#there's obvs nuance and such but like

[sugar-and-spite]

i hope it's ok to add onto this? (trans & autistic person with a spin in harry potter; ftr i agree with everything op said. just drop it.)

BUT: you also asked if engaging with the franchise non-monetarily would be harmful

media doesn't exist in a vacuum. you always get it from somewhere (even if you're pirating). with harry potter in particular, there's a very high chance that whoever you're getting the media from is going to take your engagement with it as a tell that you're on Their Side (that is to say, a terf).

there's also the question of social media (and fanworks also tie into this). if you pirate hogwarts legacy and post about it on social media, that's going to be seen by others, including terfs, and they'll think you're one of them. any trans people that see it will probably no longer think you're safe. (and also as op pointed out, the game itself is just garbage, from what i've heard, and full of white nationalist and antisemitic messages.)

as far as fanworks - you have to think about whose fanworks you're engaging with. older fanworks can be hard to tell if they were made by a terf or not, but what about ones made in the last few years? who do you think is still engaging with the fandom now, and making fanworks for it? and what messages might those fanworks have, based on who created them? and even for older fanworks - using ao3 as an example, if you read a fanfic, the hits go up. if you leave kudos or a comment, those counters go up. even if this is all done anonymously, that's still visible engagement that others can see - and it can be used by malicious parties to gauge interest in harry potter as a franchise.

the tldr of all this is that op is very correct - it's not worth it. it's far safer to just drop the franchise as a whole, at the very least until such time as jkr is dead and gone and can't use the franchise to fund her political agenda. it can be really hard to do! (especially for someone like me with a special interest.) but ultimately, any form of engagement, even non-monetary engagement, still indirectly supports jkr and directly makes trans people feel less safe. my safety and the safety of my trans friends and family are more important to me than my special interest. you have to come to your own conclusions on what is or isn't worth it for you

Ok so I’ve had this question for a while and I feel like you’ll be able to give me a good answer. I understand that we’re absolutely not supposed to support anything JKR does monetarily and I never intend to do so. However is engaging with Harry Potter media *at all* also something I should not do or is it only things that give her money?

Like, would there be anything wrong with me playing Hogwarts Legacy if I pirated it? Is fanfiction and fan art ok to consume? Or is engaging with the IP at all going to be harmful in a way that I don’t see atm?

Thank you for your time!

I don't really think a cis person is the right person to ask about this, but I also know that trans people are sick to death of having to field these questions so I'll do my best to answer this, if everyone who reads my answer will promise me that you will NOT use anything I say in this post as an annoying argument against a trans person who has a different opinion on the matter. Remember whose opinions are actually important here.

And look, number one, you can do whatever the fuck you want. Nobody can stop you. If you, in yourself, in your soul, feel morally comfortable consuming Harry Potter by some convoluted method of Ethical Consumption™, then go and do that, and own it, and have the strength to be judged for your decisions.

Trans people might not trust you - hell, I'll probably not trust you either. They might get angry at you, and criticize you, or roll their eyes and call you a fucking loser. If you have the moral conviction that what you are doing is right, and that you are acting in accordance with your beliefs and you are not doing harm, then stand by that conviction and face the consequences. Have that strength of character.

But if you feel the need to go around posting and arguing that it's unfair, that you shouldn't be judged, that you should get to be a special exception and people are unreasonable when they get mad at you... then that is evidence, proof positive, that you are a fucking loser. That you are cowardly, and you don't actually believe that what you are doing is right, you just want the world to affirm your fragile ego while you enjoy your little treats.

To be clear, I am not accusing you of doing this (you seem to just earnestly be asking for guidance), but there's a hell of a lot of people who do do this, and you don't want to be one of them.

So that's number one. Do whatever the fuck you want, and face the consequences with a spine.

Number two is... just fucking drop it. That is my earnest advice to you. Just fucking drop Harry Potter. They are children's books from the early 2000s, they just are not that fucking good or important. The Hogwarts Legacy game is live service slop; the movies are passable at best and their quality comes from the actors being better than the source material. Just drop it. Harry Potter has nothing to offer that you can't get elsewhere from better media with better authors, or problematic authors who have good grace to at least be dead.

