u/georgemillman

This is the first chapter of a fan fiction I'm writing featuring an older Jonah and Cesca fifteen years down the line (the title translates as Secrets of the Night, it's mixed English and Spanish on purpose).

I wrote this a while ago and so far haven't written any more. I was going to wait to share until I'd written the whole thing, but I'm not getting around to it so I thought I'd share on here to see if people think I should bother.

Note that in the story, Cesca has become known professionally and personally as Fran Kirby, so it's harder for people to learn of her past.

--

‘Earth to Fran?’

Fran Kirby looked up from her laptop. Her husband was cuddled up next to her. ‘I thought you were asleep,’ she said, distracted.

Jonah looked at her happily. ‘Nothing like the Spanish sunrise to wake you up in the morning. This villa’s fantastic, isn’t it?’

‘I was quite happy to find it,’ she said, self-consciously.

‘How much are we paying for it again?’

Fran sighed. ‘Too much. More than we can afford.’

Jonah grinned. ‘Bueno, podemos preocuparnos por eso cuando lleguemos a casa,’ he said in Spanish. (Well, we can worry about that when we get home.) ‘A Alfredo no le importará vivir en latas de frijoles durante un par de semanas.’ (Alfredo won’t mind living on tins of beans for a couple of weeks.)

Fran smiled. ‘Vale la pena por quince años, ¿no?’ she said dreamily. (It’s worth it for fifteen years, isn’t it?)

Jonah nodded. ‘No me arrepiento de un solo día.’ (I don’t regret a single day.)

‘Mm. Me neither,’ said Fran, switching back to English.

Friends and family often laughed at Fran and Jonah’s tendency to switch languages midway through conversation. It had happened more and more often over the years, particularly since Alfredo had learned to talk. Fran had been insistent on bringing their son up bilingual, so Jonah’s grasp of the Spanish language had improved rapidly. Although he hadn’t spoken a word of Spanish until he was sixteen years old, he was now just as confident in it as he had been in his native English tongue, and often slipped into Spanish without consciously being aware he was doing it.

Jonah looked at her laptop screen. ‘Fran…’

‘Yes, love?’ she asked, knowing what was coming next.

‘It’s our anniversary. Can’t you stop working for one day?’

‘No,’ she said firmly. ‘I can’t risk it.’

‘You’re a pretty successful author now. You don’t have anything to worry about.’

‘Yes I do,’ she snapped. ‘There’s hardly any market left for Spanish-English dictionaries, no matter how up-to-date they are.’

‘AI’s just a fad,’ said Jonah without believing it, trying to reassure her. ‘No es substituto del toque humano.’ (It’s no substitute for the human touch.) He stroked her face to make his point.

Fran wished she could believe him. It wasn’t as if her career had been a disappointment. She’d had a number of very successful language-learning courses released, and although it had taken a while, she had become something of a respected name in her field. She’d even won a few awards, both in the UK and on the continent. These days, it was extremely rare that anyone associated Fran Kirby, the leading English-Spanish translator, with Cesca Montoya, the high school teacher from Rochdale who had hit the headlines fifteen years ago.

But for a long time now, she’d been thinking about how limited a shelf life her career now had. Her last few books had sold increasingly fewer copies. ‘It’s a sign of the times,’ her agent, Jane, had told her sympathetically. ‘A translator of your calibre can probably keep going a few more years, but it’s worth thinking about other careers.’ Jane, who always went above and beyond for her authors, had even emailed over a number of relevant opportunities and had offered to introduce Fran to various contacts she had, but Fran had been vague about it. She liked being an author and didn’t want to give it up. No matter how lucrative, conventional jobs required background checks - background checks she really wasn’t enthusiastic about. But they couldn’t keep living on Jonah’s meagre salary, could they?

The noise of Alfredo’s X-Box starting up next door told them they weren’t alone. It had been a Christmas present from his Abuelo last year. For a British child in 2025, Alfredo was surprisingly sheltered from technology. Jonah had inherited many of his father’s values regarding child development and had refused to even buy a television until Alfredo was ten, but Fran’s father had a tendency to be a bit overgenerous.

‘We’ve got company,’ said Jonah, getting out of bed, intending to give his son a firm reprimand.

‘Oh, let him have fun with it,’ Fran muttered. ‘At least someone’s having fun.’

‘I’m not having that!’ said Jonah firmly. ‘All right. I’ll admit, I’ve been a little bit dismissive about your job worries. I’ll come up with a solution when we get home. But for now, let’s enjoy our anniversary, yes?’

Giving in to the charm she could never resist, Fran cuddled up next to Jonah, listening to their fourteen-year-old son next door. ‘Jonah?’ she murmured.

‘Yeah?’

‘Do you still have times when you can’t believe Alfredo exists?’

Jonah thought for a moment, remembering when he’d first learned he was going to be a father. ‘I suppose we probably wouldn’t be here otherwise, would we?’ he said. ‘We’d have had to go our separate ways eventually, even if we didn’t want to.’

Fran looked into his beautiful brown eyes. ‘Me alegro de que no lo hayamos hecho,’ she whispered. (I’m glad we didn’t.)

There have been two instances (in the original run of the programme - I haven't seen the revived series yet) in which a teenager has had sex with a classmate's parent. In Series 8 when Barry sleeps with Jack's mum Olivia, and in Series 10 when Scott sleeps with Kenzie's mum Ailsa.

Something I find interesting about the way these instances are depicted is that in both cases, it's a teenage boy and someone's mum, and in both cases the mums are depicted within the show as helpless victims and the boys in a somewhat predatory way (in the Barry case Carol tried to present Barry as the victim of abuse, but I don't think it was all that convincing and I don't think she really believed it herself, she was just trying to cause trouble). And I find this quite a curious one to reflect on, because I think if a teenage girl had slept with a classmate's father it really would not be shown like that... it would be seen as the girl who was the victim and the father the predator. To be fair we haven't actually seen it this way around so we can't prove it would have been shown like that, but I really can't imagine it being depicted the same way as the teenage boy/classmate's mum thing.

It's interesting, isn't it, the way that gender stereotypes dominate these portrayals?

I want to see if anyone else thought this. I thought Matt and Christie's actions towards Lily, Poppy and Rosie (but particularly Lily) were absolutely appalling and ruined all their childhoods.

