#also apparently this is my antiJKR proNewt tag now -

[uefb]

A Love Letter to Newt Scamander’s Autism™ and a Plea to Those Continually Gloating About the ‘Failure’ of the FB Franchise

(this is stream-of-consciousness really, forgive me)

Look. I…dislike…JKR as much as the next politically active gender/queer who was raised on Harry Potter and subsequently spent their 20s raging against the binary and tearing down the system.

But look—

I’m also autistic.

So I can’t pretend to be able to celebrate the potential crash of the first fantasy franchise/series (well, any franchise, really!) to star an empathetic, autistic hero just because I hate her.

The lady has enough money to pave Europe, enough money to buy anyone’s votes—hell, enough money to probably repurchase the entire bloody (pun intended) British empire—

And she frankly has enough money to attempt to destroy trans folks and trans women’s lives whether or not FB continues.

FB is not the root of the problem.

JKR and the increasingly inflammatory political and economic and social moments we keep hurtling through are the problem.

So when I think back on that lonely, autodidactic, quiet, gender nonconforming, gentle, awkward, morally driven (and sometimes-accidentally-in-trouble) eleven-year-old version of me—

That little nerd who clung to the safety of Hermione (as close to a relatable fictional character as I would ever find for decades) like a life raft in the godforsaken sea of adolescence—

Well.

When I think how much Newt Scamander would have meant to that little dork then,

And how much he must mean to so many kids now (let alone adults)…?

I just can’t find it in my heart to purely wish ill on every single one of JKR’s endeavors. Or to celebrate JKR’s failure specifically regarding Fantastic Beasts.

(So maybe Cursed Child can die in a fire, and —yes — JKR’s isms and antisemitisms and absolute crock can—

Well.

You get the idea.)

And maybe it’s the Hufflepuff in me—masked so often by my more ADHD-forward Gryffindor traits—but I just can’t take joy in an atypical, kind, adult autistic character—an unusual hero, in fact!—being [potentially] cancelled when I know it not only hurts me, but so so many others. It’s not joyous to me that people are losing something dear to them, when it’s not the media itself that’s damning but the woman who dreamed it into existence. (Though so much of the good of FB was built by the producers and artists and actors—it was built out by them like a wood-elf in a well-tended garden. The core of it—the trellis, perhaps—was provided by she-who-must-not-be-named, but all that delicate work in between? the moments of worldbuilding, the nuance of character and culture and blah blah blah? they wove the intricacies of the fabric and fashioned the clothes to hang in her closet.)

But I’ve mixed my metaphors and I digress.

What I mean to say is this:

A franchise like FB being cancelled is nuanced and complicated—especially since WB is gonna milk the Wizarding World for all it’s worth even if they do drop FB. This is a multifaceted issue spanning individual, political, capitalistic, societal, etc etc overlapping and contradictory levels, and we should treat it that way, not the way I’ve seen it circulated in posts—just laughing about how JKR had it coming and skimming over all the rest.

Like yes, duh.

Of course she did.

Those of us who grew up on HP rejected her for the very same reasons we loved HP in the first place.

But use your critical thinking skills.

The world is bigger than JKR—art and media have implications and impacts outside of their origin. And, thus, implications for supporting or enjoying something exist on multiple levels that must sometimes be carefully measured and interrogated, even if individually or factionally we come to our own different—and perhaps opposite—conclusions.

So i’m just proposing: maybe we should reconsider taking joy in Fantastic Beasts failure when FB is about so much more than just JKRs considerable sins —

When so many people have seen in Eddie Redmayne’s Newt Scamander the first character who truly acts like them, moves like them, speaks like them—seems to see the world like them!—for the first time in their lives.

Because yes: JKR’s views and horrific anti-trans and—frankly—anti-anti-anti-everything campaigning are personal, but so is what Newt has come to represent.

Words can’t describe that for me. What he means, from an autistic perspective.

Anyway.

I only request that you place your thinking in the complex context it deserves.

.

.

Also, please don’t viciously @ me. I’m open to nuanced conversation, should I have the word-energy to engage—though I have been teetering on the edge of a shutdown for days—but I’m not open to being torn apart for loving quality autistic representation, and for simply wishing I could have more of that character and that content in the world. To not always have to be the one to push for it. To not always have to be the one to write my own representation, to seek it out, to demand I’m worth space and consideration as a reader and consumer with intersectional identities— 

It’s complicated. 

But I’m tired. 

And potentially losing Newt really isn’t funny to me.