#jkr crit

[nock-nox]

aight

I saw this post going around about how participating in the hp fandom is the same as being complicit with the issues that go hand in hand with JKR's ongoing controversies and I just want to say... no.

It is 100% possible to divorce a piece of media from the original creator. You're not automatically transphobic for being a drarry shipper. I'll be the first one to admit that the HP franchise has a ton of issues (antisemitism, exploitation of civil rights issues, two-dimensional female characters, etc!!) and JKR has some wildly transphobic opinions that I don't agree with. But creating and consuming fan content (and therefore contributing to the self-perpetuating harry Potter content sphere) does not make me responsible for her decisions. There is not a single piece of media on this earth that is free from issues. Lovecraft is an insanely popular universe to play in, and it's well-known for having deep roots in xenophobia -- that doesn't mean that Victor LaValle (writer of The Ballad of Black Tom, a Lovecraftian story from the perspective of a black American in 1920s Harlem) is xenophobic for writing something Lovecraftian.

HP fanwriters have lovingly rewritten the universe to address these issues time and time again. And there are things about the HP universe that are interesting and worthwhile. Don't toss the baby out with the bathwater because you're rightfully pissed at JKR.

I think the best things fans can do is think critically about the things that they love and enjoy, and make the conscious decision to make up for what canon lacks. Write Trans!Harry stories. Write stories where the elves violently overthrow their rulers and rewrite the rules of their society. Write stories about goblins that add more dimension to their culture. Unironically, be the change you wish to see.

[jasontoddssuper]

Percy Jackson a better person than me because if some white girl kept constantly insulting me with my intellegence being her biggest target and hitting me but then started getting upset at me for not asking her out and acting like i was 'betraying' her for befriending other girls,i'd wait til she was reading one of those giant book's she's so smug about loving so i could snatch it from her and slam it onto her face so hard her nose breaks

[kittyregime]

Ladies, please be aware that your 20+ years of feminism will never matter as long as you refuse to submit to the TRAs

[softestvirgil]

I find it insane that Thomas “guys gals and nonbinary pals, look i’m an ally to trans people” Sanders still openly likes Harry Potter after JKR has made it public knowledge that she considers any support of her work to be support of her beliefs, which are amongst other things, extremely and violently transphobic 💀

[ryasanda]

i wish as a community we were nicer to females stuck deep in the gender cult…. like i just feel a lot of the responses are vitriol and mockery vs patience and sympathy

[olderthannetfic]

The worst example of "people need to notice/talk about X" being bad criticism is when people act like their being new to a particular fandom, discussion, etc. means everyone else is new to it and don't bother to look at what's been said. One of the most glaring was when in the midst of denouncing JKR as a TERF, people tried to say "and no one said anything about the anti-indigenous racism in her Magic in the USA stuff!" um there were MAJOR news outlets AT THE TIME that did. you didn't look.

--

Goodness. If there's one type of HP crit that hit immediately, it was of the USA stuff.

[yaoist]

as a fellow cringe hp enjoyer (tomarry enjoyer rly) in 2024 - UR SO REAL. say what u will about jkr she deserves it but if ur about to rip into the series at least get its flaws right! theres enough to criticize abt hp without pulling shit out ur ass but the majority of crit on this website is abt this completely made up propaganda that was put out into the world to activate terf sleeper cells

it's so unfair 😔 i have five billion things to complain about but none of them are the things popular posts by people who think they understand million+ words of lore (tbf fandom is like this too). nobody actually reads hp and criticizes it they just say the same surface generic shit from that shaun video over and over. worst example of this was the complaint that there were no disabled people in the series

[absolutebl]

Hi!

I have seen calls by Western (mostly American judging by English accents) fans to stop using the words Tsundere and Seme or other non-English labels related to BL. Critics have stated this alongside requests to stop using terms “top” and “bottom” as they are antiquated and limiting in their use, stuck in a gender binary and the roles that come with it, and hetero-centric.

