#so no meyer was not retconning shit

[cto10121]

Not anti fans saying they finally understand Bella’s (romantic) appeal to Edward in Midnight Sun…when it was also obvious in the original Twilight.

I think a lot of people really struggle with the fact that Bella is a bit of an unreliable narrator with regards to herself, due largely to her major self-esteem issues. Also, she is not in the happiest of moods re: her hatred of Forks. But even beneath her self-deprecation you see her selflessness and her consideration of others. The very first thing she does in the books is to sacrifice her life in Phoenix for Forks so that her mother could be happy with her new husband. She cooks and cleans for Charlie without prompting and lowkey considers Renée as a kind of daughter from years of having to be the mature one—and thinks nothing of it. She diverts conversation away from Angela when Jessica starts to grill her on the type of guys she likes. She encourages Mike/Jessica, making them sit together in the van. She enjoys her time at Port Angeles with Angela and Jessica and helps them find dresses, perfectly content in her auxiliary role. She is diplomatic in her rejection of her three suitors. And then there is the fact that she demands answers from Edward, sees through his lies, notices his vampiric qualities, but also keeps his secrets and is not afraid of the vampiric side of him (as we all know). She is very perceptive; hence how she solves his mystery in virtually no time at all with just a tiny bit of sleuthing.

All of this is downplayed because Bella doesn’t like to boast about herself or even attract attention to herself. Not in Edward’s POV, though. Since he is fascinated with her, he picks up on all these qualities and focuses on them. We get the full, truer picture of Bella’s personality without her self-deprecating narration, and many of her graces in Twilight are highlighted and reinforced in Midnight Sun. And this time we go into detail on Bella’s likes and dislikes, past the cursory summary in Twilight, because Edward is interested in all that. Bella’s humor also comes across more in MS, since Edward finds her funny—both intentionally and not.

Because that’s how first person narration should work. You get the full internal sense of a character, but also their biases and blind spots as well. Just as Bella’s narration is wholly focused on Edward and other people and her own appeal is diminished and backgrounded, Edward’s narration is focused on Bella and other people and his own appeal is diminished and backgrounded. When both have evidence of each other’s attraction to them, they both try to justify it, sometimes correctly, but always with psychic discomfort. The smart reader was supposed to pick up on the subtext in the original book…a subtext that is then made explicit text in the companion novel.

[wyn-n-tonic]

i just wanna say, like, obviously, there's a lot of work that needs to be done on Frizzy 'Verse. i need to comb through it and retcon it and put a proper timeline to it and make it make actual sense. sometimes i feel like i did us all a disservice by writing this shit all out of order, i'm so sorry. but the more i build on it here and in my silly little brain, the more attached i become and the more i actually figure out who they are and where this is going. so, like, thanks for being along for the ride. and if it doesn't make sense from one installment to the next... shh, yes it does. if Stephanie Meyer got whole ass published, we can pretend for Frizzy since i write this stuff for free.

[postmodernmulticoloredcloak]

I give props to Stephanie Meyer. Everyone compared her books to Harry Potter and said how problematic they can be. However Meyer didn't keep retconning her story and turning into a terf on Twitter

The bar is so low 😅

But yes, Stephenie Meyer reacted well to her sudden worldwide fame, she stayed down-to-earth as far as I know, interacted with fans in a respectful manner, encouraged fanworks and especially didn’t start throwing a scene every time nobody speaks about her on twitter for a few weeks. At this point I’m starting to think Rowling has found that people will give her attention if she tweets transphobic shit so she periodically does whenever she feels ignored.

Also the Italian vampires didn’t have a pet that was actually an Asian woman with a female-only disease that turns you into an animal.

Sure, the way Meyer wrote about nonwhite characters was crappy and objectifying and her Native characters turn into animals but they have agency and feelings and important roles in the plot. Again, low bar is low, but Meyer destroys Rowling in basic decency contest. I do think most of the problems in her novels come from a place of misguidedness and ignorance from living in a white mormon bubble, Rowling started from a place of misguidedness and ignorance from living in a white briton bubble but then started actively digging lower and lower.

[gallyg]

Can we talk about how ridiculous it was that the police chief ordered John Kramer's body to be dug up in Jigsaw (2017)? In what fucking world are people legitimately scared of an actual ghost to the point where government employees are holding press conferences in a graveyard?

