tired, lonely nights at 12 grimmauld place

WOLFSTAR AS VINTAGE COUPLE PHOTOS WOLFSTAR AS VINTAGE COUPLE PHOTOS WOLFST

dear GOD

Harry and Ginny after Quidditch training, 6th year. What I love about Harry and Ginny in the book is that it’s a reminder that there are still great things like love in the world.

ginny weasley: quidditch player by day, comedian by night

Golden trio 🌟

not to harry potter post in 2020 but the way you all coddle that fictional motherfucker draco malfoy...... could NOT be me!

if your malfoy redemption fic doesn’t have these two scenes then what’s the fucking point

“Come on, you can do better than that!” he yelled, his voice echoing around the cavernous room.

— Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix

Sirius Black - the Brightest Star

Despite the fact I live in a country that is literally ahead of the rest of the world on the timeline, I’m still late posting for halloween…
Well hope y’all had a happy and safe spooky season anyways! 

…hey Harry Potter fans, we’re all in agreement that Dumbledore brought the Philosopher’s Stone to Hogwarts in Harry’s first year as a test to see whether Voldemort was paying attention and what sort of state he was in, now that Dumbledore’s chosen champion was old enough to hold a wand, right?

Like, Harry learns what magic is and it’s time to start moving towards the full and final destruction of Tom Riddle Junior, so Dumbledore has a chat with his long-time alchemy friend who’s been keeping this thing safe for literally six centuries straight, and ‘borrows’ the easiest source of immortality he can find as bait for a trap to lure Voldemort out into the open so Dumbledore can get the lay of the land to prep for the next seven years.  This is canon, right?

This post just passed 50,000 notes, which is way more than I expected when I first made it, and can I just say, the tags and notes are full of so much vitriol against Dumbledore.  People loathe him so much.  I don’t think I ever realized how much before this!

I find that so interesting, because god knows Tumblr and fandom and fans at large tend to love tricksy bastards who play chess games in their heads.  Dumbledore’s far from the first old man who sent other people to die for his war.  He’s not the first character who’s manipulated kids, or raised children to be warriors because he believed they had to be.  He’s a long, long way from the first desperately flawed mastermind we’ve seen.  But god, do fans hate Albus Dumbledore.

And I wonder: how much of that is because we feel like Dumbledore betrayed Harry, and how much of it is because we feel like Dumbledore betrayed us?

Most of us were so young when we started reading the Harry Potter books.  The world was magic and Harry’s home was terrible, and a kindly old man with twinkling eyes and a white beard winked, and seemed to know everything in the world, and we thought he’d promised to take care of each and every child given unto his care.  We thought that meant us too.

There’s a thing that happens as kids grow up, when they begin to realize that their parents and the adults around them are flawed and broken and making things up as they go, and sometimes make very real mistakes.  Sometimes as grown-ups we find ways to forgive the adults that raised us for all the good and bad they did, and sometimes we cut them out of our lives forever.  But there’s always that feeling of betrayal, with the realization that a trusted adult did actually cause us harm–and not just because they used their best judgment and tried their best to protect us and it wasn’t enough, but because they decided something else was more important than our well-being and meant it.

As a human and a character, Albus Dumbledore is fascinating, flawed, fallible, with complicated priorities and a chess board for a brain, and he’s motivated by guilt and big-picture thinking and ego and a very real desire to do good for the world in the broadest possible sense all at once.  As an adult that Harry trusted he failed rather badly, but it’s up to Harry to decide how he feels about that, and Harry has plenty of complicated feelings of grief and forgiveness and self-sacrifice of his own.

We trusted Dumbledore to be the Good Adult.  The kindly man who had his students’ best interests at heart.  And he wasn’t.  He wasn’t what he promised us he’d be, and I think that’s what so many readers can’t forgive him for.

Finally some good fuckin’ Harry Potter discourse.

It has happened.

I have purchased Trans Wizard Harriet Porber and the Bad Boy Parasaurolophus

Will provide updates

IT’S HERE

I’m going to start it pretty soon. I’m for some reason locked out of my student account and email and IT was no help as usual, so what is there to do except read a parody romance novel written specifically to spite J.K. Rowling?

Chuck Tingle has more or less become a meme because of his bizarre titles and covers and because of the Hugo fiasco, but I’ve heard relatively little about what it’s like to actually read his work and I frankly have no idea what to expect or if I should go into this with expectations at all

This book is...surprisingly easy to take seriously as a book. I don’t know what I’m trying to say. But it’s like. A Book and not just an extended joke. Like on some level it’s not particularly terribly written nor does the plot like, completely exist in service to the...whatever humor is derived from the self-aware absurdity of the premise

AFSGFBCHH??

