"It can happen to you": A Critical Analysis of Hate Apologia in the Rigel Black Chronicles

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Title:	"It can happen to you": A Critical Analysis of Hate Apologia in the Rigel Black Chronicles
Creator:	Anonymous
Date(s):	2022
Medium:	Ao3
Fandom:	Rigel Black Chronicles (Fandom), a recursive fandom
Topic:	meta, racism and apologia
External Links:	https://archiveofourown.org/works/40546956
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"It can happen to you": A Critical Analysis of Hate Apologia in the Rigel Black Chronicles is a meta essay written for Unconventional Fanwork Exchange 2022 and made anonymous via an anonymous collection. The essay explores as the title says these themes in the Rigel Black Chronicles, a work by murkybluematter that deals with a world where a female Harry Potter attends Hogwarts disguised as her male "cousin" Arcturus Rigel "Archie" Black due to pureblood supremacy laws that forbid halfbloods and muggleborns from Hogwarts.

This fanwork was gifted to kitsunerei88, a BNF(in RBC fandom, but not in Harry Potter/Tortall fandom) and author of Rev Arc, the biggest recursive fic in the fandom.

Summary:

The Rigel Black Chronicles is the tale of a heroic protagonist focused on her studies and world betterment as she encounters discrimination as a halfblood witch in a Wizarding Britain ruled by the politician Tom Riddle, a trail-blazer for British halfbloods everywhere and a shining exemplar of equality, who rises above every setback she encounters, makes steadfast friends in unexpected places everywhere she goes, and, presumably, will go on to triumphantly dismantle a system of systemic oppression and discrimination. It is also a story in which loving your oppressors is the noble thing to do, the right course of action to take, the brave choice. It is a story in which friendships overcome all barriers, even among the most bigoted and privileged with the most to gain from institutional discrimination. It is set in a world where the onus of righting discrimination falls on the oppressed, where they are the one who allow hate to befall them, where they are the ones who have to be brave and befriend those who spit slurs at them, where it is the oppressors who "[do] nothing without a reason."

Ao3 Summary

Selected Quotes

Over and over, at every turn throughout the Rigel Black Chronicles, Draco demonstrates the prejudices of the society that he has grown up in. His response to an eleven year-old Neville Longbottom nearly falling to his death is, “Oh yes, what a tragedy to lose someone with so much potential to grow up into a snot-nosed muggle-loving blood traitor like his parents” (Murkybluematter, 2012). In his entitlement and possessiveness over “Rigel’s” location every hour of every minute of every day, he compares himself in a positive light to a spy of Gellert Grindelwald, who is canonically a Hitler-analogue: “As he slipped back into bed to 'go back to sleep' until the others woke up, he had to admit it was pretty exciting, sneaking around like one of Grindelwald's spies” (Murkybluematter, 2016). When mildly insulted by one Ginny Weasley, his response is to suggest that she should have been drowned at birth and through slurs at her and her family: “Why didn’t your parents drown you at birth…Surely six children is enough for even the most industrious of population-crisis cultist…You’re the seventh born of a line so tainted by Muggle blood you might as well be Americans, and my family doesn’t need to have seven children before one turns out to be magically capable–” (Murkybluematter, 2021).

And yet, Draco is one of Harriet’s closest friends. She repeats over and over that, “she truly didn’t deserve her friends’ loyalty,” and “nothing she did would ever repay the gift of Draco’s friendship” (Murkybluematter, 2012). Even Pansy Parkinson, regarded by the fandom at large to be the among the least prejudiced of the acquaintances that Harriet makes at Hogwarts, states in her narration, “...purebloods became desperate for more children to fill out their ranks, in competition as they were with all the new muggleborns who came pouring into the Wizarding world each generation” (Murkybluematter, 2016). In another world, in another historical context, the Malfoys or the Parkinsons might easily have been present at Charlottesville, chanting, “You will not replace us!”

The touching friendship, the friendship that many readers hold so dear, the friendship that many believe will redeem Draco, takes on a much more unsettling air when the patina of magic and social dynamics that do not exist in real life are stripped from it. “What is it with Gryffindors and that whole ‘sins of the fathers’ thing, anyway? I mean, we’re all purebloods at this school now, so what does it really matter at this point who tricked who? But no, those stubborn Light-headed little griffins think it’s their civic duty to try and undo everything we’ve worked so hard to accomplish. It’s like they want to rub elbows with people who can barely hold a wand straight” (Murkybluematter, 2012), Draco says. This is a speech from a boy advocating for segregation, who believes that halfbloods and muggleborns are inferior to him, that they can barely hold a wand straight, and he openly derides those working towards integration. He espouses views along those lines repeatedly to Harriet, a halfblood passing as a pureblood, and still she loves him and treasures his friendship.