The only way this makes sense is if Jigsaw 2 reveals that Saw takes place in a world where ghosts and demons and shit are real, and honestly? This series has been kind of trashy for a long time (AND I LOVE IT, DON'T GET ME WRONG). Why keep pretending Saw is too good for it? By this point in other franchises, Jason had gone to Hell and Michael Meyers was cursed with the Mark of the Thorn.

Retcon it so John is psychic, and always has been. He was blessed/cursed with the Jigsaw spirit when he cut his first jigsaw piece out of Cecil. And so were every disciple of his, which grants them low-level precognition and mind-reading telepathy. Their power grows when they test people, and they get a stronger boost from test subjects who survive, which is why John knew Strahm specifically would find his dead body and check the secret door while Amanda got distracted by an open door and almost got killed by Lynn. Better yet, maybe committing direct murder makes you lose your powers entirely, which is why Hoffman couldn't see Jill or Gordon coming, AND why he kept facilitating games during Saw 3D. He was trying to keep his Jigsaw Juice topped off.

Jigsaw 2 opens with Logan feeling psychic withdraws after killing Halloran. He creates a 100-person adversarial trap where half the participants will die while the other half lives. When the trap is over, he pulses, and he can see Zeke out there, tracking down Jigsaw copycats. He tears the door out of its hinges with telekinesis and tells the final victim of the film "Game Over" before collapsing the exit with his mind. Cut to black.

[kuvopal]

I reread your Destruct fic about 4 times.. currently on my 5th😅 one of the best fanfics I’ve ever read tbh! Somehow found you on tumblr and I just wanted to say that Destruct changed me 😭 I really wasn’t the same person after I read it every time.. thank you for putting so much work into your writing and I can’t wait for more opalvira Bc you write them perfectly ❤️..I would love to see your sequel to Destruct or maybe the story from Kuvira’s POV🥺❤️ I would go to heaven if that happens haha

oh yay thanks for the compliment! I’m glad you liked it.. I was rereading a bit of it lately and I was pleased to see that it still held up. Lots of people have asked about a Destruct sequel, and I’ve wanted to write one for years. I do definitely intend to do one (and maybe a short sequel of ATWR from Opal’s perspective) and my friend bought me the last comic for my birthday so :3 I have officially no reason not to. But I do want to write it when I’m like, in the headspace to do so and not just try to force it because I know if I try to write it before I’m ready it’s just. Not gonna be worth reading.

That said, the sequel would be from Kuvira’s perspective, so I think we could get some of her POV from when Opal and Kuvira were seeing each other in Destruct, so that might hit two birds with one stone (I’m not about to pull a Stephanie Meyer/EL James’ and just write my first story from the other LI’s perspective lmao.. Destruct is too long for that.. but I mean, I guess if I had tons of people willing to buy a Destruct ‘book’ I guess I would haha).

I’m still figuring out how I would write a Destruct sequel, especially wrt all the weird shit (aka character assassination) that happened in the ROTE comics. I’d have to retcon probably the last couple chapters of Destruct just to make it make sense with canon, but that’s not a big deal. I figure some people would rather I just continue on with where I ended with Destruct (insert spoilers here) but I’m kind of really committed to making Opalvira make sense in canon with or without Michael Dante diMartino’s permission while also being a better character writer than him?? Stay tuned to watch me try to make the ROTE comics make sense lmao.

Currently I’m trying to write some original fiction for my own enjoyment :3 but like. Once that’s done destruct and atwr are first on my list.

[thesydneyfeminists]

The Crimes of JK Rowling

CW: racism, homophobia, mentions of abuse and drugs.

The cool thing about growing up and expanding your world view is that you eventually see your childhood heroes for what they are. Flawed humans (and maybe, just plain assholes). First Joss Whedon and now JK Rowling. Nothing is sacred and no one is safe.

I loved the Harry Potter series (the original seven books, I refuse to accept any of the latest garbage she’s put out/had her name attached to – within the HP universe) and I still count Prisoner of Azkaban as one of my favourite books, but even fondness and nostalgia can’t shield JK Rowling from some of the problems with the world she has created, the way she explains/defends it, and her quarter assed (not even half) and damaging attempts to rectify that now in 2018.

Note: Simply for length reasons, these are all related to the Harry Potter/Fantastic Beasts franchises.

