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wisteria-lodge · 23 days ago

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And now for a HP fandom question - do you have any thoughts on queercoding in the series and if JKR ever actually intended it, and then backtracked, or if it was always completely unintentional? I'm thinking specifically about Lupin and Tonks (as individuals, not as a ship) Inspired by your post about the intention vs how fans perceived Draco Malfoy. Thanks!

So the first thing I want to do is make a distinction between femme-coding and queer-coding. They're tropes with very similar histories, and a lot of works treat them as the same thing. But Harry Potter doesn’t, and I think we can chalk this one up to JK Rowling’s habit of grabbing aesthetics and visuals without really thinking through the history behind them.

(Like - the goblins. She says she didn’t mean to write an antisemitic thing, and I actually do believe her. But did she use a lot of tropes and images with a long history of being tied to antisemitism? yes.)

So when I say “femme” I mean giving a male character traits stereotypically associated with femininity. Heightened sensitivity/emotionality, an interest in hair, clothes and being attractive, a love of lace/pink/frills, a dislike of violence and physical confrontation, and a preference for the soft power of manipulation, character assassination and poison - versus the hard power of direct confrontation and physical prowess. Are these things super stereotypical? Yes. But they’re ALSO traits you see all the time on male villains, especially ones that you don’t want to seem that threatening. Femme-coded villains show up a lot in children’s media, or as the Big Bad’s #2. They’re not meant to be heroic or sympathetic (since all these feminine traits are not desirable, especially for guys.) But they also aren’t scary, and you can pretty much always play them for comedy.

For example: see almost every male Disney villain. And JKR was writing children’s literature in the 90s, so of course she’s pulling from the same zeitgeist as the Disney Renaissance.

JKR loves herself a femme villain. The absolute gold standard is of course Lockhart - who wears pink, wants to start his own line of hair care products, is self-centered, vain, obsessed with popularity… but he sucks in a fight. His entire MO involves manipulating people into thinking he has these traditional masculine qualities when he just doesn’t. But there’s also fussy, prissy Percy wearing his prefect badge on his pajamas. Bitchy, emotional mean-girl poisoners Draco and Snape (especially early book Snape - which is Snape at his most villainous.) Draco, Percy and Snape are also unusual for being male characters who we see crying for reasons other than grief (apparently the only truly acceptable reason for masculine crying).

Lucius Malfoy is an interesting case because he starts off quite masc. He’s threatening to curse people, the governors are scared of him, etc. But, as the books go on… and he gets less powerful… he also gets more femme. When we meet him in Book 5 he’s no longer threatening people, but bribing them, spreading rumors, and giving interviews to the Prophet casting Arthur Weasley in a negative light. He's also getting really into peacocks. In Book 2 he was a major threat, but as he gets recast as Voldemort’s #2 he becomes a more femme, soft-power villain. When he leads the attack on the Department of Mysteries, he absolutely bungles it, which defines his character (and relationship with Voldemort) for the rest of the series. And it makes sense that Lucius is given this kind of treatment! It’s a way of communicating that there's a new villain in town, a real villain.

So, are any of these femme-coded villains additionally queer-coded? I’m actually going to say no. Queer-coding is (like it says on the tin) finding ways to imply that your character is specifically gay. Like maybe giving them a same-sex relationship that is written romantically, but not explicitly called out by the text. Or pairing up all of the characters except them. Maybe have other characters joke about them being gay, and use that as a way to talk about the subject with some plausible deniability. Or they could just play suggestively with a cigar, or a walking stick. There are different strategies.

But Lockhart doesn't get any of that. Honestly, I think that if JKR actually thought of him as gay, she would have been a lot more wary about a scene where he keeps Harry alone with him in his office for way longer than he’s supposed to. And she might have skipped this joke:

“Harry was hauled to the front of the class during their very next Defense Against the Dark Arts lesson, this time acting a werewolf (...) “Nice loud howl, Harry — exactly — and then, if you’ll believe it, I pounced — like this — slammed him to the floor — thus — with one hand, I managed to hold him down — with my other, I put my wand to his throat (...) he let out a piteous moan — go on, Harry — higher than that — good —”

Like. At least she would have picked a different word than “moan,” right? Which unfortunately has slightly sexual connotations. Especially if she wanted to keep Lockhart a buffoon, to properly set up the twist at the end.

