Come on in. No lurkers here or anything. No sir @lurker-den - Tumblr Blog

mademoiseli

The notes are broken. This is what tumblr is all about apparently.

worldheritagepostorganization

World Heritage Post

#legends

lurker-den

Been thinking a lot about Harry Potter lately, specifically about House Elves and how they might have been done better. I have not had much luck. The core of the issue is Rowling's unwillingness to actually address societal issues in a systemic way in her writing. Even something as simplistic as "and then Hermione became Minister for Magic and freed all the Elves and gave them worker's protections and there was no oppression ever again" seems beyond her. And like, she was always going to walk into trouble with this attitude. You just can't depict an even slightly complex world if this is your approach.

But here's the (potentially controversial) thing: I feel that all of the particulars of the House Elves are actually workable if she were just willing to grapple with them. Granted, it would be a much different story if she had, one that not only has to deal with monstrous institutions but the hero's complicity with them, but well, those are the pieces she laid down. If you establish slavery in your world, you've gotta deal with the ramifications. This is now a story with slavery in it, and you've gotta act accordingly.

But like, how strong of a pro-worker message would it have been if the story had actually dealt with this? If it had taken the stance that just because workers find fulfillment in their labor doesn't make their exploitation excusable. Give Winky an arc about realizing the man she thought of as a son thought of her as nothing more than a tool. Make Kreachur a tragic figure who came to see his enslavement as a necessary part of the work he loved. All I'm saying is that this premise isn't as unworkable as I see some people saying. Them loving work above everything else isn't a problem so long as the story can draw a line between loving work and loving oppression.

lurker-den

Ah shit I've just reinvented the Discworld Golems again, haven't I. I'm sure someday I'll find something Sir Terry didn't do better than Rowling, but I guess it is not this day.

#writing #textpost #harry potter #discworld #fantasy

Been thinking a lot about Harry Potter lately, specifically about House Elves and how they might have been done better. I have not had much luck. The core of the issue is Rowling's unwillingness to actually address societal issues in a systemic way in her writing. Even something as simplistic as "and then Hermione became Minister for Magic and freed all the Elves and gave them worker's protections and there was no oppression ever again" seems beyond her. And like, she was always going to walk into trouble with this attitude. You just can't depict an even slightly complex world if this is your approach.

But here's the (potentially controversial) thing: I feel that all of the particulars of the House Elves are actually workable if she were just willing to grapple with them. Granted, it would be a much different story if she had, one that not only has to deal with monstrous institutions but the hero's complicity with them, but well, those are the pieces she laid down. If you establish slavery in your world, you've gotta deal with the ramifications. This is now a story with slavery in it, and you've gotta act accordingly.

But like, how strong of a pro-worker message would it have been if the story had actually dealt with this? If it had taken the stance that just because workers find fulfillment in their labor doesn't make their exploitation excusable. Give Winky an arc about realizing the man she thought of as a son thought of her as nothing more than a tool. Make Kreachur a tragic figure who came to see his enslavement as a necessary part of the work he loved. All I'm saying is that this premise isn't as unworkable as I see some people saying. Them loving work above everything else isn't a problem so long as the story can draw a line between loving work and loving oppression.

#writing #textpost #harry potter #fantasy

janrockart

Planescape: Conquest

Epilogue: And so it came to pass that Vlaakith, last of her name, was deposed and executed by Prince Orpheus' decree. It was Lae'zel's sword that drank of her lich-pus and it grew in its thirst since. Satiety could only be achieved through pacification of the many planes. Worlds quaked and illithid heads rolled and in the glorious end all were united in the githyanki emperor's serenity. Or so the slates say.

Supreme Kith'rak Lae'zel found little time away from her duties, although flashes of light and a pair of visitors were reported to periodically appear at a cozy log cabin, somewhere in the Trielta highlands.

