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A collection of things, often related to video games, comic books and other assorted geekery. And also social justice. I make games too! You can find my games at spideyj.itch.io
“Why don’t people recognize Link in TOTK” bc everyone imagines the legendary swordsman to be built like Ganondorf and Link doesn’t bother correcting anyone bc being hailed as a hero is like on the bottom of his priorities, which are topped by things like “Bake one of every pie”
Rando farmer: They say that once the noble hero of legend passed by this very village! Isn’t that wonderful to imagine, genderfluid stranger?
Link, 5'6" with 2" heels and wearing a backless dress suspiciously stained with blood: no yeah that’s wild
“Wouldn’t they recognize him bc he’s with Zelda” Everyone interacting with Zelda was like “Wow, the princess!! The princess who saved Hyrule is here, talking to us! Plus some guy with three sets of pronouns who’s building a bomb but more importantly The Princess!! Wow!!”
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Zelda keeps coming across spare genders she doesn’t need and Link follows behind scooping them all up off the ground like a starving trash possum
Someone uses an unfamiliar pronoun around Zelda, and she hears the item pickup sound come from Link
i think the funniest possible star trek viewing order might be strictly chronological.
you’d have to start with that Voyager episode where they go to before the Big Bang, then work your way through every other time travel episode, the one with the whales, and First Contact before you even get close to anything approaching a normal viewing order.
at some point you’d have to watch “City on The Edge of Forever” followed by “Little Green Men” followed by “Far Beyond the Stars” which is about the most tonal whiplash you could possibly get from three consecutive episodes of star trek. I think I want to try this now.
HEY THATS ME IM DOING THAT I HAVE A SPREADSHEET FOR IT AND EVERYTHING
What I’m saying is that JKR, like so many average people, very likely started off in a place of well-meaning ignorance. Then she started exploring new and different ideas being shared online. Some ideas resonated deeply with her experiences as an abuse survivor, so she began exploring them deeper. Then, wham, public backlash. Her trauma is triggered - but so is her curiosity. After all, if something she did or said set people off, maybe she’s onto something. So she starts exploring more. Starts asking more questions. And when she does this in public, there is always backlash. Meanwhile, however, in private, her new friends are telling her “See? This is proof we’re right. This is proof that the world wants us silenced, because they’re scared of the truth, and they really hate women that much.” And what do you know, what they’re telling her starts sounding more and more reasonable, especially since the outside world is becoming more and more hostile.
People keep searching for ways to argue that JK Rowling has always been a horrible person deep down as a way of explaining her recent behaviour.
But here’s the thing: that’s probably not true at all.
Pretending it is discounts the harsher, scarier truth: that even decent, well-meaning people can be radicalised by dangerous, hateful, predatory groups, and given enough time they can become truly hideous versions of their former selves.
It can happen to me. It can happen to you. It can happen to any of us, given the right mix of circumstances. And over the past few years, we’ve seen it happen to one of the most famous children’s authors of our age.
Nobody is immune.
So you’re saying that The Clown wasn’t always… outright evil?
No one is born evil
Good point, but prejudice is best installed at a young age. Why is why I assumed the said Clown was just evil since some early part of their life.
And round and round it goes, until you have a radical.
This is absolutely how radicalization works. I started out “I could never be a feminist, they hate kinksters” (yes, this was a massive oversimplification) and within, oh, i think two years? i was saying “well, i don’t like the overtones of ‘radical feminist’ but what’s so wrong with saying you’re a radical AND a feminist? we need to make sure there’s space for traumatized women who really do legitimately hate and fear men.”
When you become an extremist, you become UNRECOGNIZABLE even to YOURSELF.
This isn’t to apologise for her behaviour or rehabilitate her into some former activist who is still worthy of saving; it’s to contextualise her recent descent into TERFdom compared to her previous political stances she’s openly held. She was probably never going to be a staunch ally for equality and diversity, and yes, a lot of the HP series were very problematic in retrospect, but she could very easily have gone the other way and at the very least turned out to be less of a bigoted shitbag she is now. The fact that her politics in late 2000′s/early 2010′s were similar to so many people who are now activists and organisers for queer, BIPOC and vulnerable communities should tell us to be all the more careful about radfem ideology and transphobia in progressive spaces.
It’s comforting to say “we should have known in hindsight that she was always going to become a TERF, the early signs were all there!” but that’s also not true. We have to recognise that the toxic ideology, the active harm she chooses to participate in, was a deliberate choice; this was a path she chose to go down, not one that was pre-determined for her. It’s also an easy way to separate ourselves from being critical of radfem influence; “JKR was always a right-wing bigot and that’s why she became indoctrinated with radfem bullshit. I’m not a right-wing bigot, therefore unlike her, I will never fall for radfem bullshit.”
People who become radicalised, including those to become radfems, were not always irredeemable right-winger proto-Conservatives doomed for extremism and hatred, and that’s the point. The revisionist idea that she was always beyond salvaging erases how TERFs recruit people (especially vulnerable, impressionable people) in queer, progressive and liberal circles and how easily their dogwhistles can go undetected. The idea that JKR was already a closet right-winger from the get-go and therefore could never have been a good person is ultimately unhelpful because all it does it separate from the reality of how radfem doctrine spreads. TERFs sell their own toxic, harmful views packaged as progressive ideas as part of their strategy and that’s why their ideology is dangerous and requires constant vigilance to drive out.
This is ignoring all of the racism, classism, fatphobia and queer erasure that are IN THE TEXT. I agree with an underlying point that there can be an evolution and that she made a choice, but she had already made similar choices long before, that white fandom was oblivious to because of privilege.
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