#up until this show the only hate I ever got was from TERFs

[ysabelmystic]

I’ll be real, yall were all about “cringe culture is dead” until hazbin hotel came out and now suddenly we’re cool sending anon hate and bullying people over this show…

[beatrixstonehill2]

"Just a photo of me with my lovely new girlfriend, Nikki! We met on Tinder and she was soooo eager to date a trans girl like me! I asked her if she loved girls with huge boobs like me and she asked if I'm trans. I was surprised she could tell and said that I was. She told me it was obvious I was born a boy, that I didn't pass very well. But she really wanted to hook up still, saying she loved how boys who transition into girls like me wind up with such big boobs that they're kind of a give away. Because cis girls would get a reduction and hate being so busty, but trans girls keep them and let them grow to bovine proportions. Since we have boy libidos and get turned on by monster tits and other perverted stuff. But she said she's a bit of a pervert, too.

I told her I was flattered but I'm not especially kinky. She promised me if we got together she'd make me kinkier than I ever could've dreamed. Sooooo I just had to say yes. We've been together three months, but I'm still not sure what she meant exactly..... We have sex and she encourages me to use my cock, although she tops, she likes me to stroke my cock and edge for her. She likes to tell me when I can or can't cum, which is pretty fun, although a bit frustrating since I swear I've been getting hornier since I met her! And my cock has actually grown, weirdly enough! That happen to any other trans girls at nineteen? I haven't missed any of my meds. But I've gone from four inches fully erect to almost ten! It's embarrassing having a big dick but at least Nikki seems to like it, joking how it just proves I'm really a boy deep down. It's weird but my heart flutters when she calls me a boy, especially in public. It actually makes my cock hard..... Oh, and suddenly my stubble and beard are coming in! Is that normal? I've been on blockers since ten and hormones at twelve. Should I see my doctor or do you girls think I should just let it come in? I'm OK at covering it with makeup but I feel like it's coming in really fast. Oh well, hope you all have a lovely day! ❤️"

"Fuck..... It's been two years since my last post because, well, as everyone was commenting, yes Nikki was a TERF, and yes.... she was sneaking me testosterone. You all called it and I totally ignored it. Now I'm seeing what she meant by kinky.... It was one thing to control when I cum, but now my life revolves around Nikki's fetishes. It started with her detransitioning me, training me to edge and not cum unless she allowed it. Soon my voice dropped, my body hair and beard grew thick. I couldn't hide that I was a guy at all. And fuck it made me so damn hard! I feel disgusting, thinking of how I threw my beautiful body away for Nikki. But my cock is so big now! It aches to be stroked and played with all day, but instead every time I get an erection I have to eat or chug weight gain shakes until Nikki gets home and lets me cum.

Nikki apparently loves extremely fat men and loves turning beautiful trans girls into fat men even more. I'm definitely not the first or last trans girl she's done this to. I even had to watch as she made me get my boobs chopped off. Reduced to a flat, boy's chest, as I was only numbed, kept awake as the surgeon destroyed my perfect breasts. Nikki was in the corner, controlling a set of vibrating toys, one in my ass, the other inserted into my fat cock. I was still thin and pretty that day, and it's one of the few videos Nikki actually lets me jerk off to when I'm allowed to cum. That, and videos of other trans girls she's dated enduring the same thing. Always still slim and beautiful, breasts at least a HH-Cup or bigger. Stubble starting to show on their faces, voices just beginning to crack as they're forced to watch a surgeon dismantle and ruin their beautiful, estrogen-fattened breasts.

Now my whole life is sitting home eating. Sometimes Nikki goes days without coming home and letting me cum, since she has so many other former trans girls to keep fed and growing, making sure none of us are breaking our rules, being naughty, and gooning on our own. Although, as a boy the temptation to edge and stroke and goon all day is always at the forefront of my brain. Eating is the only thing that quiets my urges..... temporarily. So I eat more and more, gorging myself, becoming a hairy tub of lard for Nikki, knowing I'll never, ever pass as a girl again. Not that I was ever very convincing.... I can't wait to get as fat as possible to show Nikki what a devoted, pathetic hog I've become! Although it is fun to watch her get mad when I can't help myself and I jerk off for hours on end to girls getting forcibly detransitioned....."

[opinated-user]

this is a lie. LO wasn't invested in "making alie work" or else she'd have listened to the bunch of people criticizing her nonsensical backstory, how her power made no sense or how she, as an author, failed to portray a black character with any of the care it actually deserves. alaina was just another rewriting of her fascist genocidal colonizer fantasies, another lord ryder in a different font, but all the same. she was always wish fulfillment, not an actual character, and we could see that because alaina was literally always whatever LO wanted at any given moment with no thought about how that affected the rest of her characterization. again, just to remind everyone, the people who started talking about how LO talking about black characters or black skin tone (not just alaina) came off as fetishistic were black people. her comments about how hunter, a character she despises in TOH, could have been "interesting" if only his skin tone was changed was the one who prompted that. then we also noticed that she made her version of rey feel instantly attracted only to black women. then we saw that all other POC, including women, through the entire SW universe got discarded for the sake of the black women she put in charge.

then we saw that on the very, very rare ocassions she talked about books, it was non fiction books wrote by black women (that she never talked about again ever since, so if she actually read them or she just googled the titles is anyone's guess). then we realise that despite trying to write a black woman, LO was completely unaware and uninterested into actually researching into common tropes to avoid and played straight into them. other people had to come to tell her she was doing that, but not before she was already using the race of her fictional character as a shield against any critique. then we noticed that while doing all of the above, she was still ignoring an actual afrolatina's opinions regarding afrolatina representation in TOH and instead hating on a fictional afrolatina character for failing to be the violent vengeful stereotype she wanted her to me. then she wrote her HR rewrite (where slavery of an entire species was still a thing) and she did it again, making another black woman to use torture curses with the same ease someone uses to flip a switch. showing that she didn't listen to any of the people criticizing it and wasn't actually interested in making it work. she just wanted another wish fulfillment fantasy through another character. look at the kind of art that LO shares on her blog that doesn't come from her friends or is directly related to SW. the majority are drawing of black women. a lot of this could have been nothing at all (someone can enjoy writing by black women or art depicting them with nothing but sincere appreciation), just a mistake to own up ("i misspoke, i didn't meant to say that black skin tone was inherently interesting") or fixed pretty easily (give alaina a consistent characterization, do actual research in tropes to avoid when writing black women, etc), but all of combined still wasn't painting a pretty picture. so instead of listening to anyone, especially the black people speaking out, LO doubled down, cried in stream and performatively yelled about how awful everyone is to her. effectively painting black people as her agressors, vultures and stalker. she, the light skinned person who never suffered any kind of racism in her life, was getting bullied by black people telling her that her fetishim made them uncomfortable. but the breaking point for LO finally letting alaina go? was when she started talking about how her sith empire was going to be, especially how the sith order was going to work, and everyone called it out for the terf utopia fantasy that it was. according to LO, on her sith empire everyone with any real authority was going to be sith lady. cis and trans women were most welcomed, which would have been good enough... until LO had to add about how a "sith lady" was allowed to stay if they stop identifying as a woman while in work. effectively erasing transmasc/non binary identities and forcing them to either be misgendered constantly or lost their jobs... without any recognition at all as to how bad this is. rather than recognizing the inherent gender essentialism/transphobia of this, that is when LO started making a show about how much she regrets making alaina. never adressing the transphobia and instead, as usual, making herself into the helpless victim of everyone else. i guess what i'm trying to say here... do not feel bad for LO. she had plenty of opportunities to make something worthwhile, something better than what she originally wrote, and she wasted it every time. nobody forced her to do anything. there's nothing to feel sorry about.

if anything, this only tell us that LO prefers to scrap a project entirely rather than listening to anyone about how to improve it.

[theoculus124]

I'm bored- No one asked but I'mma answer a bunch of questions from an ask game

0: Height - I think I'm 5ft 4

1: Age - 16

2: Shoe size - size 5, but mainly depends on the shoe brand

3: Do you smoke? - nope

4: Do you drink? - nope

5: Do you take drugs? - nope

6: Age you get mistaken for - 17/18

7: Have tattoos? - nope

8: Want any tattoos? - YESS, I have a whole pinterest board of tattoo ideas

9: Got any piercings? - Used to but now I don't

10: Want any piercings? - Kinda, but at the same time I'm terrified cause I have a stupidly low pain tolerance

11: Best friend? - I have many :) Honestly we could interact once on tumblr and I would consider u my bsf lol

12: Relationship status - single

13: Biggest turn ons - Idk if this means like relationship, or sexual way? But I'mma just take it as relationship way and say honestly being nice and I'll be happy forever

14: Biggest turn offs - being mean for no reason :/, or telling me to stop being sensitive or making fun of my weight, or making fun of my neurodivergent habits etc

15: Favorite movie - don't really have 1 movie that's my fave I love the greatest showman, I love the MHA movies, Ready Player One, Last Avatar, Marvel movies, Disney movies (Also I just saw there's a Bo Burnham movie so that'll probably be in the list once I watch it)

16: I’ll love you if… you're nice :)

17: Someone you miss - I moved house some years ago but I have some close friends where I grew up so I'll probably see them during the summer

18: Most traumatic experience - I have no clue, I also don't know if anything I've gone through counts as drama or if I'm being dramatic and catastrophising the situation. I'd say probably catholic camp that was awful

19: A fact about your personality - I'm unfiltered so idc what the topic of convo is about u can talk to me about anything and I won't judge you ever <3

20: What I hate most about myself - Being so sensitive. Ik I can't help it but still it still sucks so much, mixed with my constant need for hugs/physical affection is like the worst combo lmfao

21: What I love most about myself - I will be a massive simp for u platonically or romantically <3

22: What I want to be when I get older - I'll probably be an engineer, but I also want to be a therapist part time

23: My relationship with my sibling(s) - isn't horrendous but we don't talk much :/

24: My relationship with my parent(s) - it's been alr rn but it's very up and down, some things they say is really hurtful and it's hard to decide upon me being the overly sensitive one or not

25: My idea of a perfect date - Hugs and food and a gay show, and then staying up until late hours of the night just talking about ourselves etc

26: My biggest pet peeves - people who get mad at u for crying at how they've treated by saying "just chill" "you're overreacting" I hate it so much

27: A description of the girl/boy I like - Wilhem from Young royals. Not a desc but still I don't think I need to expand on that lol

28: A description of the person I dislike the most - bigots, terfs, racists -- those kinds of people

29: A reason I’ve lied to a friend - I don't remember the last time I've lied to a friend

30: What I hate the most about work/school - overwhelming pressure and work

31: What my last text message says - I love you

32: What words upset me the most - hearing the word fat triggers me, I understand it's used as a descriptor and that it's being reclaimed as something neutral not negative but because growing up I got called fat in a negative way I only have negative connotations with it therefore I just get so upset when people say that even if they don't mean it in a bad way (Idk if that makes sense but yh)

33: What words make me feel the best about myself - I love u, beautiful

34: What I find attractive in women - physically Idc at all, like I don't have a type of person I'll be into Idc what ur hair colour, body type, face structure/feature are I'll be into you if you have a great personality

35: What I find attractive in men - physically Idc at all, like I don't have a type of person I'll be into Idc what ur hair colour, body type, face structure/feature are I'll be into you if you have a great personality

36: Where I would like to live - probably in a city, but also I don't want anywhere too loud

37: One of my insecurities - My body image

38: My childhood career choice - I don't remember I think artist

39: My favorite ice cream flavor - anything chocolate <3

40: Who I wish I could be - Nick Nelson or Torii from heartstopper

41: Where I want to be right now - I'd love to see my friends and I'd also love to meet up with tumblr mutuals

42: The last thing I ate - coffee? If that doesn't count ice cream

43: Sexiest person that comes to my mind immediately - I have no clue so many people are attractive

44: A random fact about anything - Boston marriages used to be a thing where two wealthy women would get married so they wouldn't have to share their finances with men :) Got shut down when people realised lesbians exist

There ya go I answered all the questions unprompted :)

[bearlyloved]

18+  .Indie    .    Mutuals    Only.   FANDOMLESS OC, MAMABEAR,  by  S𝔞v𝔟𝔢𝔞𝔯    .    Established    1st    of    December   2021

Highly    Selective    &   sometimes   very intense themes      .    Crossover    &    OC    friendly

 main original verses & verses  include;  ORIGINAL MAIN VERSES , AU VERSES & CROSSOVER VERSES & HUMAN VERSES

EXPLORING: aerial arts/circus, vintage dolls & the 1950s

OTHER BLOGS INCLUDE: @funbonded & @moralpuppet

CARRD . PROMO .

dash bio/dash rules undercut for more please see my carrd

tw: terminal illness & child death 

˗ˏˋ ♡ dash bio Mamabear was created by Arthur Velvetine, a middle aged man who was desperate to give his dying daughter, Sarah Velvetine, the female role model she never had growing up. Everyday Sarah's terminal condition slowly got worse and her father made it his mission to fill her last years with love and happiness. After years poor Sarah didn't make it, leaving Mamabear's creator distraught and unable to look at his creation. She was then passed from household to household until the RUSHTOWN CIRCUS  found her. There she would learn to be a professional trapeze artist. Mamabear has always been romantacized by those she comes across, she has never truly felt love. She was only ever useful to others. She still seeks to find herself and be treated just as others are. Still craves to be seen as something other than an object. Even though she adores being a trapeze/aerial artist, the celebrity side of things has only amplified the objectification of her being. She longs that one day people will see beneath the faux fur and stuffing.