In TBR Series 1, Matt and Christie foster the Kettle sisters. But Lily is quickly returned to the Dumping Ground, seemingly because she couldn't let go of being her sisters' protector and Poppy and Rosie needed some time to settle at the Perry's. At the time it was presumed that Lily would eventually go back to Matt and Christie, but she never did (mostly by her own choice - she chose to move in with Cam instead, and then later with her dad).

I have so many issues with this. Firstly, I don't accept that Lily's behaviour caused her sisters not to know who was in charge. Clearly, the adults were in charge. But that had always been the case. At the Dumping Ground, Mike and Gina were in charge, and that didn't seem to cause a conflict like that. But the difference was, Mike and Gina had an understanding of the girls' history and understood why Lily was like that. They were able to work with Lily, recognise that they couldn't overrule her need to look after her sisters and her sisters' reliance on her. They probably did things like telling Lily the rules first and letting her tell Poppy and Rosie, so it would feel like the rules came from her.

I think the underlying problem with Lily at Matt and Christie's was that Matt and Christie just wanted a sweet family with cute little girls. They weren't willing to recognise that these girls had experienced great trauma in the past and their behaviour was always going to reflect that. Rather than show any understanding or sympathy, Matt and Christie's attitude was basically, 'These are meant to be our sweet little children, why is their big sister ruining it all for us?' This is so incredibly selfish - what they were doing was meant to be for the girls, not for themselves. They could have handled Lily in a loving, consistent way, recognising her need to continue looking after her sisters and very gradually gaining her trust enough that she was slowly able to let go. But they didn't - they had an idea of what they wanted their family to be, and when one of the children was a bit more traumatised than they bargained for they just decided to cut her out. It's utterly terrible, and increased all the girls' trauma - their sisterly bond was all these girls had had to rely on over all the things they'd been through, and Matt and Christie didn't seem to think that was very important.

I always found it very sad that Lily never got to go back to her sisters and be a family again. At least it was mostly her own choice - Matt and Christie did offer her to come back to them and she decided to go to Cam's instead. But I think this was really more that she'd seen that she and her sisters were growing apart. And that was forced on them through no fault of their own, and wasn't fair on any of them. Matt and Christie permanently split up a family of very vulnerable children who'd learned to rely on each other, and I think that's absolutely unforgivable and deserves more criticism.

Having said that, I think it's really great that it was shown, because sadly I think these things happen all the time in the care system.

Hi all

I've been thinking, and I've come to the difficult decision that it's time for me to stop contributing to this sub. I've found it very therapeutic to be here and an important part of my emotional development over the last few years.

When I discovered this sub, I was what I'd term a 'recovering Harry Potter fan'. I still had a lot of warmth in my heart towards the stories (like many fans, I had a difficult childhood and Harry Potter definitely got me through some tough times) but I was utterly dismayed by JK Rowling's horrible behaviour towards transgender people. It just seemed to come out of nowhere, I always thought she seemed so nice and accepting of different kinds of people.

As an artist, I've never believed you can 'separate the artist from the art', as the art is always a reflection of how the artist saw the world. But to begin with, I tried to do the opposite - to try to appreciate JK Rowling as a human being and a creative in spite of greatly objecting to some of her opinions and behaviour. I thought to myself, 'Yes, she's clearly got some views that I really find quite dodgy... but to be fair, probably so do most people if you dig deep enough. There must be something to her if she was able to write such beautiful books, right? She must ultimately still be a good person, even if she's horrifically misinformed?' Being part of this sub helped me escape that mindset. It's made me aware of how much worse Rowling was than I realised. It's made me see that her books were always filled with red flags, from Stonewall High (the school the Dursleys plan to send Harry to that shares its name with the UK's largest LGBTQ+ rights charity and has a reputation for children being attacked in toilets) to Fred and George's love potions (read date rape potions), and all the misogynistic, racist stereotypes in between. She did an absolutely grand job of pretending to be open and progressive for a very long time, and it took me in completely when I was a kid and for a good portion of my twenties as well - but it doesn't anymore.

As a recovering fan, this was something I really needed. I needed to look back through the stories and recognise that the beauty I thought they contained simply wasn't there - the only thing that was beautiful was my own interpretation of the stories. In some ways, even though I haven't enjoyed Harry Potter for a few years now, there's been a way in which I've enjoyed it more - it's been fun reinterpreting the stories and the characters, writing essays about the misrepresented female characters, establishing what certain aspects of the story say about JK Rowling... I think it's significantly improved my linguistic skills, and made me more capable of spotting red flags when I see them. (The other week I posted a (probably quite controversial) essay about Russell T Davies, because I've seen similar red flags in his work - things I wouldn't have noticed if I hadn't become attuned to doing it with JK Rowling.) It's also reaffirmed to me how utterly anti-celebrity I am. She is able to do what she does because we've given her a platform, money and influence - I don't think we should ever gift a celebrity with that kind of influence again. If there's an author we like, our appreciation for them should only ever extend as far as their books, it doesn't mean we need to give any more credence to their political opinions than we should any random person off the street. Giving celebrities that much influence is actually an act of self-disrespect - it gives the impression that we're less intelligent and less worthy of an opinion than they are, and that's not true.

So why am I leaving the sub? A few reasons. Firstly, I no longer think I've got anything interesting to say. I've been happy with what I've contributed and the essays I've written, but I think I've got to the natural end of what I can contribute. Secondly, JK Rowling is not worth my time or energy anymore, not even to criticise. I've spent far too much of my life thinking about this woman already - now I want to forget she exists at all. And thirdly, the most important reason: I'm no longer a recovering fan. I'm a former fan. Aside from a bit of childhood nostalgia, I hold no warmth in my heart towards JK Rowling's books anymore. The sub's purpose has been served - I've got over the confusion I had between the author I thought I liked and respected and the awful way she was behaving, and come to the easy conclusion that I was just mistaken in who I thought she was. Psychologically, my issues have been dealt with, and there's no further benefit to me from re-analysing the texts or writing any more about it.