In addition to the open discriminatory rhetoric pushed by the members of the SOW Party against those they percieve as lesser, they simultaneously consider themselves to be the ones truly persecuted. Draco states as such to Rigel: “I suppose it’s easy for the Head Auror to get permits for his joke products. Never mind all the witches and wizards whose applications get turned away by the screening board every year simply because of the nature of their magical heritage” (Murkybluematter, 2016). Harriet’s response is to marvel at how she could have not noticed discrimination against dark purebloods, how she could have been blind. “Instead she asked herself: was it true that ancestrally dark witches and wizards would have a more difficult time obtaining permits to experiment with potentially dangerous spells and potions? Probably, she acknowledged mentally. Was that unjustified, though? She didn’t know. I don’t know a lot of things, she thought tiredly” (Murkybluematter, 2016). For Harriet, systemic discrimination that directly impacts her is something to be annoyed over, an inconvenience, something that only matters insofar as it gets in the way of her study of potions: "She had always thought it unfair that muggleborns and halfbloods like her didn’t get the same opportunities as purebloods, and she had often considered it annoying that she had to go through so much extra effort just to reach the same heights, but never before had she been outraged on behalf of muggleborns and halfbloods" (Murkybluematter, 2013).

Ultimately, the argument presented over and over in-text against the discrimination of non-purebloods is that they are just as good as magic as purebloods, that they have talent and barring them is only to the detriment of wizarding society, rather than arguing that systemic disenfranchisement and discrimination is wrong in and of itself. There is no argument within the text that marginalized minorities inherently deserve human rights by virtue of being humans. Harriet herself views her proxy for success as Hogwarts in terms of proving her worth, not as a matter of inalienable human rights: “And it will prove them right, she added silently, if I fail then it will prove everyone who thinks that halfbloods don’t deserve to go to school here or can’t keep up with “real” magic right” (Murkybluematter, 2012). Hermione proclaims that she will prove all the prejudiced purebloods wrong by demonstrating that she is just as magically capable as purebloods: “I do see. I see exactly what they’re trying to do and I’m going to make them regret it. I’ll show them—the whole world, even— that muggleborns are every inch as magical as purebloods. They want to put it to a test? I eat tests for breakfast” (Murkybluematter, 2021). Mere existence, mere rights to an education, should not need to be justified. The narrative argument that if only Harriet accomplishes enough extraordinary achievements, proves herself talented enough, then an entire society would come to see the light and ingrained prejudices would disappear is a fantasy. In the real world, if this was the case, then discrimination and prejudice would have ended with the African-American female mathematicians who played a vital role in the Apollo program, it would have ended when Thurgood Marshall was appointed to the Supreme Court, it would have ended when Barack Obama was elected president. In the real world, the words for those arguments are “respectability politics” and “model minorities,” and someone else always has to bear the cost.

Comments

kitsunerei88

Thank you, brave author!

I really appreciated this critical commentary on an extremely popular series. While I definitely have had many of the same thoughts, especially on how the "magic is might" hypothesis is completely undermined by how Harry is a Lord-level, once-in-a-generation power (everything she does to try to say magic isn't might falls flat exactly because she is so powerful), it is really nice to have so many well quoted arguments in one place.

I am exceptionally impressed with your noting that for a series about discrimination, only three(ish) characters are actually part of the group being discriminated against and, with the exception of Harry herself, are all minor characters. The rest of the series literally is mostly going on about how great Harry and her friends are and sympathizing with the oppressors.

Thank you for this incredibly brave essay. Aside from the fact that its a hell of a lot to read, I know for a fact that the fandom isn't friendly to those with even mildly differing views, so thank you!

GoldenFalls 25 Jul 2022

I don’t disagree with what you say here. I think these issues with the series is in large part an extension of the works it’s based upon and the Harry Potter fandom. In HP itself, the solution to a broken, discriminatory, and eventually murderous government is just to put good people back in power in the system, instead of actually changing the system. I never read all of the Allana [sic] series and what I did read was a long time ago, but from what I recall, it also didn’t really challenge the class system which had a lot of power/wealth disparity and not even much in the way of mobility between classes. And in my time in the Harry Potter fandom, I’ve read so many fic with “Pureblood Society” and the like that take this same humanizing “we’re oppressed (and afraid of being replaced!)” approach to either flesh out the antagonists or change them into misunderstood/misrepresented good guys. Essentially replicating white supremacist and other "oppressors are actually the ones being oppressed now" arguments without representing the full context of those oppressors being in power and the systematic scale and level of harm they cause.

