent the ever-deepening chances for global nuclear annihilation. JK Rowling represents general Communist leadership, with her positive effects representing the Soviet's major role in winning WWII, and her negative effects representing the turn to nationalism and paranoia against the West. JK Rowling's tweets symbolize the Soviets stationing nuclear weapons in Cuba, and fan outcry represents the US being pissed about that. As such, This video represents the peace talks that ultimately ended the crisis. Does that make Sarah Z JFK? Maybe.
But that doesn’t work. The Soviets moved nuclear missiles into Cuba as a defensive maneuver in response to the US aggressively moving missile into Turkey.
If anything JK Rowling is the United States who following their success in WWII became arrogant and began making aggressively bad moves to preserve their own influence. Her tweets represent the countless coups the US Staged and the decision to escalate tensions between the US and the USSR by moving missiles into Turkey. And The Cursed Child represents how close the US and USSR came to global Nuclear War during the Cuban Missile Crisis.
@@blixer8384 you make a valuable point. My brain still associates Soviets = Villains despite me knowing its it's more complicated than that, so I assigned that role to her but you are actually accurate.
@@blixer8384 The US reaction also offended Canada, leading this country to continue its diplomatic relations with Cuba. I guess that this would represent Rowling trying to get closer to her fans by answering to their critics by not fixing her attitude in relation to their complaints.
Holy FUck im doing a history assignment about the Cuban Missile Crisis while watching this WHAT
@@TheDoggoPearl holy shit that's such a weird coincidence
Honestly, I believe that when a book/series is in the process of being written, it's the authors solely because they are not done with it. It's like raising a baby. When you get the idea, it's conception; when you're writing your drafts, it is then a newborn; when you go to a publisher for that first book, that's finding a school; when you raise that book series until it's an adult, that's it finding its place in the world while still being under the author's rules. As soon as that series is complete, then it goes off and stakes its own claim to the world without the author being a helicopter-parent...which is what J.K. Rowling became. Of course, the author may still defend the books as need be, but the book is on its own.
Unless, of course, it's a couch potato and just will not go and get a job.
But even as your child grows up they interact with other people, learn lessons and make mistakes, do things you wouldn’t expect, etc. As soon as you let someone read your work, they come to it with their background and personality and now they have a new experience with your work. Even if you put the story down and come back to it later, you are a different person now and the “you” who was the author is gone. So the story is only the author’s because that is how we have chosen to write our copyright laws, but no art belongs entirely to one person.
@@songbanana8 Well…yeah, that's the book going to school. It's still my work as the author, since I'm still responsible for raising/writing it. But once it's done, and I'm not writing it anymore, it's off in the hands of fandom adulthood.
That is a fair point with copywrite (…hehehe) laws though. I wasn't thinking it in that way, but yeah, by law, it's only the author's till the time is up.
Also don't ask why I answered this so quick. It's quarantine and I have nothing to do. 😔
I was curious how Starkid got away with their Harry Potter musicals, but damn I'm glad they did. They did more for the lgbtq+ community then rowling ever could
Quirrelmort is my OTP.
I still love Harry Potter and I still admire J.K. Rowling. What she's done with her life.
BUT I don't care about her shit she says about Harry Potter universe, so I don't look it up. I don't follow her on Twitter. I don't seek articles about it. I don't go to Pottermore. I keep the image of her story as it was delivered to me when I was 9.
And you know what? I am so happy with that.
Yes, me, too. She's destroying her credibility. I just hate that she feels the need to recreate the characters to fit her agenda today, which is also evident in Fantastic Beasts.
Wholesome comment 💖
Tifany Trees plus there are just really poor plot lines, it seems she no longer cares about creating a good story and just wants to cash a check
I 100% agree, I’m the same
I’ve just thought, after years of people demanding to know, “What happens next? What happened during?? What else do we not know about the characters???” it seems perfectly logical that she’d start dishing ridiculous stuff to throw people off. So when I see this disingenuous meme get kicked around...
* * *
* * * Nobody:
* * * Absolutely Nobody:
* * * JK Rowling: Dumbledore had a wild sex life!
* * *
...I call BS. Have I validated this conjecture? Nope. For the sake of integrity, should I? Maybe, but that would go against abstaining from the JKR clickbait. In my corner of the communications profession, I do see the all the memes, as well as when something noteworthy happens. If Rowling spends an afternoon with children battling terminal illnesses, I’ll cave and read about it, because I’m a total sucker for wholesome news. Going down the rabbit hole of all the things that others have the bandwidth for (not to mention A/V talents that I lack)? I’m gonna just agree with everyone in this thread. I’m much happier keeping all that info at a stiff arm’s length.
By the way, she lied about Hermione's race... She drew pictures of the characters, and every time she drew hermione, she was clearly white (there were black characters in the same image).