#nsfw #art #fantasy #bg3

charnel-grounds

Margo Kai, Untitled

graphite & charcoal on paper, 2023

#art #dark

deadgenerations

SPEW though is such an insane plot line in Harry Potter. actually shockingly regressive. if she wasn't an insane transmisogynist I think people would talk about it more because she really did spend two books on how wokescolds ruin slavery for the enslaved. Winky is literally a fucking Mammy

lurker-den

See, the moment I realized that HP discourse had changed forever was when I saw a post calling out the portrayal of house elves and everyone in the comments emphatically agreeing with it. My first thought was "oh, so we're acknowledging that now?"

People ignored this shit for so long. I don't remember very many people actually trying to defend it (the few that did failed miserably), but it was something you just didn't talk about. Even when Rowling started making cringe additions to the lore (god, remember when that was why she was controversial?) and it became fashionable to rag on her worldbuilding, it was still considered in poor taste to pry too harshly into the house elf thing. Or the goblin thing. Or the squib thing. Or any of the other things. Because everyone still liked Rowling back then, and so they excused it. Sure, if you thought about it it wasn't great, but it was hardly considered a fatal flaw with the series.

And then Rowling went off the deep end and everything changed overnight. People blew right past acknowledging the dodgy aspects of the series and started declaring them evidence that the books had always been trash and Rowling had always been evil. Suddenly, it was the good aspects of the series you'd get backlash for bringing up.

IDK what I'm trying to say here. It's not like the house elf thing and all the other things aren't major flaws with the books, and I'm certainly not saying you shouldn't boycott Harry Potter and anything else that funnels money to that ghoul. I guess I'm just really frustrated with this approach to literary criticism that bases its entire view of a work on its view of the creator. The view that excuses a book's flaws because it likes who wrote it right up until it doesn't. The view that judges a person's morality by that of the people who made the media they like. I just think that it's a really unhealthy way to interact with media and I really wish the community at large could criticize and boycott JK without engaging in it.

derinthescarletpescatarian

I agree that the way we criticise or give grace to aspects of a series shouldn't depend on whether it's fashionable to love or hate the creator. However, I did not experience this at all. I remember people criticising the house elf thing and the racism and the creepy rape culture stuff from the start. People were always pointing out how love potions and boys being preyed on by girls being written as a joke were creepy, and that the negative framing of SPEW and the house elves being oh-so-happy slaves was awful, and the antisemeticism of the goblins and that the wizard justice system sucked in ways that the series never acknowledged, and the whole framing of Slytherin House and indeed the personality-based house system itself was fucked, and a million other things, long before Rowling even started adding cringy (and frequently racist) new lore. Those discussions were popular from the start.

The main change that I noticed was the dropping of talking of positive aspects of the series. It was generally accepted that Rowling's world was terrible and her worldbuilding was shit, and full of any number of horrible implications, but her line-by-line and paragraph-by-paragraph writing was very good. The big change that I noticed was that writing advice bloggers (the ones in progressive circles, that is) used to use a lot of Harry Potter examples to make their points on skillful paragraph construction, forshadowing and information communication, and the more openly horrible she became, the more they started using other examples instead. The positive discussions disappeared, but the negative ones were there (and extremely popular and productive discussions) from the beginning, people didn't start talking about them after she became openly horrible.

lurker-den

I'd wager you were deeper into the discourse side of the fandom. I might be talking way too authoritatively given I was always a casual fan at best as well as being very late to the scene due to not being terribly online most of my life. But I'm pretty sure I'm not talking out of my ass here when I say this was a thing, at least in the less serious side of the fandom. I definitely felt the discussion around it was weirdly avoidant when I first started interacting with the community. Maybe it was a Reddit thing, maybe I exclusively interacted with stan accounts, I don't know. I definitely noticed the writing channels starting to avoid HP examples, though.

This was mostly just to vent my frustrations at this particular way of interacting with media. Harry Potter is the best example I can think of in recent times, and even if I'm completely off base in regards to discussion of the negative stuff I still think the point stands. Public opinion of HP, at least in this part of the internet, rose and fell with Rowling, and I don't think that's a good way to do criticism.