This is to say, I think your essay applies on a much broader scale. These types of stories are easy to find, at least in fanfic, and ones that try and tell a story from the lense of the oppressed which aren't just used for whump or enemies-to-lovers setup are nowhere as simple to find.

Why is that? Should it change, and how? I've thought about these things, but they touch on sensitive topics and real life experiences that tbh I don't always feel comfortable talking about on the internet, especially in public spaces like this where you don't know the people who might interact and whether they'll take you in bad faith. It can be hard to have these conversations. I think an obvious/surface level observations is that this ties into the issue of racism in fandom—even if it's not directly racism, reading this type of narrative where you're meant to accept certain things can be dissonant and alienating to people who have faced such issues in real life.

[...]

XichVu
"Allana [sic] series... also didn’t really challenge the class system"
because it wasn't Alanna theme, it was Rigel's. Alana was about gender identity, and accepting both your feminine and masculine sides.

smores_sless

~𝑺𝒉𝒆 𝒉𝒂𝒅 𝒂𝒍𝒘𝒂𝒚𝒔 𝒕𝒉𝒐𝒖𝒈𝒉𝒕 𝒊𝒕 𝒖𝒏𝒇𝒂𝒊𝒓 𝒕𝒉𝒂𝒕 𝒎𝒖𝒈𝒈𝒍𝒆𝒃𝒐𝒓𝒏𝒔 𝒂𝒏𝒅 𝒉𝒂𝒍𝒇𝒃𝒍𝒐𝒐𝒅𝒔 𝒍𝒊𝒌𝒆 𝒉𝒆𝒓 𝒅𝒊𝒅𝒏’𝒕 𝒈𝒆𝒕 𝒕𝒉𝒆 𝒔𝒂𝒎𝒆 𝒐𝒑𝒑𝒐𝒓𝒕𝒖𝒏𝒊𝒕𝒊𝒆𝒔 𝒂𝒔 𝒑𝒖𝒓𝒆𝒃𝒍𝒐𝒐𝒅𝒔, 𝒂𝒏𝒅 𝒔𝒉𝒆 𝒉𝒂𝒅 𝒐𝒇𝒕𝒆𝒏 𝒄𝒐𝒏𝒔𝒊𝒅𝒆𝒓𝒆𝒅 𝒊𝒕 𝒂𝒏𝒏𝒐𝒚𝒊𝒏𝒈 𝒕𝒉𝒂𝒕 𝒔𝒉𝒆 𝒉𝒂𝒅 𝒕𝒐 𝒈𝒐 𝒕𝒉𝒓𝒐𝒖𝒈𝒉 𝒔𝒐 𝒎𝒖𝒄𝒉 𝒆𝒙𝒕𝒓𝒂 𝒆𝒇𝒇𝒐𝒓𝒕 𝒋𝒖𝒔𝒕 𝒕𝒐 𝒓𝒆𝒂𝒄𝒉 𝒕𝒉𝒆 𝒔𝒂𝒎𝒆 𝒉𝒆𝒊𝒈𝒉𝒕𝒔, 𝒃𝒖𝒕 𝒏𝒆𝒗𝒆𝒓 𝒃𝒆𝒇𝒐𝒓𝒆 𝒉𝒂𝒅 𝒔𝒉𝒆 𝒃𝒆𝒆𝒏 𝒐𝒖𝒕𝒓𝒂𝒈𝒆𝒅 𝒐𝒏 𝒃𝒆𝒉𝒂𝒍𝒇 𝒐𝒇 𝒎𝒖𝒈𝒈𝒍𝒆𝒃𝒐𝒓𝒏𝒔 𝒂𝒏𝒅 𝒉𝒂𝒍𝒇𝒃𝒍𝒐𝒐𝒅𝒔" (𝑴𝒖𝒓𝒌𝒚𝒃𝒍𝒖𝒆𝒎𝒂𝒕𝒕𝒆𝒓, 2013).~

This. I know it is wrong to feel this way, but as a queer POC born into a very regressive community, this is exactly what I feel. I know I am being discriminated against, I that know it isn't right and yet, all I feel is annoyance, not actual outrage. Sometimes I get angry at myself for 𝘯𝘰𝘵 feeling angry at my situation. It's weird. or maybe just leftover internalized homophobia, idk.