I was going to just quietly disappear, but I don't think that would be fitting actually. This sub's been a big part of my life for the last couple of years, and I'd like to thank all the contributors for making it so special. It's probably the most comprehensive archive of this very problematic author's work anywhere on the Internet, and I think we should all be really proud of that. It's been greatly informative not just of how bad she is, but also given me the chance to examine my own idiosyncrasies and flaws, work out how I was so taken in by this awful person and think about how to avoid making such mistakes in the future.

So thank you, all of you, sincerely. I will miss you!

Back when I was a Harry Potter fan, the Time-Turner was one thing I always defended when people said it didn't make sense. Even now, of all the numerous issues I have with the content of the books, the Time-Turner isn't one of them.

If you're to take into account just the way the Time-Turner is used in Harry Potter on the Prisoner of Azkaban, its use, and the fact it cannot be used to reverse any other things in the story, makes perfect sense because it relies on the concept of a closed time loop. The story features only one timeline that we experience twice from different perspectives, and both times exactly the same things happen. It wasn't that Buckbeak was executed the first time and the second time they stopped it happening; he was never executed the first time. Harry and Hermione thought they heard him being killed, but it was just the sound of the axe hitting Hagrid's fence. At the time Dumbledore suggested Harry and Hermione go back in time, he already knew that Buckbeak had escaped and worked out what had happened. Harry thought he'd somehow seen his father, and then realised the person he thought was his father was himself from the future. The film makes this even more blatant, with future Hermione throwing rocks into Hagrid's cabin when past Hermione is in there.

JK Rowling didn't invent the concept of the closed time loop, that's a theory that has existed for as long as there's been a theoretical concept of time travel. But it does mean, very clearly, that they can't use the Time-Turner to save Harry's parents or change anything else that they know for an absolute certainty did happen. There also doesn't seem to be any means of travelling forward in time, meaning that if you turn back time you just have to wait it out until you get back to the present - making it very dangerous to do it too many times or go too far back, otherwise you'd get back to the present day much older than you should be.

So I disagree with anyone who says the Time-Turner doesn't make sense - if anything, that's one of the things that makes the most sense in the story. The thing that really strikes me as weird about it though is the fact that JK Rowling doesn't actually seem to realise it makes sense. She herself has agreed with the oft-repeated assertion that 'why can't they just use the Time-Turner to rescue Harry's parents/Cedric/Sirius/anyone else', and tells us that she intentionally did everything she could to remove the Time-Turner from the story after the one time she needed to use it. Hermione hands it back in at the end of the year, and then two books later they accidentally destroy all the Time-Turners at the Ministry of Magic, implied to be the only Time-Turners in existence (in Shaun's video, he uses this as an example of Rowling's tendency to resolve things two books later, after the fans have discovered she isn't resolving it in the following book - but in this case, she really didn't need to. There was nothing to resolve.)

Then of course, there was the fiasco with Cursed Child, where the Time-Turner works in an entirely different way to how it did in Prisoner of Azkaban - the less said about that the better.

What I'm thinking is - it's commonly understood on this sub (I'm not sure what the source for this is or how accurate it is) that in her first three books Rowling worked very closely with editors, and that she was allowed substantially more freedom from Goblet of Fire onwards. So, could it be that some editor who was familiar with the concept of the closed time loop did some very intensive work on the Time-Turner aspect of Prisoner of Azkaban to make sure that it made sense? It would explain why JK Rowling doesn't seem to understand the plot of her own story.

Did anyone else find Janeece's Series 6-8 return a great disappointment?

I really loved Janeece when she was a pupil, she was one of my favourite characters. The fundamentally important thing about her was that she was very highly intelligent, but also greatly insecure (hence why she was very susceptible to being groomed, by the religious guy at the end of Series 2 and the supply teacher in Series 3 - they made her feel valued in a way she didn't usually get).

Janeece's friendship with Andrew in the early series is my all-time favourite teacher/pupil friendship, because it was unlikely on the surface but actually very believable when you stop and think about it. Andrew, although very stern, was the only teacher who had ever given Janeece any attention, ever thought of her as anything other than a loud idiot. Janeece felt safe going to Andrew if she was worried about anything because she knew he would listen and take her seriously, which the other teachers simply wouldn't. From Andrew's perspective, Janeece was exactly the kind of kid he went into teaching for - someone who had the potential to do well, but had had some hard breaks in life and needed steady and firm adult role models. He sparked her interested in dinosaurs, and for a while in Series 2 Janeece was getting B grades in her classes.

But when she returned as a secretary, it seemed like all of this interesting character development had been forgotten about. Now, she was just a straightforward ditz. It's actually unclear either why she wanted the secretary job, or why she was given it - a school secretary is quite a difficult job, there's lots of complicated paperwork involved, and we never saw that she was particularly competent at it at all. I particularly hated the way she was going to let Ruby adopt her baby and then changed her mind, because after she changed her mind it just felt like she was neglecting Cheryl and saw her as a nuisance most of the time.

I will say one thing for Janeece as a secretary - she was quite assertive, in a good way. Like when Scout and Emily made the allegation against Scout's foster dad, she stood up to the foster mum very firmly and stopped her from entering the office (she tried to protect Karen from Richard Whitman as well, but unfortunately he just barged past her, but she did try). But aside from that, she seemed to have lost every positive attribute she had. She couldn't spell or write well (in spite of how she got B grades in Series 2), she didn't seem to have any common sense, and she was a hindrance more than a help.

I also would have liked it if there had sometimes been references to some of the traumatic things she went through at school (and there were a lot). People always say they'd have liked a Maxine reference, although I understand why there isn't one because I don't think there'd be a convenient moment for that to come up. But the one where there would have been a great opportunity for it was the Jonah/Cesca storyline. Janeece was groomed by a teacher. It would have been a really nice moment, if when Jonah was sitting outside the headteacher's office when Karen, Chris and Cesca were inside discussing the situation, Janeece had just said to him, 'You know, something like this happened to me once. I might understand, if you ever need someone to talk to.' I think Jonah needed to hear that.