Don't waste your life thinking about complicated ways to circumvent the moral problem of JK Rowling's rancid transphobic hate-aura at the center of the franchise, don't waste your finite time on Earth trying to thread that stupid needle. Harry Potter isn't worth this. Rowling is old, and shriveling from hate and mold fumes, at the very least just wait for her to fucking die, and for her political project to fail, before you pick that world back up again.

I speak as someone who read the first book at age 11, hyperfixated on relating to Harry, and whose entire cultural life was consumed by the franchise for over a decade. It is not worth it. You don't need it, you don't need the stress of trying to navigate how or whether to engage with it ethically. You almost certainly have an enormous backlog of other books, games, movies and TV shows you've been meaning to get around to, so just go do that instead. I promise you it will be infinitely more rewarding, and infinitely less compromised by stress and guilt and cognitive dissonance.

And while you're at it, send some money to a trans charity and go scream invectives at a transphobic politician some time.

[megamindsupremacy]

So like, y'all know that popular Star Wars fic trope of Time Traveling Obi-Wan Kenobi where he dies and then wakes up in his 11ish year old body back in the Jedi Temple? You know how usually he wakes up, has a few minutes/hours of confusion, and then goes about trying to act like he was at age 11 while slowly fixing everything wrong with the Jedi Order? Personally I think he would not do that.

I think that Ben "Lived As A Wizard Hermit For Two Decades On Tattooine, Left, And Then Died Immediately" Kenobi would wake up as an eleven-year-old, have a panic attack, attack the nearest adult Jedi while accusing them of Doing Weird Sith Shit To His Brain, fucking flee, only then realize he has time traveled, steal someone's ship, go flying out of the temple to god knows where, continue panicking, crash into a random moon while distracted, nearly die, build a survival camp out of his broken ass ship and eat whatever bugs he can find, get kidnapped by pirates, overthrow said pirates, steal their ship, and then very calmly return to the Jedi temple like nothing happened.

Then and only then do I think he would start trying to act like a normal human person (while also dodging questions such as "what the fuck was that" and "where were you" and "is that a pirate's ship?"), except he'd be bad at it due to having lived as an Insane Wizard Desert Hermit for the past twenty years who has experienced enough trauma and time that he doesn't super well remember the details of his childhood, what with all of the wars and death and wars and such.

His acting convinces nobody, but nobody is sure what exactly to do about All Of That so he's for the most part left alone (after very vehemently refusing sptherapy), all the way up until he catches a glimpse of palpatine out of the corner of his eye and then its On Sight

[emborami]

Hi so in case anyone was dying to know, this is what i think some of the cast of the terror would look like as animals :3 notes under cut

From left to right:

Crozier- Irish Terrier

Silna- Polar Bear

Goodsir- ryeland sheep (known for tasty mutton ;3)

Hickey- red fox

Franklin- old english game rooster

Fitzjames- red deer

I had fun coming up with them :) and I kinda wanna doodle some screencaps but with like a lil short sheep goodsir and his bestie the giant polar bear lady silence whom he thinks would love England. Or like hickey on his bullshit but with more flair bc he would have a fox body and tail to really fuck up that line of action

Anyways heres some closeups and sketches

[tomlivingspace]

okay ive seen vague posts abt my fernsong so ill make ONE POST abt this before i go back to doing whatever i want. even if i didnt portray him any certain way i would still dislike him and it turns out no one needs a moral excuse to dislike a character actually 🤷‍♀️ there are characters i hate a lot more for a lot less LMAO it literally doesn't matter. they're fictional cats and none of them have solid personalities. it's like playing dolls but with kitty cats who kill each other.

[rebellum]

The whole transandrophobia discussion thing is weird bc it feels like it's a bunch of poc and jewish trans people being like "here are my experiences of how specifically being MASCULINE had affected me, and the discrimination and violence I experienced based on that. And here is how that relates to me being a racial/ethnic minority"

And then a few loud white trans people going "ohhh you wanna be oppressed so bad you *slur*. This is why there aren't any poc in your movement it's because REAL poc understand intersectionality"

[abyssal-ilk]

violently anti-mage templar trevelyans are really fun to play around with and i have that with my trev gerard, but. the conse quences of making a cruel character is that i have to actually think about how cruel they are to my favorite companions and such. gerard is so fun to spin around in my head but. at what cost.