Slughorn also gets femme-coded in a similar way: he loves his candy, his parties, his smoking jackets, his lilac silk pajamas, his web of connections he can use to get stuff (Lucius style.) We are introduced to him squatting in specifically a “fussy old lady’s” house. He’s also unusually emotional, getting weepy at Aragog‘s funeral. But I don’t think we’re meant to read him as actually gay, or else his relationship with Tom Riddle might’ve read a little too close to Tom seducing/trying to seduce him. Which is a beat JKR does subtly play out with Hepzibah Smith, but idk. by that point at least Tom is a legal adult.

(As a side note - the Harry Potter series got so lucky that all of its adult characters are played by absolutely top-shelf actors who are aware of the connotations and history behind various symbols, and do consider these things in their performances. Kenneth Brannagh and Jim Broadbent are good enough to make sure there’s not even a hint of iffy subtext when they play Lockhart and Slughorn. Also, Emma Thompson took the potentially very problematic character of Trelawney and made her cute and sympathetic… and not Romani in the slightest.)

Draco, Snape, and Percy all have a case of the not-gays. Percy has a girlfriend (we don’t really see her or anything, but we’re told she’s there.) Snape of course gets his whole thing with Lily, and Draco… after one too many beats where it’s clear that Pansy is into him, but he’s not into Pansy… gets a scene where he’s talking to his buddies with his head in her lap. (JKR uses “no one‘s good enough for me” beats with Blaise, Draco and Sirius, and the idea there seems to be more that they have undeservedly high opinions of themselves, and less that they don’t like girls.)

But, I do agree that a lot of JKR's characters do come across as a little more queer than intended. It boils down, I think, to the general lack of any kind of romance in the Harry Potter books and JKR being generally bad at/uncomfortable with writing male attraction directed at women, BUT being perfectly happy writing attraction directed at pretty guys. And because of that… yeah, it can sometimes feel like maybe Harry has a thing for Cedric. Especially when Dudley goes on to tease him about Cedric being his boyfriend, which I believe is the only actual mention of gay people in the entire series.

So is there any intentional queer-coding in the book? It’s really subtle, but yes. I think Dumbledore is queer-coded. He is unusually emotional/cries unusually often for a Rowling guy. He is also given a scene which emphasizes his “flamboyantly” cut plum-velvet suit, and his relationship with Grindelwald is implied to be romantic for one book and two movies before being actually confirmed in Fantastic Beasts 3. (With the line of dialogue “I was in love with you.” Big step up from “We were closer than brothers.” which is an odd thing to say about someone you are interested in romantically.)

But you brought up Tonks and Lupin, two characters very commonly interpreted as queer. So let’s get into that. JKR has said that she considers Lupin’s lycanthropy to be a metaphor for stigmatized diseases like AIDS. And… as incredible as it is to say… I actually do not think that she made the jump from there to thinking that maybe the character suffering from AIDS should be gay.

Because the narrative places so much weight on Lupin being bitten young and then on maybe not being allowed to attend school, I’m pretty sure that he’s not intended to be queer so much as he’s meant to be Ryan White, the literal poster child for AIDS activism who got infected via blood transfusion when he was two. Tragic, absolutely. But not gay. Honestly, I hope JKR was thinking of ‘lycanthropy’ as a metaphor for stigmatized illness in the abstract and not as a comment on gay people specifically. Because otherwise, Greyback’s thing about biting children becomes a mash-up of two of the biggest homophobic boogeymen from the 80s: gay men infecting people with AIDS on purpose because… idk, they hate the world or something. And the influence of gay men somehow “turning” children gay. Both absolutely real, if ridiculous, moral panics.

