#the gayly prophet

[i-oooo]

My absolute favorite podcasters Lark and Jessie from Hashtag Ruthless productions aka @thegaylyprophetpodcast have made an episode about Wednesday 🖤🎉

[inkbirdie]

the gayly prophet is one of my all-time favorite podcasts! it’s absolutely hilarious and the commentary is always on point. an excellent for queer hp fans to consume fandom content ethically in a way that supports trans, queer, and BIPOC creators. i love listening to new episodes (and eps of the queer movie podcast, another fave) on my walks. i often find myself laughing out loud with Lark and Jessie and hoping no one around notices lol

one of my personal favorite aspects of the podcast is how Lark points out the egregious amount of semicolons, ellipses, and general lack of good punctuation and grammar that scoundrel jkr exhibits in her writing. as a writer and someone who hates terfs, it’s very funny and therapeutic.

i highly recommend the gayly prophet to anyone who likes harry potter, a good time, queer people, NOT terfs, or is just into the delicious asmr-like paper turning sound effect when they move between topics. they also have another podcast about buffy the vampire slayer, and although i haven’t listened as i have never watched the show, i’m sure it’s also wonderful!

so yeah that’s my gayly prophet rant, now everyone go listen!! hashtag ruthless for life 😎

the gayly prophet

I can’t believe I don’t see more people talking about @thegaylyprophetpodcast. it’s such a fantastic gem. it’s like listening to your friends talk about gay harry potter shit while you’re comfy on the couch next to them.

you don’t have to start at the beginning. they go through the books chapter by chapter and talk shit about jkr and do tarot readings and scream. they’ve done at least one episode per chapter for PS/SS through POA. pick one and go.

it’s a podcast so I know my adhd babes out there are gonna struggle but it’s my favorite thing to listen to while I’m doing an easy task. folding laundry, cleaning, driving, etc.

just trust me and give it a try. so fucking precious. if you need a starting point, try “Proving Love is Real with Chuck Tingle.” bring tissues.

also they have adorable merch like this:

[ID: two stickers on a gold glittery surface. left sticker is a black outline of a star and the words SUPPORT TRANS WITCHES on top of the star. the words are pink, white, and blue. second sticker is a comic book-style spiky speech bubble outlined in black. over it are the words HEX TRANSPHOBES in red.]

[macaron-tea-party]

Folks are really bumbling about playing the new Hogwarts game with the awkward antisemitic tropes and cringe narrative where your character stamps down a slave rebellion...yikes.

Well if you're a former fan of the franchise and don't know how to engage with Harry Potter fandom anymore, here's a lovely guide on firing Joanne K(aren) Rowling from the amazing hosts of the Gayly Prophet podcast. To briefly summarize their guide...steps on a stool and grabs a megaphone

📣STOP GIVING JOANNE FRACKING MONEY AND SUPPORT TRANS CREATORS!📣

That means don't buy the game.

If you're looking for another game entirely try the Little Witch Academia game Chamber of time.

[cowboinifaggotini]

hey guys, if you are questioning wether you should get grindr to do gay stuff and leaning towards no but then see a dream where two boys you used to know both named after prophets from difrent religions (Mohamed and Phoebus) kiss eachother gayly on the bus, is that a message from the gods to get gridr?

[hashtagruthlesspods]

For the 3rd year in a row, we talked to Chuck about one of his new books and a whole bunch of other cool stuff!!

such a treat to talk on THE GAYLY PROPHET podcast. been guest many times like visiting old buds to PROVE LOVE. this time we talked on horror novella STRAIGHT in deep dive. if you have not read yet you should read book first then check out this fun trot

here is link to STRAIGHT if you have not read. like chuck said full first hour is deep analysis of straight with many spoilers so read book first if you are interested in listening 

[picascribit]

Been listening to my HP podcasts (Witch Please and The Gayly Prophet) which are always bringing up great points, and now this is gonna bug me forever: What was the point, narratively speaking, of Harry having a giant pile of gold in the bank from his parents? It serves no real character or plot purpose. Why couldn’t it have just been enough that he wouldn’t need to worry about money until he was old enough to support himself? Why does The Chosen One need to come from massive generational wealth?