˗ˏˋ ♡ dash rules ♡ One. FIRST AND FOREMOST. General rp etiquette applies. / I am not my OC. Likewise I do not condone or romanticise any of the darker themes explored on this blog.  Two. DNI / I don't engage with people who are problematic or present problematic behaviour such as proshipping/pedophilia/ or you are a terf/ableist/racist or you show any kind of hate to anyone like that . If you see me interacting with someone problematic likely I haven't been informed yet and shall deal with it accordingly as soon as I am informed. I don't support anyone who does any of that nasty behavior and I never will and if you know you engage in such behaviors then please refrain from interacting with me. You're not welcome. Likewise don't bring drama onto my blog. If you see someone problematic here just message me privately. I won't be reblogging callouts. Three.  FOLLOWING. I'm selective. If I haven't followed back please don't take it personally. If we are mutuals and you decide to unfollow then soft block please otherwise I will see you on my Dash and still think we are mutuals and I don't really want to have to browse a list of followers to check every time I go to interact. Four. DON'T STEAL MY OC OR MY GRAPHICS. Some art used on the blog is my own others have been so lovingly created by chainsxwsmile, ryuniiis, candyeco and machopie Five.  TRIGGERS Warnings for you: This blog can be very gorey I also require you to be 18+ for this reason. Please do not follow if you're a minor. death, abuse, terminal illness Six. SHIPPING only romantically with muses who are also anthros/dolls/toys. Mamabear is also a lesbian please respect this.

[twst-discourse-bot]

An Open Message to The TWST Fandom

If you have seen this post before, this is a repost. The previous version was not showing up in the tags.

This post is for anyone who has seen the posts of, interacted with, or felt harassed/made uncomfortable by the blog fandom4lesbians:

You are engaging in a bad faith argument with a racist, homophobic, TERF whose only interest is driving a wedge in the fans by starting pointless discourse using buzzwords and skin-deep morals to support their irrational words.

I have seen people already begin to put the pieces together as to who this person actually is and I wanted to come forward and present everything I felt obligated to dig up. I have evidence and connections that this person, “Marie” who claims to be a black trans lesbian aged around 16-18, is the one behind several genshin and twst accounts that have been seen in the tags before.

The Former Accounts (chronological order):

genshin-lumine

yuunatsukuyomiinwonderland

mult1fandoml3sbian

fandom4lesbians (current and most recently created)

Unfortunately, because I had not considered that I would ever need to make this post, I do not have as many screenshots as I would like, but please read what I have to say and draw your own conclusions. My goal is not to throw some overzealous teen to the wolves, it is to get rid of a nasty person who has made it their hobby to harass TWST and genshin fans. That being said, I am not in the genshin fandom so I do not know the full extent of what this person has done there, but I will mention what I know for sure.

If you’re wondering who I am, the answer is literally nobody. I am a lurker who is sick and tired of bigoted idiots taking over fandom spaces and making others uncomfortable, I just so happened to have some physical evidence against this one. I am also an adult, so I will attempt to remain calm and mature throughout this post, but please forgive me if tension rise a bit.

I will also potentially be making additional posts if more things come up, but I will not make any promises.

Evidence to Follow:

1. genshin-lumine and racism/homophobia

approx. 1-2 months ago, this blog popped up for me in the TWST tag, they had a long list of TWST OCs (all of which were female and darker skinned). nothing suspicious there, until

they made several posts claiming that--in addition to Leona, Ruggie, and Jack-- Kalim and Jamil (characters who are known to be middle eastern and even south east asian inspired) were also black because (paraphrase) “there is no way a character with skin that dark couldn’t be black”

furthermore, they made claims that shipping two male characters together was fetishizing mlm... but has no problem with wlw ships? this is where the TERF claim comes in, it’s nothing explicitly “man hating” but it’s not subtle either and the behavior continues in the future

all of this occurred in the span of a couple days, and people rightfully messaged them explaining that what they were doing and saying was wrong (i was one of them and gave them the benefit of the doubt, but quickly saw that was pointless), but the user only doubled down and refused to listen

i think at this point people also started going after their OCs, calling them boring, Mary Sues, stupid, etc. and that seemed to get a bigger reaction, but nothing major yet

i’m guessing enough people had gotten sick of them and were flooding their inbox with messages so they deleted. to start fresh.

2. yuunatsukuyomiinwonderland; Lumine 2.0

this blog started out pretty inoffensively, but something caught my eye as soon as i saw their post in the TWST tag. they made an OC (female, darkskinned) named Yuuna Tsukuyomi using the TWST chibi picrew--like many others have done, nothing wrong with it--but what stood out was the description. the wording and construction of the post was nearly identical to those from the lumine account. so i got suspicious immediately

once again people began messaging them, saying mainly that a non-Japanese person naming a non-Japanese character after an important Shinto god was not a good look, and again this person refused to listen, saying that it was their right to do what they wanted with their character

but people knew something was up, myself included, and after the circus that was genshin-lumine, i wasn’t being nice anymore and messaged this person in no uncertain terms that we knew who they were and to fuck off, we didn’t want them there

so they deleted, again. but guess what? something interesting happened when i was looking through my browser history for evidence that i wasn’t going crazy:

and this is when i knew that i had something. moving on.

3. mult1fandoml3sbian: the Return of Yuuna

now at this point, i thought it was over and was proven wrong. this account was essentially Yuuna Tsukuyomi but with a reskin. instead it was Yuri (i think) Amaterasu. again, same language, same chibi picrew, same problems. furthermore, the time between the creation, or at least awakening, of these accounts is too coincidental. genshin-lumine deleted and then soon after yuuna pops up, then yuuna deletes and around one week later this one comes out with a near identical blog just different name

and the problems start once more. i believe this is the point where they began receiving a lot of explicit anon hate, mainly racism and homophobic things which were... not pleasant to read by any stretch and i don’t condone anything that those anons sent. you are no better than her, you are equally bad if not worse. but these messages were brushed off with short, “zingy” responses, one-liners really, or some form of “that’s not nice”, despite the really gross things that were being said. and the traffic of these posts didn’t slow or stop, the user was seemingly responding to every one they received

so i doubt the total validity of those messages, but i will not outright say the user sent them to their own account bc i don’t know anything for sure

but, time passed and this blog was deleted as well. then, less than 3 days later...

4. fandom4lesbians, the Most Recent BS

here is when i lost all faith that there was a god.

it was really the same cycle on repeat, but this time they hit it big in the genshin community. the blog is still up at this point and refuses to stop so i recommend looking right at the source to see what exactly they are doing and what they received.

to summarize, they made inflammatory comments about two newly revealed female genshin characters being in a relationship and condemned people that shipped them with male characters. immediately afterwards they received a slew of vitriolic and disgusting messages to their inbox about their identity and race. however, my current theory is that they started out sending less offensive things to themselves but attracted other bad people (genshin is full of gross weirdos) that thought they were real and jumped down her throat with even worse comments.

but then the traffic stopped for a peaceful day or two, and then started up again full force and now they are spamming the TWST tag with their fem vs masc MC garbage

and many other prominent users have received messages in their inbox asking the exact same version of “what do you think of fem!MC in TWST anime?” literal copy and paste

and to my great joy, no one gave them the time of day, even when poked further by additional anons telling them to answer the question seriously. clearly that was not exactly the reaction they wanted. long live the Shrimp!

also, remember Boycott Ghost Marriage? that was this clown and plays further into my TERF claims

5. Conclusion

is anything in this post enough to be considered hardcore evidence in a court of law? no probably not, but i hope your critical thinking skills are developed enough to see my point

these four accounts all cropped up one right after the other, they were all genshin and TWST related, they all had something to say regarding the fandom and how they treated female characters/made bigoted comments towards minority groups/have the exact same habits and writing style in their posts

another thing i noticed is that they all reblogged posts from an account called damnfandomproblems as part of their first few posts, just another suspicious thing to add to the pile

6. What do YOU need to do?

ignore them, block them, report them. if you’re brave enough, go to their blog and tell them to go away, but whatever you do, don’t stake too much brain power on it.

and for the love of god, don’t be racist, homophobic, etc. to counter their BS

best case, they’re a troll who needs their IP banned. worst case, they actual believe the idiocy they’re spreading and aren’t going to stop spamming the tag until someone doxxes them or something (don’t do that, that’s illegal)

if anyone has further evidence of this person acting a fool, i will have my inbox open and welcome discussion

[c-is-for-circinate]

Thinking today about viruses, allergies, oppression, and anti culture.

(under a cut because WHOOOPS this got long)

Racism is a virus. Homophobia, transphobia, sexism, antisemitism, ableism, etc etc etc, they are all viruses--a topic that many of us have learned a great deal about in the past year. They are ideas, yes, not literal physical diseases, but the analogy holds up. They are infectious, and often spread from person to person without anyone involved realizing they have it. They can sit latent for years, never showing up because the carrier never finds themselves in a situation where the issue comes up, only to flare up and take over when you least expect it. And they mutate, just like the flu, just like the common cold; they put on a new jacket every year and slide in undetected yet again, slip past our internal sensors and bury themselves in our brains until we go in and deal with them as best as we can.

One more thing we've learned about viruses this year is how we can fight them. The viruses of oppression are a little different because they tend to hurt the people around their carriers even more than the people they've infected (although let's talk about internalized anything-ism sometime), but in a lot of ways the attack is the same. You treat the symptoms even when you don't know how to cure the disease: we invest in respirators, antiviral treatments, hospitals; we create and sponsor programs to help those who've been hurt by various oppressions, we uplift our neighbors, we try to keep people safe from violences both big and small. You work to stop the spread: we wear our goddamn masks, we stay home when we can; we train ourselves not to say racist shit that might foster a culture of hate, we stop that guy in our office from making rape jokes, we make slurs unacceptable. You pay attention to your immune system: we seek medical attention when we experience symptoms, we get COVID tests, we talk to our doctors before the symptoms get deadly; we protest and we pay attention to the people who do, we take them seriously when they tell us that something is wrong.

You vaccinate. We train ourselves and our immune systems to recognize the thing that infects us, the thing that we fear. We try to teach our children about history, bit by little bit, on fragments of dead violence the same way we train our bodies on dead virus shells, so that someday they'll recognize the live disease when they see it. We learn about slavery and Jim Crow and the Holocaust. We tell kids bedtime stories about why hitting and bullying is bad, before we ever start teaching them the specific shapes that violence so often takes. As we get older, as we get stronger, we learn about the living stuff, all the new forms that same old virus has mutated into; we educate ourselves, we listen, we read. Just like vaccines, of course, there are anti-vaxxers and denialists shouting about how racism and sexism are already dead and they don't need any propoganda besides Fox News. Hell, just like anti-maskers, there are plenty of people screaming about how political correctness is ruining the world and they demand their right to spread their virus to anyone they can. Often these are the same people.

But we try. And make no mistake, we all of us are already infected, and just like a real virus, once you've caught it once it probably won't ever go away again--but we can prepare, and we can try to lessen the severity of our cases, and we can support our immune systems of activists and protesters and our own internal sense of this is wrong, and we can work, bit by bit, if not towards eradication (not yet, not in this world, but maybe someday in another), then at least towards control.

And then there's allergies.

An allergy is what happens when a human body's own immune system freaks out over an enemy that wasn't particularly harmful in the first place. All our immune defenses--those precious immune defenses, which work so hard to protect us against all those viral, deadly ideas--go screaming into high gear. All of that fear and fury and attack power gets brought to bear all at once, against a bit of pollen or bee venom or cat dander or peanuts, and your body is left itchy and runny-nosed and gasping--sometimes literally--as it tries to keep up. Allergies are miserable. Sometimes they're life-threatening. And the biggest danger isn't the foreign agent that triggers the allergic reaction; it's the immune system trying to fight it in the first place.