I love that he’s not even described as a humanoid dinosaur. He’s just sexy goth tattooed Severus snape and he’s also a parasaurolophus and we are left to just figure it out

I have to talk about what is going on with the worldbuilding. Like this is a parody. Of Harry Potter. But there’s an entirely different magic system and....everything???

In summary

• there doesn’t appear to be a statute of secrecy type thing magic is just fully integrated with the modern world and modern technology
• Harriet is a wizard, but that means that she creates spells by typing them out in long manuscripts, which on one level is a nod to the book publishing industry but on another level is kind of interesting in of itself
• there’s a??? spellcasting industry??
• there are different types of magic users other than wizards, and they appear to be based on the d&d classes
• or at least, bards exist and they are distinct from wizard
• the dinosaur is a bard
• Bigfeet exist and they are integrated with modern society
• there are sentient motorcycles and no one finds this in any way unusual
• THE DINOSAUR IS A BARD?!?!?!

...Warlocks in this world get their powers from a pact with Chuck Tingle

The fourth wall break is killing me.

The sexy dinosaur is also trans

As much as I love skillfully crafted satire that takes deft jabs at the flaws of the thing it’s lampooning, there’s also something charming about how every character in this book has a name blatantly and hilariously derived from a Harry Potter character regardless of how most of their roles in the story barely resemble anything like characters in Harry Potter.

...You know, I’m not even sure Chuck Tingle has read Harry Potter.

I’m back to reading. Does chocolate milk have intoxicating effects on sentient motorcycles??

...sentences I never thought I’d write

um im lowkey getting feels from this like there are some genuinely emotionally resonant bits in here what the fuck

chuck tingle’s magic system is unironically better than jk Rowling’s I’m sorry

I’m so sorry to sample the sex scene but. “sexualis secondus” just killed me. I have been pronounced dead by this book. im obliterated this is indescribable

I.

I literally have no idea how to describe what I’m experiencing right now. Like this is a somewhat poorly edited parody adult dinosaur romance novel but. It’s genuinely?? Creative?? In a lot of ways???? And there’s a lot of heart to it, a lot of genuine powerful messages about identity and about art and creativity and the fourth-wall-breaking device is...I can’t explain it because that would spoil it but it’s actually pulled off so well?????

This is not like, a humorous joke story this guy did for Being a Little Shit and Spite reasons, it’s like actually in its themes and message a genuine “fuck you” to j.k. Rowling’s transphobia even though it’s this absolutely wild janky batshit story and I have never experienced anything like this in my LIFE

I did not expect my adhd little heart to be touched by understanding of my fears about creativity and writing and its place in my life. Not like this. What the fuck. What the fuck.

FGDHXWGBKVGSSHBIIDQTVJKBSZVYSTVJKJVBXSGHXHVN

Ron Weasley was Harry's James. Ron was to Harry as James was to Sirius. Normally people think it's the other way around because Harry is James' son and the similarities do exist in the opposite way too, but in reality the Marauders parallel works so much better if you see it that way.

Ron adopted Harry from an abusive family without judgement like James did for Sirius. Ron defended Harry at every turn when he was being labeled as a Dark Wizard like James undoubtedly did for Sirius. Those two were brothers in the same way Prongs and Padfoot were. James and Ron are canonically the "mom friend" of their groups.

I have a headcanon that in PoA, Sirius didn't see himself in Ron as much as he saw James with how ready Ron was to die for Harry and how much he took care of him the entire school year (cuz Padfoot would have read and understood the Golden Trio's dynamics quite well when hiding as the Grim).

Harry is his father's son and definitely a LOT like James in terms of how noble and thoughtful he is. He's more than James besides the appearance. But if we're talking just parallels, I see Ron parallel James and Harry parallel Sirius more.

The story of a coward in three parts.

yeah sure say fuck you to jk rowling but dont forget to like. actually support trans women.

• Donate to the Trans Women of Colour Coalition
• Stop using the word femboy
• “Men in dresses” jokes aren’t funny they’re just transmisogynistic. Stop making them and stop supporting creators who make them.
  
