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Wasn’t a priority for them

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Facts of the case Zaiem Beg was a contributing editor, then editor-in-chief for Magic: The Gathering retailer and strategy website Channelfireball.com. On June 8th he shared this google doc story called “The Wizards I Know” about the anti-Black and racist environment he saw at Wizards of the Coast. Which included the fact that they would tell people of color heard “you don’t have experience for this role,” when they had more experience than the white person they ultimately hired.

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Nuanced analysis on bisexuality in pop music? Hell yeah

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Stepping away from Harry Potter

Melina Pendulum, Lindsay Ellis and Dominic Noble’s respective videos about quitting Harry Potter or why the concept of “Death of the Author” can’t really be applied in this case gave me a lot to think about.

Harry Potter has been a huge part of my life growing up. And even not too long ago, I was one of the people who still bent over backwards to justify some of JKR’s bullshit. Only 4 years ago, I went to see the Cursed Child in London two weeks after its opening, and made my brother a Hogwarts acceptance letter for his 11th birthday. (I could go on with other important memories in my life that are somehow connected to Harry Potter, but that list would get way too long and we don’t have all day. The point is - these books were a very big influence in my life.)

After JKR’s general shittyness became more and more obvious even for someone who idolized her as much as I did, I started to distance myself and expressed my disappointment in her over the years - and as much as I want to say it didn’t taint my love of the series itself, it did. I just couldn’t find the same joy in it anymore, and the only HP related things I still really enjoyed were Hogwarts Mystery and the works of fan creators like The Mischief Managers.

Now that JKR has completely gone full-blown TERF, I really wasn’t sure what to do at first. I thought I could separate art from the artist. I thought I could simply still enjoy Harry Potter guilt-free, while not supporting JK Rowling financially anymore (meaning: no movie tickets, no more merch or books, nothing that could give her another cent of my money). But as those very good videos^ explained better than I could - it’s not that easy. You can’t completely separate an author from their work if that author is still alive, has a huge platform that they’re using to hurt people, and is as deeply connected to their work as JK Rowling is. She’s made sure all the rights to Harry Potter belong to her alone. She acts like her word on the charactes is law even so many years later.

As much as I’d love to reclaim Harry Potter and say it belongs to the fans now - it does legally still belong to her. People add disclaimers to their fanfictions for a reason. I also haven’t forgotten that time JKR went to court against a fan because he’d distributed his French translation of Deathly Hallows before the official translation was released. Legally speaking, not amount of reclaiming can change that these characters are hers. And personally speaking, I also find it hard to disconnect her from this world. I’ve spent years reading and watching interviews with her - I can’t re-read Harry Potter now without remembering what JKR has said about this or that scene, about this or that character. I can’t read about Rita Skeeter’s “mannish” hands without remembering that JKR is TERF. I can’t read about the stairs to the girls’ dormitories turning into a slide to keep the boys out without remembering that according to JKR’s worldview, those stairs would keep trans girls out, too. I can’t hear JK Rowling say “Hogwarts will always be there to welcome you home” without remembering that according to her, there are people who wouldn’t be welcome to see Hogwarts as their home.

I’ve spent years being a fan of JK Rowling because she wrote Harry Potter. I bought The Casual Vacancy and The Cuckoo’s Calling not because I was genuinely interested in those stories, but because she wrote them. I’ve spent years admiring this woman - I can’t suddenly pretend Harry Potter wasn’t written by her (and I also don’t think statements like ‘Daniel Radcliffe wrote Harry Potter’ are really helping the problem).

And just a few days ago I saw so many Harry Potter fanpages and general fans wishing “Harry and JKR” a happy birthday - as if everything was fine. As if nothing was going on. As if she wasn’t using her enourmous platfrom to dehumanize an extremely marginalized group of people. A few people had the decency to say “Happy Birthday to Harry Potter an f*ck JK Rowling” instead - but even that is a reminder of who the author of this series is and how deepy entwined she is with her creation. 

Long story short: I personally can’t separate the art from the artist in this particular case. Like Melina brilliantly said in her video: “I love Harry Potter, but I love trans people more.” I know so many amazing and kind and courageous trans people and I admire them so much. Back when I was a closeted lesbian scared of coming out to my family, a group of trans people I barely even knew showed me kindness and support. They were there for me, while JKR and her books were not. (I find it insanely hypocritical that she’s pretending to “defend lesbians” from “predatory trans women”. Lady, you don’t even have a single lesbian character in any of your books. As a lesbian, I’m telling you to kindly shut up and leave my trans sisters alone.)

