#this is me telling you that letting go

[no-song-so-sweet]

I want to talk about Harry Potter.

Well. Sort of. I want to talk about Harry Potter in a roundabout way, in that, I want to talk about the reaction my friend group had when shit started really going down with That Bitch Rowling.

Because Rowling is a horrible person. She’s a TERF, a denier of Nazi Crimes, homophobic, anti-Semitic, the list goes on and on (and most recently, has been attacking a trans soccer manager, if my dash is to be believed? Somehow, she just seems more cartoonishly evil with each passing day). But this isn’t about That Bitch Rowling, not really. Or if it is, she’s merely a footnote in the story.

Harry Potter was, and I think this is true for many of us, a large part of my childhood. While the writing may be mediocre at best, it was wildly influential. I didn’t know a single kid that wasn’t hoping for a letter to Hogwarts. It was a Big Deal for a lot of people, and that included my friend group. My friend group, which is made up of members of the LGBTQ+ community. My friend group, which includes a young lady who we didn’t always know was a lady. I’m sure you can see where this might be going.

The day I got a tear filled phone call about That Bitch Rowling was, frankly, heartbreaking. She was mad because a woman she had respected up until now didn’t respect her. She wanted to get rid of her copies of the books, but didn’t want to donate them. I never want to hear her cry like that again. So I made a decision.

I told her to hold onto her books for just a little while longer. I phoned the group. I figured out when everyone could get together for a weekend, and when I had hammered out dates, I packed up my car, and drove the six hundred miles back to my childhood home.

In the passenger’s seat, was my set of Harry Potter books.

Excluding my trans friend, there were seven of us. I had made a plan, and my father had the space to enact it - I grew up on acres of land; complete with 200 year old oak tree, creek in the woods in the backyard, and a massive fire pit.

Nostalgia and youth, I find, paint everything with a rose tinted hue; if Rowling had just kept her mouth shut, I’m sure many of us would have looked back on the Harry Potter series with some amount of shame. But I don’t think it would have suffered the sort of fall from grace that led us to this point.

The fire pit is important for several reasons. For example, it had been the popular gathering place for my friend group of literal decades at this point. Small towns mean that you know everyone from a very early age. We lived right beside the woods, so we used the fire pit to burn the leaves, and the branches storms took down, of which there were many. And when the first six of my friends rolled down the half mile driveway that day, I had already collect enough wood to get a decent fire going.

Six of my friends. We told the seventh a later time. We wanted to be prepared, and anyway, we all had the same cargo (six sets of seven books joined mine on a rickety folding table). I put them to work collecting more firewood (is it really a good bonfire if you’re not risking setting the barn on fire?).

By the time our last member rolled up, I had a fire going.

She had her set of those damn books too.

(There is a visceral grief that comes from being let down by your childhood heroes, and I fully believe that That Bitch Rowling embodies the phrase “never meet your heroes,” because folks, as a general rule, I am not a fan of burning books. But I was prepared to make an exception.)

We burned our copies of the Harry Potter books that day, all eight of us. They were well read, beaten to hell and back, with cracked spines, and dents in corners, and pieces of the pages missing where we had bent down the corners one too many times. And I won’t lie to anyone. We cried. Tears of sorrow and rage, for the piece of our childhood that we were choosing to give up, because to keep it would be to disrespect the woman we had known and loved for longer than we’d ever had those books.

Letting go sucked. But it was the right thing to do.

When they were gone, we put out the fire, went inside, and built the pillow fort of our dreams. We marathoned Star Wars, and ordered too many pizzas, and had way too much soda. We fell asleep playing Risk, because that’s what our friend choose, and in the morning, I made waffles with chocolate chips and too much maple syrup.

I wanted to talk about this, not just because this is a fond memory for me (even though it is), but because one of my coworkers confessed to me that they hated Rowling, and everything she stood for, and they refused to have anything else to do with the Harry Potter franchise, but they just couldn’t bring themselves to get rid of the books.

I said I was happy to host another book burning.

But I wanted to write this down because I know that sometimes it’s hard to take that final step, to leave behind that last thing. So for anyone who needs to hear it, it’s okay to grieve the things we loose when we grow up. Letting go can be hard, but I promise you’ll end up better off. It’s been awhile since things really went downhill, but I maintain that, in this case, death of the author is nonexistent, and it is better to have loved and then lost, than to hold on too tight.

Don’t hurt yourself on the shattered remains of your childhood magic.

[missinyouiskillingme]

[nikkisticki]

RULE

[egophiliac]

don't think I'm not still deep in the episode 7 brainrot. because OH BOY AM I

(also one more extremely, obnoxiously self-referential thing, I'm -- I'm so sorry)

[prideprejudce]

youtube drama is very downplayed when it comes to its impact on tumblr (discussion of it usually ends as rapidly as it begins) so the fact that hbomberguy has been the top trending tag for several days now shows how much of an impact his video essay has made on the writing and video community as a whole. his video has spread so much awareness over the rampant plagiarism issue that has been festering under people’s radar for years now while dozens of youtube “creators” make six figure salaries off other peoples words and research. he effectively took off so many people’s rose tinted glasses and made us all blatantly aware of what an absolute shitshow this problem is now in modern media and how manipulated content has become

[lancteu]

this has drained me of my will to live

[khaopybara]

❝You said if I graduated as a doctor, I could ask you for anything, and you'd give it to me. (...) I know now what I want. (...) I want you.❞

SONYA SARANPHAT as PLENG SADABPIN and LOOKMHEE PUNYAPAT as WAN WANWIYA episode 1 of AFFAIR

[koobiie]

i love boys in a car simulator

the first pic is a redraw of an in-game selfie! here's the original:

[electrozeistyking]

"She's Gone"

This bad boy was started on the third of November, and finished on the seventh. In total, there are thirty panels (all of which were drawn separately).

A good chunk of N's dialogue near the end came to me after I did some improv to figure out what he should say. I have since dubbed it "N's Failure Monologue."

[welcometogrouchland]

[ID in ALT] I've made posts before about Talia/Dick co-parenting Damian moments (will never happen but let me dream) and this came to me in a vision. Took me ages to finish for some reason 😭 and then even longer to post

[missinyouiskillingme]

[jacksnotmyname]

“I’ll save you the pain of watching your demon b die”

Lute thinks it is a mercy to die rather than see the one you care for most die.

Vaggie let Lute live.

Lute saw Adam die.

[egophiliac]

CROWLEY SSR THOUGHTS

there is zero basis for this, but I can't get this thought of my head

I don't know why I decided to draw it this way

[eddieisinlove]

maybe in hotshots the equivalent of buck and eddie actually are divorced and co-parenting christopher. ravi has never felt more validated.

[lotus-pear]

NEW MAYOI CARDDDDS MADE ME SILLY THEY CANONICALLY HAVE GIRLS NIGHT SLEEPOVERS IM SOBBING UEUEUUEUEUE

[tsuchinokoroyale]

Gee willikers I am not good at this game 😮‍💨