[ SECRET POST #6475 ]

[case]

⌈ Secret Post #6475 ⌋

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


01.



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02.
[Saint Seiya/Knights of the Zodiac]



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03. [SPOILERS for The Righteous Gemstones, season 3]




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04. [SPOILERS for Hell Followed With Us]




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05. [SPOILERS for Ghost: Rite Here Rite Now]
[WARNING for discussion of RL death/loss]




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06. [WARNING for discussion of sexual harassment/stalking]

[Gushing Over Magical Girls]



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07. [WARNING for discussion of JKR/transphobia]
















Notes:

Secrets Left to Post: 00 pages, 00 secrets from Secret Submission Post #925.
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]

07. [WARNING for discussion of JKR/transphobia]
https://i.imgur.com/OO1hRXq.png

[(Anonymous)]

So if someone told you they're the #1 top fan of Chris Brown's music and absolutely adore it and want to gush about the artistry of the work and how it defined their life since 2006 you'd just be like "wow okay sure" and not "oof maybe listen to other music?"

Like, people get it's important to you. People also think it's a little weird and sad that it's so important you cannot let it go or even stop openly talking about it in the face of everything else, and choose to fixate on this instead of all the other great stuff to read out there.

[(Anonymous)]

To the first paragraph... yes, yes I would.

And please stop saying "Read another book." You can read all the books in the world and Harry Potter can still be the most important to you. My favorite book is one I read in high school. I've been an avid reader all my life and have read hundreds more books since then. My favorite is still that one. Does your brain perhaps only have room in it for the last thing you read? I'm sorry.

[(Anonymous)]

I mean, I hate Chris Brown, but I was a MSI teen in the 2000s. Even if Jimmy Urine is abhorrent and I don't regret pirating the music in high school, I'm still going to talk about how it was important to me as a queer kid who stopped giving a fuck about respectability politics back then, how it was a gateway to better music by less shitty people, or the cool people I met via the fandom and "same hat" I get when meeting other 30-somethings who liked MSI as teens.

Like, I know "separate the art from the artist" is often a way to avoid critical thinking about how the artist's worldview affects the art (I'm cringing hard at a lot of stuff from MSI in hindsight and will be more wary of other musicians who utilize that kind of "edgy" humor), but Harry Potter is a cultural icon. It was written before JKR came forward with her views on gender, even if it had issues with race and whatnot before. It's also unfair to act like people's entire lives revolve around this one piece of media when they dare to defend why it can still be important to them.

[(Anonymous)]

I have to agree with the previous commenter. The issue for me has always been the fans whose entire personality is being a Harry Potter fan. And if they find out you’ve read the books or seen the movies, they automatically assume you are exactly like them. I’ve been verbally attacked and even threatened for liking other things by HP fans. There are other fandoms with unhinged fans of course but they tend to stay in fandom places. HP super fans are unfortunately likely to be neighbors, coworkers, the parents of your kids friends or even teachers. They’re exhausting and unavoidable and the reason I’ve been sick to death of anything HP related since before JK’s terf tweets. And I know I’m not alone in that; plenty of people wish the fans would confine their fandom musings/reflections/rants to fandom spaces.

[(Anonymous)]

Yeah, honestly, I *was* a Harry Potter fan; I was deeply hyperfixated on it for about a year as a teenager, and got a lot of joy out of the books, the fandom, and the connections I made in fandom. But even when I was hyperfixated on it in the early 2000s the people for whom Harry Potter "defined their lives" were a little bit not right. People whose entire personality is their zodiac sign or mbti type are annoying; people whose entire personality is their Hogwarts house are worse.

I get that especially for some non-neurotypical people, special interests can feel like they're something you don't have any control over, but I promise, you do. You can shift your interest! You just have to, you know, try. And be willing to step out of your comfort zone for awhile.

[(Anonymous)]

Judy Blume was formative for me, and I'd be pretty bummed out if she turned out to be a terrorist or something. I wouldn't be buying any more of the books I read when I was 12, though.