With Janeece's key interests being dinosaurs and young children, I would have liked her vocation in life to be writing a series of educational children's picture books about dinosaurs. That would have been a good explanation for why she's in the secretary's job - she's also a published author, but it doesn't pay the bills so she needs a day job, and she took a job at her old school because she wanted to give something back. Then in Series 8, rather than the whole 'neglecting Cheryl/loses her temper with Michael' storyline, she leaves because her books are becoming really popular, she's making a lot more money from it and doesn't need her day job anymore. That would have been an amazing happily ever after from her, and a recognition that someone who really struggled managed to do okay for herself. (It also would have been nice if it was implied that she and Andrew had stayed in touch Michael and Lorraine-style - teachers often stay in touch with students they bonded with. Even if they couldn't get Jamie Glover back, we could have had a scene where she was on the phone to him telling him about her literary success.)

I want to talk about this, particularly in relation to the fact that a lot of adults loved Harry Potter when it was coming out as well.

I used to be a Harry Potter fan - I was on the younger side of the original generation of fans (I was three when Philosopher's Stone came out, and got into the stories when I was seven and the first film came out). I think part of my enjoyment of Harry Potter is to do with the fact that quite soon after I got into it, my childhood became quite difficult for a number of different reasons, and these books got me through some tough times. Ironically, given I started with the first film, I was never that much of a film fan - I became the very purist kind of book fan who objected to every minor change the films made.

A lot of my time on this sub has been spent analysing my feelings about Harry Potter, what it was about it that drew me in, what kind of story I thought it was and how learning about JK Rowling subsequently made me question my feelings about the books. Largely my journey was: As a kid, loving the fantasy elements and enjoying the idea of being a wizard; as a teenager and in my early twenties, starting to view the books as an allegory for society, recognising the problematic aspects that are in them but presuming that Rowling did that on purpose because she trusted her readers to be able to see it; subsequently to her insane behaviour in recent years, realising that my previous assumptions were completely wrong. Ironically, her approach to the books was closer to how I interpreted them as a kid - she wasn't intentionally putting social issues into her fantasy world, she included them in her idea of utopia because they're what she takes for granted.

But the thing I'm really curious about is, how did she manage to dupe so many people into thinking she and her books were so brilliant and exceptional? Particularly highly intelligent adults. My English teacher at high school, who I remember being an extremely critical thinking and considered man, really liked Harry Potter. There have been university degrees where analysis of Harry Potter has been part of the course. How was it that this came about, and what can we learn from it?

I'm particularly interested in hearing from former fans who were adults at the time the books came out - not sure if there's anyone like that on here.

Lisa Williamson is probably my favourite YA novelist (I've written about her a couple of times on here), so I was delighted that after a few years focussing on a different genre she's brought out a new one. And it's such a topical and thought-provoking book.

The basic premise is that a girl goes to a house party with a big group of friends, gets very badly drunk and her best friend's brother offers to take her home. The following morning, she wakes up in his bed and can't remember what happened. She gets this strange feeling that during the night he had sex with her when she was too drunk to consent - but she asks him and he swears blind he didn't. Which puts her in quite a tricky situation, because she's really not sure she believes him, but she's not certain, and it can't be proven either way. And there's also the added complication that he's not just any guy, he's her best friend's brother, and it would severely impact their friendship if she accused her brother of having raped her, especially if she wasn't sure.

It's told in the first person by the three main characters - the girl, the boy and the boy's sister who finds herself caught in the middle between her brother and her best friend and isn't sure what to think. All of them are very flawed characters - wasn't sure I really would get on well with any of them in real life, but also that means you're never quite sure who to side with. The boy's extracts are quite cleverly written so as to very much leave out going into detail about what happened when they got back from the party, meaning that for most of the book the reader doesn't know what he did or didn't do either, so you really have to work out how much you trust him as a character. (The truth is eventually revealed, but obviously I won't say because spoilers!)

I found it such an important story for dealing with issues surrounding consent, both for the accuser and for the accused. One criticism I've seen raised online is that it ends without all that much of a resolution - but I actually like that. With a subject as serious as this, you can't wrap everything up in a neat package. The ending, and how the characters all move forward once everyone knows the truth, is kept fairly ambiguous, so you as the reader can think how you think they'd move forward, and how you would in that situation.

(As an additional note, one thing I've always thought Lisa Williamson is really good at is slipping in representation of minority groups without it feeling forced or artificial. There's one point where a character goes to stay with her sister, they go to a party at the house of the sister's female friend, and during the party it becomes apparent that the sister and the friend are actually an item - clearly, the narrating character already knew her sister was gay or otherwise LGBTQ+ and isn't remotely surprised, but prior to this point we'd never explicitly been told that, because clearly it wasn't relevant up until this point. There's also the suggestion that someone's boyfriend is Jewish without the text explicitly ever saying that. The suggestion comes firstly from the fact his name is Caleb, a Hebrew name, and when talking about when he's going to meet her parents, he jokingly says, 'They're not rabid anti-Semites, are they?' I really like this kind of thing - just making minority characters benignly part of the crowd, rather than making their minority status their defining characteristic. She does it well in her other books as well.)

Lisa Williamson is probably my favourite YA novelist, so I was delighted that after a few years focussing on a different genre she's brought out a new one. And it's such a topical and thought-provoking book.

The basic premise is that a girl goes to a house party with a big group of friends, gets very badly drunk and her best friend's brother offers to take her home. The following morning, she wakes up in his bed and can't remember what happened. She gets this strange feeling that during the night he had sex with her when she was too drunk to consent - but she asks him and he swears blind he didn't. Which puts her in quite a tricky situation, because she's really not sure she believes him, but she's not certain, and it can't be proven either way. And there's also the added complication that he's not just any guy, he's her best friend's brother, and it would severely impact their friendship if she accused her brother of having raped her, especially if she wasn't sure.

It's told in the first person by the three main characters - the girl, the boy and the boy's sister who finds herself caught in the middle between her brother and her best friend and isn't sure what to think. All of them are very flawed characters - wasn't sure I really would get on well with any of them in real life, but also that means you're never quite sure who to side with. The boy's extracts are quite cleverly written so as to very much leave out going into detail about what happened when they got back from the party, meaning that for most of the book the reader doesn't know what he did or didn't do either, so you really have to work out how much you trust him as a character. (The truth is eventually revealed, but obviously I won't say because spoilers!)