As a queer, white, American BL fan, I am hesitant to comment on any part of queer culture that isn’t mine. I don’t particularly use the words mentioned but that has more to do with being new here and not remembering them than it does any conscious boycott. I also am hesitant to criticize queerness and how it it is expressed in culture outside of my own. For example, the use of the term “wife” in Thai BL to refer to a male partner. I don’t really know about Thai queer culture so I don’t have enough info to comment.

Anywho, I’m curious what your thoughts are on the Western, queer lens and critique of BL? It seems short sighted to me in my minimal exposure. I’d love your thoughts.

Love your blog! Keep up the awesome work.

seme/uke isn't queer (sorry, but its not terminology that belongs to, applies, or even should really be used by the queers to apply to our community in any way, certainly not applied to other queers *shudder*) its narrative terminology, as in pop culture or lit crit. Which means, by its nature, it is designed to talk about characters and archetypes, not real humans. Avoid applying it to real people and it's fair game IMHO. The problem is fans conflating it (or BL characters, for that matter) to real human beings. And that's fandom's fault, not the syntax. 

I really don't like the pillarization of words, (and I can’t STAND attacks within the community, like seriously don’t queers have actual - ya know - rights for fight for and non-queers to police these days, why all this infighting?) especially when there is NO alternative narrative word choice that doesn't impose a queer lens onto stories (BL or yaoi). These narratives are still, in the main, NOT queer, and not intended for a queer audience. In other words, can a critic of the terms seme/uke come up with something better than seme/uke? Until they do, I think it’s fair to apply these words to narrative analysis and discussion as long as the user defines them and knows their history.

Western queer lens critique/approach is fine IMHO so long as the critic understands their lens, bias, and cultural immersion issues (as in, limits to comprehension and socio-political, linguistic, and regional bubbles). Or makes an honest attempt. 

The point of healthy dialogue around pop culture is to encourage research, linguistic and otherwise, and understanding, travel (actual, mental, emotional, or fantastical), immersion, and openness to alternate cultures, social dynamics, and ways of perceiving the world. (And I do mean perception.) So long as all that is occurring because of these narratives, then the narratives are doing their pop-culture jobs.

With the possible exception of Japan, BLs are being expressly produced for a global market (now) therefore they not only can be but should be critiqued (in the academic sense of the world) by global audiences based in different cultures (and with different lenses). 

BL is pop culture entertainment intended for a global market (as, indeed, is Kpop). It’s like publishing a book and not expecting bad reviews. The thing has gone out into the world to entertain, and entertainment by its nature it is what the audience makes of the experience. The resulting pop culture phenomena IS a dialogue between creator/artist and consumer/audience. Otherwise why put it out into the world in the first place? 

This goes into one of those old arguments about separating the art from the artist. Does the art itself have its own autonomy? Will harry potter always be colored by JKR’s behavior? Ender’s game by Card’s? Lovecraft by Lovecraft’s? 

I am one those critics who believe that the experience of art and entertainment is what the audience makes of it, but that the origin should be taken into account as well. These aren’t mutually exclusive. The nature of intent is in play in both directions. The creator may intend one thing, but the consumer can and will end up reacting to whatever they make of that creation. They will take away what they wish from the experience. They will bring their own bias and life experiences to their enjoyment of any piece of media. Which is why no media satisfies everyone. 

In other words, the creators of the thing and what they intend is in play, but so is the intention of the audience. Some viewers go into BL with the intent to find flaws and to criticize (in the online sense of the word) and many of those are queer folk. 

Also, negativity always gets more online attention than positivity. 

I guess all this is say sure “everyone is entitled to their own opinion,” but if certain persons feel entitled to express that option in public, I’m equally entitled not to give it any weight if it’s ill informed. 

QED 

[mew-tilated-mogai]

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[broomsticks]

today on liveblogging fandom podcasts: @consistentsquash’s meta rec (thanks <3) reminded me i had this one--a rec from @direwolf-summer--sitting in drafts for forever.

(lots of quotes here taken directly from the episode transcript, available at the link above!)

