Episode 75: Transcript
Episode: 75: Has JK Rowling destroyed Harry Potter fandom?
Transcription by Keffy
Charlie Jane: [00:00:00] Welcome to Our Opinions Are Correct, a podcast about the meaning of science fiction and just about everything else. I'm Charlie Jane Anders, the author of the upcoming young adult space opera novel Victories Greater Than Death.
Annalee: [00:00:15] I'm Annalee Newitz. I'm the author of the forthcoming nonfiction book Four Lost Cities: A Secret History of the Urban Age.
Charlie Jane: [00:00:24] So today, we're going to be talking about Harry Potter and what it means to be a Harry Potter fan now that there turned out to be some issues with JK Rowling and transphobia. And, do we still want that sorting hat on our heads or not? We're going to be joined by one of my personal heroes, Cecilia Tan, who is an amazing author and editor and publisher, and head of Circlet Press, and the author of The Velderet and many of my other favorite books, and a huge Harry Potter fan. So, acceleramus.
[00:00:58] Intro music plays: Drums with a bass drop and more science fictional bells and percussion.
Charlie Jane: [00:01:24] So Cecilia, I was wondering if you could start us off by just kind of walking us through your journey as a Harry Potter fan, like how you got into Harry Potter and how you started doing fanfic, and those amazing parties that I've been to, with the butterbeer and everything. Just tell us about your journey as a Harry Potter fan.
Cecilia: [00:01:42] So I'm a longtime professional science fiction writer and editor and so forth. And so when I go and read a new fantasy book, or the new hot series, or go to see a new Marvel movie, or whatever, I often see it through a different eye than just a regular fan would. But when I started reading the Harry Potter books, when they were first coming out, it was this sort of little phenomenon that was only really a phenomenon within the book industry at that time, where people were like, ooh, these books are cool, you got to check them out. And it was like, the first book was like a book club edition from Quality Paperback Book Club or something. That was kind of like, ooh, adults, you might like this cool kid series, also, that is getting a lot of buzz. And so of course, I was like, I have to read this. And I sat down and read it all in one day. And then the next day, my partner Corwin was feeling kind of under the weather, and he was just like, oh, I don't want to watch TV. I don't want to move but I can't sleep and I feel bad. I'm like, I'm gonna read a book to you.
Charlie Jane: [00:02:40] Aww.
Cecilia: [00:02:41] And I started reading. Harry Potter aloud to him and we ended up reading the whole series aloud to each other as the books came out. Because then, of course, we're like, where's the next book? It's not out yet.
[00:02:55] We did that whole waiting for each book to come out. And then of course, it became this huge phenomenon with the midnight book parties. And, remember, this is at a time when the book industry basically was feeling very dire. Amazon was going to take over everything, there were going to be no independent bookstores left on earth, and so forth. And it was a huge shot in the arm. So, both from the industry perspective, and then as the sort of you just fell in love with these characters, and with Hogwarts and with the midnight parties, we started dressing up. And whatnot like that. And of course, I go to science fiction conventions as a professional. And I started throwing Harry Potter themed parties at different conventions, started going to Harry Potter only conventions. And it turned out that through Harry Potter specific conventions, I found sort of my niche within fandom that I hadn't really known was there. Sort of like general fandom is kind of like mainstream culture as a lot of, even with this sort of huge open-mindedness that being a science fiction person kind of brings to you, there's still a lot of heteronormativity and this, that, and the other and the regular patriarchal power structures are all still there. And I started going to these Harry Potter conventions, where first of all, 95% of all attendees were either female or trans. And many of these trans folks discovered they were trans through Harry Potter roleplaying, to begin with.
Charlie Jane: [00:04:24] Wow,
Cecilia: [00:04:24] Which I thought was fantastic. Yeah, really kind of interesting. Of course, then given where we've ended up. And so just these very, not patriarchal structures, to where these conventions were basically organized and run by a lot of people who are into fanfiction, who wrote slash fiction, and so forth. And it was the sort of early booming of the internet, also. So there was that kind of heyday of LiveJournal where nobody really knew your real name kind of thing. This is pre-Facebook, pre-Twitter. So the social media we had was, you started a blog. And your avatar was in a picture of you is a picture of your cat or your favorite book cover or Harry Potter, for that matter. People had to go to convention and they had to make a little sticker of their LiveJournal avatar to put on their badge so people would know who they were.