#textpost #writing #harry potter

deadgenerations

SPEW though is such an insane plot line in Harry Potter. actually shockingly regressive. if she wasn't an insane transmisogynist I think people would talk about it more because she really did spend two books on how wokescolds ruin slavery for the enslaved. Winky is literally a fucking Mammy

lurker-den

See, the moment I realized that HP discourse had changed forever was when I saw a post calling out the portrayal of house elves and everyone in the comments emphatically agreeing with it. My first thought was "oh, so we're acknowledging that now?"

People ignored this shit for so long. I don't remember very many people actually trying to defend it (the few that did failed miserably), but it was something you just didn't talk about. Even when Rowling started making cringe additions to the lore (god, remember when that was why she was controversial?) and it became fashionable to rag on her worldbuilding, it was still considered in poor taste to pry too harshly into the house elf thing. Or the goblin thing. Or the squib thing. Or any of the other things. Because everyone still liked Rowling back then, and so they excused it. Sure, if you thought about it it wasn't great, but it was hardly considered a fatal flaw with the series.

And then Rowling went off the deep end and everything changed overnight. People blew right past acknowledging the dodgy aspects of the series and started declaring them evidence that the books had always been trash and Rowling had always been evil. Suddenly, it was the good aspects of the series you'd get backlash for bringing up.

IDK what I'm trying to say here. It's not like the house elf thing and all the other things aren't major flaws with the books, and I'm certainly not saying you shouldn't boycott Harry Potter and anything else that funnels money to that ghoul. I guess I'm just really frustrated with this approach to literary criticism that bases its entire view of a work on its view of the creator. The view that excuses a book's flaws because it likes who wrote it right up until it doesn't. The view that judges a person's morality by that of the people who made the media they like. I just think that it's a really unhealthy way to interact with media and I really wish the community at large could criticize and boycott JK without engaging in it.

#textpost #writing #harry potter

dungeonlust

Art by • Hajime Sorayama

#nsfw #art #fantasy

pokemonarchive

Kyogre (2026) - Ruler of the Skies Illustrator: chibi

#art #pokemon

clytemnestraaa

hi this drives me crazy

canon is what happens in the text. e.g. merlin tries to poison morgana

a headcanon is a fact that you have personally made up as an elaboration of canon. it is your invention. e.g. i think morgana and gwen had a teenage lesbian situationship before the events of canon. or, i think modern morgana would love evanesence.

an interpretation is how one reads the existing text. it is not an invented fact nor is it a headcanon, it is a reading. e.g. i think merlin tries to poison morgana out of misplaced self-hatred. or, i think that one line was delivered with suppressed malice and shows a nuanced relationship.

fanon is the general fandom’s accepted headcanons and interpretations that elaborate or recontextualize canon. e.g. merlin is a badass waif and morgana is a bitch.

these are all different words with different meanings.

#textpost #writing

boobookittenartblog

Marine Protected Areas (1)

Mangroves, kelp forests, remote seamounts - Marine Protected Areas (MPA's) protect vital ocean ecosystems. These ‘safe zones’ for the ocean help fish populations bounce back, support the people who rely on the sea, and even help fight climate change. And the benefits don't stop at their borders; they ripple out into the wider ocean too.

Illustrations by Kelsey Manners Dickson

via: Save Our Seas Foundation

#art #nature

boobookittenartblog

Marine Protected Areas (2)

Mangroves, kelp forests, remote seamounts - Marine Protected Areas (MPA's) protect vital ocean ecosystems. These ‘safe zones’ for the ocean help fish populations bounce back, support the people who rely on the sea, and even help fight climate change. And the benefits don't stop at their borders; they ripple out into the wider ocean too.

Illustrations by Kelsey Manners Dickson

via: Save Our Seas Foundation

#art #nature

boobookittenartblog

Cephalopod Comparison

Here is my take on some of the world's largest described and named fully aquatic molluscs (many prehistoric). Nanaim may look a bit smaller than the Colossal squid because I've made the latter have its "hood" inflated; whether that's their natural form or due to extreme pressure changes when they're brought to the surface.

via: Joli AquaIslander

#art #prehistoric