Which, yes, brings us to anti culture--but not JUST anti culture. It's a good example, a little internet-centric microcosm of the same force that drives progressives to tear bloody shreds out of moderate liberal politicians. Hell, it's the same force that enables both TERFs and the Capitol rioters. It's a combination of an immune system that points in the wrong direction, flagging the wrong thing as bad, terrifying, danger, NO, and a freaked-out response that can manifest as anything from mildly irritating to absolutely deadly.

To be clear, I am not by any means equating the scale or even the source of these things, any more than hayfever is the same as anaphylactic shock. Likewise, the sources are different. Sometimes, a disease can infect an immune system and point it in the wrong direction. (Terror of the other is the absolute cornerstone of white nationalism, and when that terror gets triggered by a harmless environmental condition like, god forbid, other people asking for rights, the allergy response can be deadly.) Other times, it's the other way around. Our internal immune systems, so well trained to protect ourselves and those around us from the insidious viral ravages of prejudice and oppression, start seeing traces of it everywhere.

And they freak out. And we suffer for it.

We talk a lot of well-deserved shit about TERFs, but it's useful to remember how much their nastiness feels to them like activism. Their immune system, trained and primed and sensitized over years of exposure to misogyny and sexism, catches the tiniest whiff of something that might seem at some point to have possibly been taken for male, and freaks out, because why is that trying to get into our system. Never mind that they're wrong. An immune system that flips out over penicillin is wrong, too. It's still trying to help, and it's still doing more harm than good trying it.

So bringing this back around to anti culture, which was absolutely where I started thinking about all of this this morning: anti culture, the terror of porn and the attempt by antis to protect themselves an other people from sexual content, is an immune response. It is a trained immune response, in people who have been taught and re-taught again and again that rape culture is a dangerous insidious virus that should be fought at all costs. And, right, there's more than a bit of 'the sexism virus infected this immune system and reprogrammed it to fight itself' involved here, but look, we are all of us infected with all of the viruses at least a little bit everywhere. If we tried to direct our immune systems to rip every last shred of -ism out of every last bit of us, we'd rip ourselves apart. Which is exactly the problem.

Porn, in and of itself, is natural. As natural as environmental pollen, and living near dogs and cats, and eating wheat or nuts or citrus fruit. It's even healthy, for a whole host of reasons that belong in another essay. And citric acid and nut-based proteins and whole grains are nutritious, and pets are physically and psychologically helpful, and being exposed to lots of different environmental substances as a child can actually help train your immune system in the first place. Porn can help us figure out what we like. It can help us figure out what we don't like. And while the processes that create it are sometimes unethical and awful, we don't condemn all dogs because puppy mills and dogfighting rings exist, even if we do have dog allergies.

What we see in anti culture is often a good-faith attempt on the part of antis to attack and subdue an environmental trigger that they read as dangerous. It's a panic attack over something that is by nature harmless or mildly harmful, blown out of proportion by the very instincts that are supposed to keep us safe. It's the response of an immune system that's been taught over years and years, by everyone from parents to school systems to the activists they look up to, that negative stimulus is to be feared, avoided, and fought. Of COURSE they're going to freak out.

And of course, early exposure to controlled amounts of allergens can help prevent later allergies from developing. Of course when kids are raised with abstinence-only education, sheltered from the very concept of sex, they're going to grow up allergic to it. (Of course they're going to try to protect other kids from the same, like worried mothers who refuse to let peanuts or wheat products or dirt near their precious babies, whose kids grow up with a whole suite of allergic triggers because their bodies never learned what was okay in the first place.) And no, that doesn't mean we hand pornography to ten-year-olds any more than we should give raw honey to an infant--but of course if our culture refuses to introduce kids to the fact that sex and desire and the inside of their own brain can be messy and silly and kinky and downright weird, we're going to have a higher rate of allergic reaction to the entire concept in adults.

I wish I had a better answer for what to do with understanding that this is what's going through so many people's brains. The best I have is a prescription for allergy-sufferers, who probably haven't read this far through this wordspew of an essay in the first place--but we all get a little hayfever once in a while, and we all sometimes run into content that makes us angry. So some thoughts on how to deal with metaphorical allergic reactions, inspired by the ways we deal with literal ones?

First: we recognize that what is happening is an allergy. The thing we're reacting to might be gross, or irritating, or even unpleasant, but the danger is not and never has been the thing itself. Whether it's triggering a response because of its similarity to an actively dangerous pathogen, or our immune system just doesn't like it, our aversion to one kind of story or another universally says more about us than about it. Luckily, we have a lot more control over our social responses than our biological ones!!! If vocal activism is our sociocultural immune system firing itself up to fight an infection that may or may not exist, then we get to tell our metaphorical white blood cells to stand down. We get to decide.

Second: we get some space. The funny thing about allergies is, while early exposure to allergens can help prevent them, re-exposing yourself to dangerous allergens after you've already developed a reaction to them can make them worse. Anaphylaxis is always more likely after someone's experienced it the first time. Repeated exposure to triggers, whether biological or psychological, can make the effects worse. So stop exposing yourself.

If something makes your throat itch every time you eat it, stop eating it. If something makes you mad every time you read it, stop reading it. Obviously this can be easier said than done in a world that's a lot worse about warning labels on stories than ingredients labels on foods, but that's why fic tags exist. And: sometimes, the croissant is delicious enough that we decide we're willing to suffer through the way the almonds make us feel, just this once. Sometimes the ship or the characterization or, hell, those other kinks that we really like are tasty enough that we'll put up with the trope we hate. We're allowed to do that. But we do it knowing there will be consequences, and we don't blame the baker when they hit.

We also don't have to blame ourselves. It sucks to be allergic to shellfish when all your friends are raving about the new seafood place. But that's not our fault any more than it's theirs.

Third: sometimes, if we need one, we go to the doctor. Or a therapist. Yes, really.

Not because there's anything really wrong with an aversion or even mild breakouts of hives, annoyance, and bitching in your friends' DMs--but it sure isn't pleasant, and sometimes your doctor might have a better solution than 'avoid it and take a Benadryl' that makes you feel a little better in the long run. And sometimes, it's not a mild breakout. Sometimes it's the kind of story that lingers with you for days, makes your skin crawl; sometimes your throat swells up and it gets hard to breathe. Sometimes we get angry enough about something we've read that we can't stand down our immune system, don't want to stop ourselves from writing that angry comment, that tumblr post, that abuse report to the mods for something that didn't actually break any rules. And that's dangerous, because when our immune response can flare out of control like that, we don't always know where and when it will happen next, and the risk of what we'll do if it happens gets way, way higher.

Sometimes it really is worth getting a second opinion. Sometimes you need somebody to tell you, "actually, it is not normal to get tingly and sweaty every time you eat potatoes." There are ways to train your brain and leash your white blood cells that I sure as heck am not expert enough to address. There are, it turns out, ways to feel better. There are ways to mitigate the damage your own well-meaning defense mechanisms might do to yourself or other people along the way.

And: we can take a deep breath when someone with an allergy to something we've baked, something we've written, something we like, is lashing out trying to protect themselves and everyone around them from something they've registered as a threat. Of course they're wrong. Yes, we told them there were tree nuts in the brownies ahead of time; yes, they chose to eat them anyway. But it can be worth reminding them and ourselves that there's a difference between "this thing is toxic" and "this harmless thing has driven my own system into a defensive response that sure makes it feel like I've been poisoned." And it can be worth reminding ourselves as well as them that sometimes, that difference can be really hard to spot.

[falinscloaca]

terf bullshit below the cut (not like. sharing particularly heinous shit or anything they just live on fucking mars and i need to express my bafflement SOMEWHERE) (also when i get like this i resort to second-person talking at the person whose weird shit i’m finding... shitty, so if you don’t like reading “you” in the context of horrifyingly bigoted to the point of being a wierd surrealist cartoon character then that fair lol) 

saw this fucking paragraph in the posts notes, and like.

A) Why are you posting that. Unprompted. Like i get that the spirit of the reblog is tinged by you yourself reblogging the original post from a different terf, but. I. Ok this actually segues into the actual shit.

B) You.... the only context this statement has any reasoning in is if yer reblogging the meme and its “he would not fucking say that” out of some sort of allegiance to *cartman*. I MAY NOT HAVE EVER FUCKING GONE NEAR SOUTH PARK MYSELF BUT LIKE....?????? I *get* that its just the trannies being silly claiming characters that would obviously fucking hate us but any fucking rational mind would still fucking observe that in taking the angle of treating *that* as the point of the post, no matter how silly, it is implicitly siding with the fucking.... .. with CARTMAN????? FEMINIST ICON ERIC(?) CARTMAN.

C) “surprised they haven’t tried to cancel it yet” ok regardless of who “they” is, pretty much any “they” has in fact actively (and laudably) attempted to “cancel” south park. its a fucking universal constant. the unobstructed sky of earth is blue during the day, the majority of surviving bird species fly, and X demographic has had a vocal segment thereof attempt to “cancel” south park. Do you literally live 24/7 with your head up a cows anus because if *not* then....?!?!?!??!!? Were you born in the last five years??? It’s *south park*. It was the GTA of cartoons controversy-wise. JFC. 

D) “but the showrunners are men so of course they wouldn’t” I... ok. I’m. 

D1) Trying. TO... Think. About. That. In a logical *enough* way to like. Actually argue. Holy shit. UM. Ok. Attempted show/movie/book cancellations that i can think of: south park (run by men). Uh. Game of Thrones i *guess*?????? (Run by i dont fucking know). The 100 after whatsherface got lesbian murdered (developed by a man). Harry Potter, supposedly, i mean it was basically over when the backlash started to reach “mainstream” influence (written by a racist antisemitic homophobic *lesbophobic* fatphobic sack of trash but the films were directed *exclusively* by men and produced exclusively by men until JKR got involved herself in the last couple). Twelve Forever??? But like, the “female” responsible for the cancelling aspects of that discourse was a literal fucking pedophile sex creep so that’d be fucking weird and self-incriminating for even a TERF to defend. UM. Hm. Ok we’re talking specifically backlash from the tranny gendertrender brigade so can’t count more popular and dangerous nerd outrages. So like, no gamergate targets which usually WERE people of color and queer people and women. Oh whoops I mentioned categories of people besides womyn who are oppressed for reasons other than femininity uh oh intersectionality I Am Fucking Done With This Segment I Just Have No Fucking Clue What Precedent This Fucker Is Referring To

D2) WHY DO YOU THINK TRANNIES ARE GONNA BE OUTRAGED ABOUT SOUTH PARK BEING A TRANSPHOBIC PIECE OF *SHIT* (IN FAR MORE DIRECT WAYS THAN JUST DOING HORRID CHARICATURES OF SHITTY TRANS CELEBRITIES MIGHT I ADD) BUT THEN SIT BACK AND REALIZE “OH WAIT THE CREATORS OF THIS HAVE DICKS! THEY ARE OUR ALLIES” WHEN TRANS WOMEN ARE LITERALLY SUBJECT TO LITERAL PHYSICAL VIOLENCE BY CIS MEN NOT JUST IN REAL LIFE BUT, IN WHAT ‘YOU’ (apologies for egregious misuse of second-person, i do not mean to insult the reader by saying they are a transmisogynist lghfddfsg;ldfg) ACTUALLY GO ON ABOUT CONSTANTLY, OUR ~DELUDED VICTIM COMPLEX NARRATIVES~ OR WHATEVER THE FUCK. ITs. Literally our wholeass thing. Terfs are dangerous to trans women (and lesbians and trans men and nonbinary people and bi people and pretty much any racial or ethnic minority) in their cultural and political efforts and that factors into trans “narratives” but to act like prominent transfeminine narratives aren’t centered around victimhood under “”””””male”””””” violence is just like....., what the fuck are you even *smoking*. 

[phynali]

Canonization and Fandom Purity Culture

I wrote a 1k-word twitter thread (as proof that I am Not made for Twitter and it’s goddamn 240-character limit) and am pasting it here with edits and updates (it’s now 2k words). 

I have thoughts to share (which I know have been stated more eloquently before by others) about this trend of demanding/obsessing that certain ships become "canon" and how it overlaps with the rise of fandom purity culture.

Under the cut.

Here in 2021 there is a seemingly large and certainly loud and active contingent of online fandoms who desire (or even demand) "canon validation" for a given interpretation of a source material. This is more true with shipping than anywhere else.

First, it is important to note that the trend is not limited to queer ships or to any single fandom. In the past few years I've seen it for Riverdale, Voltron, Supernatural (perhaps most extreme?), The 100, etc., and less recent with the MCU, Sherlock, Teen Wolf, Hawaii 5-0, etc. It is a broad trend across ships, fandoms, and mediums.

