#just like with JK Rowling

[arttsuka]

People need to stop blaming 'parasocial relationships' when it's revealed to the public that a famous person has done something controversial (or even a crime) and the public is upset. 'I can't believe xxx did that!' doesn't always mean that the person who said it has a parasocial relationship with xxx. Usually it's just our faith in humanity, we want to believe that everyone has some basic human decency (especially someone we might admire) and it's only natural to be disappointed when we learn they're a bad person.

[bixels]

Always an experience watching the leftism leave FNAF fans when someone mentions that Scott Cawthon financially backed fascist politicians.

The switch from posting hardline leftist tweets about boycotts and signal boosts and critical takedowns of politicians and celebrities to ‘ohhh, well. everyone makes mistakes. who can blame him, listen he. he donated money to gay charities too. that makes it ok! a millionaire in his forties is allowed to have political beliefs. does it even matter? just let it go!’ is whiplash inducing. The antivaxxer celebrities have got to go, but this one horror dev who quietly handed wads of cash to antivax lawmakers? He’s chill, he can stay.

The charity thing is so funny too because suddenly utilitarian positive-negative point counting is the way to go. Maybe an abacus would help calculate the net good of donating to the Trevor Project minus donating thousands of dollars to Mitch McConnell and Donald Trump. -10 points if I push a kid in a lake but +11 points if I help an old lady across the street, so I’m chill. You can’t judge me. Hey, maybe. Just don’t push a kid in the lake period. How fucking low is the bar when we’re excusing maxing out the possible dollar amount of donations to Mitch fucking McConnell. That should be like. Default you’re a bad person.

[thetimelordbatgirl]

Not gonna lie, JK Rowling making it clear she doesn't understand romantic relationships unless sex is involved somehow explains a-lot about her inability to write romance in her books.

[gingerswagfreckles]

I see a post about how JK Rowling's goblins are antisemitic. I click on the person's blog. Their blog is filled with Holocaust inversion, MENA Jewish genocide denial, Hamas support, political "takes" from Twitter bitches with the red triangle in their usernames. I click out and block.

[love-too-believe]

Us asexuals literally just minding our business.

Jk Rowling: AND YOU KNOW WHAT F*CK Y'ALL TOO

What is her problem bro? 😂

[wizardbuckets]

YEAHGHHH GET THEIR ASSES‼️ FUCK YEAH‼️

[blepsalot]

Hey, does anyone have any recs for any kind of media with good rep?

Like, disabled rep, POC rep, fat rep, queer rep, literally anything.

Trying to put together a list of better media to rec to HP people when we tell them to read better books.

[litloverscorsetlaces]

An Essay on ALW's Erik

One of the best insights I got into ALW's Phantom from some random Reddit user is to watch for whether the lead plays Erik from his own POV or from Christine's, especially in MOTN. (I also add a third option because several actors also play him from the perspective of the audience or a more omniscient narrator.)

These approaches result in entirely different, but no less accurate, interpretations of the character. For example, Earl Carpenter's performance from the first lair to the final lair is entrenched in the Phantom's perspective, from the total anxiety he projects in MOTN, to his more hesitant physical engagement with Christine, to his decision to kneel/silently beg Christine to stay with him during the ring return. And I love that there's variety within this perspective as well. Carpenter uses this POV to portray a very earnest and sympathetic (if unscocialized) Erik, but I'd argue that Anthony Warlow also falls within this category even though he leans into the darker aspects of the Phantom's psyche.

I have favorite Phantoms in both categories, but I admit that Christine's POV is actually what hooked me to this musical. I got deep into Phantom boots after losing my dad in my 20s and watching an engagement fall apart under the strain of grief. When Erik is viewed or portrayed (à la Hugh Panaro) through Christine's eyes, you can see the character undergo a pitchy transformation throughout the musical as Christine works through her own relationship to men while grieving and coming of age. Erik initially presents himself to her as a father figure, then as a full-on seducer in the first lair, and then as a total monster. The story is in part about Christine's journey toward reconciling these different ways of perceiving/relating to masculinity in the absence of what had been the only male figure in her life. And the musical approaches resolution when Christine realizes that Erik is neither her dad, her lover, or a total villain--he's just a man. And he's worthy of compassion, but she can also choose to leave him.

Anyway, I hate when people say that it's inaccurate for Erik to be "X" or "Y". Because especially through the lens of Christine's journey, Erik is all the things at one point or another (or even simultaneously). He is a daddy-coded immortal messenger and a genius and sex incarnate and unhinged and broken and, and, and...a literary figure shaped by the internal worlds of the author, the reader, and the viewer/listener. What's the point in trying to make objective claims about him? Resist binary thinking and make literary and media analysis great again.

[abearinthewoods]

Randomly thinking about how jk Rowling coded it in to the HP universe that the stairs to the girls dorms had a spell to keep boys out but not the inverse. Even having a character explain to Ron that its because the founders viewed boys as less trustworthy.

In retrospect given that it really shouldn't have been a surprise when she harpooned on about "men in dresses trying to invade women's spaces". She clearly sees sexual deviancy as a distinctly male trait.