[everchased]

i have a small headcanon that one of the reasons finch and lae'zel get along so well and so quickly is both of their tendencies to subtly express themselves through their long fuckign ears

[transxfiles]

sometimes people are talking to me about physical traits they wish they had and the devil on my shoulder is shouting GO ON HRT TELL THEM TO GO ON HRT so loud i cant even carry on the conversation.

[skunkes]

yeah ur addition abt brushes mattering is so true, i dont think i really came into my current style until i tried out aliasing for my lineart

exactly! ill never understand brush gatekeeping (other than for certain reasons, like how i wont share brushes that ppl have given me in private bc theyre not mine to share, sometimes ppl wont share them bc they want to sell them etc) or saying it doesnt matter lol.... ppl who do so are always like "um having my brushes wont make u draw exactly like me! 🙄" like yeah, they wont. that's not what anyone expects. but also, if they wont magically make someone draw exactly like you then what exactly is your problem with sharing them lol what are you afraid of !

i've used TONS of brushes from artists who have shared them and i hate most of them because they don't fit my way of working even after editing settings, which is why i know they do matter when you get your hands on brushes that fit your line weight, strokes, style, texture, preferences, etc. if that makes sense....

[epiphainie]

.

[elysianasterism]

i still haven't studied finnish seriously but it's interesting how i keep finding similarities with tagalog despite them being mostly unrelated

[darkcomedies]

[catboyhawk]

this has been said before many times many ways but i really get confused when hawkeye is characterized as this overtly misogynist objectifying womanizer because. even at his worst in the early seasons his flirting, while excessive, never breached consent. it was always playful, he never grabbed or overtly came onto a nurse that openly didn't want him.. they all just wanted him so bad hddjkdj like he was fr the 4077 heartthrob and he gladly took those opportunities bc he was a guy in his 20s in a horrible situation and desperate for love/camaraderie. didn't alan himself say he played hawkeye like an overgrown child constantly reaching out for affection or something. whatever

[danrifics]

this is a bit of an abstract question but in relation to the idea that there will never be another dan and phil, what would you say their essential qualities are? (in terms of the criteria a potential second dan and phil would have to fulfill, and then why that criteria can't be fulfilled)

(sorry if this doesn't make sense)

well the reason i believe there will never be another dnp is purely because they helped shaped the internet content landscape we see today! like sticking mainly with youtube for this but like they did the work (with some other og youtubers of course) and a lot of youtubers have what they have to say as a direct result of dan and phil, the reason there will never be another dnp is cos already pioneered the genre and like the only way their feesable could be another them is if there was a something new like youtube to pioneer and of course you could say well what about the rise of tiktok etc and tbh i think what i say to that is i dont believe influencers on that platform are famous in the same way youtubers were and are like tiktok takes direct influences from vine imo and also like now you can make long videos on there it also feels like youtube in a way

dnp have done so much that modern day youtubers are doing now like tours and books etc and they were the first to do tours and now everyone’s faves are doing it and like i genuinely think we’ve reached a peak of online video content where there honestly isn’t much more we can grow and change it and that means there’s no one really out there trying to grow and change it

youtube fandoms can do their whole shipping thing with their famous youtubers and whatever but even phannie pioneered what a youtube fandom was, we dominated that platform for years.

no one else will ever do it like them and never do it like us either

[expositionbooth]

aroace jade hc... prefers ships w girl characters over davekat/erisol... transfem tav lover and general girl enjoyer... ur so so cool u could be my best friend forever i think

thank you so much i am batting my lashes... i dont hate anything or anyone much in terms of characters or ships but i think theres been too much hatred of woman in fandom for so long. who will fight for feferi if i dont you know....

[miragecounseling]

Love seeing the loudest opinions on gw2 and its story from all the various online communities

Tumblr generally loves the story, loves lots of dialog and spending as much time as we can with characters

Reddit hates having to do……… anything lol. Look for six clues? UGH ANNOYING. do two whole rifts??? WTF ANET.

Facebook hates the characters the story the dialog. I’ve seen soooo many comments to the effect of “who even plays this game for its story” and “gw2 isn’t even known for its story why do they try so hard” (I see that one on reddit a lot too)

Idk it’s just interesting. Of course people are allowed to have whatever opinions they want, I just think it’s weird to want to play an mmorpg if you don’t like story or any sort of fetch quest ???