[00:05:16] Like, oh, you’re AliceAnnStar123! And of course your real name’s on your badge, etc. We now think of it as a sort of golden age when everybody all hung out in one place on the internet together. Harry Potter basically became my church. It's the place where everyone who went to these conventions and so forth sang the songs that I sang and read the books that I read and knew the things that I knew. And I'm talking about it in the past tense, because honestly, I don't know if we're getting that back.
Charlie Jane: [00:05:50] Yeah, well, that actually leads me into the next thing I wanted to ask you, which is how did the people you knew in fandom, react when we found out about the full extent of JK Rowling's transphobia? What kind of conversations have you been having? And how diverse have the responses been?
Cecilia: [00:06:06] Oh my goodness, there's been everything from total denial, mostly from people who are less affected by it directly, to total refutation. Like literally, we've got friends who went out and burned everything. Burned the books, burned their ties, gave their robes to Goodwill, that kind of thing. Like just, never again, Harry Potter and JK Rowling are now they who shall not be named. And to people who are kind of like, well, you know, honestly, this isn't the first time she's been problematic. And we've been putting up with her for so long. You know, honestly, Harry Potter has not belonged to JK Rowling in a long time. Harry Potter has belonged to us, the fans, and maybe this is just one more thing that we should be disavowing ourselves from her about.
[00:06:53] I've kind of come down in the middle a little bit. I am never giving another dollar to any thing that puts $1 into JK Rowling's pocket. So I'm not going to the Universal parks ever again. I'm not buying the souvenirs. I'm not buying the new editions of the books. I'm not paying for the Harry Potter video games. I'm playing Wizards Unite, but I'm free to play, so I figure that’s okay, I guess. I actually quit playing for a couple of weeks, because I just couldn't stand it. I was just like, I just can't do it. And then, but a bunch of my friends all play and they got me back on the bandwagon just a couple of days ago. They were like we're sending gifts are you getting them? I’m like, okay. Alright, you guys, I'll play but still, it's just like, it's tough.
[00:07:38] And people are asking things like, am I putting up my Harry Potter Christmas tree this year? And stuff. And there are people who basically are like, look, Harry Potter fandom is our lifestyle. And what do you do? And I said, I think it's similar in some ways to well, you know, do people still go to church after all the child sexual abuse scandals? There are people who left, and there are people who went to other denominations, expecting it to be better or whatever. And then there are others who are like, no, I've got to stay, because I'm going to try to fix this or reverse the tide. And I think when we start having conventions, again, that's probably where I'm going to end up. Because of the pandemic, I get to put my decision off. But we've been running these, we used to call them Hogwarts Alumni Reunions, and I started running them when the books had ended. And we didn't know that they were going to be the Fantastic Beasts movies, and all this stuff, which are terrible, by the way, but that's another story. There's many other problems besides transphobia going on there that are Hollywood and not my business. But anyway. Oh, my goodness.
[00:08:51] But I started running Hogwarts Alumni Reunion. And then basically, when Trump got elected, we kind of switched the focus of the parties to being Slitherins for Social Justice. Witches and Wizards for Worldwide Change, etc. And we actually did a party at a convention hotel right by the Boston Common the same weekend as the Women's March. And so we had pasted posters all over the convention that were like protest signs, but wizarding protest signs, so, Women's March on Hogsmeade. Because you could get all the graphics from the women’s march and make your own signs. And so I just put a little witch hats on them and stuff.
[00:09:27] Then we started doing it as a fundraiser for different causes. So we raised for Boston Area Rape Crisis Center, and some other things that we felt were sort of crucial causes at the time. And then every year, it's been something different. And I'm like, well, if we're gonna keep going, it's gonna we're going to be giving to trans support causes of some kind, because somebody's got to work to basically counteract the toxic information that she's putting out there. And my voice is extremely small compared to JK Rowling's, but if enough fans get together, then our voice is large. So that’s what it's about. And even if I'm a drop in the bucket, every drop counts. So that's sort of where I come down on it now.
Annalee: [00:10:05] So I know that you've been very Slitherin-identified and have worn the robes. And do you think you're gonna wear your Slitherin robes again? It sounds like you you are.
