The Rec Center #151
Hello! Happy Thanksgiving to anyone who celebrates it, and happy final-weekend-in-November to everyone else. If you’re working today, particularly in retail, you have all of my sympathy. This week we have HARRY POTTER CONTENT, following the release of the new Fantastic Beasts film—one that Gav saw for work and I would only also see for money, and have subsequently not seen. A longread on JKR + HP fans + canon, a little discussion of our own evolving relationships with the franchise, and, for anyone who still wants to engage with this world but not with its current iteration, a multi-ship list of HP fanfic! — Elizabeth
new stuff
“‘The Crimes of Grindelwald’ and the painful history of ‘Harry Potter’ canon” by Michelle Jaworski at The Daily Dot
A deep dive on canon, retconning, and what continuity means to different types of fans, with a focus on JKR and her...issues. Featuring quotes from Elizabeth!
“The Invisible Hit Parade: How Unofficial Recordings Have Flowered in the 21st Century” by Jesse Jarnow at Wired
Taping was a integral part of music fandom in the analog era. This longread digs into the people carrying on the process in the digital age.
“The Problematic Relationships Between Some YouTubers and Their Fans” by Hannah Ewens at Vice
Personal—and sexual—relationships between fans and creators are often marked by fraught power dynamics, but on YouTube, the intimacy of the medium only exacerbates the problem.
older stuff
“Harry Potter and the Sanctioned Follow-On Work (or, Fanfiction vs. the Patriarchy)” by Elizabeth at Fansplaining
PEOPLE ARE CALLING CRIMES OF GRINDELWALD “BAD FANFICTION” AND FIGHTING THIS RHETORIC IS A HILL WE ARE BOTH DYING ON.
tumblr & beyond
Henry V8 fanart by hattedhedgehog, inspired by Mad Max: Fury Road
“you can lead a content creator to water but you sure as fuck can’t make him drink”
A warm hello to this person who purchased dozens of buttplugs to use as Naruto cosplay weapons.
JUST IN CASE you haven’t seen Detective Pikachu with Danny Devito’s voice.
“my first she-ra fanart is shitpost”
fanfiction
Works about the Harry Potter universe that were not authored by JKR or Steve Kloves! ENJOY. Thank you, as always, to our guest reccers. — Elizabeth
“A Short Social History of the Viola Tricolor in Western Asia Minor” by Spacenaiad. 13K words, rated Teen.
Ship: Pansy Parkinson/female oc
Recced by: Laura
Backstory: The author’s own summary really says it all: “In which Pansy works in Borgin and Burkes, gets a crush on a Muggle girl, and hangs out with people she didn't like in high school.”
Rec: A lovely look at postwar life and Pansy Parkinson finding her place in it.
Content warnings: N/A
“Wild” by Seefin. 92K words, rated Mature.
Ship: Harry/Draco
Recced by: Ganno
Backstory: Set five years after the end of the canon books, Harry avoiding all his problems (TM) in Ireland, when lo and behold, a blast from the past comes along in the form of one Draco Malfoy! Bantering and feelings ensue.
Rec: A wonderfully characterized story, all the characters in “Wild” speak with such great voices, and the dialogue is really top notch. Loved the progression of Harry and Draco's relationship as they deal with their shared history.
Content warnings: N/A
“we must unite inside her walls or we'll crumble from within” by dirgewithoutmusic. 44K words, rated Teen.
Ships: Harry/Ginny, Hannah Abbott/Neville, Ted Tonks/Andromeda Tonks
Recced by: LiarofLesbos
Backstory: Character studies for two women from each Hogwarts House, focusing on how they deal with the War and how they embody the characteristics of their House.
Rec: Some of the best character studies I've ever read. I cry every time I read Andromeda’s, and there’s element of each of them that I feel speak to some part of me.
Content warnings: Eating disorders, grief
“you were broken-hearted and the world was, too” by celaenos. 7.9K words (self-contained but part of a WIP series), rated Teen.
Ship: Gen (but series will eventually be Pansy/Hermione)
Recced by: queersintherain
Backstory: Post-battle of Hogwarts, Hermione, Ginny and Neville go back for the 8th year, Ron and Harry don’t. This is a Hermione-centric incredibly incredibly good post-canon (ignoring the epilogue) fic.
Rec: The author just does such a good job at looking at what the reality of a post-war Hogwarts would be like, both physically (less students for example) and emotionally for the characters. There will be more in the series but it 100% works as a standalone.
Content warnings: Nightmares, just generally people dealing with post-traumatic stress
“It’s Not the Years, Honey, It’s the Mileage” by Thistlerose. 4.6K words, rated Mature.
Ship: Remus/Sirius
Recced by: Elizabeth
Backstory: Sirius returns on Remus’s birthday. In the venerable “Lie Low at Lupin’s” subgenre of R/S fic, set between the fourth and fifth books, when Dumbledore sends Sirius to Remus with FOUR FATEFUL WORDS that spawned like 800,000 stories.
Rec: This is my forever OTP, like my actual *one* true pairing, and a billion years ago I did an R/S ship manifesto; obviously there are plenty of ways to read and write them, but this sort of read appeals to me most, and was very popular when the ship was big in the 2000s—sort of small beautiful moments of grace, accompanied by repeatedly twisting the knife in deeper. I especially love the dialogue, which is so precise in its execution. This one’s only depressing because it’s hopeful! :-)))
Content warnings: References to Sirius’s imprisonment and its effects, particularly on memory and mental state
“Away Childish Things” by lettered. 154K words, rated Teen.
Ship: Harry/Draco
Recced by: Gav
Backstory: Post-series fic where Harry is an Auror and Draco is a potions expert. They’re in their thirties and have finally achieved a grudging sort of alliance.
