welcome to hell [...] bisexual // sapphic // transmasc demiboy // he/him/his they/them/theirs xe/xem/xyr // @downbytheriversside and @sorry-i-panicked are my favourite people in the world // multi fandom // this blog is very messy i dont give a SHIT about aesthetic other than my theme. fuck you bye /affectionate
hi, my name isaiden, axton, alex, wylie or leo !!! i’m bisexual(but taken :3), i’m genderfluid and i use any pronouns. i swear a lot, and i also use caps a lot. I USE THE F SLUR. SORRY NOT SORRY. i’m an ENTP-Tor an ESFP idk anymore. i am bilingual ! talk to me in english and/or french ! :D i’m canadian !!! if i send you an ask and it gets reblogged by @geolikesstrangerthings with a follow-up question, that’s me, i just used the wrong blog :’) also don’t hesitate to tag me i WILL respond to them it might just take me a while because i’m lazy :’))
i post about stranger things (byler), heartstopper, wings of fire, wednesday, lunar vacation, mcr, the owl house, dick the duck/parker the platypus, my cats, theatre/acting, red white & royal blue (casey mcquiston), the promised neverland, stardew valley, animal crossing, legend of zelda (botw + totk), mistborn trilogy (brandon sanderson), carmen sandiego, neverwhere (neil gaiman), bluey, percy jackson & the olympians, osemanverse, and other things that my brain isnt currently capable of thinking of.
If the link fails, relevant information: Squatting is not, strictly speaking, illegal in Australia. If the doors are locked and they break it it's breaking and entering, and if the owner asks them to leave and they don't it's trespassing, but if the property looks abandoned, the doors are unlocked, and the owner hasn't shown up to say no, you can move in. And if you manage to stay there for 12 years (or 15 in Victoria), adverse possession, or squatters' rights, kicks in and you can file claim to the house.
Basically, what he's doing is completely legal because squatting laws were specifically put in place to avoid people making empty houses for profit, and rich people are upset and calling him a far-left criminal activist for telling people things they don't want them to know.
mfw I have to pretend for like the hundredth press conference in a row that international laws of war make any distinction between a purposeful attacks on protected people and an open disregard for the principle of discernment
"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.