• Stop engaging with terfs. it doesn’t matter if you’re proving them wrong, you’re still giving them a platform. block them and move on.
• Install shinigami eyes
• Stop insisting trans women can’t use he/him pronouns or dress “masculinely”
• Stop insisting trans women have to medically transition to be “real women”
• Donate to the homeless black trans women fund
• Read some books by trans women
• Check out the Trans*Scribe category on Autostraddle
• Donate to or volunteer at the San Francisco LGBT Center (they run the Trans Employment Program)

Judith Butler says that J.K.Rowling and the transphobic TERFs do not speak for feminism at large.

If you haven’t heard about Judith Butler before, here is a short summary: She is one of the most important gender theorists in modern times.  

When right wing extremists despair about postmodern gender theory, she is probably one of the thinkers they are referring to (not that they have ever read her). 

She has shown how social structures, language,  the stories we tell and the roles we play strengthen the oppression and marginalization of women. In other words: For her gender is definitely a cultural and social phenomenon, and because of that she is on a collision course with the so-called “gender critical feminists” (TERFs) who want to reduce gender to biological sex.

I strongly recommend that you read the recent New Statement interview with Butler, where she addresses the thinking and the tactics of TERFs in very clear terms. The interview is behind a paywall, but you should be able to access a couple of articles for free.

Still – in case you are locked out – here are some important excerpts.

She refuses to think of transphobic TERFs as mainstream feminists.

I want to first question whether trans-exclusionary feminists are really the same as mainstream feminists. If you are right to identify the one with the other, then a feminist position opposing transphobia is a marginal position. I think this may be wrong. My wager is that most feminists support trans rights and oppose all forms of transphobia. 

So I find it worrisome that suddenly the trans-exclusionary radical feminist position is understood as commonly accepted or even mainstream. 

I think it is actually a fringe movement that is seeking to speak in the name of the mainstream, and that our responsibility is to refuse to let that happen. 

She dismisses J.K. Rowling’s idea that allowing people to identify as they want will be a threat to women in women’s bathrooms.

The feminist who holds such a view presumes that the penis does define the person, and that anyone with a penis would identify as a woman for the purposes of entering such changing rooms and posing a threat to the women inside. It assumes that the penis is the threat, or that any person who has a penis who identifies as a woman is engaging in a base, deceitful, and harmful form of disguise. 

This is a rich fantasy, and one that comes from powerful fears, but it does not describe a social reality. Trans women are often discriminated against in men’s bathrooms, and their modes of self-identification are ways of describing a lived reality, one that cannot be captured or regulated by the fantasies brought to bear upon them. 

She dismisses the idea that the term “trans-exclusionary radical feminist” (TERF)  is a slur.

I wonder what name self-declared feminists who wish to exclude trans women from women’s spaces would be called? If they do favour exclusion, why not call them exclusionary? If they understand themselves as belonging to that strain of radical feminism that opposes gender reassignment, why not call them radical feminists? 

My only regret is that there was a movement of radical sexual freedom that once travelled under the name of radical feminism, but it has sadly morphed into a campaign to pathologise trans and gender non-conforming peoples. 

My sense is that we have to renew the feminist commitment to gender equality and gender freedom in order to affirm the complexity of gendered lives as they are currently being lived.

She does not accept the idea that the term gender can be defined once and for all, for example in reference to biology.

We depend on gender as a historical category, and that means we do not yet know all the ways it may come to signify, and we are open to new understandings of its social meanings. 

It would be a disaster for feminism to return either to a strictly biological understanding of gender or to reduce social conduct to a body part or to impose fearful fantasies, their own anxieties, on trans women… Their abiding and very real sense of gender ought to be recognised socially and publicly as a relatively simple matter of according another human dignity. 

She also says:

It is painful to see that Trump’s position that gender should be defined by biological sex, and that the evangelical and right-wing Catholic effort to purge “gender” from education and public policy accords with the trans-exclusionary radical feminists’ return to biological essentialism. 

It is a sad day when some feminists promote the anti-gender ideology position of the most reactionary forces in our society.

So there you have it: One of our leading feminist philosophers are comparing TERFs to the transphobic extremists of the right. And she is right to do so.

It is important to stress this: TERFs are not representative of feminism. They represent a toxic fringe movement that at this point in time does more to help right wing misogynists than women. 

• Judith Butler on the culture wars, JK Rowling and living in “anti-intellectual times”
• Pink News has also covered this interview.
• Butler criticized TERFs back in 2014, as well, as reflected in this interview.
• Judith Butler: the backlash against “gender ideology” must stop

Photo: Adorno Preis