And this is why - at least for the foreseeable future - I’m not going to be talking about Harry Potter on here anymore. I won’t be supporting JK Rowling financially, I won’t get inolved with any of her future projects, and I won’t support Harry Potter creatively (through fanfics, metas, fan discussion, etc.) I’ve put my Harry Potter books and merch away in the same box all the old stuff from my ex is in. And I’m not saying that I’ll never open that box again, but for now I think there are way better things for me to be spending my energy on.

(And just to be clear: I’m not going to judge anyone else for still enjoying Harry Potter. That’s a choice you all have to make for yourselves and I’m not going to tell anyone what to do - especially since I’m not a part of the group most hurt by her transphobic ‘essay’. This is just about me personally.)

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[My general commentary to the video, which was supposed to be a comment on YT, but I chickened out and made it into a post, because I can, and because my commentary is only an addition to what Melina already said, not an actual critique or counterpoint, because she said plenty of important stuff. So many in fact that everything I didn’t said was already said by her, and she is better at her job of media analysis feminist gig than I am, and she can talk about black issues better than I would ever be able to as a white girl from slavic country.]

Wanda Maximoff

I liked the whole idea of WandaVision letting Wanda go through grief and giving her a story, because I felt that MCU failed to give a proper (meaning: no sexy spies, no hookers, no more morally gray babes you can lust over) representation to a slavic woman like they always fail to do, even in the comics. MCU Wanda till WandaVision was closer to the villain side than the hero side, and we never actually got her side of the story, because it was always said for her by men around her, either Pietro or Steve or someone else.

In WandaVision she is finally an independent human being who finally is acknowledging that everything she did was her, that it was not someone else who did those things and made those choices, that it was her all along, and she cannot blame Tony or Ultron or someone else for what happened, because what happened was always a result of her own choices. The ultimate disappointment of mine was though that she flees at the end and the only person she actually apologizes to is Monica, while standing with her back to the people of Westview, whom she actually hurt and tortured all this time while having her self-imposed therapy in a Hex. From the madness in women standpoint I am happy that she finally worked through her shit, but from the slavic representation standpoint I am still not seeing improvement. She may not be a sexualized spy like Natasha, but she still falls into “slavic people are torturer’s and villains” trope, despite feeling bad about it. The only good thing is that she wasn’t killed off.

Whitewashing

Whitewashing of Wanda was my disappointment from the whole MCU which carried to WandaVision. Even if they wanted to connect her to Magneto at some point, she could be both Romani and Slavic, because there are Romani people diasporas in Slavic countries (and Slavic people are generally racist towards them) and their heritage would be even more complex then. They would be mixed race, Slavic and Romani, both groups targeted by Nazis during WWII, with complex cultural heritage bathed in racism and not fitting into both of the groups they come from, because they are mix raced. We could have that. We could have a good Romani and Slavic rep, but we didn’t get it, because of racism and antislavism yay.

Monica Rambeau

My second disappointment in WandaVision was ofc killing Maria for the sake of making Monica relate to Wanda. Because I think it was completely unnecessary, and it ties very badly to Wanda’s carrier in MCU to directly cause the death of black people. Like it literally starts looking as if her existing was killing them.

And the rest I disliked about how Monica was introduced as a hero Melina already said, and she said it better, so watch the video, enjoy.

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Have you seen the new Melina Pendulum “Purity Culture & Fandom... Issa Mess” video. I heard she defended Sessrin in it which is promising, but I’d love to hear a review before I watch because a) it’s long and b) I don’t want to end up watching hate and getting triggered.

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I'm not familiar with her at all. Sounds interesting though.

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I think you would love this

https://youtu.be/86C39J-XUWs

This looks interesting I'm going to watch it tonight, thank you!

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Nuanced analysis on bisexuality in pop music? Hell yeah

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Nuanced analysis on bisexuality in pop music? Hell yeah

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THANK YOU Melinapendulm no sex worker would give the money back just because a guy had good sex game especially one with a pimp. He would be angry with all of them and tell them they have to work twice as hard to get the money that they gave away and knowing Petyr Baelish he would most likely slapped them up. No!

That was some huge bullshit if anything. I remember watching and was like really bitches really. It was too funny because it was too ridic 

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Bruh this look wasn’t it. Defending anime child porn? Bc you don’t see ‘em as teens anymore? 👀 Admitting to consuming CP??? Why would you ever admit that? You can be as nuanced as you want but all I hear is “I look at cp and it’s cool 🤷‍♀️”.

Every time you get a comment from someone saying they’re CSA and they liked your vid just know that there are CSA survivors who have mentally marked you as unsafe.