Anonymous writes: “Hi Fansplaining! Thanks for the great podcast. I’ve been wondering about the recent rise of anti-fandom (not anti fandom) takes. In particular the ones that come from ‘inside the house.’ For example, someone who writes fic for a Disney property will say writing fic for that property is capitalist (derogatory) because it advertises for the original property. ... Is there something to say here about fandom and consumer identity, or is this just a new flavor of self-deprecation? … This way of thinking about it is quite different from the ‘fanfic is punk because it’s a gift economy’ message I’m used to, and while I’m not opposed to it, I feel like I am catching on slowly. Is this likely to change how people interact with fic?

some highlights:

the self-protection element of liking problematic media “ironically”. You say “This is corporate trash and I’m trash for the corporation, for you know, furthering this.” HP is definitely one of these; there’s disownership of the original canon and creator on so many levels. makes me wonder about the difference between “canon defiant” fic, anti-jkr and anti-terf fic author notes, DNIs, and ‘ironic’/’satire’ hp crit/hate blogs. definitely worth further thought.

the self-protection element was the most interesting point to me though — how effective is this actually, against external callouts? and what other effects does it have on fans engaging in fandom this way?

•

there is no individual fanfic — or fandom — that is large enough to be equivalent to spending real advertising money! so interesting given that ao3 and fandom in general is quickly breaking containment: atyd in slate! teen vogue! F1 rpf in the cut, football rpf in the athletic! (tysm to @tracingpatternswrites for some of these links!) big fandoms are definitely bigger than some smaller media, but it does tend to scale with the size of the source media so… i’m with them, i don’t imagine this will ever be untrue.

•

the idea that when slash was always reading against the will of the creator, that was more punk, the idea that it’s less punk now that fanfiction cultures now are inherently more …simpatico with the source material, the rights-holders, the creators of the things people are writing fic about -- !! i liked this insight.

… I feel like a lot of this is a reaction to the parts of fan culture that do feel like they just want more, just want more of the corporate stuff, “Give it to me, what’s Marvel gonna do next, who are they gonna cast, are they gonna cast my fave from another giant franchise in this giant franchise?”

this podcast is panfandom and not HP but this was fascinating, especially with the hogwarts legacy discourse in mind. so much to unpack here in re. this “other kinds of fans” concept. if anything what’s most stood out to me is that these divisions are not simple and neat and clean — from jewish people debating whether or not the game is actually antisemitic to trans people finding enjoyment in the game, to how some of the most illuminating jkr- and terf-critical discussions i’ve seen have been in vanilla ‘shippy gen’ canon-compliant circles. how separate are these groups, actually? what is The key defining factor?

•

ELM: And, ah, you know, I think that you would be hard-pressed to deny that the way you acted at Comic-Con was not capitalist. FK: Oh, it was absolutely capitalist, are you kidding? I was, I was, I was, I literally— ELM: [overlapping] Right? No, yeah yeah, you’re not gonna deny it. … I was talking about your enthusiasm about the corporate-presented panels for Star Trek, for example. FK: Oh yeah! ELM: Right? You know, like, I think that there’s no way to be in a space like that where it’s literally being presented by the corporation…you can’t sit there and be like, “Well, the way I engage with this is different, actually,” you know? [laughs] ... Like, there’s no way to deny if you are like, just eager for the next—eager to buy the pants and the jacket, like, there’s no way to spin that. You’re in. Right? You are…

ELM: … in fanfiction fandom, I do think there’s a tension, and I think we’ve talked about this a lot recently, but like, the kind of…the way that certain arguments about the transgressiveness or the punk nature of fanfiction have gotten kind of reified or codified, and that looks kinda weird, when you’re like, super excited about the next Marvel movie or next Star Trek installment or whatever, and you’re like, “My existence as a fan is about like, sticking it to The Man and the gift economy, yeahhh.” FK: Well, yeah, and I think that’s also part of what makes it vulnerable to some of these…like, what I would frankly think shades into purity-culture critiques, right? … Because if you’re already saying “Yeah, I’m committed to all of this stuff, I know that my fandom is a little bit of a trash fire because of X, Y and Z,” then the natural thing to go is to be like, “Well, if you know it, if you know that you’re a trash fire for this, why are you still doing it? You have a choice!” You know? [laughs] You can not do it. And I think that ultimately when you follow that to its logical extreme, which most people are not, but some people are, you get to a place where you almost can’t make art of any kind or engage with culture in any way, because it’s not sufficiently punk, it’s not sufficiently pure, you know, whatever.

