#evil bob

[onbearfeet]

In Which the Wizard School Books Are a Hammer

Okay. I'm gonna tell this story once, and only once, because I think it might help people who are struggling to finally, FINALLY boot J.K. Rowling from their lives.

I can't precisely say I sympathize, but I definitely know how you feel, because I have already had to do this dance with someone I guarantee you've never heard of. I've had all the feelings you've had. I had to find a way through all by myself, and now I'm going to help you so you have an easier time. Okay? Okay.

Content warning: discussion of child sexual abuse (mentioned but not described in detail).

So there's this writer. I refuse to speak or write his name these days, so we'll call him Evil Bob. ("Bob" is my default placeholder name, and this Bob is evil.) Evil Bob was a damn good writer and, frankly, an underappreciated one in his time. I picked up a few of his projects out of the bargain bin on impulse when I was about 12, and after that he was one of my names to conjure with. If Evil Bob had written it, I wanted to read it. He had a kind of perfect workman's style--he did a lot of things pretty well, and he did them in such a way that a bright 12-year-old could see how the trick was done. I learned a lot of basic writerly technique from Evil Bob--things about dialogue and pacing and how to convey character through action and lots of other stuff. Evil Bob unlocked something in my brain, and I really blossomed as a young writer by applying the lessons of his work.

Evil Bob's fiction started to fall off in popularity eventually, so he switched to nonfiction and wrote a damn good history book that won a lot of awards. I read it in college. The man could really interview, I tell you what.

I even got to interview Evil Bob myself, eventually. I was working for a small magazine that wanted to publish an article about a certain minority group's representation in a certain fiction genre, and Evil Bob had written one of the seminal works in that niche, so I tracked down his contact info, called him up, and we had a lovely hourlong chat. He was kind and gracious and funny and --

Yeah, this is where you learn why I named him Evil Bob.

A few years ago, people in Evil Bob's old fiction genre started circulating a list of, shall we say, disgraced writers in the field. Think of it like a MeToo list. The list got passed around every time a new name was added, and at a certain point, after a much more famous name had just been added to it, the list crossed my feed for the first time in a while. I dutifully scanned down it in case there was anyone on it I'd missed; after all, I attended conventions for this genre, and some of these fuckers were on the list for assaulting fans like me, so I wanted to know who to watch out for.

And there, in the middle of the list, was Evil Bob.

Weird, I thought. Evil Bob had seemed chill when I spoke to him, and usually, being 22 with big boobs (as I was when I interviewed him) brought out the perv in these guys if there was any perv to bring out. Well, maybe this was something else--maybe he used a slur on an old tape or something. I googled.

It was something else, all right.

As I sat there googling, Evil Bob was sitting in a federal prison a thousand miles away. He was there because, according to his Wikipedia page, he had been convicted of having so many CSA images on his hard drive that the judge in his case became physically ill. Honestly, I want to know where he got a hard drive that big in the year he was arrested, but I absolutely will not be asking him.

Evil Bob was EVIL. Fuck the carceral state, but also never let that particular dude near kids or a computer again.

So now I had a problem. I was going to stop buying Evil Bob's stuff, obviously--I would drop the man like a hot potato--but I couldn't so easily remove his influence on me. I'll never be 12 years old and digging through the quarter bin at the used bookshop again. There's no way to re-learn the foundations of my artform without Evil Bob. The bastard is part of me, whether I like it or not. He's left his fingerprints on my brain. And while I have negative interest in creating my own criminal hard drive, it's a little hard to shake the irrational guilt (especially since I had been raised in a high-control religious environment where any contact with sin could permanently stain one's soul, and Evil Bob's writing was part of how I escaped, and--you get the idea). I couldn't shed the stink of Evil Bob. I'd written that article. I was covered in the fuckin' ooze.

I'll spare you the six months of angst and self-flagellation. I've been to therapy since this happened. Here's what I eventually decided:

Evil Bob is like a hammer.

My dad gave me an old hammer when I moved out, along with some other miscellaneous hand tools in a paper bag. I bought a toolbox, I put the tools in it, and I use them when I need tools. My dad is an asshole who abused his children, but a hammer is a hammer. Scratch the previous owner's name off the handle, and you can build a pretty fine house with it.

What I learned from Evil Bob are the tools of a trade, and tools are not inherently evil. He taught me how to put sentences together--but I decide what my sentences say. He showed me how to convey character--but I choose what I'm conveying. He made me a writer--but I'm the one writing now.

So I still use Evil Bob's tools, with his name scoured off. I still teach some of those lessons, but he's the one source I don't cite. Oh, that dialogue hack? I picked it up in grad school, pinky swear. Here, let me share it with you for free, with no credit or compensation to the bastard who taught it to me.