Cecilia: [00:10:15] I probably am. But it's one of those things where like, I feel like I can't wear my Slitherin scarf around town now in the winter. Not that we ever leave the house because of the pandemic. But if we did it really feels like you can't wear your Harry Potter colors right now. Because you could be seen as making an anti-trans statement. And I'm sure there are people out there who are doing it that way. So it’s like, yeah, no, take your house affiliations out of your Twitter bios, etc, etc. Because that's how it's going to be interpreted. You can't wave the American flag now, without people thinking you're some kind of right wing Trump asshole, right? And it's like, the flag supposed to belong to all of us. But it's been so used this way. And it’s just like…
Charlie Jane: [00:11:01] Yeah.
Cecilia: [00:11:02] We do some things to counteract it. I mean, like Fox Estacado did a run of special pins and stickers that are HP Fans for Trans Rights, and they’re…
Charlie Jane: [00:11:13] Yay.
Cecilia: [00:11:13] It’s a log with a a trans flag and a hand holding up a wand and whatnot, so I bought a pile of those stickers and whatnot like that. You can download her graphics for free if you're going to reproduce the HP for Trans Rights logo, basically. Yeah, I don't know. I honestly am not sure where the cosplay is going to go from here.
Charlie Jane: [00:11:32] So I wanted to play a clip of my favorite reaction to the sort of Harry Potter that the JK Rowling transphobia reveals, which is comedian Pete Davidson on Saturday Night Live doing their sort of weekly edition segment, and he's asked about Harry Potter. And this is what he has to say.
Pete: [00:11:47] I mean, what's wrong with her, Colin? She creates a seven book fantasy series about all types of mythical creatures living in harmony with wizards and elves. And the one thing she can't wrap her head around is Laverne Cox? She's a national treasure!
Charlie Jane: [00:12:03] And, you know, I feel like Pete Davidson, God bless him, he really summed up how I feel, which is just like, you know, what the hell? You can believe in fucking goblins and elves and dragons and everything, and you can't believe that trans people are real and you can't support Laverne Cox. So I guess my next question is, as fans who are trying to grapple with this, and I feel like this is something that we can all speak to, do we read the books differently now? And part of what I keep thinking about is, there's a huge strand in the books of basically biology is destiny. You're either born with magical abilities, or you're not, which is a choice. In a lot of fantasy worlds, anybody can learn magic, it's just whether you're able to do all the things you need to do to learn. But in the Harry Potter universe, you either got it or you don't. And it's biology. And I feel like that notion of biology is destiny feels very different to me now, now that she's trying to make that same kind of statement about gender. So does it change the basic reading of the books for us?
Cecilia: [00:13:04] I feel like there's always been a bunch of problematic heteronormativity, first of all, in the books. There's always been very strong sort of British colonialism. And there's been all kinds of problematic stuff in there that are, a white lady from Britain wrote this. In the history of children's literature from Britain, maybe it's still not as bad as some, but we're not trying to measure her against—
Charlie Jane: [00:13:30] Cough-Cough-Roald Dahl.
Cecilia: [00:13:32] Someone from the eight—yeah, exactly. I mean, it’s not like she's the first problematic creator, either. But where it really hurts, though, is that, you know, the message of Harry Potter that she has stated, it is supposed to be that there's diversity and inclusion and this fight for equality. And this fight against that sort of blood purity stuff, which is… Blood purity, which is supposed to be your biology is your destiny thing and that was supposed to be the bad guy in the book, right? What she doesn't kind of come out and say is that well, the actual bad guy is that this idea is supposed to be bankrupt. But Voldemort, who is not himself blood pure, of course, uses it as a way to stir up all the people who have the most privilege in that world so that they'll support him. Right? And it's like, gee, where have we seen that before? And, I mean, her thing has always been anti-fascism right? And it's like, yay anti-fascism. Except that, the books in the end, Harry marries his childhood sweetheart, they have 2.5, kids, and etc. It's just like, she wanted to have this anti-fascist message. But then at the same time, she ends up with this, but everybody will be happy if everyone just conforms.
[00:14:43] The disappointing way that Tonks’s arc turns out, for example, is like a lot of people when they see Tonks, when she first comes in, she's like this punk character, who is a metamorph major so she can make herself anything including other genders, other species, etc, etc. And she's this nonconformist. She's like oh, wasn't good at domestic charms. She can't even clean Harry's owl cage with a spell. And she's an Auror. So she's like this badass, right? And then she spends a whole book where she her hair isn't purple anymore, it's brown and boring because she's depressed. And we eventually find out she's depressed because she's in love with this werewolf who doesn't love her back. Or kind of does, but he says they can't be together because of angst, and so forth. And then of course, they get together. And does she go back to purple hair, and this and that? No, she becomes mother of their child, and this, that, and whatever. And it's like, she never goes back to the rebel character, right? She's like, Oh, well, now I don't need to act out anymore. Because now I'm—
Annalee: [00:15:45] It's the classic domestication of the tomboy kind of story.