We’re told by the internet that entering spaces where children are being sexualized is actually good for CSA survivors because it helps us “cope”.

Humans aren’t meant to cope firstly, we meant to live.

But more importantly, it is that much harder to heal from CSA when one is steeped in the sexualization of children as a kink or just consuming CP of anime boys that could be adults but aren’t.

Doing stuff in the bedroom with one’s partner is encouraged by therapy but actually seeking that stuff is incredibly harmful.

You are perpetuating that harm because you NEED to ship.

That’s what I got most of all from your vid, you need to ship more than you don’t need to consume CP of anime boys and you’re okay with that I guess.

I just got tired of seeing all the comments telling you your take is so nuanced when in reality it was just a selfish take. You made a movie length vid to excuse yourself.

I went back and forth about how to/or if I even should respond to this since I feel like there is nothing I can say that will mean anything since this is what you got out of my video, but since I got two asks like this I'm just going to say the following:

I have been a twelve year old Black girl having grown men look and oggle at me in the streets. I've been sexually violated. I have people I love in my life who have been raped. The person I spoke to and consulted with this video is a survivor.

I was never speaking from a place of selfishness, but from a place of that there are people who are survivors who have complicated relationships with these thing. There are people who have been raped, are CSA survivors, and do not feel as you do. Does that invalidate your feelings? No. Absolutely not.

But even as you are saying I'm consuming anime child porn, you are putting my comment about looking at two boys from a fictional anime in cuddling pictures on the same level as the sexual abuse of real children.

As someone who was a child and had grown men sexualize me, harm me, and seek me out ... it is just really frustrating to just be labeled as selfish or making excuses because of something that makes up a tiny part of who I am.

If what you got from the whole video is just *that* then I know that nothing I say will make you think differently and I don't think I could be more eloquent here than I was in the video. But I'm just going to say this:

I don't "need" to ship and putting illicit motivations and intentions onto me for trying to speak in a nuance way about something that, as even you said, other CSA survivors say spoke to them, is also harmful. It is harmful because you don't know my history.

One of the things I cut in the video because it just felt really too personal, is that when I was a teenager I got pressured into sharing and sending nudes of myself to men. So when you say that I'm making excuses for CP, as someone who had immense guilt and shame about that, let me just say, once again, no one has be high ground when the intent is to shame.

And ultimately I feel angry that I feel pressured to have to express my own trauma because the projections of strangers. Which I’m sure is how other survivors must feel when asked to do the same by people who mean well but ultimately seem to be saying that I’m surviving my trauma wrong because of fiction.

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"we are not far along enough in terms of LGBT+ progress that we should really be comfortable with having this be a battle that we are so busy infighting" fucking PREACH. Every time i see some twitter gc gay talking about how big or trans people are some kind of existential threat to us just by being accepted or shown solidarity and treat it as if that's the main issue facing the gay community let alone one at all, all i can ask them is how fucking SHELTERED from homophobia have they been that they really think this is something to put as more important than the actual homophobia we still face? How can they be remotely comfortable letting their guard down taking their eyes off of the homophobia that has actually hurt us to focus all their attention on these petty fucking gripes? What will they do when our society no longer abuses people on the basis of orientation or gender and we can just be who we are and like who we like without needing to organize behind it? I know none of us will live to see it but what do they think will happen? How can they seriously MOURN that progress that comes from a lack of abuse all cause it means their own personal labels might not be used any more? I can't figure out if these people have just had easy lives and need to make shit up to feel alive or if they're just so deeply traumatized that they no longer find the will to wish for a world without this abuse but the more i interact with them the more i can't help but believe it's the former

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I have said time and time again that the DCEU should not be above criticism, and this woman here is one of the only people who I have found who can criticize the franchise without getting personal and shares just the same amount of criticism for the MCU. I’ve been binging a lot of her videos. You should all give her a try!

Disclaimer: I’ve been made aware that this YouTuber seems to be acquaintences with M*ggie M*e F*sh, so while I would still recommend her for some interesting takes, please tread lightly.

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@batman-comics @jasonredtoddhood @batbrosbeforehoes @batmanscurrentlover @batfamilyposts @batwan @batmananimated @catwomano @batmanjokerha @batjokescatelog @batjokes

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Assista a "Jane Eyre: Why We Keep Reading It (Feat. Princess Weekes) | It’s Lit" no YouTube

@princesssarisa @sunlit-music @astrangechoiceoffavourites @theancientvaleofsoulmaking

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I just love it when there is a YouTuber who articulates something I’ve said in a way better way than I can write.