[(Anonymous)]

Grow up past being a teenager.

Signed, someone who saw a lot of themself in Harry as an abused child growing up but still put it down because trans people mean more than my nostalgia

[(Anonymous)]

Different people react to things differently, and neither reaction in this case is more mature. Your emotional response to JKR is to throw away your love for Harry Potter. This is no more a mature or moral response than that of trans people who still love Harry Potter for how much it meant to them despite hating JK Rowling. Both are pure emotion, and as long as the people who still love HP aren't still supporting anything new and official coming out, telling them to grow up is pure thought-policing.

I bet you love that C.S. Lewis quote about not putting away childish things, until you can use "immature teen who still likes thing I hate" as a guilt trip.

[(Anonymous)]

I hate when people brigade so hard they try to police your own experience.

Yes yes, we all know the author is awful. But some of us can separate the books and still enjoy them while not giving her money or attention. Same with many many other entertainment sources.

[(Anonymous)]

I don't think anyone in this thread is policing anyone's experience or saying it's not real, not allowed, or not valid. They're just responding to people's specific, voiced opinions, which is fair game.

Someone can state that HP is the most important book to them ever and you can acknowledge that may be true for that person, and also think it's sad and an unfortunate situation for them considering the behavior of the author.

[(Anonymous)]

This isn't fucking death of the author, TERF-supporter. You know she thinks trans men are just poor, deluded autistic girls who're being STOLEN and TRICKED? Did you know she's cited in actual lawmaking?

[feotakahari]

In general, I don’t think you can purchase morality. Like if you don’t purchase meat because factory farms are horrible, your fruits and vegetables are probqbly still grown with pesticides and picked under abusive conditions. Unless you can get a truly massive boycott going, capitalist problems need legislative solutions.

[(Anonymous)]

This. I think everyone should try to make ethical purchasing choices, but there is no truly ethical consumption in capitalism. Real change happens from the top down. We can save a lot of rage for people like politicians and CEOs. And JK Rowling, who has, like many billionaires, decided to be an awful person - an outspoken and proud transphobe, supporting legislation in the UK that is harmful to transgender people.

[(Anonymous)]

As an ex-vegan, this is a good point.

[(Anonymous)]

Now if we could get more GE crops approved, we could at least make headway in reducing pesticide use (something that is a bigger issue than expected with organic fruits and vegetables).

[(Anonymous)]

Unfortunately, Joanne is using that nostalgia to line her pockets and uses the money to wage a campaign of transphobia and misogyny. Now if she was dead (I AM NOT ADVOCATING FOR HER TO BE KILLED!), then I can understand ignoring her less savory behavior and enjoying her work, but she's alive and being an absolute asshole who got into bed with white nationalists in a cursed the enemy of my enemy is my friend arrangement.

I feel so lucky I never liked the woman's writing.

[(Anonymous)]

I don't support the notion that if she was dead, we could ignore her less savory behavior. We can hold her accountable, now and always. She's a billionaire and doesn't care about anyone else, in the end.

However, I completely agree otherwise. And same. I was entirely relieved I was spared this particular obsession by realizing how problematic and mediocre her writing was many years ago.

[(Anonymous)]

It's true that these two notions can co-exist. But if people never think critically about what they've enjoyed in the past (or present), therein lies the problem. The point is to think critically about it and grow past it.

If these books defined your life at the time, the only thing I can say is I hope you grew up. Letting a piece of media define you is unhealthy. Also, speaking for other people in this way isn't helpful. It defined *you*.

(Personally, I was an adult when these books came out. I read the first four books in 2003 and realized its absolute mediocrity. Could never understand the obsession, especially from people my age.)

[(Anonymous)]

Tell me you're okay with her pro-slavery, pro-richness, pro-racism shit without telling me because MUH NOSTALGIAAAAAA.

(Let's sit here and think why the red-haired family coded as Irish is poor, live in a crumbling and overstuffed home and has way too many kids where the father is treated as kinda a well-meaning idiot and the mother is overbearing and doesn't care much about her youngest son but dotes on her beloved daughter.)

