#with some VERY minor exceptions

[benadrylcandlewhack]

I bring a sort of "Optimus and Elita both get to live and least be on good terms with one another" vibe that the majority of Transformers canon doesn't like

[milkamel]

Sketchbook doodles of Cross 💜❌ They're a little messy (cause I used zero references- a major mistake 💀) but looks good enough to post I guess 👍 He's an angry boy <3

Cross belongs to jakei

[etz-ashashiyot]

While my strong, vocal support for Ukraine remains unchanged and I believe it is unambiguously morally correct, I will say that there is something of a bitter pill embedded in it for me as a Jew who is very close to another Jew whose whole family had to flee Ukraine with her as a child because a combination of having the wrong surnames and being Jews meant they could not safely and successfully stay there. And like. She was born there. She still identifies as Ukrainian and has been devastated the last three years over the suffering of her people. She has been a vocal opponent of Putin and of Russian imperialism.

And at the same time, the reason she's here in the US and isn't fluent in Ukrainian is because she was too Jewish to be a "real" Ukrainian (despite the Soviets having forced her family to give up their Jewish religious practices and her having to learn everything as an adult.)

[aroaceleovaldez]

Your blog is the only blog where I feel safe enough asking this question. What do you think of Percy Jackson fans who feel as though they and the series have a moral superiority to Harty Potter ? Obviously, Harry Potter and its author are laden with questionable and sometimes straight-up hateful takes and views. But the way PJO fans constantly compare the two, its authors (even though RR is far from flawless), and the two MCs (ignoring how the two both share similarities in the fact that they are both traumatised, abused, angry teenage boys). I'm sorry that this ask got so long, but this has been annoying me for a while now.

This is an interesting question - for one, fandom fights over superiority is a concept that has been around for ages and has never been constructive. PJO and HP fandoms have been fighting in that exact way (and it has gone both ways!) for literal decades (remember, PJO turns 20 this year) so this isn't new, it's just taken on a moral flavor. Let's go over some things though (but please keep in mind i never got into HP and never read the books or fully watched the movies so my knowledge of HP is primarily pop culture absorption/secondhand from my family and friends):

Are either series perfect? No. HP absolutely is full of hateful sentiments and JKR is a hateful person and I do not respect her for that. Disney's marketing recently has absolutely fully leaned into trying to put Rick above her as a moral paragon and emphasizing how progressive he is and his support of diversity in middle grade series, despite some failings to reflect that in the actual text. Are Rick and JKR equally bad? Definitely not. Rick has had tangible good influence on adhd/dyslexia awareness that very directly impacted people like me as a neurodivergent kid going through school in the 2000s. JKR meanwhile has directly negatively impacted trans laws internationally very recently.

Rick absolutely isn't perfect, but he's vocally supportive, has made a lot of effort in the past to be inclusive, and still attempts to do so. Most of his issues simply stem from his own unaddressed internalized bigotry/biases and his research on varying topics not being great (plus poor management decisions such as not hiring a sensitivity reader actually fit for the story he's trying to tell). But he's not hateful. JKR is. JKR is very vocally hateful and bigoted and this is absolutely reflected in her work as well even in earlier HP. They are comparable in that they are both middle grade authors of easily two of the most popular middle grade fantasy (or specifically hidden world fantasy) series out right now. They are not equivalent in the slightest in their bigotry or tangible damage.

In terms of Percy versus Harry, I personally don't think they're very comparable. They share some similarities, but mostly just in that they're both the protagonists of their stories and thus serve protagonist purposes. Beyond that their use within the narrative is pretty different functionally. Their worlds' magic systems are not comparable. The hidden world aspect in both their universes isn't even comparable, since in PJO the "hidden world" aspect is very different from most hidden world fantasy formats because the entire point is that it's functionally not a hidden world. The characters themselves are very different as well - Percy's personality and the way he behaves and reacts to his environment is absolutely nothing like Harry's.