So if it is more common for queer ships, it is hardly unique to them. Similarly, pretending that it is about queer representation is a clever misdirect to disguise the fact that it is most often about ships and shipping wars. If you ever need proof of that, consider that a character can be queer without being in a given relationship or reciprocating another character's affections. Thus a call for more/better queer rep itself is very different than a call for specific ships to be made canon.

Also note that when audiences frame it as wanting to recognize a specific *character* as queer, it is almost always in the context of a ship. Litmus test: would making that character queer but having them *explicitly reject* the other half of the ship be seen as a betrayal?

(Note: none or this is to say we shouldn't push for more queer rep and more *quality and well-written* queer rep! Just that that isn't what I'm talking about here, and not what seeking canon validation for a specific interpretation or a specific ship is almost ever about.)

Why does this matter?

the language of representation and social justice should not be co-opted to prop up ship wars

it is reciprocal with a trend toward increasing toxicity in transformative fandom spaces

Number 1 here is self-explanatory (I hope). Let's chat about 2.

Demands for canon validation correlate with a rise in fanpol / fandom purity culture. What is fandom purity culture (and fandom policing)? This toxic mentality is about justifying one's shipping preferences and aiming to be pure (non-problematic) in your fictional appetites regarding romance and sex.

Note that this purity culture is so named as it arises linearly from American Protestantism, conservative puritanical anxiety around thought crimes, and overlaps in many ways with terf ideologies and regressively anti-kink paradigms.

It goes like this: problematic content is "gross" and therefore morally reprehensible. Much like how queer sex/relationships get labelled as "gross" (Other) and thus morally sinful, or how kink gets labelled as "harmful" and thus morally wrong. The Problematic label is applied by fanpol to ships with offset age or power dynamics, complicated histories, and anything they choose to label as "harmful". As such, they would decry my comparison here to queerphobia itself as also being harmful, because their (completely fictional) targets are ~actually~ evil.

(The irony of this is completely lost on them).

This mode of interacting with creative works leaves no room to explore dark or erotic themes or dynamics which may exist in fiction but not healthily in reality. Gothic romance is verboten. Even breathe the word incest and you will be labelled a monster (nevermind Greek tragedy or GoT).

As with most puritanical bullshit, fanpol ideology only applies these beliefs to sex and never to violence/murder/etc, proving what lies at its core. It also demands its American-based values be applied to all fictional periods and places as the One True Moral Standard. It evangelizes – look no further than how these people try to recruit others to their cause, aim to elevate themselves as righteous, and try to persuade (‘save’) others from their degenerate ways of thinking. 

“See the light” they promise “here are our callouts and blog posts to convince you. Decry your past sins of problematic shipping, be baptized by our in-group adulation and welcome, and then go forth and send hate to others until they too see the light.” In many ways “get therapy” by the antis is akin to “I’ll pray for you” by the Christian-right (and ultimately ironic).

(Although it has been pointed out to me that these fans are likely not themselves specifically ex-evangelicals, but rather those who have brushed up with evangelical norms and modes of thinking without specifically being victims of it. In many ways they are more simply conservative Christian in temperament and attitude without necessarily being raised into religion by belief).

What this has to do with canon validation is that these fans look to canon for approval, for Truth. On the one hand, if it is in the canon then it must be good / pure or at least acceptable. The authority (canon) has deemed it thus. It is safe and acceptable to discuss and to enjoy watching or consuming. In this way, validation from canon means a measure of safety from being Bad and Problematic. 

For example, where a GoT fan could discuss Cersei/Jaime's (toxic, interesting) dynamic in depth as it related to the canon, fans who shipped Jon/Sansa (healthy, interesting) were Gross and Bad. The canon as Truth provided a safety net, a launch point. "It's GRRM, not me, who is problematic." It wasn’t okay to ship the problematic bad gross incest ship, but it being in the canon material meant it was open for discussion, for nuance, for “this adds an interesting layer to the story” which is denied to all non-canon ships labelled as problematic.

(Note: there are of course people who have zero interest in watching GoT for a whole slew of very valid reasons, including but not limited to the incest. That’s a different to this trend. A less charged example might be The Umbrella Academy, where a brother canonically is in love with his sister and antis still praise the show, but if you dare to ship any of the potential incest ships then you are the one who is disgusting).

On the other hand, a very interesting alternate (or additional) explanation for this phenomenon was raised to me on twitter. (These ideas aren’t mine originally, but I wholly endorse them as a big part of what is likely going on): Namely, as with authoritarian individuals in general, they see themselves as right and correct, but the canon (which has not yet validated their ship) is not correct, and is in fact problematic, and so they can save the canon from itself.

As mentioned, these fanpol types see their interpretation as Good and Pure. So if they can push (demand, bully) the canon into conforming to their worldview and validating their interpretation, then they have shown the (sinful) creators the light and led them to the righteous path. This only works if the canon allows itself to saved though, otherwise the creators remain Evil for spurning them.

How is this different from fans simply hoping for their ship to be canon?

For a second here, let’s rewind to the 90s (since Whedon has been in the news recently). This “I want it to be canon” thing isn’t 100% new, of course. We saw this trend then for the show Buffy the Vampire Slayer, but it was different then. At the time, fans who hoped for a ship to be canon might have been cheering for a problematic one to begin with (Buffy/Spike). So shipping was still present, minus vocal fanpol.

(And Buffy fans learned that canon validation...can leave a lot to be desired. A heavy lesson was learned about the ways that fan desires can play out horrifically in canon, and how some things are best left out of the hands of canon-writers).

These days, this is still largely true. Many fans hope for their ships to go canon, as they always have. There are tropes like “will they/won’t they” that TV shows may even be designed around, which a certain narrative anticipation and a very deliberate build up to that.

But while shipping *hopes* occur for many fans, almost all ships fans that *demand* to go canon and obsess over are now the ones deemed as Unproblematic, or as Less Problematic. I’m talking here about the ships that aren’t necessarily an explicit will/won’t they dynamic but do have some canon dynamic that leads them to being shipped, but which the creators aren’t necessarily deliberately teasing and building up a romantic end-game for.

These ships often have fans who are happy to stick to fandom, but there has also been a huge uptick in the portion of fans who are approaching shipping with an explicit lens of “will they go canon?” and “don’t you want them to be canon?” and now even “they have to go canon” and “the canon is wrong if they don’t make this ship canon”, to a final end-point of “if the ship doesn’t go canon, the source material is Wrong and Bad.”

These latter opinions are the one we see more by extreme fans (‘stans’), hardcore shippers, but especially by fanpol-types, the ones who embrace fandom purity culture at least to some extent.

Why them?

In pushing for canon validation, fanpol types seek to elevate their (pure) interpretation of canon. As mentioned above, it’s validation of their authority, a safety-net, and a way to save the canon from itself if only they can bully the canon into validating their right and good interpretation. 

There’s also another reason, which is that canon validation is a tool to bludgeon those seen as problematic. They can use it to denounce other (problematic) ships as Not Being Canon and therefore highlight their own as Right and Good, because it is represented in the True Meaning of the Work.

Canon validation then is a cudgel sought by virtuous crusaders to wield against their unclean enemies. It is an ideological pursuit. It is organised around identity and in groups sometimes as insular as cults.

How does this happen?

Fanpol tend to be younger or more vulnerable fans, susceptible to authoritarian manipulators. As many have highlighted before, authoritarian groups and exclusionary ideologies like terfs are very good at using websites like tumblr to mobilize others around their organizing beliefs. Fanpol tend to feel legitimate discomfort, but instead of taking responsibility for their media engagement, ringleaders stoke and help them direct their discomfort as anger onto others; “I feel ashamed and uncomfortable, and therefore you should be held accountable for my emotions.” Authoritarian communities endorse social dominance orientations, deference to ringleaders, and obedient faith to the principles those ringleaders endorse.

As these fans attach more and more of their identity to a given media (or ship), and derive more and more validation and more of their belongingness needs from this fanpol community, they also become more and more anxious about being excluding from this group. This is because such communities have rigid rules and very conditional bases for social acceptance. Question or "betray" the organizing ideology and be punished or excommunicated. If that is all you have, you are left with nothing. Being labelled problematic then is a social death.

What this means is that these fans cannot accept all interpretations of a media as equally valid: to do so Betrays the ideology. It promises exclusion. And, in line with a perspective around ‘saving’ canon and leading others into the light – forcing and bending the canon to their will is what will make it Good (and therefore acceptable to enjoy, and therefore proof of them as righteous by having saved others). As was also pointed out to me on twitter, endorsement from canon or its creators also satiates that deep need they have for authority figures to approve of them.

Due to all of this, these fans come to obsess over canon validation of their own interpretation. In a way, they have no other option but to do so. They need this validation -- as their weapon, as their authority, as their safety net, as their approval, as their evangelical mission of saviorship.

Canon validation is proof: I am Good. I am Right(eous). I am Safe.

(In many ways, I do ache for some of these people, so wrapped up in toxic communities and mindsets and so afraid to step out of line for fear of swift retribution, policing their own thoughts and art against the encroaching possibility that anything be less than pure. It’s not healthy, it’s never going to be healthy.)

In the end, people are going to write their own stories. You are well within your rights to critique those stories, to hate them, to interpret them how you will, but you can never control their story (it's theirs).

Some final notes:

This trend may be partially to do with queer ships now being *able* to go canon where before so no such expectation would exist. Similarly, social media has made this easier to vocalize. Still, who makes these demands and the underlying reasons are telling. There are also many legitimate critiques of censorship, queerbaiting (nebulous discussions to be had here), and homophobia in media to be had, and which may front specific ships in their critique. But critique is distinct from asking that canon validate one's own interpretation.

[flowerkidlove]

Hello! I encourage any who see this to read it. I've spent roughly two hours redrafting this.

We are a system and recently, one of our headmates was accused of being ableist. We would take this directly to them, but they did it anonymously. Before I get to what we've been lead to believe is the reason, I would like to point out that the system's body is disabled and there's not a single one of us who isn't disabled, neurodivergent or mentally ill in some way - including the alter who was accused of being ableist. The alter in question is autistic, psychotic, depressed, anxious, semi-verbal, hard of hearing, has PTSD, night terrors, sleep paralysis and has dyscalculia. The body itself has three chronic pain conditions, an autoimmune disease, a suppressed immune system, is hard of hearing, has kidney disease and is highly likely to develop some form of cancer before we hit our 40's. The fact that we, a traumagenic system, have DID needs no explanation, but here we are anyway. Despite this all, we have a job - it's not a good one by any means. We work, at maximum, an hour and a half a day and are frequently victims of casual ableism in the workplace (often to the point where our paychecks get held for a pay period because our boss doesn't like how we did something). Despite what little money we make (and the fact that we have to rely on food stamps, housing and disability payments), we donate portions of our money to various charities and relief funds, some of which include ones for disabled individuals, while also trying to survive and also save up for a graphics card so we can try and get a job as a youtuber and/or twitch streamer so we can leave our dehumanizing job. We don't talk about most of this because, to us, it feels strange having all of it out on the internet. It also feels personally wrong to talk about our donations. Feels like we're bragging, to be honest.

Now that our background is out for all to see, let's get to the point of the matter - the things that may have given someone the impression that at least one of us is ableist.

The first one I'll explain is simple - a post about how Discord servers that have blacklists often handle said things poorly, to the point where every possible topic you could talk about was on some of them, leading members of our systems to get triggered by things due to having to reveal all spoilers just to see what was being talked about. Nobody ever said that they were bad, just that, because of this experience, we don't feel comfortable in them.

The second is less easy to explain - a conversation (later dubbed a discourse?) about the canon-ness of Chell being mute. The alter in question has Portal has a major special interest and has since before the game even came out, thanks to our mom being a playtester of the game. I won't get into the details, but basically, the alter wanted to share some information and got a little overexcited about it, to the point where some people thought they were trying to say that having Chell being mute as a headcanon was awful and terrible because of canonical things - which was never said. In fact, the alter themself actually holds nonverbal autistic Chell headcanons close to their heart because they are semiverbal and go nonverbal when overwhelmed. They just also think that if there is canon information, it should be shared. The repetition of "my mom playtested the game" is an inside joke. It means nothing other than the fact that she played the game before other people. She uses it to try and get a laugh out of people, especially when it has next to nothing to do with the situation (like this one that I'm talking about right here). The alter does regret getting so excited about sharing the information and even apologizes to anyone who felt hurt by their words. I also couldn't help but notice an ask saying they were saying there was a "wrong" and "right" way to see a character - something that literally never got brought up until that particular ask - I went back and read the entire ordeal.

