Latest Posts by nob0dyyimportant - Page 9

"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.

Apparently Rowling hasn't tweeted since her cyber bullying meltdown, and I'm thinking that might be related to Imane Khelif's lawsuit, and now I'm wondering if we can give her an additional gold medal for being the first person to ever get JK to finally shut the fuck up.

Apparently in China peach wood (Along with the rest of the plant) is believed to have properties that repel evil spirits, a little similar to silver in European legends or iron for both European fae and West Asian/Middle eastern Jinn. Taoists sometimes keep swords made of peach wood because of this. This made me realize something. If you took a peach wood stick, and attached studs to it of both silver and iron you'd end up with a club or staff (or mace, flail etc.) that would have the weaknesses of many kinds of supernatural creatures while still retaining effectiveness as a normal weapon (peach is a hardwood and silver's poor edge retention doesn't matter for studs). You could even keep adding new stud materials to get something ridiculous that affects over 120 catalogued folkloric monsters. Since you just need a few little studs you could even get some really expensive materials like meteoric iron (a thumb tip sized meteorite can still cost like 10-20 bucks I think). I could somewhat feasibly make a weapon that affects every monster ever thought to walk the earth, from vampires and werewolves to jinn and jiangshi and even mankind.

Rule

Shit man, this wizard war is fucked. I just saw a guy clap his hands together and say "the ten hells" or some similar shit, and every one around him turned inside out, had their tibia explode and then disappeared. The camera didn't even go onto him, that's how common shit like this is. My ass is casting frostbite and level 2 poison. I think I just heard "power word:scrunch" two groups over. I gotta get the fuck outta here.

What, the forest-dwelling entities with imperfect human mimicry who insinuate themselves into groups of hikers? Yeah, we had one of those. Clocked it immediately, of course. Honestly it kind of fell in that so-inept-it's-kind-of-charming range. We just played along until it'd had it's fill of marshmallows and shambled back into the treeline. We might have been violating some kind of killjoy wildlife contact best practices but what the hell, can't plan around every little thing. Why, what happened to you guys

HUGE TMA SPOILERS FOR ALL SEASONS❗❗

AU where everything is the same except Jon stays the same as he does in S1. No matter what fucked up paranormal event, Jon always explains it away.

Jon: *compels someone to tell their deepest secret* Jon: Obviously I'm just good at getting people to talk ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ You're just jealous I'm actually good at my job

Jon:*knowledge appears in Jon's head*

Jon: I'm just naturally smart.

I think somebody else submitted something to the effect of this but you know what? you get bonus points for the skit

Rewatching TMA and getting to Arachnophobia is a lot funnier when you imagine Jon just having war flashbacks as he reads through this, like, no WONDER the poor man thought that it was some kind of prank

“Can you be haunted by the ghost of the spider that destroyed your childhood ?”

I don’t know, Jon, CAN you ?

au where the 16th fear is homophobia

A while back my pharmacist saw my deadname on my profile and accidentially called it out, he corrected and deleted my deadname from the system so only my preferred name shows up now. There was a crowd of people behind me, so as he hands over the pills he apologized, in equal tone and volume as when he called my deadname and lied saying it's been a long day and he didn't mean to call out -his own- name. I quietly told him it was fine and he didn't need to do that for my sake.

His response: "No, it's my name now."

I went to the pharmacist yesterday, his nametag is my deadname. He informed me he's immigrating and in the process he's changed his first name to my deadname to have an English sounding name. That's why he's now able to get a reprint of his nametag to be my deadname. And repeated, with the intense seriousness of someone who is going to die on this hill: "It's mine now. Not yours. I'm taking." His tone indicated that decision is final.

Bro literally deadnamed me once, and has committed to flat out stealing my deadname. It's his now. Legally. Officially. I over heard his co-workers call him by the name.

sometimes a piece of media just! grabs you by the throat and says, "hey buddy! I'm gonna irrevocably alter your brain chemistry now! have fun with that!!"

and then you just ! gotta deal with that ! you guess !!

Goncharov (1973) dir. Martin Scorsese

“The greatest mafia movie (n)ever made.”

why did you people come up with russian names for what is supposed to be a movie set in italy. what was the thought process here. why does she sound like she walked out of a tolstoy novel

THE TIKTOK PEOPLE ARE SAYING THEY MADE GONCHAROV!!!!!

yes we all know about medieval jesters waging psychological warfare in times of combat, but wait there’s more!

at the beginning of battles they would ride in on horseback, juggling swords or lances, and taunt & bait  the opposition. soldiers would get so angry they would break rank & weaken formations just to try to kill the fool

Hello. I hope you have the day you deserve.

this was extremely threatening actually

i want to bite God's thumb off

woe, tma quiz be upon ye

honestly the world is so lucky I will never be a time traveler. I'd legit go to some random village in 1339 or smth and be like.

"Hi there, so you know the 7 deady sins and 7 heavenly virtues yes? Well let me introduce to you the 14 fears :)"

And each time I'd go in a cloak with slightly different properties. One time I would go with very gentle eye patterns with a few eyes painted on my hands with some elias bouchard jewelry, and others I would go covered in dirt and with a shovel on my back and each time I would look like and tell tales of each fear until I became a myth of some weird lady who'd tell you of the world with eyes and claws and knives and doors and holes and skies so blue and-

Reblog if you think a woman can be complete without children

Y’ALL HAVE TIME TO REBLOG THIS. IT TAKES LESS THAN FIVE SECONDS.

i know elon musk scared to go out rn and i hope he gets fucking shot dead big time