Nostalgia is just that: nostalgia. It's romanticizing the past without learning from it. And you're proving you care more about your rose-tinted glasses than anything else. I'm sorry, but letting a fictional media from TWENTY YEARS AGO still define you is, frankly, pathetic. Get more likes. Seriously. This is an actual way of being healthy mentally.

[(Anonymous)]

Your problem is twofold. First, and most prominently, is that Jo will not shut the fuck up for 5 minutes (unless she's being sued for potentially life-threatening slander).
Second is that HP fandom was a pop-cultural phenomenon and we have a social protocol for this situation that some HP fans simply refuse to follow.

Michael Jackson was a huge part of many people's childhoods and young adulthoods and was very important to many people for various, complicated reasons. Ditto The Cosby Show/Bill Cosby. If you're looking at more niche/geeky fandoms, Ender's Game/Speaker for the Dead and the Mists of Avalon are examples of definitive series for many, many people.

And yet, most of the fans of those properties, particularly the "online" ones, have had to come to terms with the reality that there's a big asterisk on them now. Virtually no fan is going to make any of those fandoms a major part of their online identity unless they're trying to "say something." It just requires too many disclaimers otherwise. But as long as there's a large and vocal segment of HP fandom that refuses to accept that things have changed and as long as JKR loudly uses that ongoing fandom support to bolster her hatemongering, you're kind of screwed, OP. That elephant isn't just in the room, it's tap-dancing on the dinner table with a lampshade on its head while everyone is trying to eat, and it's too much to expect the people around you to just ignore the elephant when there's bits of food and china and elephant shit flying around the room.

[(Anonymous)]

Yep. It's weird that HP fandom thinks it's the exception.

[(Anonymous)]

I think you really should read another book. It's okay to take good things from it but there is the whole world out there

[(Anonymous)]

I'm only angry because people like me, who have given up Harry Potter, are made to feel guilty about even being sad over losing our love for it. No, we must use every drop of our HP-related sadness for the harm JK Rowling has done to us, and be gleeful to throw HP away.

[(Anonymous)]

Honestly, when I read this secret, I was like "Why is this is a secret...? It's just stating things that are true?" Then I read the comments and was like "Jesus, I guess that's why." I don't know if this is trolling or what, but like... why are commenters saying the same hackneyed thing the secret already addressed? (Secret: "And of course we've read other books." Comments: "Go read another book lol.")

Also like... there is just no way to take JKR's money bags away from her. She is already way richer than anyone ought to be, and determined to use that money to prop up anti-trans legislation and initiatives and platform transphobes, and most people online who are in HP fandom don't actually do things that contribute financially to JKR. Like, I've seen people on the internet angriest at fans writing fanfiction which doesn't actually line JKR's pockets in any way?? Those fanfic writers, meanwhile, will never buy another HP book/merch/game, will not go to the Harry Potter land in Universal Studios, or whatever it is. Their only crime is not swearing off a fandom that other people find too unpleasant or distasteful to continue to participate in. (While letting all the studios and producers and other people who work directly with JKR and who actually make money from Harry Potter off the hook, of course.)

Whether someone participates in Harry Potter fandom is entirely up to them, unless they're showing off all their officially-licensed HP merch they bought or newly-bought HP books or something, which I've just never seen. Nothing in the world turns on whether HP fan lunielovegood87 draws some HP fanart, or whether they decide to keep that username they came up with 15 years ago or whatever. Nothing.

If someone you know is still a big HP fan and seems to have NO idea what JKR has become and what she's doing, then sure, tell them about it. If they're minimizing JKR's transphobia, then call them out for minimizing transphobia. But if someone is fully aware and open how awful JKR is and decides to participate in HP fandom anyway, or isn't even in HP fandom anymore but just has the audacity to be sad and upset about the role HP used to play in their life, just... let them? What even turns on whether they have the exact same feelings as you about HP?