Top Posts Tagged with #and finally...

the first time i was threatened with a gun, i was 8.

i was playing soccer on the street like every other kid with bad aim and big dreams.

the ball rolled into a man’s yard.

i went to get it back.

simple. harmless. not a life lesson, ideally.

the man came yelling like i’d just announced plans to steal his job and all his valuables, then cook his whole family into curry to eat with my naan.

he called me names.

accused me of things my nine-year-old brain hadn’t even developed the imagination for yet.

and yeah—he had a fucking gun. cute lil pistol. he held it casually, like it was just another accessory, like keys or a wallet. immigrant starter pack y’all. this kind of shit happens all the time. i got off pretty easy to be honest.

when i wasnt playing soccer and listening to slurs, maa was teaching me how to read english fluently. the first proper english chapter book i managed to read by myself was harry potter and the sorcerer’s stone. for this reason, i have developed a rather inconvenient attachment to the wizarding world. it’s a weird, itchy experience of loving a world that doesn't actually seem to know you exist beyond a few checkboxes and some questionable fashion choices at wizard prom. it’s our first magic, even if the magic wasn’t written for us.

many years later, i met mud. mud is named mud because when he was 9, a boy bullied him for his mud brown skin and he responded by slathering the boy’s face with fistfuls of brown mud. if that ain't poetic justice i don’t know what is. mud isn’t just my flatmate. mud is my big brother and my hero, and i will never tell him this because my pride and ears would never recover. he is also the one who dragged me into this godforsaken fandom.

love you bhaiya but this is your fault

now.

jk rowling.

if you want to understand her worldview, you don’t even need twitter. just read her books. the subtext is doing backflips and screaming. take “the casual vacancy” or her works as robert galbraith as examples. you will learn a lot about her views on gender.

but before you open that can of worms, pull up a chair. lets talk about race.

a lot of acclaimed authors love diversity. in theory. in practice, many of them cobble together an exotic sounding name that actually makes 0 sense from a cultural and linguistic perspective, then proceed to write the character like john from accounting. but don’t worry— despite the white mentality, they’ll remind you the character has brown skin every three sentences. every time the character’s body moves by a fraction of an inch, the phrase “cOfFeE cOlOuReD sKiN” is used and the author gives themself a pat on the back for being so inclusive. meanwhile, an indian immigrant girl is in the corner hyperventilating because the hindu character just walked into their bedroom wearing shoes. SHOES. inside. i was ready to call the police.

rowling does this too, just with extra confidence. jk rowling has written several indian characters. i will focus only on harry potter, for if i talk about casual vacancy’s jawandas i will end up flinging myself out of the window. her coloured characters are written so horribly i could swallow the pages they feature in and shit out better representation.

ain’t no way the lady behind “werewolf wolfkid wolf son of wolf wolf and mrs wolf nee wolfnoises bitten by the notorious werewolf norsewolfmonster” didn't notice the implications behind the name shacklebolt. also — why is bro literally introduced as “the black one”. bald pate shining in the night, single gold hoop earring reiterated like it’s the most exotic accessory in britain.

then theres the african wizards at the quidditch world cup. everyone else is chilling in their tent kitchens, and look at those africans with their quirky robes, roasting an entire rabbit over a fire! what’s next, drums?

angelina johnson’s hair — pansy said her braids look like worms coming out of her head. shit like that should warrant a mudblood-level retaliation, but i don’t think anybody even addressed it.

cho chang?? okay, name controversies aside, the girl's entire personality is "crying" and "being pretty". back in primary when life was so simple, i met julie. i had to physically restrain julie when people said she looked like cho. they probably meant it as a compliment. julie was mongolian-american. it’s the classic "all asians are a monolith" starter kit—if you have straight black hair and a pension for tragedy, congrats, you’re cho chang.

then theres the patil twins.

oh my fucking god.

i need a minute

those lehengas should be illegal. criminal. punishable by law.

was dora the fucking explorer on a budget the reference point? fuck, even she could’ve designed better outfits with a blindfold and crayons. and rowling missed such a golden opportunity with parvati’s love for divination. vedic astrology? ajna chakra? bitch the concept of the third eye literally comes from bharat. one line—one throwaway line— acknowledging that could’ve added so much depth. but no. 9 year old me got crystal balls and vibes. one line could’ve made her feel like she belonged instead of just the token brown girl with the bad date and lavender brown’s sidekick.

oh? what’s that rowling? you love black hermione?

well listen up chucklefuck, you cannot just recolor hermione in cursed child like she’s a paint bucket tool in ms paint. that’s not how stories work. that’s not how people work. you cannot write a white character and then slap “chocolate-coloured skin” on top and call it a day.

observe:

white!hermione: slavery made this food. i won’t eat it. i’m going to free the house elves. everyone else: wow she’s so bloody weird. ha ha ha, classic quirky granger.

now imagine she’s black.

add the history add the mudblood slur.

think about mud. think about growing up in spaces like ours

suddenly it hits differently, doesn’t it

if hermione is a black girl, her crusade against house-elf enslavement isn't just a strange hobby that ron can roll his eyes at. it carries the weight of ancestral trauma and systemic history. without acknowledging that, the narrative feels hollow—or worse, dismissive.

i’m not demanding perfection from a story written in the late '90s/early '00s. and i'm not asking lil miss 'activist' bitch to defend our honour on twitter. she's done more than enough on her godforsaken account.

this is about how those choices echo, especially for readers who were looking for mirrors and mostly got windows (or worse, caricatures)

because making characters poc isn’t cosmetic. it’s not a fucking filter. it changes everything—how you move, how you’re seen, what you risk when you speak, what it costs to be brave. the world doesn’t interact with you the same way. so your story can’t be the same either.

and that’s what i did with james fleamont potter :)

बन्दर क्या जाने अदरक का स्वाद is a love letter to every colored potterhead kid who ever had to choose between being the monkey or the stag, between climbing or standing, between laughing first or letting the empire laugh last