On top of that, Remus and Sirius do get a pretty clear case of the not-gays early on (“He embraced Black like a brother.”) Buuuut Alfonso Cuarón did think through those implications for Movie 3, absolutely saw Lupin as gay, and directed David Thewlis to play him accordingly. No reports confirming or denying whether Alfonso Cuarón ships Wolfstar, but I think that if I’m an actor trying to make sense of Lupin’s motivations… and I know he didn’t show Dumbledore the Marauders’ Map and didn’t tell anyone Sirius was an animagus… and then I’m told my character is gay… well. Anyway, I think there are absolutely hints of Wolfstar in that performance.

And there's Tonks. Tonks is introduced during a very spooky segment in Book 5: Harry has been going through it, been left alone at the Dursleys while having what sounds like a depressive episode. It’s dark, he hears intruders. It's a really good piece of writing. But JKR knows that it’s the good guys who are coming and thinks, okay. Let’s make that as clear as possible from the word go. And so the first thing Harry sees is Tonks' pink hair. And what kind of person has pink hair? A young adult. A punky young adult. And what power would a teenager think was cool? Well, the ability to change the color of their hair at will. That, by itself, would have worked perfectly fine for this character.

But then (for reasons best known to herself) JKR goes further. Even though Tonk’s hair changing color is easily 90% of the transformations we see and there is no plot reason her appearance needs to change more than that, we see her drastically change her age and body type. When you think about this power for more than five seconds, it becomes kind of OP. For worldbuilding reasons alone, my instinct would’ve been to tone it down a bit.

But no, we have this counterculture character who seems interested in her career and not in a relationship, who can easily change anything about her body, and (if her ability works anything like Polyjuice) that means she should definitely be able to change her gender. Cool.

Then, in everyone’s least favorite romance, Tonks and Lupin are paired up. I have heard the argument that this was meant to walk back queer-coding, or to punish people who thought they were queer... but I don’t think that’s the case. I don’t think JKR expected these two to be fan favorites, and then was kind of surprised when everyone wanted to hear about their continuing adventures.

(There are a handful of characters who JKR clearly really enjoys - and really enjoys writing - that fandom honestly could not care less about. Mundungus Fletcher and Ludo Bagman spring to mind. But the reverse is also true. She had one story for Lupin and people wanted to see more. Tonks is probably supposed to be her comment on immature young adults: she is loud, in your face, causes mild destruction and is “a little annoying at times.” But the fans fell in love with her.)

So JKR has these two fan favorite characters and nothing for them to do. A romance is something for them to do. JKR also has a kind of weird pattern where good people need to either have kids or take care of kids. It’s not good to be a woman who isn’t involved with taking care of children in some fashion: see Rita Skeeter, Dolores Umbridge, Bellatrix Lestrange. This is also (I think) why Harry names his kids specifically after Severus, Sirius, and Albus. Since they’re good men, JKR had to find a way to give them kids after the fact.

So yeah. I think we were meant to read Tonks and Lupin having a kid as kind of a reward, or at least as proof of their intrinsic goodness. There also just isn’t another guy in the right age range to ship Tonks with. The only other option is Sirius.

(Harry in the books and Lupin on Pottermore both suspect that Tonks/Sirius is a thing. Completely forgetting, I guess, that they're cousins.)

#hp #hp meta #hp close reading #queer coding in hp #femme coding in hp #jkr critical #anti jkr #draco malfoy #severus snape #lucius malfoy #percy weasley #gilderoy lockhart #horace slughorn #remus lupin #nymphadora tonks #albus dumbledore #aids #literary analysis

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edwinspaynes · 29 days ago

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Inspired by me seeing a post on Twitter: If DBDA comes back in the future and recasts the main characters, I'm not going to watch it. That's not only insulting to their work but it's a surefire way to ensure a low-quality shitshow.