Did she ever explicitly say that Hermione was intended to be black? The tweet included in this video was her saying she’s not bothered by black Hermione, which I think is a perfectly okay thing for her to say, but if she said she intended her to be black from the very beginning, then that has to be complete BS. I’m really curious, does anybody know?
@@monkiram No, she never said Hermione was black all along or that that was her intention. She just said that in the actual book, her race wasn't specified, so it was OK if the play cast her as a different race than the movie did. The closest the book got to describing her race was one passage where she was sitting outside and it said she was "very brown" and one passage where she got scared and she had a "white face", which are both obviously idioms in the same way "she turned green with envy" wouldn't mean she was legitimately green. I think it's obvious that Rowling intended Hermione to be Caucasian in the books, but since it was never explicitly stated, if the play was just going off of what was actually in the books and not off of Rowling's "intentions", it's perfectly fine.
@@SarahZ I think its in the books that it was mentioned that she had a pale skin. And the scene where she was stated to be "very brown" was after she visited Australia(I believe) with her parents in the summer. Now personally, I dont see a tan on my black friends, or when I go to the beach, I can see white girls have tanlines due to their straps not being perfectly still, but with a black girl, I dont see the straps leave tanlines(or they all tan topless, or somehow their straps stay perfectly still). So its pretty much certain that her skin, as described in the books, is at the very "best" light brown and at the "worst" neon white(which I personally viewed her, as she is a massive bookwurm the first 3 books and probably rarely went outside the library in her spare time).
But obviously, for her character story over the harry potter books(not including the ending), her skintone was pretty much irrelevant. As her family in the wizarding world is pretty unimportant overal. Personally I take issue when a role gets changed in race out of nowhere. For example: in Hairspray, you have 2 options: the standard black people for the american version, or red haired irish people for a british version(or in the rarer cases: the local, historically discriminated minority), but Tracy needs to be the color of the local majority, no matter what. Now, I went to a local play where they thought the best person to portray Tracy, was a black girl, but her dad was white, and her mother, was white, and the host of the regular show was black. They still went for the "negroday" set up, which was utterly ridiculous, as the set up was that no black people were allowed on the show, yet Tracy was. You can see how the entire conflict now seems meaningless. She is black, and dances with a white group under a black host, then tries to mix white and black on tv because she feels that black people should be free to dance on tv whenever they want. Except that she achieved her goal by getting on the show herself in scene 3. My point must be extremely obvious by now, but that just shows that when skincolor matters for a story. Now, in Hermoine's case, she married ron, and she had children with red hair. I'd like to point out, that genetically seen, this is extremely hard. You would need at least 1 parent having the red haired gene to have it yourself. Red hair is far from being dominant. Black and asian people tend to not have that gene, which is why it normally tends to be linked with white people, as the gene has originated and spread heavily. Odds are about 10% at any given moment that a white person carries a gene for red hair. For black people, you would pretty much need a red haired carrying individual to be your (grand)parent, and then you'd have between 12-25% chance of having that gene yourself. Having 2 redhaired children points out that she has that gene. Being black in 2017 and having the recessive gene for red hair, is almost as rare as gold.
Let's be honest, Hermione is a white girl because, besides Rita Skeeter, she is the closest character to represent JK Rowling (in an idealised way) in the book. I know that here there would be a problematic Freudian interpretation, but, for starters, just take into account that Hermione has Rowling's favourite animal as a patronus. What do you expect from a person who willingly concealed her female name in order to not bias the readers' perception of her work?
Her view of British students was that of pale white people and occasional gingers. At least for main characters, that worked quite well. Even though I admit, Black Hermione would be interesting to see due to her sassiness.
Lol J.K. Rowling is confirmed a Terf now, so F
true
F
aaand now we can add "proud transphobe" to the list of bad things about Rowling -_-
I think JK Rowling confirming My Immortal and Christian Harry Potter as canon is the next step
Ah, I see you are a man of class as well
My Immortal as canon would be hysterical XD
Rose Christo and proudhouseife confirming Rowling's Harry Potter as canon*
My immortal is canon it’s called cursed child
@@alexkmz why say something so controversial yet so brave
Can we acknowledge the fact that the "candy from the trolley" lady I canonically an immortal demon who tries to murder students for sneaking off the train? Like, I know she didn't write that. But. It's there.
...I'm fairly certain you're joking, but like I somehow remember this?
Seph Kennedy probably because you were actively trying to forget the cursed child like the rest of us
I’ve sort of suppressed all knowledge of that book. Everything outside of the first seven books (with the possible exception of the first Fantastic Beasts movie) is just so strange that it seems to make up its own separate canon.