super interesting discussion! especially as someone who for various reasons has really very little interest in the more commercial aspects of fandom 🙈

but yes. something i didn’t truly realize until i dipped a toe in some other fandoms that feel much more positively towards its source media and creators/adaptors — and by join i mean not just passively read fic, but actively join discords and participate in discussions and write and rec and comment — is that hp fandom has so much unique baggage. unsure whether it’s size or age or creator-nonsense, but.. yes. i also liked the reference to the no ethical consumption under capitalism thing but also thought it would’ve been important to mention that there is more and less ethical, degrees make a difference, insofar as we are able to tell/ we have knowledge of how the sausage is being made.

•

ELM: … I think that you do see fanfiction fans, or all sorts of kinds of fans, say, like, “God, I feel like I’m giving so much to this show and it’s not giving me anything back.” “You know, I keep opening up my heart and they keep giving me shit, and I’m writing all this fic, it still sucks…” … And the show does not care. They don’t care. … No one is ever gonna validate how much you’re doing for it, and if you’re looking for some kinda validation out of that, or for it to suddenly be good when it’s letting you down, that’s not gonna happen, and so you’ll see people being like, “I can’t do this anymore, I gotta, I can’t keep loving this show that doesn’t love me back, I’m gonna quit,” and it’s like…then quit. You know?

another interesting way of engaging with fandom i hadn’t known about or given much thought to! this, along with the above, … one of my big takeaways is that it’s definitely possible to be too online — fandom is supposed to be fun — good personal callout/reminder!

[rosesradio]

ts crit & the battle of the allegations that all crit is bullying, written and narrated by: a person that is sometimes a little hater, but is now legitimately concerned.

(a post discussing the nature & sources of crit & fan concerns, not contributing to crit)

friendly reminder that, with all the stuff happening in the sanders sides fandom with updates and crit and everything, it is perfectly okay to post ts crit. no one is being a mean, big bad wolf for doing so. the two types of crit i’ve seen are actually very reasonable and important:

1.) crit of the lack of honesty regarding when the next ep will be coming out (though this has since been announced, at least within a bracket). not the time it’s taking--although there have been jokes--but the lack of honesty. crit of thomas’s defensive reaction to when fans asked for a tss update. crit of other weird & bad social media & business practices (i.e. the patreon from ex-patreons, more “adult” posts that are seen by the (assumed) pre-teens in his audience, etc.)

2.) crit of the creators thomas & team continue to endorse, such as jkr and butch hartman. a lack of addressing any of the controversy and continuing to put things like hp in his brand makes fans (like myself) uncomfortable. it’s perfectly reasonable to want a statement of some kind on it, especially considering his lgbtq+-friendly brand.

if you don’t want to see crit against a creator you really like, that’s fine. no one’s making you look at it. but to pretend that all crit is bullying is lumping legitimate fan concerns with essentially hate mail.

to say “thomas is an asshole and the show sucks” would be mean and uncalled for (and also untrue).

to say “thomas should be more clear on what age range of audience he wants, so that way kids aren’t seeing things they shouldn’t” or “thomas should address somewhere on his sorting video that he doesn’t support jkr’s views & maybe donate to a trans charity with some of the ad revenue” is legitimate criticism and not at all bullying. if you think that it is bullying, you probably need to get off the internet and form any kind of relationship and, i dunno, grow as a person.

[jasontoddssuper]

Stephanie Brown grew up poor,was physically abused and constantly told told how worthless she is just for being herself and trying to be a good hero and goes out of her way to uplift women different from her because she sees them as friends and allies she is NOT like Annabeth Chase!