Crime One: Racism

It’s no great secret that there are very few characters of colour in the Harry Potter universe. Apparently, while it’s plausible that there’s a whole (not so) secret world of magic, it’s just too unbelievable for there to be many witches or wizards of colour. Before you come at me with “but Vee, mudbloods and Voldemort only wanting pureblood wizards is a metaphor for racism!” you can stop that right now. Because you know what’s also a great metaphor for racism? Actual racism. How about how people of colour are literally discriminated against every single day. They get passed over for jobs, they’re spat at in the streets, they’re being killed by police. Metaphors for racism? Not good enough.

I’m in the camp that think white writers shouldn’t write their main character as anything other than white, for a whole host of reasons, but if I had to summarize it, I think stories of colour should be told by authors of colour, we should be opening the doors for more authors of colour, we should listen to their voices, their stories, their experiences. I think white authors can’t know the exact nuances of what it’s like to be a person of colour, how the world treats us, the experience of living in diaspora, the disconnect between first gen, second gen and third gen family members, and so much more. It’s something that sure, you can read about it, you can do your research, but you’ll never quite understand it unless you’ve lived it. All of that being said, I do believe that white authors can include characters of colour in a meaningful way, that is, not for decoration, not as a handy plot device to move your story along, and not as a harmful, disgusting stereotype. But let’s stop for a second and count the number of background characters of colour that have been more or less confirmed (note that Hermione could easily be coded black, the only hint we get is in PoA, she’s described as “very brown”, but it’s not until the older Hermione was cast with a black actress in The Cursed Child did JK pop up and say “of course she could be black!”). So, we have Lee Jordan (maybe unfairly assumed, as he’s only described as having dreadlocks but he was cast with a POC), Dean Thomas (who was very good at drawing – also maybe unfairly listed, was cast with a POC), Parvati and Padma Patil (possibly unfairly listed, described as having long black hair, and cast with POC), Cho Chang (quickly, can I point out that a character of Asian descent being sorted into Ravenclaw the “smart house” plays into so many racist stereotypes that I can barely breathe), Kingsley Shacklebolt, Blaise Zambini. And then, well, there’s Nagini.

Tweet reads: “The Naga are snake-like mythical creatures of Indonesian mythology, hence the name ‘Nagini.’ They are sometimes depicted as winged, sometimes as half-human, half-snake. Indonesia comprises a few hundred ethnic groups, including Javanese, Chinese and Betawi. Have a lovely day.”

 About a week ago, the trailer for Fantastic Beasts 2: The Crimes of Grindelwald was dropped to mixed reactions. The trailer revealed a snippet that reveals that Voldemort’s pet snake was once a shapeshifting woman, cursed to become trapped in a snake’s body. An Asian shapeshifting woman. Reduced to becoming (a white supremacist but metaphorically) a white man’s pet. Cool. Naturally, there was some backlash about this turn of events, and so JK tried to tweet out the reasoning and explanation (while also saying she’d been keeping this racist secret for 20 years) that obviously Nagini had to be an Asian woman because it was based on a creature from Indonesian mythology, and that Indonesia comprised a “few hundred ethnic groups, including Javanese, Chinese and Betawi”. Cool, JK, but the actress cast is Korean, and you saying all of this kind of reinforces the idea that all Asian ethnicities are interchangeable. Let’s not even get into a white woman explaining Indonesian mythology or ethnicity, or the fact that it’s also an Indian mythology, the Naga. I don’t want to split hairs here, there are other examples of mythology that are similar but have key differences across other cultures (the kitsune/kumiho/huli jing fox spirit, for one). So it’s possible she only read up on the Indonesian myth and took her inspiration from there. But the way she “explained” the debacle sits uneasily with me. She brushes over any concerns that come from people of colour – valid concerns and questions, and instead chooses to ignore the real issue, which is that by playing into the harmful stereotype that Asian women are subservient, and that all of the different Asian ethnicities are interchangeable, she does more harm than good for inclusivity and that she is doing it for show. She doesn’t give a shit if her work includes characters of colour, and if it does, she doesn’t give a shit that they’re shitty stereotypes, 2D characters that are nothing more than the colour of their skin, just there to boost the POC count in her works.

Thinly veiled racism? Guilty.