I remember reading that scene and half-hoping/half-expecting it to be another of Harry's dreams. Why can't the old lady who gives treats just be a sweet old lady who gives kids treats? Why does she need to be a murderous demon who punishes students with death if they try to get off the train? How would Hogwarts even explain that to the parents of the dead child? "Oh, sorry Mr and Mrs Thompson. Bobby was feeling a little train-sick and wanted to get off the train, so our immortal demon killed her. Oopsie!" It definitely makes the wizarding world seem a lot less magical than it should be :/
I got to admit even if she didn't originally plan it making the lady on the train who was selling sweets into some sort of monster that catches child who try to escape the train was actually not that bad of an idea or at the very least it was not as bad as all of that SJWish stuff that J.K Rowling tried to insert after the fact.
JK Rowling announces that My Immortal was actually an extremely well-disguised Vampire Chronicles fic
The two things I can buy was intended from the start were Dumbledore being gay and Nagini always being intended as a human.
For Dumbledore, well yeah, there are things the publishers doesn’t allow the writers to include, however the issue with that is that by the seventh book, she was one of the most influential writers in the world and had a lot more sway and freedom. So why not include mentions of Dumbledore’s and Grindelwald’s relationship in Rita’s book.
Would’ve been perfect, to get some proper representation of a major gay character, throw some more dirt at Dumbledore (from Rita’s point of view) and humanise Dumbledore more. Not only did Dumbledore have his own Ron who Harry never knew about, not only was Dumbledore into the dark arts and controlling muggles, not only did Dumbledore have a brother and sister, he dated the most evil Wizard, second only to Voldemort.
For the Nagini, well, she put a lot of meaning in names.
Nagini seems to stem from Naga which are a sort of snake/human hybrids. So why not? Was just never relevant to include in the story. But yes, it’s a little bit ill advices when thinking through the implications.
The rest... for fuck sake JK...
Yep true dat
watching this video on the day the pottermore account tweeted that wizards used to just, shit themselves all the time, is... perfection
They what
@@spirithawk6580 pottermore twitter published that wizards and witches didint use toilets at first but when they would GO they would just use a spell to remove it. It stated that they later started to use muggle ways to go to the toilet. Basically they grossed everybody out with non important facts.
@@Steven-qs2qv Wasn't that a fake twitt?
@@riley8385 If it is, then the fact that it's a v believable tweet to come from Rowling doesn't help her case at all
@@riley8385 I read it on the Pottermore website.
You either die a hero or live long enough to be a villain.
JackAllen Greenfield i snorted
JK Rowling always was a condescending hack writer, as far as I can tell. Her stories aren't that great to begin with, if you start analysing it, and her personality, from what you can read from her tweets and such, is insufferable.
I say you can love long enough to become a hero. You just gotta know the line and where it'd drawn
@@IchCharacter Insufferable only if you haven't gone full progledyte. Those unhygenic androgynous cat-moms eat that shit up.
@phaedruslive What is "progledyte" even supposed to be? Do you mean troglodyte? Either way, anything cat ladies tend to like is pretty insufferable.
"The Sorting Hat was trans"
*Laughs in late 2019*
*laughs in 2020 when she ignored something positive in the wake of covid-19 and focused on the phrase “people who menstruate” instead*
@@willowwisp9320 *crys in same*
JKR: Lupin and Sirius actually had a romantic relationship just forgot to mention it
legit don't understand why Rowling *hasn't* said this one though - so many fans took that interpretation from the books and would have supported a canonization... but nope, a white character was actually black, and Sirius is confirmed "not gay" 🙃
@@daisymay156 Reminds me of this comment I saw once where a Twilight fan said Sirius Black was a ripoff of Twilight's Jacob Black even though Sirius was created before Twilight was even a thing. The person commenting also thought that because Sirius's surname is Black that somehow meant he had to be black. Even though surnames don't determine races.
Disagree with you on the Hermoine is black observation
Most people dislike this not purely because they are left (you deserve no credit due to lack of representation) or Right (cultural Marxism agenda) but because she is so disingenuous. You can tell by the fact that her primary book covers which featured Hermoine depicted her as caucasian, she approved Emma Watson to be the actress to portray Hermoine for the whole Harry Potter Movie Franchise and her original sketches, that she drew herself, depicted Hermoine as a white girl. JK obviously had an idea on what Hermoine looked like and now she's just back tracking in order to try and earn brownie points
JK Rowling herself even drew pictures of Hermione as white. So it's ridiculous for her to claim that Hermione was always supposed to be black, and anyone who interprets her as white is wrong. How hard is it for her to say something like "yep, Hermione was always intended to be white, but if you had a different interpretation while reading, then that's ok too." She doesn't need to pretend to be some diversity queen. It's embarrassing at this point.
Brownie points? Was that a racist pun?
Nah, I'm just kidding.
To be fair the cursed child was garbage regardless of whether Hermione was white or black. It was still trash. I’m not saying that one can’t have an opinion, but the fact that people are so up in arms about it just seems rather silly compared to the other crap that was introduced in that play.