[themonsterblogofmonsters]

Do you have any opinions on international sorcery, or links to other resources? Saw your one post linking over to the wizarding worlds of Asia and thought it fascinating!

Most of my headcanons for this stuff can be found variously across this blog, @thelethifoldwitch, @wandmore and @encyclopaediaarcana. For other areas of the world - you say you've already seen either @mahoutokoro-at-nagumo or @chinesewizarding-xianxia, yeah? So other than that I can mostly just suggest @americanwizarding who's headcanons I don't always agree with but find interesting... but they've been on indefinite hiatus for various reasons up to and including JKRs TERFy bullshit.

And, well... that's kind of a big reason the fandom is dying off - because JKR is a TERFy piece of shit. If you want blogs with various and sundry headcanons... @shafiq28 has some, @livesandliesofwizards, @amortentiafashion, @wizardhistory and @thepostmodernpottercompendium all have thoughts. @wizardingschools is still active I believe but I don't really keep a close track of them. @ilvermornypress has some stuff.

Otherwise, check the site-wide hp-headcanon and hp-worldbuilding tags.

I'd also recommend looking at thoughts from the areas you're specifically interested in. Some have their own headcanons and worldbuilding and others have some very nuanced and well-thought out crit that you won't get from a British or American POV. I'd dearly recommend @ethereal-business-cabaret for this as the one url I can remember off the top of my head but they don't really post about HP anymore.

If anyone has their own recs, please do reply or reblog with them.

[firespirited]

Mum accidentally ended up under a pile on when she said death threats against DV survivors were not okay when JKR was brought up by someone totally ignorant of the past decade's drama and the very angry very sweary 'death to joanne' replies poured in. She was then labelled a terf by some teenagers for asking why their anger was directed at jkr and not the tories in power which made clear she was British and an older woman.

She's very literal and doesn't believe in death threats against paedophiles either, just that they should be locked up. That's just how she is... Readmore for length.

So I had to explain what trans exclusionary radical feminists were, how they labelled themselves & it's not a slur and how outrage online isn't rational and often isn't focused at the systemic issues but fallen heroes also often turn into the biggest scapegoats.

The thing that really got to her was the disproportionate energy people had for hating jkr but not other authors or politicians who are far worse, the energy for outrage but no political/community engagement elsewhere.

I wasn't really able to explain why people have energy to be mad at jkr but don't do any offline activism or even get that angry at politicians, there's a sort of passivity, the sense that the game is rigged I guess but people feel maybe they might have the power to make jkr uncomfortable talking smack about marginalised people in public ??

It's hard to explain, on some level I feel like people enjoy bullying and when there is a righteous reason then it's ok to engage in such "fun". On the other, I'm seeing this strange manifestation of trauma where people will be vicious with people who fail to live up to perfection (and that definitely includes trans women - think Hot Allostatic Load: it's a great article that explains something I've seen play out too many times but also isabel fall and the lady who made the mistake of griping about being locked out of the local lesbian scene and ended up painted as the evil pervert who coined the cotton ceiling - she was just really lonely and rightfully sad) with the stored anger and pain that deserved to be directed at multiple systemic issues and instead comes out like a firehose on a peer who is no longer a 'good' peer so they're the enemy. I'd love to read any psych studies but I'm not sure what key words. I know a lot of people are noticing this: energy for rage, apathy for even minor changes we can make. I've seen multiple "stop with the 'omg look at this terf who deserves to die' when you're just retraumatizing trans people by boosting" in the same way that people of colour had to beg for folks to stop boosting black and brown people being brutalised, just graphically making people relive that trauma but please boost actions and learning instead. You know what I'm talking about? Right.

I know the world is terrifying right now but the way social media has raised folks to channel it is not healthy let alone constructive. I'm not sure how to help and not sure how mum can ever regain her purity in the eyes of the little book group she's in. She doesn't like gender, she's actually long been gender non conforming but doesn't know any of the vocabulary. She's still processing trauma from DV and being in a cult so being told how to think gets her hackles up even when she's trying to be as logical and fair as possible. I'm scared the gender crits will reach out and say "hey we're real feminists who care about women, we don't even hate trans folk, come hang out with us and leave behind the rude meanies".