[360degreesasthecrowflies]

Do you ever figure Rowling deliberately made it so that the only subjects her half-human hero characters could speak with authority on were things that directly related to their non-human attributes?

Lupin or Hagrid couldn'tve been the Potions or Astronomy teacher? B-but, they're DARK CREATURES so must talk about the dark creatures subjects!

I guess we should be thankful Dobby never became the home ec teacher from his experience of cooking and cleaning 🤡

[hashtagruthlesspods]

hello to my fave queer irl witches!!! your podcast is so funny and unabashedly queer in a way that always makes me smile/laugh and i can't thank you enough for putting all this out into the world! i know you've offhandedly talked about what you would pursue discussing after this podcast (tragically) ends, and i have a small suggestion for you. i'm in more than a but of a marauders era (thanks to you lovely people) and i was wondering if you'd read/react to the infamous marauders fanfiction All The Young Dudes by MsKingBean89. it's one of my favorites, widely accepted within the marauders fandom as canon, and i'd love love love to hear you talk about it! obviously, do what you want with your time, and this is just a suggestion! love you guys, and stay ruthless! <3

Jessie here, thanks for the fic rec!! There are a bunch of marauders-era fic I still need to read so I am here for any or all recs!

As for the future of the Gayly Prophet, I'm not sure we'll pivot to fanfic but I do love reading it.

[hashtagruthlesspods]

We love a shameless plug

5 for the sakt asks?

5. Has fandom ever ruined a pairing for you?*

Ok dear heart I am truly stumped here omg

Like, I am in fandom mostly to have fun and self-examination/self-expression so anything that is this effed up I will grieve for a short period and then just...cut out and forget immediately ig??

Hmmm....scoundrel jkrow*ing ruined harry potter very much for me but that's not the fandom per se... ( @thegaylyprophetpodcast is the only and best tether I have to harry potter anymore pls excuse this shameless plug but this podcast brought me so much joy and furthered my understanding of my own queerness, ok?)

I'm so sorry that feels like an easy answer but it's the best I could think of atm?

Big Thank for the ask tho; this is going to follow me for days now lmao

[aveseart]

Skating AU

[lunarlesbien]

[puzzled-dragon]

today my mind was blown by the gayly prophet's headcanon that Hagrid can be read as a closeted transwoman

highly recommend listening to that ep at the very least, but also just the whole pod it's excellent

[macaron-tea-party]

Heck yes for game recommendations✨

Funny enough, there's a game that ISN'T transphobic and antisemitic as fuck on sale right now featuring students at a magical school. Who knew?!?

[obsidianarchives]

My Heaven is a Republic

I’m not a religious person. A huge reason why is my grandmother, a deeply critical woman who moved to Detroit during the Great Migration. She would often call out the Black churches in Detroit for their hypocrisy: always a poor congregation and a rich pastor. She was spiritual, though. She believed in God, and because of her I went to several Catholic elementary schools. And like many queer kids who went to religious schools, I left them as a self-proclaimed atheist, having experienced firsthand the disingenuousness of a religion that taught love and forgiveness but, in practice, hated difference. I was bullied mercilessly and had teachers who belittled me. I saw clearly that none of the lessons in chapel or religion class seemed to be practiced by anyone, save a few tender adults. 

Then I got older and noticed that queers and women were reviled by the people I knew who were church-going. I was the only teen in high school not in a church youth group, and the only one who spoke up loudly about reproductive rights, gay rights, and the dangers of capitalism.

It’s no wonder that I had my own spiritual texts. 

The first was Octavia Butler’s Parable of the Sower, which I read at 10 years old in a book club that my sister attended. We both loved reading, and as my mom was a comically neglectful parent, my sister looked after me, which is why I was the lone child at a book club of old Detroit radicals at Detroit’s Unitarian church. We both read Parable of the Sower in one night.

The book changed me. Detroit in the ’90s felt a little like the apocalyptic Oakland of the novel. Empty crumbling ruins. The yearly fear of homes ablaze on Devil’s Night. The puzzling undercurrent of why the suburbs had street lights but my neighborhood did not. 