The third involves the beginning of the above situation - a simple statement that they find the "dangerous mute lunatic" line from Portal 2 hilarious, as they tend to call themself that in a lighthearted way (and also just find GLaDOS funny in general). I have nothing else to say on that one.

The alter in question is one of the kindest people I've had the fortune to meet. Unfortunately, in order to make people more comfortable and not hurt anyone else inadvertently, they've decided to step back from the blog that they created. To be fair, they rarely contributed to it these days, opting to let the rest of us run it and occasionally ramble due to things involving one of the system's abusers (moreso hers, but he's bullied the entire system off of previous accounts and sent us into hiding twice now).

Now, I personally wouldn't care about having words thrown around about us* if it wasn't for the fact that this entire situation has made the alter have a shutdown and fall into a delusion that our aforementioned abuser has found us once again and is going to try and hurt us. As such, I felt the need to clear things up. Again, I'd take this directly to the person, but they called us an ableist through an anonymous ask, so we really can't. I can only send this and hope that it gets posted and furthermore gets seen and fully read by whoever thinks we're ableist. I also hope it clears things up, because this is one Hell of an accusation.

Sincerely,

Gordon from the system behind @abbyfreemansmind

*EDIT: Thinking about it and going beyond the irony of us being called ableist, it just doesn't sit right with me. Working on the assumption that it's regarding one of the three things above, the person is basically turning an overly excited conversation about Portal canon into evidence that we discriminate against (or even hate) disabled people. Aside from the fact that we ourselves are disabled, a scroll through our blog shows a lot of proof that we're far from discriminatory against our fellow disabled people - or anyone aside from discriminatory and harmful people (homophobes, racists, transphobes, ableists, maps, terfs, etc.).

[lovelylogans]

Yes. Please Open The Box. I've been on hp brainrot cause I've been rewatching the movies with my mom. Please

i feel like i have a lot of opinions that are popular opinions, and fuck terfs, but nonetheless:

regulus black would have been the perfect example of a brave slytherin that albus was named after

arthur, hagrid, or remus could have served as other father figures instead of albus; tell me hagrid would not burst into tears upon hearing his child was named after him? also, arthur, for both ginny and harry!

i read the occasional drarry fic but it has to be very, very well-written; or, at least, it has to have the understanding that draco has to go through some sort of redemption, either through atoning for his own actions, or an au in which he already has—some fics make him the next-gen spy, a bit like snape

uh, draco and dudley are perfect foils, and people would simp after dudley if he was as “conventionally attractive” as tom felton

dudley had more of a canon redemption arc than draco did

fatphobia is rampant in the series—villains are the vast majority of fat rep, and even good fat characters like molly or hagrid still have faults (hagrid is “big and dumb,” a bit like dudley tbh, and molly is kind of just? a Mother? like that’s her defining character trait. nothing wrong with being a stay at home mom if that’s what you want, of course, it’s just that molly didn’t have much of a personality outside of her children until the later books.)

misogyny too—molly was so mean to hermione in the fourth book and fleur in the sixth, ginny was mean to fleur too, hermione gives off “not like other girls” energy especially concerning lavender and pavarti

poc harry and hermione—sure, jkr says she’s cool with it, but she gets a lot of credit for the bare minimum. she could have written them that way.

there’s a whole lot of white people in hp. wish there’d been better rep

same with dumbledore! it’s so clear she said he’s gay to get better credit for rep that’s barely there, but now she has the chance to expound in it in the fantastic beasts movies, she isn’t planning on addressing it. right. okay.

should i even get into the antisemitism of the goblins

most -isms jkr ticked, tbh, and described better by other people who these -isms directly affect, so i won’t get too much more into it

wish hufflepuffs had more house rep, in general, they mostly just get cedric, and i wish that “good slytherins” were expounded upon, especially concerning the whole “no slytherins stayed” for the final battle you cannot TELL ME that there wasn’t ONE slytherin who had ambitions to fight voldemort

(i’m a ravenclaw, btw)

cho, angelina, and ginny are all overhated; movie!ginny was albeit lacking a lot of the Spice of book ginny, and movie cho got shorted bc they didn’t include marietta as the betrayer of the da, but like. god. pls chill ppl

albus probably considered that sirius was innocent but decided to leave him in azkaban, even though he didn’t know for sure; albus probably also laid out the traps for the stone with eleven-year-olds in mind, just in case harry wanted to try and prove himself; albus was behind a lot of the machinations, and at the very least he left a child to be abused for years on end

i wrote a ten page essay on why snape is a garbage person for that college class i mentioned. i got a perfect score.

like seriously i could talk about how much snape sucks and why him having a crush on lily isn’t redemption, but like. we get it. c’mon. “i see no difference,” threatening to kill a student’s beloved pet, being that student’s worst fear....... come on.

harry should have been the dada professor when he grew up. like it’s right there.

tonks is genderfluid you cannot convince me otherwise

i love wolfstar as much as the next gal, but if we get a marauders tv show slash movie, you know she’d make that shit as straight as possible. no thanks.

someone on tiktok said florence pugh as helga hufflepuff tho and. yeah.

mmm jkr really should have kept her hands off a lot of the international schools; i know she messed up at the very least native american representation, even though native americans requested she not do that, and there are really big Colonization Vibes from those expanded schools. which like, i get, bc colonization was happening, but. still. so many fics have done better with those concepts.

speaking of! fic recs! these are all on ao3

the changeling: slytherin!ginny. takes her through all seven years and addresses various kinds of magic. i absolutely adore it. harry/ginny

boy with a scar series: takes various “what ifs” about the harry potter series and writes them; mostly canon ships

sunshine in my eyes: lily is raised by professor mcgonagall. jily

true, and unafraid of toil: a character study of autistic newt scamander

the dogfather: petunia turns down taking in her son, sirius escapes azkaban much earlier, and harry’s adopted by muggles. only the first year of hogwarts is written out in full, but there’s ficlets that follow through to the end of the wizarding war. wolfstar.

(the completely unwilling participants on) the bachelor: james is the first british bachelor; lily is a journalist who is sent on the show, undercover, by her shitty boss. james/lily

swung by serafim: a characterization of snape that i do not completely hate; i avoid the last two chapters, bc i do not like snarry, it squicks me out, and i didn’t see the tags for it until the very end of the work since it gets more textual in those chapters, and also it involves real life events that feels a bit strange to write about in fic, but. that’s just me. i think there’s cho/harry/cedric in there?

turn: genuinely just one of the best-written harry potter fanfics i’ve ever read. harry after the epilogue gets sent to an alternate universe where things went a little different. drarry

the debt of time: obligatory “hermione gets sent back in time to the marauders” fic; these were super popular on fanfic.net, where i started out, but i read this recently and really really enjoyed it. sirius/hermione, remus/hermione

the pure and simple truth: everyone goes out to a bar. drarry, romione

hogwarts, to welcome you home: harry as the dada professor from mcgonagall’s perspective

stealing harry: sirius never went to azkaban, but harry still went to the dursleys for a bit. it’s written up to part of the third book, but it has notes for how the rest of the series would have turned out. wolfstar

hermione granger’s hogwarts crammer for delinquents on the run: if harry was told he was a wizard at age seventeen, instead of age eleven. drarry

the reclamation of black magic: harry’s grandmother dorea was in a coma and never died. now she’s come to adopt her grandson and seek a reckoning on the wizarding world. this is unfinished and is in harry’s first year; sirius black/remus, for a bit, but also remus/female oc and sirius/male oc; probably harry/hermione, by the end of it.

if any of you have fic recs (especially fics featuring ginny, jily, or wolfstar) (i’ve been meaning to read atyd, i’m saving it) please let me know!

[fake-wizard]

How did you become a trans terf? This is really interesting!

Thank you for this question because I can now delay watching my lectures for like 30 min. 

I got tumblr my freshman year, started my deep dive into the realm of tumblr’s lgbtqianpd+++ stuff. I did a bunch of ace discourse as an “inclusionist” then as an “exclusionist”, started iding as nonbinary demiboy, ace/aro, he/they, got a binder i think during the winter of my sophomore year and came out to a couple friends as nb. Went more towards ftm. Started dating my current boyfriend winter of my junior year, told him I was id’ing as ftm (he’s bisexual, didn’t matter) and the rest of my friends, changed my name and pronouns socially. Start of my senior year I told my family and had them change pronouns and name as well. My bday is in October, so turned 18 and was going to start testosterone. 

By the winter of that year however, I had been hate-reading a lot of “terf” blogs. And what I found was that I could not argue against what they were saying. I was experiencing a lot of cognitive dissonance about it all, repeating the same mantras but knowing they didn’t quite add up. 

Specifically about: If sexuality is based on an internal sense of gender, how can you be attracted to anyone until they tell you what gender they are? If a lesbian sees a woman and she says “i’m ftm” does that mean the lesbian is now a bisexual because they were “attracted to a man” or is a switch supposed to flip and they stop being attracted? If sexism is based on “being perceived as a woman/passing as a woman” then why do butches who pass as men still experience sexism? If being gay is about “being perceived as gay in society” then wouldn’t that make all the homosexual couples historically who passed as hetero for safety suddenly become actual literal heteros? If transmen have male privilege, why are they not represented in politics, are targetted for sexual abuse by straight men, and need access to abortion just like women do? If transwomen don’t have male privilege, why are they the main voices of the movement? They can reap all the benefits of a male life for 50 years, and then suddenly none of that mattered? If me and my boyfriend’s relationship is “gay” now that i id’d as ftm, how come we could legally get married and adopt in any country in the world? I was raised being told I Should like and date men, I never once believed my attraction to men was a sin, and gay men experience the Exact Opposite, so how could we both possibly be gay men? Why do transwomen have male patterns of violence? Why have I only ever heard of stories of transwomen abusing transmen, and not the other way around? Is it possible to only be attracted to the same sex? To say no is to say that it’s possible for all women to like dick, which is obviously fucked up. What is so different about a man and a transwoman that means a lesbian is supposed ot like the latter? Why can’t anybody define women? first woman, then female, then afab, the goalpost kept moving. What is there to being a woman besides being female, isn’t all that extra stuff just stereotypes? When my sister is distressed with her body and denied herself food, or I cut myself, that’s a bad thing because it hurts your body, but hrt and a mastectomy hurt your body, they even risk killing you, but that’s okay? I took a sociology class and it’s clear socialization effects behavior - but somehow magically trans people grow up uneffected by it? If socialization can influence women to wear makeup, dress, and act in specific ways that arent’ innate, and cause higher rates of eating disorders, couldn’t it effect dysphoria as well?

And so much more!!!

And that’s only on the trans side - I also had my eyes opened to the horrors of pornography and prostitution, the rates of domestic violence, and all the other terrible sex-based oppression that women are subjected to globally. There is so much more to being a radfem than the trans issues too. 

So for two years (winter of my senior year to winter of my college’s high school year) I decided not to transition. I engaged with radfem tumblr and talked about all these things with my female friends in person as well, it was like getting a huge weight off my shoulders too. And it really did help lessen my dysphoria to an extent. I came up with a long list of coping mechanisms to employ for dysphoria as well. 

But by this february, I was just so tired of that. I still supported everything I say about radical feminism, about sex based oppression, protecting homosexuals, and the dangers of medical transition. But dysphoria is just this constant painful presence day in and day out, and I pursued medical transition in february. I applaud every woman who chooses not to transition, and ultimately view transitioning as giving in, because I can no longer be a role model to young dysphoric women, who shows them that you don’t need to transition. 

At this point, I love my body more than ever and I can’t imagine regretting these changes really. I will miss connecting with women the way I used to, especially as a woman in science, but the women in my life from before transition will always see me as one of them still, and I appreciate that. 

The way I see it, words don’t hurt me at all, they are immaterial, and as a scientist I value coherent definitions, and I understand the realities of sex. So my goal with transition is to pass as male in society and to alter the parts of my body that bring me distress - I know i’m not literally male. And I think all trans people need to get to the point where they understand that, it really helps mentally. 

And I’ll always think, maybe if i had different friends (half of my friends understand, half think i am or would think i am an evil terf) or was dating a woman instead of a man (i’m bisexual, thought i was hetero in highschool (but called myself a gay man lmao), and dating someone with the same body seems like a big deal in handling dysphoria), if i tried harder with my coping mechanisms, if I saw a therapist who understood all this and didn’t just encourage me to do whatever I wanted, maybe i wouldn’t be transitioning. But I’m happy now, so that’s what I focus on as mattering to me, and that’s what I want to pursue. 

I do caution others from doing the same though. 

Also tangent at the end here, I call myself “trans” because I’m medically transitioned. To me, “cis v trans” makes no sense and is sexist. But “dysphoric vs not dysphoric” or “medically transitioned vs not medically transitioned” make more sense to me. 