#dead boy detectives #dbda #edwin without george is NOT an edwin i want #etc etc same for others

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xxgothchatonxx · 5 months ago

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Just thinking about how Delainey Hayles was cast as Claudia in a very last-minute recast situation (I mean no disrespect to Bailey Bass, I hope she's doing well) and apparently only had about a week to prepare for the part and get everything sorted before she started filming. And she gave a consistent high-quality, scene-stealing performance throughout this entire season.

Absolutely phenomenal.

#interview with the vampire #delainey hayles #claudia de pointe du lac

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the-bjd-community-confess · 1 year ago

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I check Ali recast shops from time to time to see what else they recasted lately. And oh boy, the prices! Those who says buy them because they are cheap... They are not cheap.

Recasts are nowadays as expensive as legits. A recast M1nifee is in the price of a cheaper legjt doll, not a M1nifee, but like Doll L3aves. The big guys go around 300-600 usd, depending on the complexicity. How is this cheap?? There are big guys for this price, lots of them. And the recast quality went down too. I used to have recasts, the first ones were okay I guess, I had no comparison back then, but the lastest last one was very subpar - I had the same doll but legit, and the posing was night and day.

~Anonymous

#BJD #ABJD #BJD Confessions #Community Counterfeits #Recast Quality

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chimaerite · 4 months ago

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the seven deadly sins (in terms of hannibal)

Sin should not be overlooked, as Hannibal believes. There is no God, there is no tooth fairy, as such – one should be their own judge in the constellation of their stars. As he sits in prison now, hands clasped on his worn knees. His mind recasts memories of Will Graham.

PRIDE fuels Hannibal himself. He’s a prideful friend. Will Graham serves to continue assisting the FBI, but he can’t also feel a little bit of prejudice against him. He feels a little gnawing at the back of brain at the feelings of Will’s inconspicuous betrayal.

GREED, is what accompanies pride. Hannibal wants Will all for himself. Whilst not obvious, silent remarks of Will wash through Hannibal’s actions. He twitches his legs, and eyes dart back and forth – as though looking for his figure in the shadows, or even listening more attentively for the man’s footsteps.

LUST in the more platonic sense, drifts ashore. Hannibal wishes to be Dr Lecter, once more to Will Graham. Whilst their barred relationship has gone rocky – and has returned to a “Dr Lecter” state, Hannibal can’t help but desire their patient-therapy times. Hannibal stares soullessly into the clock above, eyes swirling for better or for worse as he recalls the broken clock Will once drew for him. He’s also broken his insides, for sure. Hannibal can’t help but feel ENVY for Alana Bloom, or even Bedelia for that matter. Alana, he quietly promises to himself and Will’s lingering scent, that he will find her and her wife – Margot Verger. Whilst he stops himself to stoop so low as to fully destroy the Verger heir, he droops his head into his hands, ruffling his greyings, and closes his eyes to breath the scent of Will – wishing he were there.

GLUTTONY may have been his own downfall. Similar to greed, Hannibal wants more. He wants, not just Will in the physical sense, but also his heart – metaphorical. He wants to see it dripping from skin down in blood, lustful blood that makes his saliva tingle in his mouth and eyes light up with the same obsidian as that one singular night. WRATH builds. Lecter is a patient man, but day after day as he uncuffs his grey low-quality uniform, his heart aches for a more desirable condition. No matter how many books are towed in for his pleasure, he wants to seek his own delights. He may have a telephone, he may call people now and then under supervision – but he will never be the same person out of jail. A SLOTH in empathetic values, Hannibal finds it difficult to think for anyone anymore. He thinks for himself – mostly, but his indolence affects many. His choices are not based on empathy, they’re decisions based on merit. He chose to surrender himself, yet feels aggressively dismayed by the lack of contact from Graham. Nonetheless, he knows the chase isn’t over with the Red Dragon flying overhead. Bored, he leans over the corners of his tidy bed for a recurring book. It’s European art. Perhaps the biblical portraits of familiar figures and certain crimson creatures will suffice for his current circumstances. Set during Season 2 Hannibal NBC