I found it such an important story for dealing with issues surrounding consent, both for the accuser and for the accused. One criticism I've seen raised online is that it ends without all that much of a resolution - but I actually like that. With a subject as serious as this, you can't wrap everything up in a neat package. The ending, and how the characters all move forward once everyone knows the truth, is kept fairly ambiguous, so you as the reader can think how you think they'd move forward, and how you would in that situation.

It's easy to forget this because it wasn't really shown onscreen, but there was a time Ros and Lindsay were best friends. At the start of Series 5 when the John Fosters people come, the two of them are always together... but Lindsay abandons Ros to start the girl gangs. Then later on she tries to get Ros back, but Ros is cross with her for abandoning her and won't make up.

I can easily imagine, once it became apparent how messed up Lindsay was, that Ros would forgive her and go and visit her in prison. I can also imagine how after the awful debacle with Jo Lipsett, Ros would feel Lindsay as the one who was once her friend might be the only person she could talk to about it. Ros was both very kind and also a pretty private person - if she'd reconnected with Lindsay, I can imagine her not having told anyone else about it.

And with Lindsay needing somewhere to go to get a break from her family after she left prison, I can see Ros offering her a place to stay in wherever she's living by then. It's the perfect refuge... an old friend that no one even knows she's in touch with anymore.

So, this is something that's occurred to me. In Order of the Phoenix, Hermione mentions that Michael, and his friends Terry and Anthony (who incidentally is the Anthony Goldstein that Rowling thinks is a good representation of Judaism) came to the Hog's Head meeting because Ginny was going, and Michael was dating her. Ron isn't immediately clear which one Michael Corner is, and Hermione describes him as 'the dark one'. Which I have always taken to just mean the colour of his hair, but it could also mean his skin colour.

The reason this has occurred to me is that the other characters Harry and Ginny go out with before they go out with each other (Parvati, Cho, Dean) are all characters of colour. (I'm not counting Neville, who Ginny went to the Yule Ball with, because they clearly went as friends - and as such I'm also unsure if I should include Parvati, but I think it's slightly different because I thought she was at least hoping it might go somewhere with Harry, even if Harry had no such intentions. Whereas with Ginny and Neville it felt far more mutual.)

And then, at the end of Order of the Phoenix, Harry and Cho split up, Ginny and Michael split up - and Michael and Cho get together. If Michael is a person of colour as well, it gives the suggestion that mixed-race relationships are fine just to have a bit of fun with, but ultimately people should stick to their own race. (And, just to be clear, I am aware that Michael is absolutely not the same race as Cho, who is Chinese - but I also doubt JK Rowling makes that distinction; she's so ignorant of other cultures and heritages that it really wouldn't surprise me if she views race as 'white people, and then everyone else'.)

For people not in the UK, the lowdown is that the Government's announced an Australia-style ban on social media for under-16s (which I personally am not in favour of, but it's a complex debate).

The thing I find absolutely mad about it though is how much of a concern cyber-bullying suddenly seems to be. Yet when people have pointed out how much JK Rowling's social media behaviour ruins lives, no one seems to think that's a major concern. In fact, some of the people who've been ignoring it and bending over backwards to pacify her have been the very people promoting this ban.

Weird, much?

At the end of Series 1, there's a massive school crisis when Jack tries to permanently exclude Lewis, and then isn't allowed to. Even though Lewis sexually harassed a teacher (and had been openly violent and intimidating to both teachers and pupils on a number of occasions before that), the board intervenes and says that Lewis can only be temporarily excluded. Eventually, Lewis isn't excluded - they get rid of him by blackmailing his mother into taking him out.

But in Series 6, Karen comes in with a number of hard and fast rules, including a 'three strikes and you're permanently excluded' policy. The things people are able to get excluded for at this point are nowhere near as serious as what Lewis did to Kim. It doesn't seem like anyone tells Karen she can't do that.

Was the difference that Karen warned everyone in advance what the rules were and with Jack and Lewis it was more spontaneous? Was it that what Lewis did couldn't be proven (if so that's very unfair, because Sam bringing drugs to school couldn't be proven either, and no wonder because she didn't do it)? Or did headteachers just get given more power in the few years between these instances?

Mine is 'Homer Goes to College'. I appreciate that it's one of the most popular ones, but I've never really got the humour. I don't get off on watching Homer being mindlessly obnoxious.

We haven't really talked much about the depiction of these three girls on this sub - which isn't surprising, because they're very minor background characters and we find out very little about any of them (they're so minor that all three of them had multiple recasts in the films). But I've been thinking a fair bit about the way Rowling depicts them, and it's really made me think that they were characters who had an awful lot of potential and deserved far more than they got, and the lack of interest Rowling obviously had in depicting them really demonstrates her misogynistic tendencies (and in Angelina's case, some racist ones as well).

I'll start with the obvious irony - these girls play Quidditch on a mixed-sex team with four boys, which is tremendously ironic with the way Rowling seems to view women's and men's sports. And I'll also say something else - the great success that the Gryffindor team has in the books is down to the three of them far more than it is to Harry, who tends to get all the credit. Harry has two roles in Quidditch - to catch the Snitch, and to distract the other team's Seeker to stop them from catching it. A Snitch catch is only worth fifteen goals, in a game where it sounds like there's goals every few minutes, so if the Chasers didn't consistently perform as well or better than the other team's Chasers, Harry would not be able to win the game.

Let's look at each of the Chaser trio in turn:

Angelina Johnson

We don't really see much of Angelina over the first four books, the only things of note being that she wanted to be a Triwizard champion and that she and Fred went to the Yule Ball together where they danced in such an extreme and over-the-top manner that no one wanted to dance anywhere near them. But she generally seems fun and likeable.

In the fifth book, she gets promoted to Quidditch captain. And to be honest, the way she's depicted in this book is grossly unfair. Her captaincy is intensely stressful and fraught with all kinds of impossible situations, from having practices cancelled by Umbridge to having to replace half her team in the middle of the tournament. Still, she somehow manages to captain the team to a Quidditch Cup victory. Yet despite this, the narrative doesn't really praise her at all. At the end it's Ron and Ginny, not Angelina, who get most of the credit for the Gryffindor win. Angelina's job was quite significantly harder than either Oliver's or Harry's when they were captain, yet she's depicted as bossy and unreasonable when she's understandably cross about constantly having to change plans at the last minute. Oliver Wood wasn't super-likeable, but at least in the third book you could really feel how gutted he was to have not won the Cup the previous two years and you feel happy for him when he finally manages it in his seventh year. Angelina gets nothing like that. (And incidentally, Gryffindor losing the Cup in the first book was totally Oliver's fault for not having a reserve Seeker on hand - no matter how good someone is, surely it's foreseeable that there'll be occasions when they'll be ill or unavailable for some other reason? It sounds as though when Harry was in the hospital wing and unable to play, Oliver went absolutely to pieces and they ended up playing their final match without a Seeker, which means they absolutely deserved the loss. Compare this to Angelina when she abruptly had to replace three players at once - she wasn't happy about it, but she managed it, and they did win.)