Cecilia: [00:15:50] Right. You're just like--
Charlie Jane: [00:15:51] It was just a phase, you guys.
Cecilia: [00:15:53] Exactly.
Annalee: [00:15:53] Yeah, it was just a phase.
Cecilia: [00:15:54] What? Really? So disappointing.
Annalee: [00:15:59] I feel like there’s a lot of stuff in the books that you're highlighting, like all of this heteronormativity, and the idea that we should all form little domesticated units, little nuclear families. And also all of the implicit racism in the books, and homophobia. That was all stuff that I felt like, I was kind of ignoring when I read them initially, before JK Rowling came out as transphobic. And I kind of chalked it up to like, yeah, she's a white liberal. She's trying. She wants to have a message of inclusivity and it's just really hard for her to imagine that. And she really wanted to appeal to the mainstream so she had to make her main character a white boy, and I’m not thrilled, but I get it. And I kind of, I felt like I was often kind of extending her the benefit of the doubt, because I felt, like you said, that there was this overwhelming message in the books of anti-fascism and also to a certain extent, anti-racism, because the mudblood thing winds up being kind of a metaphor for race, even though of course, there's also all this other horrible racist crap with actual human races. And of course, there's these enslaved house elves, which always pissed me off.
[00:17:12] But then, I feel like for me, when JK Rowling didn't just come out as a clueless white lady trying to be a good liberal, but actually a toxic transphobe who really wants to expunge a subgroup of people from the world and limit their rights. I had no patience for any of that other stuff anymore. And I felt like this kind of floodgate opened in me and I was like, oh, okay, well, all that bullshit? I'm not going to take that bullshit anymore. I just don't like that part of the books.
[00:17:44] So it kind of leaves me asking, yeah, what do we do next?
Charlie Jane: [00:17:50] The thing about the anti-fascist message and the thing about like, prejudice against the muggles, this is like one of those areas that I feel like we've talked about in previous episodes of Our Opinions Are Correct, where you have a metaphor, but once you make it a supernatural metaphor… It's like in True Blood, where the vampires are gay people, but they're gay people who go around murdering everybody. It's like, real life gay people don't actually go around murdering everybody in sight.
Annalee: [00:18:13] But in real life, there is a whole idea that gay people will go out and commit crimes and murder people for sex.
Charlie Jane: [00:18:21] In this thing. It's like, okay, so prejudice against mudbloods, or muggles, or whatever, is unreasonable. Except, it's true that muggles can't do magic. They are inferior in this one very distinct, and important way. Their inferiority is a fact within the universe. And I think that that's an interesting thing to revisit now that we're kind of asking these questions.
[00:18:46] So we're gonna take a very short break and when we come back, we're going to talk about what's next? And basically, how do we move forward? And what kind of stories do we want to be telling?
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Charlie Jane: [00:19:08] Okay, so Cecilia, and Annalee, and actually me, how do we create better stories? Do we fix this by writing Harry Potter fanfic that kind of expunges the bad parts? Or kind of improves on it? Or do we create our own fantasy worlds and just kind of try to create something better that's brand new? What kind of stories do we tell going forward that kind of take our Harry Potter feelings and put them in a positive place?
Cecilia: [00:19:30] There is no or, first of all, it's always and. So, that's my philosophy in life.
Charlie Jane: [00:19:35] Very good point.
Cecilia: [00:19:36] There are no binaries, actually. That's just the human brain doing this dumb thing that it does by splitting everything to two sides. But yeah, so, there's going to be fanfic, and we have to write our own worlds that are, so forth. I mean, the thing that's kind of good is that, I mean, Harry Potter literally inspired an entire generation of writers who are wrote millions, literally millions, of words of fanfic, some of them millions per person. And there's still millions and millions of words of Harry Potter fanfic being written. And the more you dig around in that world, which I did, I am one of the people who literally wrote millions of words of it. While my professional career was in a slump. I just started writing Harry Potter fanfic, and I haven't stopped honestly.