[itsclydebitches]

Is buying the new Harry Potter game supporting transphobes because I've been seeing a lot of that on twitter? Not playing it. Pirating is fine, but actually paying for it.

Hi, anon!

I’ve seen a lot of the same and had initially thought to post my thoughts on the issue… before I got a very angry ask condemning me for a post where I admitted that I thought the game looked great and was excited to play it. I can no longer link to that post because I deleted it: a late night, impulsive decision made in an effort to try and protect myself from further flaming. Thus, I considered ignoring this ask under the same justification… before realizing that it might not matter in the long run. The Harry Potter: Legacy trailer has been out for just a few days and already I have gotten that furious ask, been told off by a friend for mentioning the trailer, and was questioned (antagonistically) about why I had added a Harry Potter related book to my Goodreads list. They’re small and potentially coincidental anecdotes, but it feels as if any engagement with Harry Potter is slowly coming under scrutiny, not just the (supposed—more on that below) crime of purchasing the new game. Given that I will always engage with Harry Potter related media, if there’s any chance such subtle criticism will continue regardless of whether I make the “right” choice to boycott the game or not, I might as well explain my position. Especially for someone who asked politely! Thanks for that 💜. 

Which leads to the disclaimer: Any anon hate will be unceremoniously deleted. This is a complicated issue and I intend to write about it as such. I ask that any readers go into this post with good faith and a willingness to acknowledge that this situation isn’t as black and white as they may prefer it to be. If that’s not something you can emotionally handle—which is 100% fine. Some subjects we’re simply not inclined to debate—or if you’re just looking to get in a cheap shot, please hit the back button.

Right. Introduction done. Now here’s the tl;dr: saying things like “Buying this game is inherently selfish/transphobic” isn’t the hot take people want it to be. Is boycotting Legacy one (very small—we’ll get to that too) way of showing support for the trans community? Yes. Is buying the game proof that you’re a selfish transphobe?  No. This isn’t a bad SAT question. Legacy boycotters are to trans supporters as Legacy buyers are to  ___? The argument that someone is selfish for buying the game is basically that you are choosing a non-essential video game over the respect and lives of trans individuals, but the logic breaks down when we acknowledge that purchasing a game has no real life impact on a trans individual’s safety, support, etc.   

“But Clyde, you’re giving Rowling money. She is then using that money to support anti-trans organizations. Thus, you have actively put more harm into the world.” Have I? I’m not going to get into whether/how much/what kind of money Rowling is receiving from this project because the fact is we don’t know and we’ll likely never know. Suffice to say, she probably will get some portion of any $60/$70 purchase. The real question is whether those sales have any meaningful impact. Reputable information on Rowling’s net worth is hard to come by, but it seems to be somewhere between 600 million and 1 billion pounds. Or, to put it another way: a fuck ton. And money keeps rolling in from a franchise that is so, so much bigger than a single video game. It literally doesn’t matter how much money you might put in her pocket via Legacy because she’s already so goddamn rich she can do whatever she wants. If Rowling wants to give a million dollars to the heinous “charity” of her choice, she can. She will. You are not directly contributing to this horror because that money may as well already exist. Every person in the world could refuse to buy this game and she’d shrug, going about her disgusting life because it literally does not affect her in any meaningful way. You’re refusing to give the murderer a knife when they’re got direct access to a knife-making factory. Horrible as it is to hear, you can’t stop them from doing something horrific with that tool. 

For me, this is the straw argument of the Harry Potter world. Not straw as in strawman, but literally straws. Remember how everyone was talking about plastic straws, swore off them, and subsequently deemed anyone who still used one to be selfish people who didn’t care about the environment? It didn’t matter if you had a certified “good” reason for using one (disability) or a “selfish” reason (carrying straws everywhere on the off chance you wanted a drink is a pain in the ass)—you’re a horrible person who wants the planet to die. Same deal here. If you can swear off straws, great! Do what tiny bit of good you can. But if you can’t or even don’t want to give them up, the reality is that your “selfishness” doesn’t make a significant difference in the world. The amount of plastic corporations are pouring into the ocean makes your actions inconsequential. It’s not like voting where every small, individual act adds up to a significant total. This is your lack up against others’ staggering abundance. It’s not adding a few drops of water until you have a full bucket, it’s trying to un-flood the boat with a teaspoon while someone else is spraying it with the hose. Have you, on the most technical level, made a difference by moving that teaspoon of water out of the boat? Yes. Is it a difference that holds any meaning in regards to the desired outcome? Not really. Now apply all that to Rowling. She is so phenomenally wealthy—with additional wealth coming in every day—that your purchase of Legacy is a teaspoon of water in her ocean of funds. It’s inconsequential.

“But Clyde, buying this game would support her and supporting her sends the message that what she believes is okay.” Exact same argument as above. JKR’s fame is so astronomical that no video-game boycott could ever make a dent in it. For every 100 people who swear off her work there are another 1,000 who continue to engage with both her writing and the writing related to her world because she is that prominent. Harry Potter is one of the largest franchises of all time, second only to things like Pokémon and Star Wars. This isn’t some indie creator who you can ignore into silence. The reality is that Rowling is here to stay and we have to take far more substantial acts to counteract that influence. 

Even more importantly, buying the game is not evidence that you support her views and the black and white belief that it does is an easy distraction from those harder “How do we improve the lives of trans people?” questions. I started compiling a list of stories with problematic authors only to realize the number of incredibly popular texts with awful histories attached to them unnecessarily increased the length of an already long post. Everything from Game of Thrones to Dr. Seuss—if you love it, chances are one of the authors involved has a history of misogyny, racism, homophobia, etc. Which I don’t say as a way of excusing these authors, nor as a way to silence the justified and necessary call outs on their work. Rather, I bring this up to acknowledge that engaging with these stories cannot be concrete evidence for how you view the minority group in question. The reasons for consuming these stories are incalculable and at the end of the day no one needs a “correct” reason for that consumption (my teacher forced me to read the racist book, I only watched the homophobic TV show so I could call out how horrible it was, etc.) If fiction were an indicator of our real life beliefs we’d all be the most horrifying creatures imaginable. I may be severely uncomfortable with the queer baiting in Supernatural, but if a friend says they bought the DVD collection my response is not, “How dare you support those creators. You’re homophobic.” In the same way, someone purchasing Legacy should not generate the response, “How dare you support her. You’re transphobic.” There’s a miles’ worth of pitfalls in connecting the statements “You purchased a game based on the world created by a transphobic author” and “You yourself are transphobic.” 

So if buying Legacy does not add additional harm to the trans community from a financial perspective, and it doesn’t make a dent in Rowling’s platform, and playing a game is not evidence of your feelings towards the group the author hates… what are we left with? “But Clyde, it’s the principal of the thing. I don’t want to support a TERF” and that is an excellent argument. Your morals. Your ethics. What you can stomach having done or not done. But the “your” is incredibly important there. People need to understand that this is their own line in the sand and that if someone else’s line is different, that doesn’t mean they’re automatically a worse person than you. For example, I have made the choice not to eat at Chick-Fil-A. Not because I believe that me not giving them $3.75 for a sandwich will make a difference in their influence on the world, but because it makes a difference to me. It helps me sleep at night. So if not purchasing Legacy helps you sleep at night? That’s a fantastic reason not to buy it. But the flipside is that if someone else does purchase it that is not a reliable reflection of their morals, no more than I think my friends are homophobic for grabbing lunch at Chick-Fil-A now and then. Sometimes you just want a sandwich. 

“But Clyde, why would you want to buy it? Rowling is such a shit-stain I don’t understand how anyone can stomach supporting her—whether that support has an impact or not. Maybe someone eats at Chick-Fil-A because it’s close to them and they’re too busy to go elsewhere, or it’s all they can afford, or they don’t know how homophobic they are. There are lots of reasons to explain something like that. But you’re not ignorant to Rowling’s problem and there’s no scenario where you have to play this game, let alone spend money on it. So why?”

The reality is that I will likely be buying Legacy, second-hand if I can, but new if it comes to that, so I’ll give some of my personal answers here, in descending order of presumed selfishness:

5. Part of my work involves studying video games/Harry Potter and as a researcher of popular culture, my career depends on keeping up with major releases: good and bad. I often engage with stories I wholeheartedly disagree with for academic purposes, like Fifty Shades of Gray.

4. I find the “Just pirate it!” solution to be flawed. I’ve spent the last four months struggling to get my laptop fixed and I currently have no income to buy another if it were to suddenly develop a larger problem. I am not going to risk my $2,000 lifeline on an illegal download, no matter how safe and easy the Internet insists it is. 

3. We’ve been told that Rowling has not been involved in Legacy in any significant manner and I do want to support Portkey. No, not just financially because I know many others have insisted that everyone good has already been paid. Game companies still need to sell games. That’s why they exist. There’s a possibility that a company with just two mobile games under its belt will be in trouble if this completely flops. Is my purchase going to make or break things? No. Same reality as whether it will put new, influential money in Rowling’s pocket to do horrific things with. But I’d like to help a company that looks as if they put a lot of heart and energy into a game only to get hit with some real shit circumstances outside of their control. Even if they’re not impacted financially or career-wise… art is meant to be consumed. I know if I wrote a Harry Potter fic and everyone boycotted it because they want nothing to do with Rowling anymore, I’d be devastated. Sometimes, you can’t separate supporting the good people from supporting the bad. Not in a media landscape where thousands of people are involved in singular projects.

2. I’m invested in reclaiming excellent works created by horrible authors. That’s fandom! We don’t know much about Legacy yet—this is pure, unsubstantiated speculation—but this new story could be a step forward from Rowling’s books, giving us some of the respect for minority groups that she failed at. That’s the sort of work I want to promote because Harry Potter as a concept is great and I think it’s worth transforming it for our own needs and desires. The reality is that as long as Rowling is alive she’ll benefit from licensed material, but if that material can start taking her world in better directions? I want to support that too.

1. I literally just want to play it. That’s it. That’s my big justification. I think it looks phenomenal and I was itching to get my hands on it the second the trailer dropped. And you know what? I’m not in a good place right now to deny myself things I enjoy. I don’t need to tell anyone that 2020 has been an absolute horror show, but for me certain things have made it a horror show with a cherry on top. Not a lot gets me excited right now because we’re living in the worst fucking timeline, so when I find something that makes me feel positive emotions for a hot second I want to hang onto it. I have no desire to set aside that spark of happiness in a traumatic world because people on the Internet think it makes me selfish. Maybe it does, but I’m willing to let myself be a bit selfish right now. 

Which circles back to this issue of equating buying a game with active harm towards the trans community. It honestly worries me because this is a very, very easy way to avoid the harder, messier activism that will actually help the queer community. When someone says things like, “You’re choosing a stupid video game over trans lives” that activism is performative. Not only—as demonstrated above—is purchasing a game not a threat to trans lives or ignoring the game a way of protecting trans lives, it also gives people an incredibly easy out while still seeming ‘woke.’ Not all people. Maybe not even a significant portion of people, but enough people to be worrisome. “I’m not purchasing that game,” some people post and then that’s it. That’s all they do, yet they feel like they’ve done their duty when in fact they’ve made no active difference in the world. Are you donating to trans charities? Are you speaking up for your trans friends when someone accosts them? Are you circulating media by trans authors? Are you educating your family about trans issues? Are you listening to trans individuals and continually trying to educate yourself? These are the things that make a difference, not shaming others for buying a game.

All of this is not meant to be an argument that people shouldn’t be absolutely revolted by Rowling’s beliefs (they should) and that this revulsion can’t take the form of rejecting this game wholeheartedly. This isn’t even meant to be an argument that you shouldn’t encourage others to boycott because though the financial impact may be negligible, the emotional impact for you is very real. I 100% support anyone who wants to chuck this game into the trash and never talk about it again—for any reason. All this is meant to argue is that people shouldn’t judge others based on whether they purchase this game (with a side argument that we can’t limit our activism to that shaming). That’s their decision and this decision, significantly, does not add any real harm to the world. Your fellow Harry Potter fan is not the enemy here. We as a community should not be turning our visceral on one another. Turn it on Rowling. She’s the TERF, not the individual who, for whatever reason, decided they wanted to play the game only tangentially related to her.  

If Twitter and Tumblr are any indication, I can imagine the sort of responses this post may generate: “That’s a whole lot of talk to try and convince us you’re not a transphobe :/ ” For those of you who are determined to simply things to that extent, there’s nothing I can say that will change your mind. Please re-read the disclaimer and consider whether yelling at me over anon will benefit the trans community. For those of you who are still here, I do legitimately want us to think critically about the kinds of activism we’re engaging in, how performative it might be, whether it harms the community in any way, and (most significantly) whether it’s actually moving us towards a safe, respective world for trans people to live in. Personally, I don’t think telling Harry Potter fans that they’re transphobic for buying Legacy will generate any good in this world, for them or for the trans community. 