I don't know where to start. With pretty much all other marginalisations we have had people in our life to relate to. Mum's got lesbian, gay, black, Muslim, jewish, sex worker, disabled and mentally ill friends but zero point of reference for trans folk above 14-15 (a friend's child is autiqueer). If any of her friends came out as trans she'd be eating every book available and ready to advocate for them at doctors appointments but right now it's just an abstract concept that makes no sense when she's never been feminine enough to be more than a failed woman and never been that attached to gender.

How do you explain gender dysphoria to someone who's never experienced gender euphoria?

This is someone who never once questioned the anger behind some black lives matter posts, never took wypipo or 'white woman tears' personally because of course anger comes out messy and of course people don't like to think they're racist and have to deliberately learn to be anti racist and will mess up.

The problem here is that it's very hard to talk gender with someone alienated from anything gender related except misogyny.

I remember back when I got into feminism and she'd given up on all that because it didn't have anything to say for working class women who love men. Womanism had the keys to her heart: loving men + hating the patriarchy that crushes their souls along with yours, not wanting the capitalist dream but a different society.

If you've read this far you deserve dog pics, thank you for letting me rant. I'm going to try and find some books by older trans men and women from similar working class backgrounds (no showbiz) and some intro to Judith Butler. Maybe something on the left eating it's own to explain why these younguns don't know how to just boycott and never listen to jkr again.

Replies are welcome, reblogs not. This is delicate and personal. Please have grace. She's trying. I'm trying.

[shiverdawn]

DNI radqueers, kandiqueers, xenosatanists, every form of para contact except for neg or fluffy para, transphobes/homophobes/biphobes/islamophobes/xenophobes/ableist/racist/any type of exclusionist, anti-endo or anti traumagenic, sysmeds, transmeds/TERFS/SWERFS/TIRFS, pro jkr, part of the harry potter fandom, non-crit hamilton, dsmp, and any vivziepop media fandoms/enjoyers/fans, proship/comship/darkship/profic/whatever you fuckers call yourselfs, MAP/noMAP/whatever YOU fuckers call yourselfs, nsfw/ddlg/ageplay blogs, tcest, yes this includes YOU rottmnt/tmnt 2018 apriltello/aprilnardo/any ship of april with the turtles or casey jr with the turtles you are so incredibly fucked up, antisemite, zionist, pro-israel, anti-neopronouns/xenopronouns, anti-mspec/good faith identities, anti-xenogenders, anti-otherkin/therian/nonhuman/alterhuman/furry, xenosatanist, support pewdiepie, sssniperwolf, vivziepop, wilbur soot, or dream, transID/transX, basedqueer, PRATs, winterqueer, antirecovery, consang/conabusive, lsdqueer, lacedqueer, "winterpunk" (you are a disgrace to actual punk people), use terms like 'narc abuse', waifspo/thinspo/encourage eating disorders, encourage s3lf harm/su1c1d3, naz1-punk/transnaz1, awooqueer, alternatefreak, pro-life, demonize disorders, anti-agere/agedre/petre, anti-educated self dx, gatekeepers, anti-decolonization, fujoshi or fetishizes anything like being disordered/mlm/wlw, etc.

[the-rad-menace]

Solid review of Judith Butler's most recent book, Who's Afraid of Gender.

The language she uses is just as pretentious and unintelligible as ever, and it seems like it wasn't edited competently, if at all. There are tons of incorrect citations, citations of works she doesn't seem to have actually read, (mis)quotes that are not remotely in the context she implies, and a bit of (inadvertent?) plagiarism. She also displays a shocking unfamiliarity with gender critical arguments for someone who is one of the architects of current day gender ideology. You generally expect academics to have at least some understanding of opposing perspectives and research, yeah?

I really hate the ai generated header image of Pope Francis, JKR, and Putin though.