[teddyniffler]

A day in the life of the Harry Potter fandom

[lylahammar]

this fat liberation month I'm wishing for every british author to be visited by the ghosts of fatphobic characters they've written past present and future

[santa-argues]

wanna remind the jk rowling defenders that she's a bad person! i will not deny that shes done good, 500 refugees on the talibans kill list got saved cus of her and shes donated around 160 million pounds to charity. that is astounding and incredible. she also (and not mentioning her transphobic and acephobic tweets)

- wrote a whole ass book thats basically about a man pretending to be a woman going into womens bathrooms and murdering women using the name of a man who used electric shock conversion therapy on gay people (edit: i think he actually invented conversion therapy after looking into it)

- lobbied a lot of money to appeal a decision made on the definition of woman (reason why its bad: limits trans women from accessing rape and abuse centers for women, excludes them from sports, etc etc, i could go on) also heavily supports and advocates for not giving hormone blockers to people under 18 (these are reversible, safe and very often life saving, i have talked to a lot of people who would have killed themselves due to their dysphoria if they hadnt gotten some form of hrt)

- scotland. everything she did to scotland. the tldr is she donated over a million pounds to keep scotland a part of the uk, and the uk drains a lot of scotlands natural resources

- said they didnt kill trans people during the holocaust???? or burn books on trans healthcare?????

- heavily implied autistic people are unable to figure out their own identity without outside sources influencing them

- even elon musk told her to tone it down on the transphobia btw, absolutely hilarious

theres more, of course, but im done listing them. i see a lot of people saying all her charitable actions mean this stuff is irrelevant, i just saw a take that said we have to consider her to be a good person because of the good shes done and just ignore the bad.

let me ask you this then, can we excuse elon musk? can we call him a great guy?

yeah hes a terrible person, an absent father, abusive, transphobic, racist, homophobic, sexist, and i could go on, but hes donated millions of liquidated money to charity, billions in stocks, pioneered both reusable rockets in space travel and electric vehicles, and is the reason why like half the people who live in remote areas have an internet connection.

do THESE charitable actions excuse him? im not saying musk is better, he's definitely worse, not only that but he's richer and a man, so he has more power than rowling to continue to do these terrible things, hes even a part of the american government now. he's also not smart enough to hide his bigotry behind implications and a pretending-to-be radically leftist ideology and theres a lot more damage you can do by being outwardly a bad person.

the comparison is obviously stupid, musk's charity work doesn't excuse helping to set queer rights back by decades or his weird autism stuff or him hanging out with nazis or him supporting Israel or him actively advocating for nazi ideology, but jk rowling is doing the same fucking thing and its okay because shes done charity work?

[lovebeatriceplz]

Severus Snape >> The Marauders. FIGHT ME

[its-just-hyper]

In anticipation for the ending of my hero academia, I gotta say: man, is anyone remembering that one time that one beloved book series about a wizarding school ended with the flawed government staying exactly the same, everyone having kids and naming them after killed off characters, and the protagonist becoming a cop?

[maxdibert]

James would do anything that would make him appear like the hero he always romanticized about being. So joining the Order wasn't that admirable in his case. Lily and Remus are much more braver for that.

In a war, you either pick one side or the other, but you're going to the frontlines no matter what. In the end, I'm sorry, but the way the worldbuilding of Harry Potter is set up doesn't make me see anyone as heroes, just as people who had no choice but to pick a side in a war they couldn't escape from.

This isn't a story where a totalitarian regime is established and people unite to bring it down (like The Hunger Games, for example). Instead, it was just bourgeois fighting against bourgeois to decide who got to set the social norms, but even the most "progressive" ones never made any real reforms. I mean, werewolves remained discriminated against, house-elves were still enslaved, goblins were treated like garbage, giants too… It's a shitty society. So, what exactly was the purpose of the Order? To stop Voldemort from ruling the world? Okay, and...? Wizards treating house-elves as private property isn't much better than discriminating against someone for their blood status. It's an incredibly cynical and hypocritical perspective.

They had no plan for social reform, nor did they care, because the Order and its followers were led by upper-class people or families that were traditionally pureblood and had no problem with non-human beings living in misery—as long as humans were fine, the rest could rot. They weren’t revolutionaries, nor did they seek social justice. They just wanted to maintain their status quo and their personal privileges and interests. It was a war between bourgeois, because J.K. Rowling is a fucking bourgeois who doesn't understand the roots of social issues, and that perspective carries over into her vision of "justice" in her books.

So, sorry, but Lily doesn’t seem heroic to me, and Remus just seems like a completely alienated fool. If I were him, I would have told them all to go to hell. Let’s not forget that the Potters end up dead because they chose Peter over Remus as their Secret Keeper—because Sirius suggested it, since they didn’t trust Remus because he was a werewolf. Could they be any more of your average bourgeois? Seriously, what the hell—

[starsmacabray]

so now miss joanne katherine is coming after us aces. 😐

first, she wants to know what’s in our pants because she’s afraid that every queer person’s goal in life is secretly to SA someone under the ‘disguise of a different gender.’

now, she’s mad that aces typically don’t want to use what’s in our pants at all. so- you want us to fuck, or you don’t? babe. pick a goddamn side, or just leave people alone.

to all the other aces out there, i’m standing with you

🖤🩶🤍💜