I mean death eater Cedric? Really?
Benny James can y’all please remember they weren’t willing to risk little white girls not connecting to the only girl that gets as much screen time as the protagonist? They didn’t want to lose any potential fans so they went with a “”safe”” option. 🤔
I agree. It sounded terribly disingenuous. She could've said that hermione's race was irrelevant to the character, but no, she goes around saying she was ”woke” the whole time
J.K. Towards fans: “You can’t interpret characters other than how I wrote them!!!😡”
J.K.: *changes writing to fit her own interpretation of characters after the characters have already been written about*
Casey Greyson she never said you can’t intepret her work. the opposite, actually.
arabella-grace brown I think this person is referencing the fact that JK hates fanfiction about HP, even though she’s essentially writing fanfiction about her own series now
@@revuesdeminuit4071 Really? Did she change her mind? Because she was quoted being very cool with fanfiction.
revues de minuit if it’s her series then it isn’t fan fiction tho.
KiSwordsman
It’s FanFiction in that she keeps making random assessments about the series that don’t add up and are never actually addressed in canon
As someone who's in the process of writing a novel, I would be FLATTERED if people enjoyed my work enough to create fanfiction about it.
If JKR replied to Twitter questions with more "Maybe!" and "You decide!" Rather than man-handling interpretations of open ended subjects, maybe I would actually want to read the books and engage in the series rather than avoiding it for all these years. Also, screw that nasty transphobe, ick.
Or if she prefaced each statement with , “personally, I feel that . . .” There’s nothing wrong with having an opinion, as long as you recognize it as such.
And about the whole “Dumbledore wouldn’t have have told Harry about his sexuality, that would be out of character”-yeah, true, but one of the main plot threads in Deathly Hallows is Harry learning about Dumbledore’s past and coming to grips with the kind of man he really was )because a huge part of growing up is seeing the adults you looked up to as 3-dimensional for the first time) and it would have been /so easy/ to have either 1) his letters to Grindelwald be explicitly romantic 2) have Rita Skeeter write something like “he was totally crushing on Grindelwald therefor he was evil” which would have been very in character for Rita with her whole smear campaign or any number of things.
It would’ve tied in with the point of seeing your role models as adults for the first time and becoming an adult yourself, been in character, and been better rep.
Anywhoo great video, I know I’m late to the party but this is very nuanced and informative
Personally I'm fine with it not being in the books but Dumbledores sexuality not being confirmed in Fantastic Beasts 2 is where I have a problem.
I mean, Rita Skeeter does basically say "he was totally crushing on Grindelwald and therefore he was evil". She describes Grindlewald's duel with Dumbledore with: "People may be forced to conclude that Grindelwald simply conjured a white handkerchief from the end of his wand and came quietly!"
...and then later in the same chapter heavily insinuates that Dumbledore was sexually abusing Harry. It's super gross that the only real evidence of Dumbledore's sexuality comes from coded homophobia quoted from a character who's a transmisogynistic caricature but whatever we know Rowling was a homophobe
It's this weird WASP thing of equating homosexuality as overtly sexual; for example, telling a same-sex couple not to hold hands or engage in light PDA because their are children nearby, even if a heterosexual couple could engage in the same without issue. Grindelwald can't be Dumbledore's "great love" or boyfriend, because that'd be "too much to tell a child."
Speaking of Skeeter, that woman who fakes her way into getting what she wants and has metamorphose powers... is described as having a masculine figure and is probably a trans woman :)))))))))
It would take exactly one line for aberforth to clarify that his brother was romantically involved with grindlewald
JK Rowling is just arguing with her past self at this point.
"Hermione's race was never established"
That's not what her third book claims.
"That was then. This is now. And the sorting hat was trans."
HOLY MOLY- That Aged Like Milk 😬
I feel it could only happen now with the caveat that it also tries to eat exclusively cis women or something.
On the topic of the changing relationship of the HP fanbase with JK, I remember when I first started reading fanfiction in 2012 (that was when I turned 11, so I did miss a lot of the earlier movement just due to youth), many of the stories had those huge disclaimers at the top, which have largely fallen to the wayside for those newer to the fanfiction community as fanfiction becomes more prevalent. In HP fanfiction disclaimers, there were frequent references to "Jo, our queen" or "My favorite person Jo", etc. This is no longer the case. The fanfiction authors who still write disclaimers very rarely acknowledge JK in any way at all, and if they do, it's frequently with the attitude of "You all know I didn't' write Harry Potter, if I did, it would be this fanfic, not what JK wrote". I do find this culture shift very funny, and I think when you transition between websites you can clearly see what I mean. I started reading fanfiction at the tail end of fanfiction.net's major popularity and status as THE fanfiction site. With the rise of AO3, you see a lot of new authors who've only been writing int he past 3 or so years, who don't use disclaimers, who call out authors who they don't agree with in long notes at the beginnings and ends of stories, and who frequently post completely original works under the guise of fanfiction (just using character names and nothing else) in order to cultivate a fanbase. Idk, cool shit and a funny shift in culture.