Angelina is one of the very small handful of black characters in Harry Potter, and the only black female character. I could be wrong, but I don't think her skin colour was stated in the text until the fifth book, so it's possible that Rowling only decided later on that she was black. If that's the case, it says quite a lot - that she was fairly likeable in the first four books, but once she's revealed as being a black girl she immediately falls into the 'angry black woman' trope. She also holds the distinction of being the only character of colour who's in a relationship at the end of the series, having married George Weasley. Something I find quite concerning is that on Harry and Ginny's journey to grow into the people they're going to be when they fall in love, the people they go out with in the meantime tend to be people of colour (Harry with Parvati and Cho, and Ginny with Dean) - it suggests that people of colour are okay to mess around with but aren't desirable as the forever partner of a white person, so it is good at least that Angelina and George bucked the trend there. But, her relationship with the Weasley twins is weird. I'm never clear whether she and Fred were actually boyfriend and girlfriend, or whether they just attended the Yule Ball together as friends - there aren't ever any other suggestions that they're dating, yet Fred was so confident that she'd agree to go with him that he confidently told other people they would be going together before he'd even asked her. And I'm pretty sure I remember Rowling implying in an interview that George and Angelina's marriage is quite difficult, because really they were drawn to each other out of grief for Fred. So there you have it. She's the only person of colour who manages to settle into a relationship, but it's not a particularly happy relationship and her husband doesn't actually want her for her, but just because she reminds him of who he's lost.

Katie Bell

Katie Bell doesn't really do anything of note until the sixth book, but in that book she becomes a comparatively important character.

I'm going to start with the issue of captaincy. Katie, not Harry, deserved to be Quidditch captain. She's been on the team the same length of time as Harry, because of Harry's injuries in book 1 and Umbridge's ban in book 5 she has played in more games than Harry, and she is older than Harry - he'll have another chance to be captain the following year, and she won't. She earned it fair and square. Her comment to Harry that 'I thought you'd get that' demonstrates that it wasn't that she was offered it and turned it down - she would have liked to be captain, but knew McGonagall would go for Harry. To add insult to injury, she even has to try out and earn her old Chaser position back (to be fair to Harry, he does offer her an automatic spot and Katie insists on trying out for him - but why? That doesn't usually happen. It sounds like Katie feels so disrespected that she feels she needs to prove to everyone that she's worth something, and that's pretty unjust for someone who's played so well for such a long time).

Her role in the rest of the book is to be cursed by the necklace and end up in St Mungo's. In this, she's such a perfect choice for a victim on Rowling's part - someone Harry knows well enough that it feels like a big deal, but actually he doesn't give a shit about or spend the slightest time worrying about once he knows she'll make a full recovery. Again, I think this speaks to Rowling's misogyny - like Katie, Cedric Diggory existed just to be in the wrong place at the wrong time, but at least Cedric had some characterisation which was carefully built up over a fair bit of time. Katie had almost nothing. We don't know anything about her. And she's carelessly used as a plot device to further the Harry/Ginny/Dean triangle - Dean has to take over from her on the Quidditch team so that plot line can progress, and then the moment Ginny and Dean split up and Harry's free to make a move on Ginny, Katie helpfully returns so Rowling doesn't have to bother about Dean's presence anymore.

I can understand why, especially given that Rowling knew Harry wasn't going to return to Hogwarts for his final year, she wanted to show Harry as Quidditch captain. But there was a way of doing that that wouldn't sideline Katie. Give Katie the role initially, show that to begin with she's a really great and inspiring captain who gets the best out of everyone - but then the cursed necklace thing happens, and Harry has to take over as interim captain whilst Katie's in hospital. Then Katie returns later and gets her Cup victory. This would have been the best of all worlds.

Alicia Spinnet

To be honest, there's very little to say about Alicia, as she's such a background character. The other day someone posted a video about how there are only 28 female characters in the top 100 most mentioned characters in Harry Potter - but Alicia doesn't even make it into the 28.

However, I will say one thing about her, which is that there's quite a few points in the series that she's the target of deliberate and unprovoked violence on the part of the Slytherin players. In the third book, a Slytherin beater whacks her over the head with a club and tries to claim that he thought she was a Bludger. In the fifth book, she's attacked when she's studying in the library, and Snape claims she must have done it to herself in spite of there being fourteen eye-witnesses. She's always the target, and never able to properly defend herself. This I think represents what Rowling thinks women in sport are - very weak, incapable of defending themselves, prime targets for abuse. This is the kind of logic that causes her to doubt whether any women who show any strength or sturdiness are actually women.

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I have two more observations to make about these girls. The first is that despite playing alongside them for five years, Harry doesn't seem to be friends with them. They should be friends, because they have a shared interest and see one another very regularly at team practices. It's not because they're older either, because they're really not much older - Angelina and Alicia are two years older than Harry, Katie's one year older. Katie's the same age as Cho, who Harry went out with. It sounds like Harry really has no interest in making friends with anyone other than Ron and Hermione - I guess he's friends with Fred and George, but only through Ron.

And the last observation, and the most important one that's prompted all this in the first place, is that the girls seem to be pretty close friends with each other, including off the pitch. Usually when we see them, they're together. I think the real reason Angelina was able to hold her team together in the fifth book was that she knew she could rely on her gal pals, and they knew the same about her. These girls are there for each other always, give each other confidence and emotional support, and were the glue that held the team together when it needed it. They clearly display the sisterly loyalty that is so frequently missing from female friendships in Rowling's books, which are normally characterised by competitiveness rather than co-operation. And this explains why we barely get to know them, because Rowling hates girls being there for each other like that. She likes girls to be catty and bitchy, and the rare girl who isn't like that to be 'not like other girls'.