Annalee: [00:20:21] Which, thank you, by the way, I love your fanfic.
Cecilia: [00:20:25] [crosstalk] fanfic is about trying to fix the stuff that you see is wrong, where you're just like, yeah, that's not how I would do it. And it's like, well, or whether it's something basic, like, well, but I think these two characters should be together and ship them. Or, whether it's something less basic, where you're just like, well, but she never explains how this thing works at Hogwarts, I'm going to try to explain it, whatever. Or house elf liberation, why does that go nowhere in the books, that kind of thing. There are people out there writing their house elf liberation, etc. And it leads to basically people ending up writing their own books, you can't see the through line as clearly as you can with Twilight, because there was a whole generation of Twilight fan ficcers who basically literally just changed the names, and were able to become New York Times bestsellers, selling—
Charlie Jane: [00:21:09] 50 Shades of Grey!
Cecilia: [00:21:09] Without having to change very much. Because vampires and humans getting together is a staple of paranormal romance, right? So with Harry Potter, it's got to be a little more subtle, but JK Rowling didn't invent wands, or flying brooms or any of that stuff. So it's sort of like that's kind of all a mythology that's still out there to be played with. And I'm far from the only person who's done it. In every magic school book, though, that comes after Harry Potter. There were magical books before, of course. But every one that comes after basically has to refer back to it in some way that it's an answer to, or a reaction to, or, whatever. Nobody gets away with it.
[00:21:52] Like, you can't do a space opera without kind of referencing where you fit between Star Wars and Star Trek. You can't just pretend giant things don't exist. You can't write a superhero comic without ever referencing that Superman exists. That kind of thing. It's like the foundational things that are so big in the canon that they're like a gravitational well, right?
[00:22:15] So yeah, now there's a whole generation out there who are writing their own magic school books and their own fantasies of all kinds that are still in some way trying to fix it, that are like, well, I'm going to write the inclusive, diverse, you know, whatever. I mean, there's people on the right wing doing it also, who are just like, well, we're just going to go back to our good old guns and spaceships and patriarchy stories, too. They can have those if they want them. Go ahead, you know. I'd rather have them writing and reading those stories than oh, you know, like building bombs to blow up an AT&T switch switching station with their creative energy, so.
Charlie Jane: [00:22:52] Yeah, and so what I'm thinking about when I think about Harry Potter fanfic is just how gay so much of it is. Listening to you read some of your fanfic at conventions really made me think about Snape and Harry in a new way, for example. Is there something about Harry Potter that just lends itself to homoeroticism or to queerness? We already talked about the people who transitioned as a result of it.
Cecilia: [00:23:12] Yeah. So that Harry Potter, you have this sort of golden Venn diagram overlap of, you've got a really heteronormative patriarchal milieu. But then you've got this message of, but there should be room for everybody. There should be inclusion. There should be, whatever. And so that just leads people to be like, okay, where are they at? And especially then with that sort of reveal where the week after the last book was published, then she does this big event in New York City and she's like, oh, and by the way, Dumbledore is gay. And people were like, what? And it's like, you go back and read between the lines, and you're just like, okay, now wait a second. And of course, the very first time Dumbledore ever appears in Harry's description of him is he's like, he's literally wearing purple glittered boots. And a whole bunch of just these kind of signifiers. You know that of course, 11-year-old Harry and most readers, miss. But of course, those of us liberals in the know were supposed to pick up as hints, right?
[00:24:15] And then of course, the whole fact that the tell-all biography that is written of Dumbledore about his affair with Grindelwald wasn't just about his seduction to the dark side of thought. It's that they had a gay relationship. That's never stated completely. And everyone kind of wondered, okay, so in the Fantastic Beast movies are Grindelwald and Dumbledore gonna bang? And now I don't know if we’re ever going to find out because they've made such a mess of those movies that who knows if there's going to be another one, then?
Annalee: [00:24:47] I think, for me, the question that I have is that it's hard. Well, this isn't really a question. It's a statement. It's hard to move on in the way that I think you're correct that we have to. Which is to say, writing our own fic writing our own original stories, when JK Rowling is still out there, making so many toxic comments. And it's not just that she's got a platform to speak, it's that she literally controls the IP. She is the canon. And she can take things back in the narrative. She can revise the narrative, she can do all kinds of things to it. It's a very different thing than, for example, what's happening with Lovecraft now, where people are kind of revaluing Lovecraft, and critiquing Lovecraft and appropriating Lovecraft. And Lovecraft isn't there to come in and be like, well, actually, this is all about how the white race is superior.
