[ SECRET POST #5567 ]

[case]

⌈ Secret Post #5567 ⌋

Warning: Some secrets are NOT worksafe and may contain SPOILERS.


01.



__________________________________________________



02.
(image is from The Story of Yanxi Palace)


__________________________________________________



03.
[image is from One Piece]


__________________________________________________



04.
[Mo Dao Zu Shi/The Untamed]


__________________________________________________



05.
[Centaurworld]


__________________________________________________



06.
[Hogwarts Legacy]


__________________________________________________



07.
[How I Met Your Mother]
















Notes:

Secrets Left to Post: 02 pages, 34 secrets from Secret Submission Post #797.
Secrets Not Posted: [ 0 - broken links ], [ 0 - not!secrets ], [ 0 - not!fandom ], [ 0 - too big ], [ 0 - repeat ].
Current Secret Submissions Post: here.
Suggestions, comments, and concerns should go here.

Comments

[fscom]

06. https://i.imgur.com/88vdEaV.png
[Hogwarts Legacy]

[(Anonymous)]

You are so close to getting it, so very, very close.

[(Anonymous)]

I genuinely don't know what you're attempting to imply here. Is it, "Yes, OP is a bad person for liking Ender's Game"? Or is it, "Yeah, this is why treating abstaining from certain media as a form of social activism is a bad idea; because almost everyone likes at least one piece of media created by someone problematic"?

If your goal was to be smug and condescending in a way that makes me disinclined to agree with you no matter what you're argument is, congrats, you did it.

[(Anonymous)]

"Yeah, this is why treating abstaining from certain media as a form of social activism is a bad idea; because almost everyone likes at least one piece of media created by someone problematic"?

DA

I honestly think that a ton of the people who have a scorched earth policy toward Harry Potter and anyone who indicates that they still like it, are very young. This was their first huge obsessive fandom, and now they're disillusioned and they don't know how to handle it. Their lives revolved around that fandom, and now... but at my age, I'm thinking "if I aggressively abandoned all media that had problematic elements or was made by someone who did/said problematic things, I'd have nothing left and if I stopped talking to anyone who liked any of those things, I'd have no one left to talk to either."

[(Anonymous)]

For me, it's more about new properties within the world than full scorched earth. A lot of the other "problematic" media I like is over; boycotting it wouldn't accomplish anything, because it's over and done and the shitty creators aren't still making money off of it. Unfortunately not so with JKR, so I feel like that adds another element to the new video game specifically (and makes it a bad comparison to Ender's Game as a "finished" media).

[(Anonymous)]

Yeah-- my problematic author is super dead, so it's... not remotely the same. And with most living problematic authors, it's... still not remotely the same.

The conversation is so different when it comes to hp/jkr, like... I've read and enjoyed one of Orson Scott Card's non-Ender's Game books without knowing who he was, and then after I learned about his views, I had to sit with that and think about what I took from his book vs what he believes, and come to the conclusion that I wouldn't be monetarily supporting his work (around the time the Ender's Game movie came out), and while I knew some people who were excited about it because that book had been a formative one for them as young readers, the reaction to my saying 'eh, I don't like the writer so I won't see it' was pretty much a shrug and moving on.

I don't get that experience with jkr. Even with blocking her on twitter I'm seeing her transphobic tweets, hearing about this or that thing that's racist/antisemitic/ablist/homophobic on top of that, and then having relatives who talk openly about being excited for/spending money on new hp things because their kids loved the story, and surely this is more important than the fact that she wants people like me dead and uses her place of privilege to enable even more violent transphobes.

If I don't bring transphobia etc into things and say 'eh, I don't like it so I'm not going to see the new movie/play the new game', people DON'T shrug and move on the way they do for other books. People insist that this one series is different and sacred and I need to give it another chance when they think I just didn't enjoy it. It's a whole other mess if I 'bring politics into it'.

Ender's Game was never BIG on the level of hp, there's no theme park for it. I've never been in the position of defending WHY I wasn't a fan to strangers, any more than any other book or movie.

[pantswarrior]

Ohhh yeah that last bit. I am not sure I've ever been in a fandom where there was nothing with either the creator or the canon that could be seen as very problematic, except a couple of the very small ones. (And if those had more engagement, I'm guessing someone would have noticed something I didn't, due to differing perspectives.)

Harry Potter seems bigger because... well everything about Harry Potter seems bigger than nearly anything else. The fact that JKR keeps showing up and putting her bigotry on display doesn't help. I know some folks that weren't even HP fans who are just sick of hearing anything from her, and it has to be worse for people who actually were HP fans and used to respect her.

[(Anonymous)]

I'm an older fan who was never really into HP fandom but still feels scorched-earth towards JKR. And honestly, I know all media contains problematic elements and many creators say some problematic things, but there's SO MUCH DAYLIGHT between that and actively figureheading a hate movement. The constant minimising of the really active, really malicious bigotry JKR is serving is honestly something that really gets me. Whew.