Angelina, Alicia and Katie deserved better. They should have been bigger characters.

Last February, I wrote an essay about the UK screenwriter Russell T Davies, with a vague mind of posting it on here. The essay was about various red flags I've seen in his work and in his behaviour, which I've noticed mostly because of having spent so much time on here analysing JK Rowling's historical behaviour and thinking, 'Why didn't I see it?'

Eventually, I decided not to post the essay on here, because I wasn't 100% certain of what I was saying and because I really wasn't sure many people would think it was relevant/worth mentioning (I did send it to a few people via private message, as I'd happened to mention there was a writer I had suspicions of and a few people asked me who it was). But since then, the things I was concerned about at the time I wrote it have only increased, and particularly with his behaviour this week towards fans of his flagship show, I think the time has come. So below is my essay. I hope no one objects to me posting it here - I am aware that there's an argument that it doesn't properly fit rule 5, about relating directly to JK Rowling. But I think it is relevant, because I'd hope the benefit of looking back over the history of someone like that is that it does, and should, make you notice the same patterns in others, and make us more critical of this kind of media. I never would have written this essay, or really thought all that much about it, without the various contributions of this sub and an increased awareness of potential red flags.

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The writer is not a novelist, but the UK screenwriter Russell T Davies, who is best known for resurrecting Doctor Who in 2005 and has recently returned to it. He’s openly gay and aside from Doctor Who, he’s known for writing a number of Channel 4 dramas in the UK, most of which have LGBTQ+ themes. These include Queer as Folk (which later had an American remake that ran for a lot longer), It’s A Sin, Years and Years and A Very English Scandal.

The reason I was nervous about saying it is that in the UK where I live, he’s seen as the absolute beacon of LGBTQ+ representation on television. People really look up to him, in much the same way that they used to look up to JK Rowling. But I have some serious doubts about his depictions of LGBTQ+ characters, and I think he’s largely got away with it because he’s openly gay (in the same way, I think Rowling got away with her very misogynistic depiction of Umbridge because she’s a woman - if a male writer had written a female antagonist with that kind of description, I think it would get a lot more criticism).

I find his depictions of gay men are incredibly harmful. I have never come across a gay male character in any Russell T Davies drama who was capable of holding down a monogamous relationship - they always sleep around, cheat on their partners and prioritise instant gratification (not that I don’t think gay men should ever be depicted like this, but in Davies’ dramas they always are). In Queer as Folk, every single gay male character was out on the pull every night, whilst the one token lesbian couple was settled in a monogamous relationship with a baby. This seems to me sexist. Worse than that, Queer as Folk glorified a sexual relationship between a 29-year-old man and a 15-year-old boy. Again, I don’t mind that being shown at all because that kind of thing happens and that should be depicted - but it’s suggested that this kind of thing is a staple of the gay community, which is an extremely damaging stereotype and has led to gay men being associated with paedophiles. In the programme, every character who is concerned about Stuart and Nathan’s relationship is suggested to be against it because of homophobic tendencies rather than because they’re worried about Nathan’s welfare. Indeed, the night that they first get together is the night the lesbian mum goes into labour (Stuart was the sperm donor). When introduced to Nathan, her girlfriend jokes, ‘So you both had a child on the same night!’ I think if I was her I’d be looking at restraining orders if my child’s father did that, never mind joking openly about it in a public place.

His era of Doctor Who and the spin-off Torchwood features an openly bisexual character, Jack Harkness, played by John Barrowman. At the time he was the first openly bisexual character many people (including myself) had seen on television, so I suppose he deserves credit for existing in the first place. However, he is not a good depiction of bisexuality AT ALL. He is consistently portrayed as wanting to shag anything that moves. And his relationships with women are consistently shown as being more loving and more genuine than his relationships with men, which seem to be derived purely from nihilistic pleasure. (There is one exception to this, when he seems to fall in love with Ianto in Torchwood - but I think this was mostly fan service rather than being something the writer intended. In the first series I think he was just a casual shag, but fan popularity led it to being developed.) Besides that, the Jack Harkness character makes an INCREDIBLY transphobic comment in the Torchwood episode ‘Greeks Bearing Gifts’ (to be fair, Davies himself didn’t actually write that one, but he was still the showrunner and I can’t believe he let that pass). There is also a trans woman in his first era of Doctor Who, Lady Cassandra played by Zoe Wanamaker. The one and only reference to her being trans is a throwaway line where she refers to ‘where I used to live when I was a little boy’. Whilst in general I think it’s good to have regular characters being trans without it being the whole part of their identity, Lady Cassandra’s character is someone who’s constantly having cosmetic surgery done, so I think this line was purely to back up that rather than to show her having transitioned in a validating way (and also perhaps because Zoe Wanamaker, a cis woman, has quite a husky voice, which is a trope about trans women). In another episode, Cassandra inhabits the body of the Tenth Doctor, played by David Tennant. Her reaction is hammy excitement - ‘Goodness me, I’m a man! Young! And so many parts!’ I think in real life, a trans woman who suddenly found herself suffering the indignity of being thrust back into a male body would find the experience traumatic and undignified, and I think Tennant’s portrayal of such is quite offensive. (Since he’s retaken the role of Doctor Who head writer, there has been another trans woman, played by Yasmin Finney. I haven’t actually seen this so I can’t personally comment on it, but from what I’ve heard a lot of the portrayal, although meant to be empowering, just keeps on reinforcing her diversity value as a trans woman rather than allowing her to have her own identity. In particular, there is one person I know who wasn’t familiar with Yasmin Finney and didn’t know she was trans, who when watching it said, ‘Why do they keep on saying how beautiful that woman is?’ I found this fascinating - that constantly using empowering language to refer to trans women can actually quite patronising if it’s overdone, because cis women aren’t talked about like that. I think trans people deserve to be treated exactly the same way as cis people do - nothing more and nothing less. This portrayal didn’t do that, it hyped up the diversity value of having a trans character played by a trans actor.)