Crime Two: Poor Handling of LGBT+ Issues/People

Back in 2007, speaking to a crowd of fans at an event at Carnegie Hall, JK Rowling revealed that she “always thought of Dumbledore as gay” to wild applause. Finally, a canon character was more or less confirmed as LGBT+ (sorry to the Dracarry shippers, that still just lives in our hearts). Great, right? Except, why did she wait until the book series was completed to come out with this revelation? Why didn’t she include it in the books? Sure, you might say “well, Vee, it’s a kids book, you’re expecting far too much” except it’s not a “kids book”, it’s always very clearly been in the young adult category (certainly after the third book, at least) and readership has always been split between adults and younger people. The series came out when I was a teenager, finishing when I was 21, and I definitely would have appreciated some LGBT+ representation in a book that meant so much to so many people. I’m not saying she needed to include a sex scene in there (she could’ve faded to black, like Stephenie Meyer did in Breaking Dawn) but to go back and retcon that Dumbledore was gay and that she’d always thought that, for it to ring true, she needed to leave us hints in the original series. She “always thought of Dumbledore as gay” but “didn’t feel the need to spell it out”. Maybe she didn’t see the point of it, maybe she didn’t want to spoil her “big reveal” (note that some fans had always suspected that Dumbledore had been in love with Grindelwald), but by not mentioning it until after the fact? It comes off as lazy, or as wanting to appeal to the LGBT+ community, by trying to earn an ally card by doing very little at all.

Tweet reads: “I was asked whether Lupin’s treatment by others could be seen as a metaphor for (then) stigmatised conditions. I agreed that it could. 2/4”  J.K. Rowling (@jk_rowling)

Then there’s the Lupin issue. Supposedly, at some point in 1999, JK was asked whether or not Lupin’s “condition could be seen as a metaphor for (then) stigmatised conditions” and she said it could. Basically, lycanthropy is meant to be a metaphor for HIV/AIDS in the HP universe. In Short Stories From Hogwarts of Heroism, Hardship, and Dangerous Hobbies (released 2016, mind you), JK writes “Lupin’s condition of lycanthropy was a metaphor for those illnesses that carry a stigma, like HIV and AIDS. All kinds of superstitions seem to surround blood-borne conditions, probably due to taboos surrounding blood itself. The wizarding community is as prone to hysteria and prejudice as the Muggle one, and the character of Lupin gave me a chance to examine those attitudes”. Maybe she had the best intentions in mind when she came up with that idea, and true enough, blood and blood purity does matter to an extent in the wizarding world, but something about it feels hollow and gross. I’d like to note here that we only meet three werewolves in the series (Lupin, Greyback and an unnamed man who was bitten) and none of them were female. Take that how you will, but a few fans came to the conclusion that her “metaphor for HIV/AIDS” also includes the harmful stereotype that gay men were going out and maliciously infecting over men with HIV.

Retconning the source material to make herself seem LGBT+ inclusive but handling it terribly? Guilty.

Crime Three: White Feminism

Maybe this crime really explains the others. It explains her support of the decision to cast Johnny Depp in the Fantastic Beasts film series. Yep, Johnny Depp, you know, the guy who physically abused (then-wife) Amber Heard. Sure, he’d been cast before we knew about that. He’d appeared, for five whole minutes in the end of the first Fantastic Beasts film, so he’d already signed on. Surely, he couldn’t be fired when his contract was signed. Except, we’ve seen examples of men accused of abuse being let go from their jobs (not often, but it happens sometimes). Kevin Spacey, for one. So, why couldn’t Grindelwald be recast? Especially after a five minute cameo at the end of a movie? JK Rowling released a statement where she acknowledges that around the time of filming the first movie in the new franchise, stories involving Depp’s abuse of Heard started to appear in the press, and “based on our understanding of the circumstances, the filmmakers and I are not only comfortable sticking with our original casting, but genuinely happy to have Johnny playing a major character in the movies.” Comfortable and genuinely happy to have a known abuser affiliated with your work, based on our understanding of the circumstances, the circumstances being that Depp physically abused Amber Heard, who provided photo and video evidence. Even Daniel Radcliffe has spoken out about the decision to let Depp remain on cast, given the decision to fire a lesser known actor (Jamie Waylett) from HP: Deathly Hallows pt 2 after his arrest for growing 10 marijuana plants (he was later arrested for a more serious crime, but that was well after his firing from Harry Potter). DanRad mentioned how he was, of course, thankful for the opportunities provided to him from being cast as Harry Potter, but that “I suppose the thing I was struck by was, we did have a guy who was reprimanded for weed on the (original Potter) film, essentially, so obviously what Johnny has been accused of is much greater than that.”