[00:25:39] We know he said that and we can criticize it, and we can move beyond it.
Cecilia: [00:25:42] But he isn't on Parler or Twitter with a one and a half million followers.
Annalee: [00:25:46] Yeah. And that's, that's the thing I'm wondering. How what you're seeing among fans of how people deal with that when she is out there actively undermining a lot of the values that the fan community stands for?
Cecilia: [00:26:01] Well, it means that you can't just kind of make a decision that, okay, this is where I'm going to be on this issue and then sort of forget about it. Because she keeps hammering on it. She keeps coming around to it again, and it becomes more and more clear that she's become her own villain. The thing that made Voldemort a villain was that he had pain and angst from his early life that he could never get over. And the difference between him and Harry is that Harry got over it, kind of, or at least Harry made the choice to fight for good instead of allowing himself to kind of be twisted by his pain, right? Even if there is a bunch of caps lock in book five.
Annalee: [00:26:42] But no, it's true. Harry Potter's made a decision to try to set things right in the world instead of to just like dwell on his narcissistic angst.
Cecilia: [00:26:52] Yeah. And it's like she's made herself into her own villain by being like, well, I'm this way because I was abused, myself. And you know, from so on. And so we’re like, okay, so what you're saying is, you're literally afraid of men. And so that has made you afraid of people that you've decided in your mind are actually quote, unquote, “actually men,” when they're trans women. And what we're trying to tell you is… And it’s like, she can't hear it, doesn't want to listen, and now that she's in this incredible position of privilege, she’s taken the villains route of just being like, well, I'm not gonna listen to any of you. I can do what I want. Part of me feels a little despondent about it, because I'm like, we're not going to stop the Harry Potter train from rolling on. The theme parks are there. The books are on literally billions of bookshelves all over the world in 150-something languages. I just have to hope that every time she opens her mouth, the answer is that a bunch of other people in her world, all speak out and are like, actually, no. Trans people are people, trans women are women, non-binary people are valid, etc, etc. And if there's one thing that warms my heart, it's that literally everyone who has been involved professionally, with Harry Potter has come out on that side.
Charlie Jane: [00:28:08] Yeah, that is really that's really heartwarming.
Annalee: [00:28:10] That is really true, yeah.
Cecilia: [00:28:12] I was right in the middle of a Kickstarter for Harry Potter-related book, basically, when this all started happen. I wrote a book called The Binge-Watchers Guide to the Harry Potter Films. It's a guided tour through the films from a fan perspective. Easter eggs, and, plot summaries and casting notes, and all that good stuff. As well as like, my information on how to throw a Harry Potter-themed party and whatnot, which, God knows if I'm ever going to do again, right? And literally everyone involved with the films, right down to Steve Clovis, the screenwriter, every single one of the actors, etc, basically came out and made a public statement.
Charlie Jane: [00:28:49] I know.
Cecilia: [00:28:49] Big public statements, and it just like, because they're just like, what?
Charlie Jane: [00:28:55] I was so grateful for that. To me, I think Lovecraft is a comparison that I thought about a lot. But to me, the comparison that comes to mind over and over again is Orson Scott Card, author of Ender's Game. He's somebody who has become very public about his homophobia. And he didn't wait until there was an Ender’s Game movie to do this. So we didn't get like a giant Ender's Game franchise or… Ender's Game was never as big a deal, I think, is Harry Potter.
[00:29:21] But it basically made it, like now you can't be a fan of Ender's Game without basically taking a side in this controversy, I feel like. And because Orson Scott Card is still out there and still spreading these views, these extreme homophobic views. It's very hard to support Ender's Game in any way anymore. And I think that that's kind of the other example of you can't recontextualize Ender's Game. You can't reclaim it, you can't do anything, because he's still there and he's still kind of making this mess.
[00:29:54] So, taking a step slightly back. I feel like this moment with like the Harry Potter of it all and everything is a moment where we can all kind of stop and think about what we want from our fantasy stories going forward. And what kind of stories and what kind of magical worlds do we hope we're going to be seeing like 20 years from now? What do we hope the legacy of all this will be?