His drama It’s A Sin was about the AIDS crisis. Truthfully I found this story powerful and upsetting - but more because it was it was a real thing that happened to members of our community not all that long ago than because it was actually an especially well-written story. I didn’t feel an emotional connection to any of the main characters, because they were just Russell T Davies’ staple gay boys - self-absorbed, promiscuous and unable to have any conversation that wasn’t about gay sex. One of the boys was from a strict Nigerian family which would have been a good premise for some decent character development, but it became apparent that Davies couldn’t be bothered to educate himself very much about Nigerian culture or what that would be like, and quickly relegated this character to just being a funny and quirky background character. There was a girl character who had almost no life or personality and existed just to be an ally. The only difference between any of the boys was that one of them was quite quiet and shy and the others were loud and extroverted, and even that one difference felt like it was only there for the shock value when the quiet one is the first one to die from AIDS. And the worst part is that in the finale, when the main character was on his deathbed, he fantasised about how many men he might have infected with the virus and killed. This is absolutely awful, in much the same way that Fenrir Greyback and the werewolves are an awful depiction - it suggests that that’s what HIV-positive gay men do, and that’s so insanely offensive. And if a straight writer had written that they’d rightly be condemned for it, but because it was written by a gay man who lived through that time it’s allowed.

My concern with Russell T Davies is a bit more than just his work though. It’s his attitude. He conducts himself in a very insistent, moralistic and defensive way, in much the same way as JK Rowling does even though he’s saying different things. I don’t get the impression that he really listens to anyone - he very much has the manner of ‘I’m a gay man, and therefore I am the world authority on all these matters.’ I think some people find that empowering, but it worries me very much because we used to big JK Rowling up on whatever she came out with and she abused that platform. Davies frequently says things that are completely nonsensical or which contradict things he’s said in the past. For instance, when Jodie Whittaker’s Doctor regenerated into David Tennant, for the first time ever the character’s clothes changed as well. Davies said that this was because it would undermine drag to ‘’put a great big six-foot Scotsman’ into her clothes. I don’t see why men wearing women’s clothes has anything to do with the man’s height or nationality, and Davies saying this so confidently really makes the conversation weird. He also says things that betray his own privilege. For instance, he’s said publicly that it’s wrong for straight actors to play gay parts (in spite of having cast straight actors in these kinds of roles in the past). I’m a gay actor, and I find this assertion really problematic - acting is a job, and I don’t think I’ve necessarily had less in common with straight characters I’ve played than I have with gay ones. This statement ignores the fact that not all of us feel comfortable to publicly come out. It ignores people who aren’t sure about their sexual orientation, who might have lived a heterosexual life so far but could benefit from stepping into a gay person’s shoes for a bit. It ignores the fact that in saying that, it also means that we’re less likely to be considered for straight parts. I’m really offended by that, and particularly as someone who casts people in stories which often have LGBTQ+ themes, it’s made it a lot harder to find actors. These days I often have people doubting whether they can play someone of a different sexual orientation to them, which a few years ago just didn’t happen. And I don’t really want to have those conversations with people - I find it intensely harmful to my way of doing things, which is all about being very open and inclusive and letting people find the roles that organically fit them. Russell T Davies either didn’t think about the consequences for ordinary people of him saying that, or just didn’t care.

There have also been rumours that he’s permitted abuse on set. The actor Christopher Eccleston stepped down from the role of the Doctor in Doctor Who after just one series, saying that there were issues on set that weren’t effectively dealt with by senior management. Eccleston has never clarified exactly what these issues were, but I don’t think it’s a coincidence that the three leading male actors in that series besides Eccleston - Noel Clarke, John Barrowman and Bruno Langley - have all been accused of sexual harassment at various times. Of course, if that is the case there are many people who are culpable besides just Russell T Davies, but he was the most senior crew member on that production so the buck does stop with him. It’s hard to speculate without more evidence, but I do think there’s at least grounds for concern.

Until recently I still really enjoyed Russell T Davies’ work. But then, I enjoyed Harry Potter until recently as well. With Harry Potter, I thought I was able to enjoy the story whilst still having serious issues with the author, and I was wrong. The more I learned about Rowling, the less I was able to truly enjoy what she wrote and the more troublesome aspects I saw in her books. Having spent so much time thinking about these dogwhistles and becoming more aware of how to spot them, I can’t help but see them in Russell T Davies. I absolutely hate how much he’s looked at as the most progressive and LGBTQ+-friendly UK scriptwriter, and I can easily imagine in a few years time something dodgy coming out about him just as it has with JK Rowling, everyone looking back at his work and saying, ‘It was there all the time, why didn’t we see it?’

Probably being WAY too sentimental here, but who cares? The Simpsons can have that effect occasionally.

Bart was so strongly drawn to Jessica from the moment he saw her. I know he's had a few love interests at different points, but I don't think he's ever been quite as infatuated on someone as he was on Jessica. He liked her so much, and wanted her to reciprocate such a lot that he was prepared to renounce being a troublemaker to impress her. Even when he realised how wild she was, he found it incredibly hard to stand up to her or call her out because he just wanted her so much. And all he got back was her spitefully framing him for something he didn't even do.

It's really quite sad when you think what Bart goes through in that episode... going out of his way to get Jessica to like him, the one golden night they have together causing mischief throughout the town (feels like the first time Bart and a peer have actually been truly equals with each other), realising she's far more crazy than him, trying to talk to her about it, and then her response being to steal money and let him take all the blame. He didn't deserve that at all.

The bit that really gets me is how happy he looks in that brief moment when they hold hands outside the classroom... it's the perfect moment of a young boy finally getting that special moment with the girl he likes, and then she bangs his hand on the fire alarm and suddenly it's no longer special.

I think it's partly the way Nancy Cartwright plays it. She captures Bart's euphoria at the beginning so perfectly, and I'll never fail to be impressed by the genuine righteous indignation at the line 'Jessica, you're really beautiful, but you are not very nice!'

In some ways the episode makes me have a lot more respect for Bart... he handles it all incredibly maturely, considering.

(Sorry for being overly sentimental, again!)

Did anyone else notice this?

Jerry Preston runs a church called the United Creation of Sciences, or UCOS for short. UCOS was also the Unsolved Crime and Open Case Squad in New Tricks, which was on the BBC at the same time.

I was a little taken aback when I heard it was the same acronym. Coincidence?