Rec: Lettered has already written several post-war stories where the characters reevaluate their childhood and/or wartime trauma, and this new fic may be the best yet. It’s a long and plotty twist on the age-regression trope, beginning with Harry getting magically turned into his 10-year-old self (ie, with no memories of the magical world) and Draco taking care of him while he figures out how to reverse the spell. Draco’s awkward interactions with young Harry are very sweet, and as the story progresses in new directions, both characters learn more about each others’ childhoods and how their upbringing molded them into the men they are today.
Content warnings: No archive warnings, but specific trigger warnings are listed in the tags
FINAL THOUGHT
Elizabeth: So I’ve been thinking recently about when I went with some friends to see an opening-day screening of Sorcerer’s Stone (sorry, USA! USA! mostly I just think it’s kinda pretentious when Americans call it Philosopher’s Stone but ANYWAY). I’ve been specifically thinking about the sinking feeling over those two hours that the film...wasn’t that good? I was 16 and my critical fan faculties were in full swing. But the second it finished, my friend turned to me and said, “God, that was bad,” and I felt instantly, righteously defensive, and said as much. No one can criticize my mediocre adaptation but me.
Back then—and for most of my many years in HP fandom—I had that kind of deep foundational fannish love that lets you weather the stuff you think isn’t so good—even the stuff you think is bad, or offensive. But now, 17 years later, that foundation has crumbled to the point where I’m not sure it even exists anymore. You would have to pay me to see the newest installment in the Harry Potter franchise. You literally were paid—you saw it as a professional film critic—and I don’t know if you would’ve gone to see it otherwise?
Gav: Haha, I was precisely the right age to enjoy all the original Harry Potter movies. I recognize now that the earlier ones are pretty ropy, but the canonical alterations weren’t drastic or meanspirited enough for me to be like “this is Bad” as opposed to just feeling vague nostalgia for a corny children’s movie. (I do think the last few are good though, as far as I recall. And obviously we have a lot to thank for Alfonso Cuaron on #3.)
Morgan & I actually talked about this during our Crimes of Grindelwald podcast, but it’s a Patreon-only ep so most people won’t get to hear it. I was a die-hard HP fan as a kid, but I definitely would not have seen this movie if I wasn’t paid to do so. It’s just too demoralizing and unnecessary. On the plus side, I find it very easy to divorce the original books (which I still love) from the work of present-day JKR, who I basically think has been corrupted by power. Her politics grow increasingly dodgy by the year, and when you combine this with the sloppiness of being too important for an editor, the results aren’t pretty.
Elizabeth: Yeah, so this is what I’m struggling with! I’m finding it increasingly hard to have any love for any part of HP, which is real awkward, since I have, like, framed fanart in my kitchen and approximately a million fics that I love and would like to enjoy were I to read them again. I’m curious about how you compartmentalize that—I’ve heard from a lot of fans over the past year who were really struggling with whether they were going to see this film. (And like, I definitely do see a difference between “bad adaptation choices” and “actively offensive” here, too—but even the things I found offensive about the original books were points of strenuous critique, not opportunities to throw the baby out with the bathwater, which is where I’m at now, I think.)
Gav: Sadly I have no advice for you, because I think people’s reaction to this kind of thing is a purely emotional response. Possibly it helped that while I was really into HP as a kid/teen, I was no longer active in fandom by the time the final book came out, so it’s all sort of compartmentalized in my childhood rather than being something I did as an adult? IDK. But in general, HP is such a rich canon that people can just continue on and ignore JKR’s later additions. It’s like any beloved but problematic fandom, we have the freedom to pick and choose. Which is fortunate, because the worldbuilding and politics of the new movie are so offensive and incompetent that they feel like they’re written by a different person.
Elizabeth: Lol God, that’s bleak. But you are compartmentalizing, though—helped along by sort of natural divisions about when you were in the fandom. I think that’s the only way to stick around; for me, the massiveness and the long, long history of the fandom do help. When I soured on Sherlock—and with no deep love for Holmesiana, which I know sustained other fans who also soured on the BBC adaptation—it was because between the creators, who are *quite* present lol, and the fans I didn’t mesh with, there wasn’t a ton of other space. But HP is so massive, and so many fans are unhappy with or basically endeavoring to ignore JKR, that there’s more space to kind of find a patch of Harry Potter that belongs to you.
Do you want to share your writing on Crimes of Grindelwald? You took one for the team. Being in the SDCC Hall H panel where J Depp materialized and gave a speech on genocide was my limit.
Gav: Yes I would love to. Please read my many critical words and make my suffering worthwhile.
“Fantastic Beasts and the problem with wizarding costume design”
I have a whole menagery of pet peeves about this franchise, but the boring costume design is my most personal bugbear. Along with using wizarding fashions that look virtually identical to muggle clothes (which actively makes the film more difficult to understand!), The Crimes of Grindelwald gave Dumbledore a deeply bland makeover that erased his flamboyant fashion sense in the books. IMO this was a bad move in terms of characterization, and for reasons explored in this post, was a subtle case of straightwashing.
“Queerbaiting is ruining the Fantastic Beasts franchise”
The Dumbledore/Grindelwald situation is a damn mess.
“How The Crimes of Grindelwald fails its female characters - especially women of color”
“Why does The Crimes of Grindelwald sympathize with its fascist villains?”
Have a favorite one-off rec? Please send it our way! We’ll use it in a future list. Other fanworks—comics, vids, zines, etc—are strongly encouraged as well. And if you have any interest in doing an entire rec list, explainer, or ship manifesto, please get in touch! elizabethandgav at gmail dot com.
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