P.S. I wrote some damn good fanfiction back in the day. Like, it was total cringe, but I was 11-13, and people definitely thought I was much older. Fanfiction and fan culture also helped me become so much more active online and has made me a lot more competent with technology than I ever might have been otherwise. not to mention, my general typing speed, skill, and writing speed and skill, have improved so much as a result. So to everyone in these communities, please remember to be welcoming to the dumbass twelve year-olds looking for a place to belong. By mocking kids on the internet for BEING kids on the internet, you're actually being pretty harmful to your own fandoms and subcultures. You need a second-generation, let these kids discover themselves and participate, for the longevity of fan culture in general.
Well, not acknowledging JK anymore has aged like wine and milk now.
@@amandalynn4979 Funny how years pass
"I have never read the series, but sometimes I just like to peruse the (...) tag on AO3 just to be smug about it." This is so relateable.
Do you ever go on ao3 just to flex on Ann Rice?
@@iluvearth99 Nah, honestly didn't know of her before this video.
...but I might've just looked up Vampire Chronicles on AO3 and read a short fic just to be able to say that I have.
Yeah thats about right. If you havent read Harry Potter, reading fics on ao3 is sorta the same experience lol.
I have read fanfiction from Teen Wolf, Daredevil (the show), Merlin, Pacific Rim, Star Trek and have watched none of the original content (I will eventually get to some of them some day hopefully).
Arunima Tiwari I have seen five episodes of Daredevil and yet have read a few hundred fanfiction. Who needs canon when fanfic understands the characters better?
JK Rowling: [throwing darts at a board of character names] gay... gay... also gay...
It would actually be reasonable to flip a coin to determine the gender of any character for which their sex is insignificant to the narrative, and I have considered whether or not I should do this many times.
@@futurestoryteller Cool idea. Flip a coin to see if they're male/female. Roll a dice to see if they are bi/gay/nonbinary etc... :D
In an interview she once said something like “nope, xy isn’t gay, Dumbledore is gay”. I can’t remember the exact phrasing, but she said it as if only Dumbledore could be gay. I’ll link the interview if I find it
@@plasticfrog4533
I remember watching an interview on youtube, she was with Radcliffe, I think?
He asked about Dumbledore, and she said that she always thought Dumbledore was gay, but didn't feel it was something she needed to say, because it wasn't really necessary to the plot, or might have detracted from it.
(People insert their own meaning where there is ambiguity in a work, many just thought Dumbledore and Grindlewald were friends, while others thought their relationship was, ahem, _deeper._)
She also said that there was a line in the script for deathly hallows part two, in the "it looks like king's cross" scene, where Dumbledore reminisces about some woman who was his love interest.
And she says she just sort of. . . wrote on the script "dumbledore is gay" and gave it to the writer, who took the line out.
The more public announcement came later.
Irving IV I also saw that interview, If anyone reading this want‘s to watch it: th-cam.com/video/IprmyN9mEsk/w-d-xo.html
I read the books before I found out that she had outed Dumbledore and to be honest, as a queer person, I tend to notice when someone is written as queer (not always tho), and I never noticed anything with Dumbledore. That’s why I was also a bit upset, because I thought she did it for publicly.
I just hope she includes him „being gay“ (a lingering look into Grindelwalds eyes with swelling music or something like that would be good enough for me) in the new movies.
The Tolkien example doesn't work because it is actually ABOUT death of the author. He was fine with people having different interpretations of his work, he just had an issue with them putting that interpretation on him: hence why he prefered applicability to allegory, one being a choice the reader makes, the other being an unequivocal and undeniable statement about the author's intent.
Tolkien was fine with you saying it was about war, he just wasn't fine with you saying that's what he was saying. And as the difference is between readers claiming they know what the author wrote and what he meant to write, and Tolkien was encouraging the former, I don't think it's fair to say the reader can impose their own interpretation on him.
28:16 she did explicitly call her white in prisoner of azkaban (and if I remember correctly, she also explicitly said so in the half-blood prince)
I believe that, fundamentally, the author decides the meaning of the story and what is canon...at the time of writing it. Which is to say, while JK Rowling is free to write the story in whatever way she wants and attach intent to this, that does not mean we have to believe her when she tries to retcon the story and act like it was this way all along.