Tweet reads: “Just unfollowed a man whom I thought was smart and funny, because he called Theresa May a whore. 1/14” J.K. Rowling (@jk_rowling)

Of course, supporting the casting of an abusive man doesn’t make her a white feminist, nor does tweeting about unfollowing a man for calling Theresa May a whore. What does, in my honest opinion, is her handling of any criticism she receives, and the bullshit way in which she tries to earn her ally card, but only when it suits her. If all of this mattered so much, she would’ve included it the first time around. Retconning her source material in an effort to appear more diverse isn’t true diversity. It’s literally a made up world, she could’ve made it more diverse from the start. She needed to explicitly state things, because marginalised groups need to see representation. Good, strong, representation. Not weak and harmful versions. By being properly inclusive in her material, as a middle class white woman, she could’ve set an example of how things should be. If she’d spoken to any marginalised group, heard their stories, about their lives, gained an insight in how to write about them, her POC, LGBTQIA+, lower class, etc audiences would’ve come away with the message that she cared and wanted them included in her stories. In her world.

The bottom line is, JK Rowling does not care enough to follow through, and well, when you’ve made as much money as she has, why should she? She bangs on about how truly diverse the wizarding world was and gives examples to back it up, but she does so way too late, and without any real proof, just her word. Sure, she created this universe, maybe she did believe Dumbledore was gay, or Hermione could be black, but she needed to say it back then, not ten years later when people are critical of the cis-het white world she’d created. She rants about men immediately calling women names when they disagree with them, prides herself on blocking and unfollowing these men, but when called out about supporting the casting of a known abuser? She suddenly no longer cares about supporting another woman. One who was arguably, treated a little worse than just name calling. Her idea of feminism is clouded by her life experience, which would be fine if she took the time to listen to the people around her, from different backgrounds, and try to understand why they feel what she says and does is offensive, clumsy, and lazy. But when her opinion and her views challenged, she comes out swinging, blocking people, throwing around statements like “Dumbledore is gay!” or “Hermione is black!” as a clumsy attempt to appease the very people she does not give a shit about. The solution is laughably simple, all she would have to do is just listen to marginalised voices. Hear their stories and educate herself. And if she truly wanted to be a true intersectional feminist, she would do it. Understanding her privilege would cost her nothing. In fact, it would garner her more respect, something she’s lost a lot of in the last few years.

Just say you don’t care, JK, it’s more honest. Guilty, guilty, guilty.

By: Vee H 

 Sources:

Twitter

https://www.pinknews.co.uk/2016/09/08/jk-rowling-reveals-remus-lupins-werewolf-condition-metaphor-for-hiv/

https://www.jkrowling.com/opinions/grindelwald-casting/

https://ew.com/movies/2018/01/12/daniel-radcliffe-johnny-depp-fantastic-beasts/

[myotherblogisfamous-blog]

The new Twilight book begins with the wedding of Jacob and Nessie.

They can’t bring themselves to have sex, though. Because they’re not actually attracted to each other at all. The marriage just sort happened because everyone expected it. Their wedding night is spent addressing this.

Jacob sends Leah and Seth on a mission to find Taha Aki so they might get answers on imprinting and their magic as a whole. This is half the narrative of the book and is, of course, especially poignant to Leah as the only female werewolf and having lost her love to imprinting.

In the meantime, Nessie and Jake hastily set off on their “honeymoon.” They asked Bella for her shield as a wedding gift so they might have some privacy in the early days of their marriage. Even so, they feel uneasy around the Cullens. They worry everyone will find out their intimacy problems. Especially Emmett.

Nessie hasn’t seen Nahuel or met another hybrid since Breaking Dawn. Now fully mature, she still doesn’t know what it means to be what she is. So she and Jake set out in search of Nahuel so that they can engage in the forced love triangle Meyer won’t be able to live without.

They encounter a hybrid and her daughters, a coven of vampire-hunters.

[Could be one of Nahuel’s sisters if we retcon some shit.]

Over the years, she’s bred with both humans and vampires. Being half-vampire, she has the strength to withstand the pregnancy and birth. Female hybrids make natural vampire-hunters and she raises them as such. The venomous male offspring, however, are killed immediately.

She suggests this is the reason for their imprint - their combined genetics should create the ultimate vampire-killer.

Nessie and Jake join them on badass vampire-hunting adventures. Nessie is still conflicted, however, knowing she comes from a loving vampire family.

[Tomfoolery with the Volturi, of course.]

The End.