Cecilia: [00:30:16] Legacy is a big word.
Charlie Jane: [00:30:17] It is.
Cecilia: [00:30:19] Yeah. And this is the thing, is that I think there was a long time where Lovecraft’s racism and whatnot, were kind of forgotten.
Charlie Jane: [00:30:28] Yeah. Or excused?
Cecilia: [00:30:31] Yeah, that wasn't the first thing that people thought of or knew about. And this is the whole reckoning with #MeToo also. The question is the Scarlet A, or the Scarlet R, or whatever, it is now, attached to people forever? And should it be. You can make the whole argument that the author is not the work, and that the work of art, whatever it is book, movie, painting, song, whatever, sort of does its own work in the world. And that you can be a fan of that without being a fan of the creator or whatever. But it's sort of, I don't know. I feel like in the present moment we're in, it's really hard to sort of see past the real effects that, that take place with people we know.
[00:31:14] I think I bring it back to a fandom again, where, yeah, there's going to be literally millions of people reading Harry Potter in the future. And probably at some point, I'm going to hope that in the future, people are going to look back at JK Rowling's transphobia and see it as a quaint quirk of the 20th century, in the way that people try to excuse the racism of things. Because if we get to that point, that will mean that transphobia is the minority and is not accepted. It’s like, can we please? That's the future that I am hoping for, that it won't be an issue because, like her point of view will, despite her platform, and all the loud “feminists” who want to trumpet it, will have been silenced or will have been put in the dustbin of history.
Charlie Jane: [00:32:03] So part of what I think about is James Bond, because Ian Fleming was a huge racist. And if you read the original James Bond novels, they are actually full of racist stuff, which was reproduced in a lot of the ‘60s and ‘70s James Bond movies. I'm thinking specifically about Live and Let Die, You Only Live Twice, a couple others. But at this point, James Bond is no longer even defined by Ian Fleming. I would say, if you asked everybody in line to see the next James Bond movie, at the movie theater, who wrote the James Bond books, maybe one out of 20 people in line to see the movie would know the name Ian Fleming. And it's just, it’s James Bond. It's just like most people who love Batman don't know about Bob Kane and Bill Finger. So it's possible that that's the way that this is going to end up. But I do think also that this is a good time to think about the fact that a lot of fantasy, not just Harry Potter, a lot of the fantasy that we cherish comes from a very colonialist, very white, a very kind of problematic heteronormative place. And now in the first quarter of the 21st century, what's left of the first quarter, is a really good time to just think about, creating fantasies that aren't just like the same story, but more inclusive, but radically new stories that actually kind of decenter colonialist ideas and heteronormative ideas. And I feel like there's some really exciting stuff being published right now that is actually doing that.
Cecilia: [00:33:23] Yeah, I agree. I mean, the thing is, we're in the 21st century now and the fantasy we write now is going to be the fantasy of our time. And maybe in the 22nd century, people will look back at us and say oh, but they were so backwards thinking that beings with two legs and two arms were all that. I don't know.
Annalee: [00:33:41] It's so biped-centric.
Cecilia: [00:33:43] I know, seriously.
Annalee: [00:33:46] And like, all of that, sort of like mammal fetishism? Ugh.
Cecilia: [00:33:51] Exactly. I don't know what what it is that's gonna make us look backwards to people in the future. But you can only, even when you're writing futuristic science fiction, you still really are writing about your own time and your own… maybe your hopes for your own time and your own people. But I think that there's so many children's classics, that are now so divorced from their creators. I mean, the Wizard of Oz, Alice in Wonderland. I mean, there's so many things that are not in their original contexts at all. I mean, like there’s lots and lots of political—
Charlie Jane: [00:34:23] Frankenstein.
Cecilia: [00:34:25] Frankenstein. Yeah, there's lots of political commentary in both Frankenstein and in Alice in Wonderland, that now we miss because we’re not in that context anymore. Like I was saying before, we're not we're not stopping Harry Potter. Harry Potter is not getting canceled. Is JK Rowling getting canceled? Maybe. In our dreams. All we can do is try to try to cancel her message, is try to counteract her message and keep using it as an excuse to tell people that they need to be allies, and they need to think about these issues for themselves and they need to support the people in their actual lives.