Most of the anti-HP-in-general sentiments stem from wanting to cut off JKR's notoriety, which I think is valid to want to do. And I do think there are a lot of issues with continuing to support JKR's work especially in ways that functionally promote her work or support her financially. Obviously, we will never be able to scrub HP from the cultural zeitgeist. It's just not feasible and I'm very anti-book burning so I do think it's important to acknowledge the role HP has had in pop-culture alongside acknowledging its harmful materials. HP is a text you absolutely can't death-of-the-author your way out of because a lot of the vitriol is baked into the text and worldbuilding in very overt ways - and there are plenty of other pop-culture staple novels like this. But fandom in general, at least true fandom and not mainstream fandom, is so obscure most of the time that I don't think, so long as people are not ignoring negative themes of the source material and are being thoughtful as they navigate engaging with it, that it is an inherently bad thing for HP fandom to just exist at all. It's never going to just stop existing no matter what people do. And HP fandom are not the only ones who should be thoughtful about how they engage with their source material - PJO fandom is not exempt from examining some of the problematic aspects in our own text and figuring out how to be respectful with those topics. It's just a lot easier for PJO fandom to tune it out without it being noticed because there's less of it and it's (at least sometimes) less overt. Honestly if HP fandom decided to go more down the path of a fandom like Warriors or Miraculous Ladybug, where the average sentiment is more along the lines of "Oh god no don't read/watch the source material it sucks/we stopped paying attention to it year ago and it's not relevant at all to what we're up to. We're over here functionally rewriting everything from the ground up/doing our own thing" I would very much support them in that endeavor. I do think there is merit in limiting promotion of the HP source material as much as possible, though.

Hopefully that all makes at least some amount of sense.

[queer-omens-in-the-archives]

Staring with some trepidation at our 50+ open tabs of fanfics we mean to read and review. Wish to get started on that (browser needs a cleanup so bad and let's be real if we put something in a bookmark folder or AO3 Marked For Later => out of sight out of mind), but also, scary while we're working on our own projects

[tutyayilmazz]

🚨 from january 1st 2024, russian and belarussian gymnasts will be able to complete if they are authorized according to these criteria

very intrigued how they will evaluate the criteria

surely this must have been in motion before but announcing this now is very much like oh we don't wanna ban israelis WHICH ARE ACTIVELY MILITARY PERSONEL so maybe some russians can compete lmao

full pdf stating that they must wear light blue, music must not contain references to their country, etc. is here

[unhonestlymirror]

Do you ever look at someone's art and clearly realise they are extremely unhappy with their sex life?

[bbbartblog]

I just wanted to doodle some HM/SoS OCs of mine. I made them for some collabs (the sisters for a collab comic and Beryl for a RP thing on DA)... but as collabs consisting of mostly teens often do, those kinda fizzled out haha

Even if the stories I created them for don't exist any more, I want to include them in some sort of story in the future, since I'm really fond of them~

[alatariel-galadriel]

Woe, 1839 German bible uncovered in family attic be upon ye!

included: names/birthdays from 1892-1985, a pressed flower, a printed condolence card (1913)

not included: several locks of hair, a handmade condolence card (march 1842), 5 deitsch marriage certificates (1851-1935) lots of notes written in deitsch, and the chemise it was wrapped in

[thedevilsrain]

here's a handy comparison chart

[stonerzelda]

God damn it i slept in until just now WHY!!! But i did have a kiefer centric dream even if it was incredibly stressful. Fine

[song-tam]

also like i was going to reblog ur post abt it last night with a good old ramble but i literally don't know how to articulate any of it. being diaspora + being mixed = NO media that ever caters to how different that experience is AND how simultaneously u have both of the cultures AND that of the place u were born. like. being chinese and being told by all my khmer friends i'm a lot more chinese than khmer because of our food & social etiquette etc vs seeing chinese diaspora media and it's all... so Clean. like no mention of being lower middle class it's all going after wealth and being Chinese American. idk. it is complicated

ohhhh yeah. idk man growing up in diaspora is its own beast yknow?? i could not imagine adding being mixed on top of that like truly like the identity crisis mustve been. insane for you which like. fucking sucks :/ on some level though i get what you mean abt not feeling represented by representation bc like. idk its hard to put into words but for me a lot of the times its like. here i see a character who looks like me but i dont feel seen. if that makes sesne

[loregoddess]

so I've been watching the KH Union Cross stuff (in order, thank goodness, this would be so confusing to piece together otherwise), and like, I knew enough about UX that the appearance of the foretellers at the end of KH3 wasn't confusing bc I knew who they all were, but getting the expanded, explained lore and I'm like okay, actually these weirdos in animal masks are pretty cool, glad to know they'll show up (presumably) in future games

also I'm glad that memorizing the Latin names for the seven deadly sins is finally paying off

[airenyah]

love it when you end up doing work that shouldn't be your responsibility but you know you don't have to say a word bc you know your bosses are kind hearted and are seeing this shit and are decidedly not ok with it

[astralleywright]

brennan has loaded them up with so many vestiges and important artifacts and shipped them off to vasselheim. nonzero chance he's winding up for a tpk via vasselheim

you know that would be actually interesting so i hope you're right

[mqfx]

my imps be honest is it bad that i'm taking this long to come back :( i'm sorry i prommy i'm working as hard as i can so the clues actually make some fucking sense!!!