#hannigram #will graham #hannibal #hannibal x will #hannibal lecter #hannibal lecter x will graham #hannibal x reader #will graham x reader #hannibalnbc

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hotvintagepoll · 1 month ago

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Ernest Thesiger—who could forget him camping up the screen as doctor pretorius in bride of frankenstein??? a few years before that legendary role he also appeared as the haughty horace femm in the old dark house, creating another memorable weirdo in another witty horror classic from his friend james whale. thesiger was a seasoned theater actor renowned for his comic abilities who moved in many literary and artistic circles, where he was a notorious eccentric and wit and is said to have made no particular secret of his queerness, and his friends included george bernard shaw, john sargent sargent, somerset maugham, radclyffe hall, and ivy compton-burnett, several of whom based fictional characters on him or wrote parts specifically for him (also if anyone here happens to know the gormenghast books, mervyn peake loosely based doctor prunesquallor on him). when he wasn't acting he occupied himself with many artistic endeavors and was particularly expert at petit point embroidery, exhibiting his work internationally and publishing a book on embroidery; he was also skilled at painting, knitting, crochet, lacelace-making, beadwork, costume and jewelry design, and probably more. his screen appearances are always delightful and i just can't imagine a world where we didn't have his signature flamboyant, comic, and menacing gaunt weirdos enriching cinema (supposedly the studio wanted claude rains for pretorius which would have been a wildly different vibe), so give it up for my man ernest.

ZaSu Pitts (Greed, The Bad Sister, Shopworn, Dames, It's A Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World)—The vocal inspiration for Olive Oyl in the Popeye cartoons! ZaSu Pitts started out doing a variety of roles during the silent era, but audiences couldn't take her seriously after the advent of sound, to the extent that preview audiences laughed at her dramatic performance in All Quiet on the Western Front and the role had to be recast. Her doleful eyes, fretful handwringing and quavery voice brought interest to what might otherwise have been forgettable supporting roles, often as flighty spinster types, and it's that wonderfully cartoonish voice and pathetic demeanour that give her true scrungle quality.

This is round 1 of the contest. All other polls in this bracket can be found here. If you're confused on what a scrungle is, or any of the rules of the contest, click here.

[additional submitted propaganda + scrungly videos under the cut]

Ernest Thesiger:

youtube

He just... has the right vibes. He's so eccentric, but he has so much scrungle that goes with that. I don't think he's ever played a "normal" character in his life!

youtube

He's the OG queercoded villain to me. He often plays mad scientists or morally dubious eccentrics, so he's got the perfect scrungly combo of being physically non-intimidating and arch yet vaguely threatening in his presentation and behaviour. He is extremely camp.

youtube

Just look at him. He looks like a cat became human

youtube

ZaSu Pitts:

2:15-5:23 in the film below [editor's note: I haven't watched the whole film, so no content warnings if you choose to watch all of it.]

youtube

#zasu pitts #ernest thesiger #hotvintagepoll #scrungly 1 #Youtube

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annymation · 10 months ago

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The voices in my Wish Rewrite

I haven’t talked much about it, but in my Wish rewrite some characters would be recasted. I wanted to make this post just to show which actors I’d replace… And it’s pretty much everyone except Magnifico, cause ya know, Chris Pine is Magnifico, and Magnifico is Chris Pine, it’s just how it is.

So let’s get this started!

Asha- Denée Benton

Im absolutely OBSESSED with this woman’s voice, she sounds like an angel and carries so much personality in her performance, she sounds pure, youthful, hopeful but also strong, everything I imagine Asha as. THIS is what I imagine the 100th anniversary Disney princess sounding like. Not that I didn’t like Ariana DeBose’s singing tho, but I just love Denee Benton more, and hey, it’s my rewrite, so I get to imagine Asha’s voice how I please. Also I can totally see Asha and Aster singing this song.