[meadowphoenix]

hmm, far be it for me to say that internet anger is logical but the context of "playing hogwarts legacy" isn't necessarily the same as "liking ender's game." and I can't tell what precisely you think is connecting the two. like the plot seemingly validating oppressive stereotypes? the creator's reputations? enriching the creators? wanting to enjoy something that insists on questionable stereotypes? all of it?

[(Anonymous)]

I can't go back and unlike Ender's Game, nor the Harry Potter books and films for that matter, but I can choose not to continue financially supporting these franchises. But you're not a horrible person for not making that choice. Obviously. You do you. Seriously, we're giving that silly rhetoric the time of day? Why?

[(Anonymous)]

Oh, I know most creative people have something seedy in their pockets. And I can... read with an awareness that I'm not always going to agree with what an author believes?

But Blood Libel: The Adventure Game is a step too far for me.

[(Anonymous)]

Also, this is a brand new game. Even if you want to ignore JKR's culpability here, the intended audience is old enough to know better now. This isn't someone's nostalgia for a dead 80s franchise, where the fondness likely developed when they were young and sheltered enough to miss the Unfortunate Implications.

[(Anonymous)]

Adults have been a big part of the HP fandom from the very beginning. It didn't start out as a kids-only thing and then become a nostalgia franchise. I'm sorry I didn't notice all the problematic things in HP when I was in high school through the end of my college career, but neither did my parents, grandparents, peers, online friends who were more flavors of marginalized than I was, or anyone else except for perhaps groups so niche that nobody noticed them.

SA

[(Anonymous)]

And plus, the same online friends and peers did point out unfortunate implications in other things that were popular at the time, some that I'd missed myself, and some that we kept being fans of anyway, so it wasn't like they knew all along that HP had unfortunate implications but pretended not to because they knew I was a bigot who'd tell them they were crazy.

[(Anonymous)]

I'm sorry, but I read these books twenty years ago. Obviously I didn't know about the problematic sides of it when I was 10 and living in the countryside without internet access at home. To me personally, this is a huge piece of nostalgia - as to others are the 80s because to them, at some point, that also was twenty years ago and they were allowed to feel nostalgia.

[(Anonymous)]

What are you being defensive for?

[(Anonymous)]

Literally no one is talking about what you liked in high school. Hogwarts Legacy didn’t come out back then. We are talking about the brand new bigot-flavored HP game. You know the problems with it now, and there’s no need to drag grandma into this.

[(Anonymous)]

If people gave up on every piece of media that had something or someone problematic involved, that would be the end of all media, I think.

That said, I totally understand if people feel the need to boycott or just can't stomach certain pieces of media from certain sources. I believe everyone should be able to choose for themselves what their lines are without it meaning that they themselves are problematic for liking something problematic or problematic-adjacent. But I think awareness isn't a bad thing, in and of itself. And I can see how some people might consider consumption of certain pieces of media to be support for someone problematic and/or an implicit tolerance of them/their views.

[(Anonymous)]

Particularly when those certain pieces of media specifically endorse those views, eh?

[(Anonymous)]

"Something problematic" is not a flat field. If you really can't see any difference between, to grab two examples not related to JKR, Mel Gibson's whole bigotry deal and Stephen Fry's weird opinions about how no women like sex... I mean, seriously? It's so disingenuous to handwave JKR's virulent and active anti-queerness with "well, everyone's problematic" that it's hard to believe good faith.

[(Anonymous)]

"No women like sex" is, I suppose, not the worst opinion a gay man can hold, however misguided... but in my own experience as a gay man, women aren't the ones uninterested in sex so much as I am uninterested in thinking about sex with women.

[(Anonymous)]

ayrt

Okay, but I don't believe that because someone likes Hogwarts Legacy, they are transphobic; or that because someone likes Lethal Weapon, they are antisemitic; or that because someone likes QI (2003-2015), they are misogynistic. I believe you can like things that come from terrible people [like Roald Dahl (racism), John Lennon (spousal abuse), Dr. Dre (physical assault), Jay-Z (stabbed a producer), Norman Mailer (stabbed his wife), and on and on and on] without it meaning that you agree with any of their views or actions.

[(Anonymous)]

But choosing to support Hogwarts Legacy is choosing to fund a virulently bigoted author who uses some of that money to put towards hate campaigns. You may feel sad that this is happening, but that is a consequence of your active support.

And you may say you can choose this action without it reflecting on you, but... how, seriously? You getting to play this game out of all the games in the world are clearly more important than the queer and Jewish people telling you of the harm you are actively causing. How the hell does that NOT tell me something about who you are?

[(Anonymous)]

I'm excited for the game. It looks fun. Although nothing will beat the Lego HP games

[(Anonymous)]

K