Is It Weird That I Kinda Enjoyed One Is Silicon And The Other Gold?

Mood

My coworker said “every time i see that tattoo this is what it reminds me of” and pulled this photo out of her favorites album on her phone

“We don’t talk politics at thanksgiving!”

Because you cannot fathom the fact that your very existence in this shithole country IS political.

Because you’ve been insulated from reality by your propaganda networks.

Because you don’t care.

So why should we? Why should we waste what energy we have on you who are conned and comfortable. Why should we beg you for affection when you literally voted to kill us?

If you want to pretend politics don’t exist for a few hours maybe you should be alone every holiday until you wake up to your own compliance with fascism.

I'm noticing that [adult swim] is getting more female-oriented nowadays. yolo, birdgirl, them rescuing tuca and bertie, unicorn warriors eternal having a female lead and romantic subplot, my adventures with superman pretty much being a shojo, sailor moon airing on the toonami rewind block, invincible fight girl, women wearing shoulder pads.

considering that Mike Lazzo infamously said that women aren't funny and refused to hire them, I see this an absolute win. he must be sooooo angry right now lol

I wanna see these four fight to the death

Being a Jew in America right now is so bizarre. The president's right hand man endorses a far-right German party that wants to remove Holocaust memorials and ban the sale of kosher meat, members of the ruling party are doing nazi salutes at rallies, and standing members of congress openly repeat conspiracy theories about the Rothschilds and Jewish space lasers. Then you see a news article about antisemitism and it's like "we need to do something about all these college students protesting mass killings."

"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.

Dude I forgot to shoutout the Goldbergs they’re another chaotic family I love!

My fave chaotic fictional families:)