Aster- Jordan Fisher

Oooooh this man, I love him so much. His voice has the perfect energy for Aster, sounding youthful and melodic like a prince, it had to be a literally other worldly voice, and I think Jordan’s voice is PRETTY DANG other worldly, like, this example I found on Spotify doesn’t even do him justice, go listen to his other singing chops on YouTube.

If you look up Jordan Fisher you’ll see the guy is DEEPLY connected with Disney in his career, from singing the song “Happily Ever After” 6 years ago, which is the theme song for the Magic Kingdom, to now being the main singer of 4-town in the movie Turning Red. And of course this one time he made a cover of “You’re Welcome”, the guy just lives and breaths Disney so WHY NOT have him as a wishing star? It just makes sense. But besides working with Disney he also has experience in a musicals such as Hamilton, Dear Evan Hansen, Sweeney Todd and more recently he became the new Orpheus in Hadestown… And by god I need a good quality audio of him singing “Wait For Me” more than I need air because that song fits Aster’s character SO WELL.

Magnifico- Chris Pine

Yeah no surprises here, you can’t have Magnifico without Chris Pine… But HIS SINGING VOICE IN THIS SONG THOUGH??? ITS SO GOOD!!! I listened to “Any Moment” ONCE and now I constantly go back to listen to it over and over and imagine young Magnus and Amaya meeting in the woods. I still haven’t posted about Amaya’s backstory BECAUSE IM TOO LAZY TO FINISH THE DRAFT I HAVE EXPLAINING IT- But let me just say her hesitating to start a relationship with him is VERY accurate to her character. And Magnus being like “May I kiss you” out of nowhere because he: 1- Sees himself as irresistible so he thinks she’d fall for him with just that and 2- he had 0 social skills before he met Amaya.

And then there’s the line “Life is often so unpleasant, you must know that as a peasant” ARE YOU KIDDING ME?! This is LITERALLY something my Magnifico would say, I’m so freakin lucky!

My point is, my rewrite’s Magnifico sounds like THIS when he sings, with a deep, smooth and honeyed voice that makes you want to trust him… Take that high pitched voice Chris Pine did in “This Is The Thanks I Get” and throw it out the window. Disney wasted the man’s talent. I’m so mad.

Amaya- Emily Blunt

Do you guys see my vision? Do I even have to say anything? Like really, go watch a scene of the Mary Poppins remake, any scene with her at all, that woman has a voice that DEMANDS respect, while also being motherly, it’s practically perfect in every way. I’m using “Open Up Your Eyes” here as an example though because… Well, it fits her backstory… Ya know, the backstory I’m stalling to talk about 👉👈… But it also just simply fits her personality in general!

And no disrespect for her voice in the movie, Angelique Cabral… BUT ITS EMILY BLUNT AS AN EVIL QUEEN!!! Come ooooon! It’s just meant to be!!!

Also side note, since we’re talking about Queen Amable, THIS design that came from an deleted scene is how I’ve imagined her the whole time:

Like, I could not STAND her hairstyle in the movie, it simply didn’t fit my vision for her character, see, Amaya is sophisticated but she’s also… Practical and likes to feel comfortable, hence why in my rewrite her dress has no sleeves, she values her own comfort more than conforming to the social norms… AND THAT HAIR LOOKING LIKE HEADPHONES WITH THAT CROWN THAT MADE HER FOREHEAD LOOK LIKE A SQUARE DROVE ME NUTS!

So yeah, this is our Queen Amable, voiced by Emily Blunt, with a British accent, in all her glory, we’re moving on.

Valentino- Gregory Mann

This is just a bonus mention, since Valentino doesn’t even sing in my rewrite, he just speaks in like 3 scenes… And you guys have only seen one of them so far. But either way, let it be known he sounds like Gregory Mann, because Gregory Mann sounds adorable. That is all.

Thank You For Reading!

#Spotify #disney wish #wish rewrite #wish #wish 2023 #wish star #wish disney #disney #wish movie #wish reimagined #wish asha #kingdom of wishes

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