[00:34:57] That's where it comes down to for me is, how does it affect the actual people that I have contact with, not just the people we think are out there in America or in the Twitterverse, or wherever, but the actual people that we know. And that tends to be a lot of queer, trans, and other non-categorizable folks who are trying to live their lives outside of the mainstream in whatever way, whether they're poly or they're… What attracted them to science fiction and fantasy in the first place was the fact that there were worlds that had different rules or different ways of being than the one that gets handed down to you in the sort of mainstream, marry your childhood sweetheart and have 2.5 kids way, I feel like those folks are not going away. We're all still supporting each other every way we can and that's the most important thing.
[00:35:44] And so, I want to support the Harry Potter fan creators who are still making art and making t-shirts and creating videos. There are people out there who are making Harry Potter fan films that they've been working on for years that haven't been released yet. And it's like, are they going to stop now that they've put six years of work into a film that isn't out yet? They're not, they're going to instead turn it into a way to make a statement about where they stand on the issue. That kind of a thing. And I resent that she is making those people go through that.
Charlie Jane: [00:36:20] Same.
Cecilia: [00:36:20] That she’s forcing people to take what was a celebration of a world that she created, and so forth and so on, and a way for people to express their creative talents. And now all of a sudden, they have to be like, and by the way, we don't support her transphobic views. It’s like [crosstalk].
Charlie Jane: [00:36:38] Right.
Annalee: [00:36:38] I take a lot of hope from that, though, too. From the fanfic writers and fan movie makers, because I think Charlie's right when she says this is the time for us to be writing radically new and radically original fantasies. But I also think that we've lived in the era of fanfic long enough to know that transformative works are transformative, and they can be a way of taking control away from a narrative that has defined a different generation and remaking it.
[00:37:08] And I mean, I now consider myself a Star Wars fan, which I never did before. And that's partly because of the way that people who grew up as fans of the series, of the franchise, are now taking it and turning it into something that's more diverse, that has characters that look more like me and my friends. And that act in a very different way. And that aren't necessarily just aristocrats from a fancy family, but maybe come from a more lowly background.
[00:37:35] As we started out, saying here, we need both things. We need new fantasies, and we also need new ways of appropriating the old fantasies. And so I look forward to both. That's my hope.
Charlie Jane: [00:37:48] I think that's a great place to end this. And that's a wonderful final thought to leave us with. So Cecilia, can you just tell us where can people find you online?
Cecilia: [00:37:56] Oh, gosh, I'm easy to Google. The—
Charlie Jane: [00:38:00] But don’t make them Google you!
Cecilia: [00:38:02] I know.
Annalee: [00:38:03] Don’t make them do the work.
Cecilia: [00:38:05] I’m at CeciliaTan.com. And you will find my books and so forth hopefully coming out soon with a new urban fantasy from Tor Books called The Vanished Chronicles. It's six years late, I know. It's coming. I promise. The new rewrite just went to the editor today, trust me.
[00:38:24] And yes, and if you still are a fan of the Harry Potter universe and so forth, and at least want to support the films, The Binge Watchers Guide to the Harry Potter Films is out there for sale on Amazon. And at your… well, if your local bookstore is closed, because of the pandemic, you probably, it's a little harder to get, but you should be able to special order it or whatever, for curbside pickup.
[00:38:48] And vaccines are coming. I promise.
Annalee: [00:38:49] Yay!
Cecilia: [00:38:50] Okay, that's me. I'm always doing something. So yeah, there will be lots more inclusive, diverse, and gender fluid [crosstalk]. Because let's face it, I use my fiction as ways to work out my own hang ups about gender and identity. And here I am in my mid-‘50s. I haven’t come close to working them all out yet, so.
Annalee: [00:39:13] We look forward to another half century of you working this out.
Charlie Jane: [00:39:17] I definitely hope you don't work them out soon.
[00:39:18] So thank you so much for listening. This has been Our Opinions are Correct and you can find us wherever podcasts are found. If you feel like leaving a review on Apple or somewhere else, we really appreciate that. And we appreciate our supporters at Patreon which could be you. We have a patreon at patreon.com/OurOpinionsAreCorrect. We're on Twitter as @OOACpod.
[00:39:40] And you know, just thanks to everybody out there who supports us. Thanks also to the wonderful and brilliant Veronica Simonetti, our producer, and thanks to Chris Palmer for the music and thanks again to you.
[00:39:53] Bye!
Annalee: [00:39:53] Bye!
[00:39:55] Outro music plays. Drums with a bass line including bass drops.