That is a very interesting point. ^ ^
But what about Professor Mcgonagall having a different birth date in the year than in the new Fantastic Beasts? I agree that she is free to say something was that way all along and that as the audience we don't have to believe that, like Dumbledor having a new brother that never came up when we learnt about his family history but the Mcgonagall matter is a mistake and, from what I've heard, J K Rowling has tried to hide this by removing Mcgonagall's birthday from Pottermore since the film came out.
@@kerrie6084 I agree with you. That was indeed a mistake, but it happens with many authors, I suppose. G.R.R.Martin talked in an event about how he changed the sex of a horse in the middle of a chapter. It was a silly mistake, far less important that McGonagall's birth date, but it represents how hard it can be for a writer to keep track of every single aspect of his narrative. It was a mistake, but I still admire her very much. What she did with the Harry Potter series changed forever the history of fantasy literature. I belive she deserves some slack. ^ ^"
@@romaosoares5195 I agree mistakes can happen, I guess it's just that from J K Rowling intricate plots and the fact that the information was online makes it worse because she's known for doing the opposite of simple mistakes :)
@@romaosoares5195
According to rumor, the "Game of Thrones" book series has become so
complicated that GRRM himself is hopelessly confused, and he can no
longer finish writing a single page without consulting with a small cadre
of hardcore fans who have an encyclopedic knowledge of GoT. That old
fat fuck will die before he ever finishes the series.
Rowling’s first mistake was confirming The Cursed Child as canon. Her second mistake was thinking she was a screen writer. Too much creative control without oversight and respect for the previous Potter films. Example, George Lucas and his Star Wars prequels, though I like them, they could have been better.
Nah the problem with Lucas was that he had an entirely different world in his mind than his technology and base allowed.
he should have just booted a new franchise (possibly within the same universe) and it would have been a lot better. the only reason he gets so much hate is because his worlds don't match anymore, that's the big problem there.
Liam - True to a degree, however a key component missing on the prequels was the brilliant editing team that cut the first trilogy into classic movies we all loved. Marcia Lucas, George’s first Wife was part of the editing teams credited and uncredited. She and her partners won an Oscar for best editing on A New Hope, she was also nominated for an Oscar in editing for American Graffiti also by George Lucas. George didn’t have such a talented team for the prequels editing the movies into films just YES MEN. That’s what I meant by no oversight.
Well... but that's my point... to a degree. the prequels got mostly unedited Lucas doing exactly what he wanted.
But the fans don't realize that, they think the original trilogy was also Lucas just doing what he wanted.
I can imagine if he actually made the prequels shortly after the sequels things would have turned out far different... but not closer to what he wanted.
You see this with the new movies where they just revive tropes from the original trilogy instead of expanding on the world Lucas was intending to build, that's what makes them feel empty.
Given the resources Lucas wanted to build a far bigger world in which he would essentially tell a story of a fantasy space jesus heavily influenced by asian culture.
Lucas too is a far better world builder than he is a writer of stories. if you just block out the original trilogy and the new movies but you keep the licensed old canon books and series like the clone wars you will see that the intent suddenly is to go in a totally different direction. but because of the original movies he was always going to write himself into a corner.
There's several writers that suffer from this when they do their foreshadowing wrong or when they try to do a prequel.
Actually even within the starwars universe : Starwars Rogue One was actually a good movie at it's core... but not at it's ending. it had an interesting setup, it had the retro feel but also expanded the world.. the only problem is every character introduced in Rogue One had to be eliminated by the end of the movie because they don't exist in the actual original movies.
This then is easily compared to the problems Rowling has, because she too has set up a world in a very specific manner with very specific rules that she originally used to build that world, the changes she's now making outside of her written words don't work because they don't connect anymore.
Liam - I agree with what you stated. However from my view, to make sense of your vision, one takes advantage of good people in their field while translating your vision to film. You need the right mix to produce a successful film while maintaining creative control. George had a vision with his prequels, however I think he wore too many hats in making them. He still could have made them better if he didn’t try to do it all himself. That’s what Rowling is doing now. She’s a great writer but is she a great screen play writer? In film making getting the right pieces to help fashion your vision without sacrificing too much of what you want, makes a great film. I think both bit off more than they could chew thinning the line between good and mediocre.
Oh I agree with you on that!
If I was an author, I would literally ask people to send me their fics, to be completely honest.
Ultimate Softie
That would be a bad idea. If you should write another book in the series and it resembled one of the fan fics - even in the slightest - you could be sued for plagiarism. It’s tough enough with easy internet access, but inviting it into your home would be disastrous.
@Al Pals same. I'd spend nights reading them!
Same
Some well known screenwriters and directors have assistants screen their email for them, because even if they accidentally read an idea sent in by a fan, and later a similar idea was shown in their movie or TV show, they could be sued. There have been cases in which the director or screenwriter had the idea first, and then it was suggested by a fan, so then they couldn't use the idea.
"And the Sorting Hat was trans" has a wildly different energy in 2020.