At the end of the day only you can decide whether you can stomach buying this game or not. Decide that for yourself, but make that decision knowing that there’s no wrong answer here.  

[black-streak]

What about a fic where Tim has a perfect plan to propose but a lot of things go wrong/ don’t go as planned?

Okay anon, when I first read this, I completely misinterpreted it as every time he tries to propose, things go wrong. Went off on a spiral with that idea, so I hope you don't mind.

I'm getting a surprising amount (3) of marriage related prompting for this pair. Still taking any timari prompts for the moment if anyone else wanted to send them in btw!

~---~

At this point, things were getting out of hand.

He had been trying for well over a month to propose to Marinette and yet everything kept falling apart around him, no matter how many contingency plans he created.

...

The first time, Tim had been young and naive, setting up a beautifully quiet celebratory dinner for after a runway show. She had been stressed out and working herself to the bone for months now, setting up the drop of her new line and he knew whenever he closed a big deal, he loved nothing more than quietly settling in for a stress free night with his sweet little girlfriend, especially when he didn't have to have a hand in the planning of it. Logic dictated that having the same care and consideration for her would be just as well placed and a perfect time to ask her to allow him to take care of her on nights like these for the rest of their lives.

Logic could go choke on itself.

With the show over and the models undressing and everything being put away without her need to supervise or tweak anything, Mari had disappeared from view. Seeking her out for well over half an hour, he finally found her curled up asleep in a side room of strewn extra fabric, using the unneeded pieces as bed and blanket both. Stepping towards her with the intent to gently awaken her so they leave this mess, an arm slammed in front of him, her personal assistant glaring him down as though he were a particularly foul piece of trash stuck to her shoe.

"If you even think about waking her up, I will personally castrate you," she bit out, teeth flashing in a feral manner.

With that, he was promptly tossed out to go home alone. Marinette didn't return home until the next afternoon, looking dead on her feet. And so the plan was scraped.

...

The next time, he came more prepared. They both had the night off, it was a family dinner, and neither were scheduled for a patrol that evening. Even if something happened to set off the alarms, they weren't responsible for answering the call. Add on that all of his family would already be present for the proposal and it skipped the step of telling them the story of how it happened. Perfect.

Except, nothing in his life went perfect, so of course a mass breakout happened an hour before dinner and all hands were called on deck. By the time the city had settled down and most of the escapees had been caught, three days had passed and everyone clawed at each other's throats in exhausted irritation. He passed out in an office chair and forgot about his original plans entirely.

...

The third time he attempted, he became entirely jaded to the whole process. He also decided to be an idiot about it and just leave a message on her phone asking her if she could fit time in her busy schedule for a half hour with him so he could propose. Just like that. Straight up tried to book an appointment to ask her to marry him. 

Later in the evening, she shoved through the door with tears in her eyes, pitching a fit over how absolutely useless the Apple store was and that her entire system was wiped from her phone. Marinette swore she would never put her calender on a phone again and that written planners where obviously the superior method of organization. 

With the impeding panic attack on her horizon, he helped recover and write down what they could remember of her upcoming events, contacting her assistant to fill in the blanks. It took a few hours, conferring with his own schedule for shared events, but he eventually settled her down with the knowledge that they got everything she needed down. He offered to fix the phone himself, but at this point she no longer trusted the damned thing and just wanted to trash the thing.

It wasn't until a few hours after, with her asleep in his arms did he remember that his message was deleted before she could even look at it. That was fine with him. It was a horrible idea anyways.

…

In the end, he decided to toss the entire proposal out the metaphorical window. Marinette already stated her intention to marry him over a year ago, it's not like they weren't planning for the eventuality of it. 

Instead, one night he just slipped the engagement ring over her finger in her sleep and went back to bed. She wore Plagg's ring so often, he doubted she'd even realize it was different.

She wore the ring for well over a week without noticing the fact that Plagg's ring sat on her other hand.

Marinette refused for over three years to ever step into the watchtower, not wishing to become a known entity outside of the Bat family. Honestly, Gotham wasn't even sure of her existence, considering her to be the shadowed cryptid of their city, more so than Batman had been for years, because there were no eye witness accounts of her. To go to the watchtower was to allow the Justice League to know something else creeped through their terf, an unknown. Surely, they would try to investigate. Tim, however, begged her to come with, needing to get a few particularly rude heroes off his back about his girlfriend being fake. She didn't need to tell them anything, just show up with him, that's all he asked. Not to reveal her abilities or allow them to know anything about her, just let him show her off. Ironically enough, a week after his placing the ring on her finger, she caved.

Upon their arrival, the heroes stationed there at the time turned to greet him, only to stop upon seeing the hooded figure next to him.

"Red, who did you bring?"

With a growing smirk, he squeezed her hand, lifting it to kiss over where the ring sat, "I'm glad you asked. I would like to introduce you all to my Fiance."

Her eyes widened, taking in the ring his lips brushed over before blushing and ducking into his side, whispering, "how long has that been there?"

"Over a week, love."

"You are diabolical."

"No, you're a menace. I've been trying to propose for a month now," he ducked down to kiss her, ignoring their audience.

"God, I hate you."

"Is that a no?"

"Are you kidding, of course I'll marry you," she ducked her face into his shoulder to hide as Flash coughed in front of them, not having heard the conversation.

"Sorry, but since when do you have a fiance?"

"Since now."

Mari groaned into his shoulder as Tim laughed, "I'm getting you back for this."

[abbyfreemansmind]

Hey sooo "queer" has been a slur for homosexual people long before "terf" was made up. Things like "smear the queer" were shouted as (mostly) gay men were beaten to a pulp and/or violently killed. Please learn more about gay history before ever saying something so ignorant, homophobic, and frankly hateful again. You're 22 and old enough to know better. Queer is not a catch-all term for babies that want to feel special, its still used today by homophobes. Or maybe youre homophobic already??

You can not like being called queer and still accept that it’s not actually a slur anymore. Fun fact: Gay was a slur. Lesbian was a slur. Homosexual was a slur. Every word we as a community use to describe ourselves was a slur at some point and is still frequently used as a slur by cishets. Queer was an openly used and inclusive term by so much of the community, outside of people who personally didn’t like it, until very recently. Around the same time that TERF stuff began to spread, along with “you’re not trans enough” discourse, bi/pan discourse and aspec discourse, among other hateful things made to tear our community apart and divide us.

I don’t know who you are, since you weren’t brave enough to come off anon and tell me this with your already anonymous online account, but I would suggest your same advice. Learn about gay history before sending things like this to me. Also, no, I don’t call people I disagree with TERFs, I said it was from TERF ideology. Please get some reading comprehension and maybe some critical thinking skills. There’s a reason there are phrases like, “Not gay as in happy, but queer as in f*ck you!” and “We’re here, we’re queer, get used to it!” Same reason there’s also a show called Queer Eye/Queer Eye for the Straight Guy, although I’ve never seen it.

I’m 22 and old enough to know better. I also know LGBTQ+ people offline. Off the internet, I’ve never encountered such widely accepted rhetoric formulated to tear the community apart. Ace/aro/agen people, nonbinary people, GNC people, all types of trans people (dysphoric and not, binary and not) are accepted, people know their history, it’s a nice place. I’m even gonna plan to help set up my town’s first Pride! It’ll be a socially distanced thing, but it’s still a Pride. I think you and so many others could use some time offline and away from discourse.

If you don’t like queer, that’s fine, but unless you plan on going around saying literally every other word we use to describe ourselves is a slur, don’t say it’s a slur. While hatred has boiled for certain groups within the LGBTQ+ community, the “queer is a slur” and related discourses were started by TERFs, who wanted us to be less inclusive so they could more easily target trans people.

This is the 17th anonymous message I’ve gotten that’s rehashed your point. Given the fact that numerous other anons sought to turn the fact that I’m bi, ace, arospec, nonbinary and reclaim queer as a label for myself (much like how most LGBTQ+ people reclaim gay!) into a point about how people “like me” are a problem in the community, I’m willing to bet that you, just like them, have already decided I’m wrong based on various things about me and that you have some problem or another with my identity. I won’t let it bother me. There’s no point in being bothered by anonymous people on the internet who don’t even know me, especially ones who don’t even have the courage to be even slightly less anonymous about it and use their actual account to say such things to me.

Anyway, I hope you’re well. I hope you prosper in life. I hope you get everything you ever wanted in life. Dream job, dream house, dream car, dream partner(s) or QPP(s), dream pet(s), etc. I have no animosity towards you. I wish only the best life has to offer for you. Good luck with your endeavors! I believe in you! You’ve got this!

EDIT: I've been told the last paragraph comes off as sarcastic. I meant it genuinely. I really do wish the best for you.

[dmitri-smerdyakov]

The Fantastic Beasts Franchise and JK Rowling

Alright, so...hi everyone.

I don’t know how many people follow this blog anymore because my main blog of operation is now @alwaysahiccupandastrid - I still try to keep this blog relatively active though, just because it was my original blog, I’ve had it since I was 13, and I have so many memories attached to it.

I’m aware that a lot of the people who follow me, especially since late 2016, do so because a) I was a loud and proud Fantastic Beasts fan, b) I wrote some Newtina and Jakweenie fic, and c)...I don’t know. I literally don’t know why people bother following me anywhere because I don’t feel like I have a lot to say. But, anyway, many people probably follow me due to Fantastic Beasts and my posts/fanfics within the fandom.

Those who follow my active blog will already know my feelings and thoughts, but because of the fact many things about this blog - me, the posts for the last four-ish years, the url itself - are Beasts related, I felt it was necessary to come and write an actual post here instead of just reblogging things and calling it a day. I’ve always been very outspoken online, but I’ve been avoiding a certain topic of conversation on this blog for years now, and I’m finally in a place where we can discuss it.

I am, of course, talking about the hot topic that is JK Rowling.

Back in the days between FBAWTFT and FBTCOG, I was a very outspoken defender of JK Rowling and her decision to defend Johnny Depp’s inclusion in the films. Now, this is something I still stand by to this day, and due to the evidence that has since come out, I’m even more steadfast in the opinion that keeping Depp was a great decision. I am fully in support of him and the way he’s currently battling against his abuser. But that’s not what I’m here to talk about right now. As I was saying, back in the day, I was outspoken about the opinion that “we don’t know the full story” etc., and as a result I received very colourful anon messages. Now, to my knowledge, none of these were about JKR being a TERF/transphone, but I think it’s important to mention that at the time I scoffed at the idea she could be one. I openly admit that I didn’t listen to what other people - including actual trans individuals - were saying about JKR and her transphobia because I frankly didn’t want to admit it. I didn’t want to admit that the person who wrote something that saved my life could be so hateful and a bad person - that, and at the time I passed it all off as “wokeness out of control”.

It is now 2020. Up until last Saturday night, I was still in support of JK Rowling - I didn’t agree with some of the stuff she had said, but I was trying to be positive and have hope by telling myself that she didn’t mean to be transphobic, that she just didn’t know what she was doing was wrong, even though the evidence clearly showed otherwise (I.e. her liking transphobic / radfem tweets). I said to my followers on my Beasts page that instead of cancelling people outright, we should be attempting to educate them instead, and if they choose not to learn then fine. And, being 100% obvious, I didn’t want to admit it because I frankly already was feeling annoyed at two different Beasts cast members for different reasons: Ezra Miller (for choking a girl) and Dan Fogler (for his tweet about BLM - admittedly that was probably him being well intentioned but not saying it right). So yeah, I didn’t want to cancel another member of the Beasts “family”.

I had JKR’s tweets on notifications, and for the most part over the last few weeks, it was all about the Ickabog. However, on Saturday night I noticed that she had suddenly tweeted something completely different, and I looked at it. Given that I had adamantly defended her and said “freedom of speech” for so long, it’s telling that my first thought upon seeing her tweet was literally “for fuck sake, Jo, why”.

I won’t post her tweets here but to sum that first tweet up, it was her being annoyed over the term “people who menstruate” being used in an article instead of “woman”, and mockingly saying “there used to be a word for that” before pretending she didn’t know the word. She knew that tweeting it would start arguments and anger, and yet she still made the decision to do so. Her follow up tweets frankly dug the hole deeper; she tried to defend herself by saying, to sum it up, “I have a butch lesbian friend who agrees with me” “I just care about women’s rights!” And “IF trans people were marginalised I’d march with you!” (“If”, of course, being the real kicker here because what do you mean IF. They ARE. Every DAY.)