For me, it was barely fantasy to imagine the world of Parable, a world of ecological and economic nightmares spun from greed and disregard of Black and brown neighborhoods. When Lauren, the main character, turns from her beloved father’s Christianity to a grassroots spiritual movement of her own, it struck a chord.

God is change

Pretentious little nerd that I was, I knew there was a reason people throughout history had religion. It could explain what happened around you, what happened to you, what happens after you die. As an anxious child, I fretted over death and the unknown. As a sensitive child, I fretted over the destruction of the rainforest, of the dwindling elephants killed for ivory. I knew that these were big feelings to grapple with, but also that saying it was God’s plan seemed like an empathy cop-out. I didn’t do drugs or drink as a teen (though I would later), but I deeply understand Marx’s assertion that “religion is the opium of the masses.” It’s so much easier to think that something or someone else will fix your woes and pain. Religion is a better drug than the shitty brick weed I smoked in college, but I imagine it results in the same numb feeling of “not my problem.” 

All that you touch

you change.

All that you change

changes you.

In high school, I was in a youth volunteer program that was heavily political. Because my sister attended, and she watched me and my brother, we would tag along. I owe my entire political education and radical mind frame to this time. I learned the history of my city and country, about the political power of art and gardening, about food and environmental justice, about gender and racial inequality. Nearly all the adults who ran the program were queer, as well as several of the older teens I admired. I started to notice homophobia more in the world, and was troubled. We were taught to be youth leaders, to advocate for social change, to think of a new way of living — as we saw all around us how capitalism failed my hometown, gutted its beauty and resources, mowed down its Black and Chinese neighborhoods to build freeways for white suburbanites to travel more easily through the city. Change is inevitable, and we learned to be the change we wished to see in the world. 

The only lasting truth 

is change

Empires fall. That’s what world history teaches us. What is perhaps less obvious is that change is slow. The US is still not post-segregation, post-lynching, or post-homophobia. It can be overwhelming, the cycle of two steps forward and one step back. But change happens regardless, it is constant, and, most importantly, it can be shaped communally and personally. 

I’m not immune to the fact that my other spiritual text — the His Dark Materials series by Philip Pullman, like Parable of the Sower — also interrogates Christian-based teachings. The books are dense with Western art and religious imagery, allusions, and symbolism, but the most impactful part for me happens on the last page of the last book, The Amber Spyglass:

“We have to be all those difficult things, like cheerful and curious and brave and kind and patient, and we’ve got to study and think and work hard, all of us, in our different worlds, and then we’ll build...the republic of heaven”

Lyra, the main character, is home from her adventure, having saved the multiverse. In doing so, she has preserved Dust, the physical manifestation of the intentional good things conscious beings create. Dust is not finite, it can be created, through hard work, through treating people kindly and patiently, through learning and growing. I use this as my moral (golden) compass to guide me every day. I maintain a calm, kind, public vibe, even when I'm angry or frustrated. I compliment people freely. I donate to strangers’ GoFundMes. I offer to drive for friends and coworkers. I practice active listening. I challenge people when they say fucked up things. I’ve become a Professional Mentally Ill Queer Weirdo through my podcast, The Gayly Prophet. This is hard work, especially for someone like me, with depression and anxiety, where it would be so very easy to be dismissive and apathetic and withdrawn from the world. But that’s not the kind of world I want other people to live in. I hear from listeners every day that my openness has changed their lives and their relationships with themselves — this is the kind of world I want to live in. 

I don’t do any of these things looking for some reward in a cartoon afterlife. The reason I try to live a moral and just life is that I believe the meaning of my life is to shape a better world. To build the republic of heaven.

We do not worship god.

We perceive and attend god.

With forethought and work

We shape god.

In the end, we yield to god.

We adopt and endure,

For we are Earthseed,

And god is change.

[redgoldsparks]

I was delighted to appear on the podcast The Gayly Prophet as a guest for the first chapter of Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban! This is a queer witch re-read of the whole HP series one chapter at a time, sprinkled with Tarot insights, editorial rants, and sassy headlines. Please check out this episode and the podcast as a whole :D They also publish comics to go along with every episode- check them out on twitter, instagram and their website.