sunfloweraro

[sunfloweraro]

i’m home sick with the flu and i just received this email from my father

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is that backgrounds? and special effects? insane...

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I was playing around and decided to swap my ninja desings, so here are Blasian rgb sibs. Maybe i'll do the rest later.

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unreasonably charmed by Pendant in the shape of a ram's head, Eastern Mediterranean, 5th–4th century BC, made of glass

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died and came back right. there was definitely something wrong with me before? resurrection fixed me i think

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what you learn from hobbies:

consistent practice opens up whole worlds of skill that you couldn't imagine

making mistakes in the process of learning is not only natural, it is also essential

activities that you enjoy can give you more energy back than you spent on them

wow everything is so expensive

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Can't leave him out of the misery

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“Do it scared” “do it badly” it’s time to drop the guide for do it alone

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I dont know if anyone has made this one but I think im funny

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why the fuck is it called the xbox 360 what does 360 mean???????????????????

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what a beautiful day to not be in high school

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Hey everyone, remember that being sick or healing from injuries is a hard time for your body. You have to eat a lot and lay still and be kind to yourself! [large neon sign that says HYPOCRITE descends from the ceiling and points at me] Hey what the heck what's this who put that there

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i like the phrases "it's not for me," "it's not my thing," and "i'm not the target audience" because they're the most concise way to express "this thing that you enjoy has merits but idgaf about it" without being aggressive

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happy disability pride month and once again, FUCK lazy subtitles. fuck the [speaks foreign language] instead of actually transcribing the words, fuck shortening sentences and changing whats been said for no reason, fuck censoring swearing in captions but not in audio and fuck anyone who says youre being 'too sensitive' for being upset about a lack of accessibility

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"I know JK Rowing is a terrible person but her books are so good-"

You sure about that?

I mean, just for a start, have you taken a good look at her fantasy creatures lately? A whole bunch of them are straight-up based on malicious and dehumanizing stereotypes about actual people.

Remember the werewolves? And being a werewolf was made into a kind of metaphor for having AIDS?

And you know how AIDS was first associated with gay men? And how conservatives back in the day were claiming gay men were preying on children in order to convert them to gayness?

Remember how Fenrir Greyback preyed on children in particular? Yeah, she put that subtext in there. She was an adult in the 90's. She knew damn well what she was doing.

Remember the house elves? Remember how most of them loved to serve and needed to have a home and a master or else they just wouldn't know what to do with themselves?

Did you know that's literally what slavers in the American South said about the Black people they kept enslaved? Go look up the happy slave myth.

Do I even need to get into the goblins and the antisemitic tropes they're based on? No, folkloric goblins were not gold-hoarding bankers waiting for their chance to stab humanity in the back.

"But the characters are so good!"

Are you kidding me?

Most of her characters are pretty one-dimensional, including Harry. Her idea of making a morally complicated character is giving a tragic past to a bully. Numerous characters are little more than stereotypes. (Looking at Fleur right now.) Literally anybody, including you, can easily make dozens of characters just as good, if not better. (It doesn't exactly take a lot of character designing skill to go, "hey, actually, having a sad backstory doesn't make it okay to bully children" or "hey, maybe I should not base a character on the first stereotype that pops into my head.")

"But the rest of the worldbuilding!"

Sorry, but her worldbuilding is just as basic as her characters. Magical castles and secret passages are stock tropes. Magical people who keep their true nature secret from humanity is the premise of pretty much every White Wolf TTRPG. Most of her fantasy creatures are just common European fairy tale and folklore creatures with shitty stereotypes projected onto them.

I'm not saying "basic worldbuilding bad." I'm saying, you could do just as good, if not better, with minimal effort.

Also there's her magical bioessentialism, where only Harry's abusive blood relatives could provide him with supernatural protection from Voldemort. Rowling thus effectively declared that non-biological family isn't quite real family, and that abusive biofamily can give you some essential thing that a loving, supportive family that isn't related to you just can't.

The Hogwarts houses are one of the most insidious elements of her worldbuilding. The idea of being sorted gives you a little dopamine hit because wow now you have a li'l niche where you belong!

But the actual function of the houses and sorting system and the House Cup is teaching children to see each other as rivals, and ensure that the most toxic views of the upper class get passed on to every new batch of kids sorted into Slytherin.

Hogwarts effectively prepares children for a dystopia where magic serves to distract its citizens from how nightmarishly awful it is. Economic inequality is so bad that people like Arthur and Molly Weasley can barely afford to put their kids through school, casual sadism is just an accepted norm in everyday society, and non-humans are second class citizens. Rowling sorta acts like she thinks this is a bad thing with certain lines she gave to Dumbledore, but in the end, her special boy protagonist becomes an auror; IE, a defender of the status quo. So.

If you've never seen it, Lily Simpson's video goes into even more detail on how the worldbuilding of Harry Potter is actually incredibly fucked up, and how it betrays small-minded attitudes on Rowling's part. There's no separating the art from this artist, because Rowling's rotten values pour out of nearly every page.

Yes, there are many things in Harry Potter that evoke feelings and inspire people, but there's absolutely nothing in it that this series has a monopoly on. You can find those same experiences in much, much better media.

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All joking aside, reminder the June isn't the end of Pride because July becomes Disability Pride Month. Keep supporting your Disabled Gays and Theys throughout the month!

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what ppl defending kids on ipads don’t seem to understand is that there are other ways to keep kids occupied. my mom had a whole bag full of little toys and games for me to play with while waiting in lines at disney world. once your kid is like 7 or 8 they can read a book. they can color. or they can literally just sit there and imagine things. i did that a lot as a kid.