Since then, JKR has written an essay on her website defending herself and her opinions, and yes, I read it. I read it a few times, in fact. At first, I felt my anger simmer and felt I had been too hasty to make anti JKR jokes, that I was wrong...but then I read it again properly and realised that what she had written was a piece that turned herself into the victim, and that despite putting on the appearance of her saying she supports trans people, including the phrases “I support trans people” and “of course trans women are real women”, she still spewed much transphobic vitriol and hate. She cited no sources for any of her proclamations or statements about statistics, implied that trans men transition to escape their “womanhood”, that trans women are men in dresses, that trans women are dangerous to “real” women (aka cis women) and shouldn’t be allowed into women’s changing rooms or toilets. There was also the autism comment, and the implication of autistic girls somehow not being able to make decisions or whatever.

I’m going to get straight to the point: I don’t support JK Rowling or her radical feminism.

As someone who is a proud feminist (libfem?), I can honestly say that never have I felt threatened or like I was being silenced by the inclusion of trans women in feminist spaces or conversation. Never. In my second year at sixth form, I was in charge of the LGBTQ+ club until a new leader with better leadership skills could step in, and - put simply - that year, the club was made almost entirely of first year transgender students. Even though I had called myself a trans ally for years, I realised there was a lot I didn’t know, and I learnt quite a lot from these students. I continue to still learn today. They were some of the nicest and most intelligent people I got the chance to meet, and I can truly say that at no point was I ever worried to be in a room alone with a trans woman, nor was I concerned about which bathroom they went in - bathrooms are bathrooms. Speaking of bathrooms...when I was at uni during a particularly tense rehearsal a few weeks before our final show last year, a guy in our group made me cry and I ran to the women’s bathroom to escape. Not only did the other girls come to comfort me, but you know what? The guy came in and apologised profusely to me. Did any of us girls give a shit about having a guy in our toilet? Absolutely not. It’s a fucking toilet. And, on that note, I was never worried about a trans woman or even a cis man attacking me in the toilets. You know who DID attack me in the toilets regularly? Other cisgender women.

As a feminist, I fully support trans women and am not threatened by the inclusion of trans women in women’s spaces or in women’s rights discussions. While I agree that cis women and trans women inevitably go through different struggles, at the end of the day, we all identify as women and are women. I think that if your feminism is so threatened by the existence of trans women - TERFs, RadFems, JKR, looking at you - then your feminism is flimsy and not feminism at all.

As a woman, I find it highly offensive that JKR and many RadFems focus so much of womanhood and feminism on an involuntary biological function that, frankly, many of us would rather do without. Yeah, I’m talking about periods - no matter how proud I am to be a woman, I still fucking hate periods and would get rid of mine if I could without erasing my chance of having kids someday. I can hear the RadFems accusing me of “internalised woman hatred” for saying I hate my periods, but you know what, they suck and they hurt and fuck them. The fact that JKR (also the the radfem movement) reduced “women” to just people who menstruate and can have children, and vice versa, is incredibly offensive and misogynistic. For a start, trans men menstruate, intersex people can, non binary can etc. Next, not even ALL cis women have periods - women who are menopausal, young women who haven’t started puberty yet (some do start very late), some women don’t have regular cycles, some women have medical problems that affect their cycle, some women are on birth control that can stop their cycles. So the idea of women being defined as “those who menstruate” is offensive not only to trans/intersex/non binary individuals but also to cis ones too.

As I write this, I’m a 22 year old woman who is still learning and changing every day, and one of the things that I’ve found myself thinking about recently - especially since we’re in lockdown and we have nothing BUT time to think - is about myself and my identity as a woman. What prompted this was when I saw Greta Gerwig’s adaptation of Louisa May Alcott’s beloved book, “Little Women”, which I’ve since read, for my birthday back in January, and I left the cinema feeling exalted and powerful with my own identity as a woman. (I’ll be returning to LW in a bit)

After some thinking, I’ve realised some things. For me, my identity as a woman is not just because once a month my uterus decides to shed; I do not identify as a woman just because I have certain physical features. I am not a particularly feminine person either, and I’m what some may call a “tomboy” (a phrase I actually don’t mind but I know a lot of people do for understandable reasons since it’s a phrase designed to differentiate people who don’t conform to society’s expectations etc) because I prefer video games and more geeky stuff to shopping or dressing up or make up.

For me, there is no one way a person has to be or appear in order to identify as a woman. Women are beautiful, complex human beings; we are not defined by our genitalia, by an involuntary biological process. Women are strong, intelligent, and interesting people - no two are the same. For example, some decide to raise families, some choose to pursue a career, some do both - all of these are valid and none are more “feminist” or “womanly” than the others, because it’s our as women. I guarantee that if you lined up every single woman in the world - cis AND trans - no two would be the exact same.

I mentioned “Little Women” earlier, and as I was pondering over what makes me identify as a “woman”, I thought a lot about a certain quote from the 2019 film that has stayed with me since it was first said in the release of the trailer. It’s spoken by Jo March to her mother, and I’ve started to understand what for me makes me a woman.

For me, being a woman is all of this: having minds, hearts, souls, ambition, talent, and being beautiful each in our own ways. Women are capable of love and empathy, capable of desire, capable of the most complex and human feelings and emotions, and coming out the stronger for it.

Sex is one thing; gender identity is another.

I won’t dissect every single thing JKR wrote in her essay, but I will just say this: her comments regarding autistic girls are extremely tone deaf and she does not speak for those with autism. I’m going to be honest and admit something here I haven’t before: I have not been diagnosed with autism or aspergers but I AM currently on the waiting list to see someone who COULD diagnose me. Apparently I show signs of a potential diagnosis, so...we’ll have to see. But I have friends who are autistic, and they’re disgusted by JKR trying to use them to support her TERF arguments. Autistic and other neurodivergent people are absolutely capable of making decisions and are NOT people who need to be babied or have their hands held, to be told who they are. It’s incredibly ableist of JK Rowling frankly.

I would also like to point out... I’ve seen people saying “but she doesn’t hate autistic people, Newt is autistic!!!” - yes, but JKR didn’t write him as autistic. Eddie Redmayne chose to play Newt as autistic - JK Rowling didn’t do shit.

It’s also time that I acknowledge that both Potter and Beasts inevitably hold JKR’s problematic views, and that by denying her ownership of her work, we’re not holding her accountable for the horrible things she’s done. This includes - but is not limited to -:

Anti-Semitic stereotypes in the goblins

Lycanthropy being used as a metaphor for AIDS - an illness that is heavily associated to the gay community, and also there was the panic of the AIDs crisis in the 90s where much misinformation and homophobia was generated and spread because of it.

Adding further to the lycanthropy point, one of the infected individuals - Greyback - is stated to have a sick preference for infecting children. Not only are werewolves tied to harmful gay/AIDs stereotypes, but also to the disgusting and frankly wrong notion that gay people are pedophiles.

The only Asian character is called Cho Chang. Cho Chang. That’s two steps away from outright just calling her “Ching Chong”. It’s not a name an actual Asian person would have.

The Goldstein sisters are probably distantly related to Anthony Goldstein, who JKR confirmed (on Twitter of course) is Jewish, meaning that Tina and Queenie are most likely Jewish too (and Goldstein is a Jewish surname). However, despite the fact that the first FBaWTFT is set DURING Hanukkah in 1926, there’s zero signs of them celebrating or observing it. Maybe that’s more on set design than anything else, but come on - if I, a fanfic writer, can do some research, JK/the crew of a major movie can too!

Adding on from that, gotta love how one of the JEWISH main characters then decides to join the Wizarding world equivalent of Hitler. I already had problems with Queenie’s characterisation in CoG, but that’s the icing on the cake.

POC/Black characters - in both series but since I’m a Beasts blog... Seraphina Picquery, a Black female president serving a term during a MAJOR wizarding world crisis, is severely reduced to have only 3 lines in CoG. Nagini’s only purpose is to be the only friend of Credence, a white man, before he joins Wizard Hitler and abandons her; she’s also an Asian character who we know one day permanently becomes a SNAKE, and who goes on to actually have a piece of Voldemort’s soul inside of her?? And some do see her as his slave, though you could argue that she’s actually the only being that he holds any love or respect for. Leta Lestrange is a half-black woman who is killed/literally sacrifices herself for TWO WHITE MEN, and who’s death was literally confirmed to have been added in last minute.

Also, the whole Lestrange storyline was fucking nasty: white Lestrange Sr imperius-ed a black woman (Yusuf Kama’s mother), raped her, and she then died in childbirth. I’m sorry, what the fuck??

In Harry Potter, Seamus is a terrible stereotype of an Irish person - he likes to blow things up. Look up the IRA and their bombings. Fucking Irish stereotype. As someone with Irish grandparents and who is proud of their Irish heritage, this really pisses me off.

Let’s not forget the whole Native American cultural appropriation. That truly speaks for itself.

So here is where I speak candidly to everyone who follows me and/or sees this post. While Beasts is no longer my No. 1 fandom these days, it and Potter still hold a huge piece of my heart. I have 5 wizarding world tattoos, so much merchandise, and I can safely say that being a fan of both series has shaped me as a person. Both of those series helped me get through the darkest days of my life, including bullying at school, my Nan passing away, and my mental health struggles.

This is why what’s happened has impacted me so much and broken my heart. For me, it feels like it’s tainted now because of Jo and her views. I know that we should separate the art from the artist, but when her views are so clearly woven into the very fabric of the Wizarding world, it’s a huge problem.

Here’s another part of the dilemma - I do not wish for the Beasts films to be cancelled. I’m well aware that the *cough* people who dislike me will say I’m trying to be negative, trying to boycott the series blah blah blah, but that’s truly the last thing I want. I still love the story, the characters, the soundtrack, and I want to know how it ends, if only for my own piece of mind. It’s also important to add that by boycotting Beasts, it’s also harming the hard working thousands of others who worked on the films: the cast, the crew, the extras, the musicians, etc., not to mention the fans who actually are invested in the series and have taken solace in it. It’s not fair for them to all suffer over the actions of one TERF.

This is one of my biggest worries, however: the Fantastic Beasts films do NOT have a good reputation as it is. The second film was boycotted by some due to Depp, and now there’s talk of people boycotting number 3 because of JK Rowling. Lots of people already talk hatred about it, and this will only fire that hatred up even more.

There’s also talk of Eddie Redmayne potentially being kicked from the franchise due to a “leak” that he doesn’t want to work with JKR anymore, but this could be sensationalist news reporting. But if it came down to it, I can honestly say that I would rather continue to have Eddie play Newt than keep JKR as a writer. Eddie has done more for Newt than even JKR has, and if he goes, then that will be the last straw for me within the fandom. That will be when I take a sharp exit out, sell my FB merch and have my tattoos covered.

To add, the Fantastic Beasts scripts are...not great. Or, at least, what we saw on-screen wasn’t. Maybe that’s David Yates being the literal worst (fuck you, Yates, you suck) and cutting all the parts with strong female characters, but I honestly don’t think that JKR can write screenplays well at all. I think she’s clearly better at writing books, and that’s fine - books obviously allow for more time to explore characters and story/plot arcs etc, and film scripts offer way less of those chances. I don’t think screenplays allow her to write what she needs to in order to tell the story she wants to, hence why CoG was kind of a hot mess. So maybe it’s just that she’s not suited for screenplays and should stick to books.

Honestly, I kind of just wish that WB would hire another person to finish writing the Fantastic Beasts movies - obviously they’d have to keep JKR on board to tell them the actual plot, but get someone who can actually write screenplays and not be problematic to write them.

By now I’ve gone on long enough that I’ve forgotten my original intent while writing this, so I’ll try to sum up and end now. In short, I am extremely disappointed in JK Rowling and do not support her or her views any longer.

I don’t know how any of you guys are feeling but I would be interested to hear other people’s thoughts, especially other Fantastic Beasts fans. I want to also add that, as always, my DMs and inbox are always open - if not here, then always at @alwaysahiccupandastrid where I’m more active nowadays.

Finally, you guys don’t need me - a white cis woman - to tell you this but you’re all valid and magical and fuck JK Rowling. Her characters would all be ashamed of her, and the characters we grew up with would not stand for the bigotry and vile hatred she spreads under the guise of ““protecting women””. Several of the amazing actors from Potter and Beasts have spoken out against her and her tweets: Daniel Radcliffe, Emma Watson, Bonnie Wright, Katie Leung, Chris Rankin, Eddie Redmayne. Some have been...less inspiring (Tom Felton, Evanna Lynch, looking at you two 👀)

I’m sending love to everyone right now. I wish I could say something more useful but I’ve spoken enough - I’ve made my opinion clear. I love you all, please stay safe.