Rowling: guess which character is gay?
Fans:
Rowling:
Fans:
Rowling: *a l l o f t h e m*
except Sirius!
gus lol
I love that video
Jus Gohnson
and Snape is a single mother!
I can't believe you would do this, I'm sorry Sarah, but you're 100% wrong here.
Everyone knows that "10 Things I Hate About You" is the best Shakespeare fanfiction.
OMG 😂😂😂
I remember that movie! Total ripoff of Taming of the Shrew!
I mean... She’s the man is also pretty great!
This is a spectacular video. I was engrossed the whole way through. I don't think I've ever watched an entire 30min+ video without speeding it up or skipping... except for this one. You are so well-spoken and the way you discuss things is informative and really interesting :)
It’s hilarious because I often find novel length fanfiction that is hundreds of times more interesting and satisfying than the source material.
Fuck copyright
Not to brag but i clearly understand the metaphor for the Cuban Missle Crisis
Well duh. Rowling's increasing alienation of her progressive fans echoes the fledgling relationship between the Soviet Union and the United States following World War II, with each successive announcement escalating the tensions in a manner that recalls the stockpiling of nuclear weapons by both world powers.
Alberto Villaescusa Rico
@@albertovillaescusarico9456 #deep
On Rowling and Fanfic: A friend of mine worked for Pottermore and part of their job was to read through, and summarise, Harry Potter fanfic for Rowling.
I wouldn't be surprised if a lot of these "reveals" came from those fanfic summaries.
your comment made my day, thank you
It's just like with the casting for The Cursed Child. I am sure that in her mind Hermione was white when she first wrote her but when she saw the casting for the play she went "huuuum interesting.". If she were honest she would have said "I don't have a problem with this interpretation of the character" if she was self-aware too she could have added, "Hermione wasn't like that in my mind but this interpretation is fine". BUT NOPE! That response would have given all the WOKEY points to the play for being diverse so instead, she said it was actually HER idea to have Hermione be "not so white" so that people would be giving HER wokey points. She is basically taking interpretations that she finds interesting and instead of being honest and acknowledging that she didn't see things this way at first, she steals that interpretation and claim it was her ideas all along so that people will praise her. She has a huge ego. It's so huge in fact that it stops her from realizing that some of those interpretations are actually very troublesome. She doesn't want to see that because the wokey points look too good but at the end of the day, she's the only one actually seeing those wokey points because most people despise her new additions.
That's really interesting, but wow, that job sounds amazing.
Eli N.S Maybe if she says Hermione is not black, wokey people will accuse her of being a racist. It’s England. People there are a bunch of cunts.
Eli N.S i 100% agree. i think black hermione's a great idea and it's awesome if people see her that way (especially all the black women saying they were empowered by her as kids), but she obviously was MEANT to be white and it's stupid for jk rowling to pretend otherwise. the correct course of action would have been just to go "i wrote her as white, but it's cool if you saw her as black" and not,,, whatever this is
5:45 You can pinpoint the exact moment when i realized “Oh, this video is old”
I like how down to earth and candid you are. Thank you for making these videos! Your nuanced approach to these topics is refreshing.
No one:
J.K Rowling: Dobby was in all reality a gay midget wizard that had a fetish for kids with lightining shaped scars.
“gay midget wizard” 😂😂😂
I know your trying to be funny but ... that's literally what he actually was.
HAL 9000 wasn't he a house elf? I'm fairly certain those are different to wizards, midget or otherwise. And I'm not going to touch that fetish thing.
im one of those "love the series, hate the author" type of harry potter fan, of whom i know there are a lot, and the whole ordeal really saddens me. this is a brilliant video though, thanks for making it :)
I understand you completely. If only she just deleted her twitter and actually wrote new books... although her writings will probably be affected by her stances nowadays... Like Black female president of magic US in (my guess) 30's.
Dean Goldenstar the 20s, and actually i don’t mind that in theory, i’m always for representation, i just think the character, as well as the rest of the movie, was poorly written
I will also add that HP series is even unintentionally... ASKING for fan fiction. Its a very open world. Where writers seemingly just gravitate towards writing their own stuff within the world to again. As you said too.. HELP THEM WITH THEIR WRITING. Training wheels.
I am working this weekend and needed some entertainment to binge. I found your channel and I've watched nearly half your content in a single night. I literally love you. Subscribed and early awaiting your next video.
I kinda wanna watch the four hour video about J.K Rowling though...
same
The Tolkien example is strange: Tolkien's definition of "allegory" was basically "the author meant for this to be a symbol (for, say, a World War), therefore that's the only valid way to interpret it." Tolkien himself was basically a proponent of Death of the Author: he's fine with you interpreting his writing however you want, as long as you don't insist that A) that was how *he* intended it to be read, as the author, and therefore B) that's the only valid way of reading it.