I won't pretend Evil Bob wasn't an influence on my younger self, but you'll never hear me speak his legal name. I was one of the few people who really counted themselves fans of his work ... and he'll never get a whisper of a hint of that support from me again. I guarantee you won't be able to track him down from this post, and that's just the way I like it. There's a reason I haven't identified what genre he wrote in, or what his seminal fiction work was about, or whom he interviewed for that prizewinning book.

Damnatio memoriae, motherfucker. This is my hammer now, and it always has been.

So how do we give JKR the Evil Bob treatment?

Unfortunately, the Terf Queen has a larger media presence than Evil Bob ever did. One sad ex-Potterhead won't be able to erase her from culture. But there's a lot more than one of you, isn't there?

The thing is, cultural trends fade faster than you expect. Plenty of celebrities and famous artists of your parents' generation are nobodies now, and it's usually because their work spoke to your parents but not to you. I once witnessed my brother trying to read his sons a 1912 book about Spanish naval history as a bedtime story, and let me tell you, it did not go over well. Some art burns hot and bright and then it burns OUT.

The Potterheads are the parents now. Imagine how easy it would be to just ... stop talking about her. Stop buying the merch. Don't watch the new TV show or play the new game. Don't tell people you used to be a fan--not because you ought to be ashamed, but because you're not going to give her the satisfaction of saying her name. And when your kids ask about your tattoo, just tell them not to get blackout drunk in college.

Damnatio memoriae, motherfucker.

And if you feel the need to explain where you learned your kindness and courage, your unshakable loyalty to your friends (especially the trans ones), your hope in the face of overwhelming darkness ...

... why, that's your hammer. And it always has been.

[missathlete31]

For who could ever love a beast? 💛🥀

A Hannix AU with:

Phoenix as Belle

Hangman as the Beast

Maverick as Maurice

Javy as Lumiere

Rooster as Cogsworth

Penny as Mrs. Potts

Amelia as Chip

And dare I do it?!? Bob as Gaston? (Come on we all need some evil Bob in our lives 😉!)

Feel free to comment who you think everyone should be!

Happy Sunday everyone!

[archaicfirehydrants]

rondpunt

ROTONDE GRAAAAAAHGHGG

[greyphilosopher]

This motherfucker

this son of a bitch

Bob from RuneScape 3

[vanilla-extracter]

city watch sketch dump,,,

[neyafromfrance95]

ok, but why aren't we talking about how sentry was clearly gentler with yelena than with the others?

when she jumped on him and for a moment he was considering how to handle her and then when he flew up to get her off his back but then caught her before she hit the floor and tossed her away with obvious restraint???

[unmillon]

maybe it is the phone

[thedykeparade]

i love the idea of *the new avengers somehow defeating the most insane villains with only the power of friendship. all the other heroes in the mcu are baffled and honestly a little irritated that this group of human disasters keep surviving every mission by just punching and shooting and more importantly hugging. why tf are they always hugging after winning a battle? they don't even seem to like each other all that much. whatever.

[silna-pdf]

The Birkin family ft classic Annette and no.1 babysitter Albert Wesker

[monika-fan]

saw post abt wg villains as batman villains from @adriantheanimator09 and so made some arts hehe😌

[supertaliart]

Post-it Note Jin Guangyao

[fitzs-trained-monkey]

Let me say it louder for the people in the back:

Just because John Walker killed someone in a far more public setting, does NOT make him any better or worse than the rest of the Thunderbolts.

Just because the weapon he used to do it was far more meaningful a symbol, does NOT make his crime any worse than those of the other Thunderbolts.

Let's break it down:

Ava was made to do a lot of shit for shield/hydra, yes. But after her condition was stabilized, she still CHOSE to work for Valentina.

After freeing the other widows, Yelena still CHOSE contract killing. Even after Hawkeye reached out to her, she still CHOSE contract killing. She chose to work for Valentina.

Alexi ALLOWED his surrogate daughters to be taken by the Red Room and turned into assassins. He ALLOWED that. Not to mention whatever else the Soviet government had him doing.

Just because John killed someone while the world watched, just because he did it with Cap's shield DOES NOT MAKE HIS CRIMES ANY WORSE OR ANY BETTER THAN THOSE OF THE REST OF THAT TEAM.

Thank you and good day.

[vesselvindicate]

sorry guys i've given in to the tail meta

[insaneplane]

CHARACTERS AT THE MALL!!! :O

I got inspired after seeing someone else do a idea similar to this concept, It took me awhile to finish it but it’s done :D YAY!!!

[mephistoic]

the girls are tussling

[setttanen]

More magma stuff!! Drawing with a mouse can slow me down but i think my speed with it is already decent, i'm just tired of adjusting faces and shapes (›´ω`‹ )

These are solo ones, i needed some brush testing and doodling 🥺

And these are with friends, it's my corner here and i made Eddie Gluskin for one of my friends who joined, drawing him is very fun. 🫶🏼

Then smol Deus Ex babies for myself 🥺✨️