#fuck it I'm keeping this shitty idea

[liesmyth]

that one post I rb'd earlier about France and laicité and Macron celebrating Chanukah is still making me made just thinking about it. That came in the same week as Masha Gessen being almost stripped of the Hannah Arendt prize because they wrote an essay about Gaza (incidentally, Gessen is Jewish). I'm just really, massively tired of the current climate in Western Europe where political and civil authorities pay lip service to diversity and pluralism but actually actively suppress diverse voices. Case in point, lots of framing Judaism = Israel while actively making life harder for their Jewish communities.

I'm not eloquent enough to word this properly, but it's infuriating to witness. It's not a new attitude by any means, but it's rooted in racism and xenophobia and I hate that it's getting so much fresh mileage lately. I wish more people (& local press) called it out for what it is.

[actual-corpse]

Saw a YT vid with the title, "Fandom Can't Handle Asexuality"

You're right, they can't... Because it doesn't fucking exist to them.

[neverendingford]

Therapists have two genders:

Professional Asshole and

Well-meaning Incompetent

[blurred-cat]

another of this year's experiements is that i noticed i'm.... "pretending to be normal" as i tend to do in public around my own damn company by myself sometimes? so my experiment is like. not. doing that. being more natural and relaxed in my own presence. not stuffing down the emotions that rise but acknowledging them. not flattening myself. nobody is around to observe me or judge me or criticize me. for the most part i do relax but not to the full extent that i could.

[eosofspades]

i hate how difficult making massive projects is when it comes to art i am having the GREATEST idea for a video game but the only way it can come to actualization the way it needs to be to make it work is if i could get it picked up by a triple A studio

[running-in-the-dark]

the apartment we looked at today was really bad - like, one room was missing half the flooring and they (the landlord) just put carpet over it. luckily it was only the current tenant there, though - she told us about the landlord and that she's... not great. so even if the apartment had been decent we wouldn't have been interested after that.

[feluka]

i'll say it again. every SWANA girlie should be entitled to one free patricide per lifetime no charges no jail time no nothing

[lapis-maid]

kinda fucked up that one big source of dysphoria for me is that I'll never really be able to have or understand the experience of having a period

like i'm sure they suck and are terrible etc etc but, from my perspective, it's yet another insurmountable difference between me and cis women

just another thing i can't relate to on top of the myriad of other shit, and i Just Have To Live With because there isn't a damn thing I can do about any of them

can't go back in time, can't wipe away the influence that the world perceiving me as a guy had on me, can't learn the things you'd naturally internalize from growing up in a world that perceives you as a girl. can't have even the shitty experiences for myself. I just get pills, blood tests, and occasionally get to remind myself of how far I still have to go and how much will likely be forever unattainable even with a decently paying and insured job that I might end up losing anyways

[zerodaryls]

hmm y’know what. i think i’m actually gonna go ahead and be obnoxiously kindhearted.

[spushii]

once again i get invested in a new thing and search out content for it and everything i find is just lameshit aus i couldnt care less about. why would you strip harrowhark nonagesimus of everything that makes me insane about her

[iwantabatlleaxe]

Vent in the tags my beloved OMG THE LIMIT IS 30 TAGS NOW??

[on-wednesdays-we-eat-the-rich]

Just participated in the worst carol service of my life. Here are the Details (totally unasked-for but I gotta let off steam).

There were two adults teaching the choir and the orchestra the songs. Only one of those adults, our music teacher who I'll just call Mr H, was present for the rehearsals at school yesterday and at the church today. He was trying to manage the orchestra and the choir at the same time. While his effort is appreciated, Mr H was woefully underprepared to do all this work and should have asked at least one other teacher to come along and help.

We sang three songs that we'd rehearsed for a few weeks, and four songs that none of us had practised and that some of us (i.e. me) had never even heard in full. (The only reason I could sing O Little Town of Bethlehem was because my class sang it once in primary school and I vaguely remembered the melody.)

The congregation was supposed to sing along with the four songs we didn't know, which helped a bit, but when it came to everyone singing them, no-one thought to let everyone know which song we were singing, they just had the orchestra play the intro and expected us to sing it flawlessly. I couldn't tell which song was which from hearing the intro because they all sounded the fucking same.

Two teachers who showed up right at the last minute, Miss L and Mr B, told me that I wasn't dressed smart enough. For context: I'm a sixth former, so I don't wear the school uniform any more. For this particular event I'd decided to dress in both my smartest-looking and most festive outfit, which consisted of green trousers, a shirt with a leaf pattern, and a red velvet tailcoat (the same one I'm wearing in my profile pic). Apparently the coat wasn't what the teachers wanted. Basically they wanted me in the uniform, which is kind of impossible because I literally don't own a uniform any more and all of my regular clothes are very colourful. Also, what is more formal than a fucking tailcoat?? I didn't change anything about my outfit.

Mr B, who is a bit of a dick anyway, was maddeningly unhelpful for the short time he was watching us rehearse, and spent the whole time barking orders at four singers, who looked royally fed up with him.

Before the performance started, when everyone's parents were coming into the church, I was sitting next to two rowdy younger boys who were spreading themselves out along the pew and squeezing up next to me. My mum noticed, came over to us and told the boys to give me some space. Thanks very much Mum, but that was the most embarrassing thing she's ever done because neither the two boys nor the rest of the choir knew who she was and for all they knew she was just some random stranger coming to tell them off. I wanted to hide under my seat.

Remember those four songs that the choir hadn't learnt and were supposed to sing with the congregation? Everyone was given the lyrics for those songs, but the choir were given different lyrics to the congregation. So we ended up singing them wrong. What the fuck.

[monsterblogging]

"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.

[boatswainscall]

They shadowbanned my sideblog that I rb’d a single nature gifset on earlier too. and fully blocked my access to DMs on both that blog and this one. good fucking lord.

[sesamie]

aha i'm seeing it around again so let's please remember that the "there are two wolves inside you, one is evil, one is good" (and every single variation thereupon created for funny internet meme fandom reference purposes, thank you) is a textbook example of native fetishism and half-assed appropriation - it is a false "inuit legend" created by billy graham. yes, that billy graham. originally he said the story was inuit, then upon being called out in the canadian press, he changed it to a "cherokee legend" because he knew the cherokee wouldn't be able to do anything about it due to censorship of native americans in american media. "so what?? i'm not even using it in a way that references the original! it's just a funny phrase / a tiktok audio / etc!" - the reason i personally hate this fake legend so much is because it was invented to support christian beliefs - the idea of inner darkness and original sin versus inner goodness and morality is a christian one entirely, and not a part of inuit or cherokee beliefs. if you know any damn thing about native history both on and off turtle island you should be able to figure out why exactly it's fucking shitty to compare christian ideals to native legend in any way shape or form, or imply that the two are related somehow, or that natives have always believed in christian ideals pre-colonization, even. and by repeating it as a funny phrase it doesn't really actually take any power away from it like so many well meaning non natives seem to think it does. all it does is keep circulating a myth that further pushes real native cultures (cultures!!! never a monolith) out of society's view!!!

[running-in-the-dark]

feeling like shiiiit right now, awesome!