His word for *reading* something as an "allegory" for something else (as opposed to trying to read authorial intent into it and using that as a cudgel of authority) was "applicability". His works were "applicable" to things like the World Wars, the experience of PTSD, etc., and they were free to do so. He'd be entirely fine with people reading Frodo's experiences as him having PTSD, as long as you didn't insist it was allegory (again, to use his definition of the word) - that Frodo has PTSD, that Tolkien intended that Frodo has PTSD, and anyone who doesn't interpret Frodo as having PTSD is Wrong because they disagree with the Allegory being used by the Author.
From the man himself: "I think that many confuse applicability with allegory, but the one resides in the freedom of the reader, and the other in the purposed domination of the author.”
Tolkien himself is against the author dictating the One True Way to read or interpret their works, and he applies this standard to himself. The most he'd say were things along the lines of "that wasn't what I meant when I wrote it", which was emphatically not meant as "your interpretation is wrong because I wrote it, and I know what I meant when I wrote it". Tolkien believed, as he says, in "the freedom of the reader" over "the domination of the author".
Tolkien's disdain for allegory (as he used the term) is similar to the sort people have for hamfisted political cartoons, where they literally label what everything is intended to represent so the audience doesn't Get It Wrong. The sort of blatant, beat-you-over-the-head-obvious symbolism that can *only* be read one way (as a metaphor for whatever the author intended). He basically thought that that was a tool used by hack writers, and that more nuanced, realistic (or "historical", as he put it) would be validly applicable to many different things, depending on reader interpretation.
To provide the rest of the above quote: “I cordially dislike allegory in all its manifestations, and always have done so since I grew old and wary enough to detect its presence. I much prefer history - true or feigned- with its varied applicability to the thought and experience of readers."
If you read Frodo's experience as being plausibly PTSD, Tolkien would applaud you for it (whether that was what he deliberately meant when he wrote it or not). You thought about the work and applied it in a way that's reasonable and plausible, rather than detecting the author's Glowing Neon Sign indicating the Correct Symbolism.
He was tired of people insisting, for example, that the story was intended, by him, to be read solely as all one big allegory for World War Two (and that the Ring was an allegory for the Atomic Bomb), and included a foreword to that effect, explaining what he would have done if he *was* writing such an allegory (again, using his definition, where the author clearly and specifically intends for this thing in the story to solely represent this specific real-world thing or event):
"The real war does not resemble the legendary war in its process or its conclusion. If it had inspired or directed the development of the legend, then certainly the Ring would have been seized and used against Sauron; he would not have been annihilated but enslaved, and Barad-dûr would not have been destroyed but occupied. Saruman, failing to get possession of the Ring, would in the confusion and treacheries of the time have found in Mordor the missing links in his own researches into Ring-lore, and before long he would have made a Great Ring of his own with which to challenge the self-styled Ruler of Middle-earth. In that conflict both sides would have held hobbits in hatred and contempt: they would not long have survived even as slaves.
"
You may note, for example, that the Free Peoples are a stand-in for the Allies, that Sauron is Hitler and Mordor is Germany (which then becomes occupied by both Isengard and Gondor), that Saruman an Isengard specifically (and only) represent Stalin and the Soviet Union, etc. This is the sort of allegory Tolkien preferred to avoid.
@BTIsaac and Tom bombadil was Switzerland
EXACTLY. I'd say that Tolkien definitely put his own experiences about war into stories, but he never intended it to be compared to, or directly inspired by, the wars. Write what you know and all that.
Pseudo Nym that’s exactly what I was thinking. When she got the the authorian intent and death of the author bit, all I could think of was «I don’t think you understand what an allegory is.»
Also, I just noticed your psuedonym is literally Psuedo Nym.
I was okay with the example (although I don't know if she meant it this way) because I interpret that discussion as people forcing authorial intent of allegory upon Tolkien as their interpretation. In that some people wanted Frodo to directly represent Tolkien, or the Shire to directly represent England, so even if Tolkien was a DotA proponent, people's interpretation was to create a narrative of authorial intent. Although, I'm not sure how authorial intent/DotA are applied in terms of the interpretation including intent, so this might be an incorrect reading. Sorry if this comes across as really stupid! (Also, in terms of allegory, I've usually found C.S Lewis to be my go-to example).
As Jenny Nicholson noted, we know that Rowling didn't originally write her world to be diverse because we've all seen what happens when she tries to add diversity.
26:27 Exactly Sarah. Nagini being a snake Voldemort took as a pet in Albania and later turned into one of his Horcruxes to symbolise his relation to Salazar Slytherin was fine. There was no need for "Oh yeah she was really a witch with a blood curse who permanently became a snake." A Maledictus is just an Animagi who ends up trapped as whatever animal they turn into.