had to get this one out of my system so i can actually work
my appologies to everyone i booped
You sure about that?
I mean, just for a start, have you taken a good look at her fantasy creatures lately? A whole bunch of them are straight-up based on malicious and dehumanizing stereotypes about actual people.
Remember the werewolves? And being a werewolf was made into a kind of metaphor for having AIDS?
And you know how AIDS was first associated with gay men? And how conservatives back in the day were claiming gay men were preying on children in order to convert them to gayness?
Remember how Fenrir Greyback preyed on children in particular? Yeah, she put that subtext in there. She was an adult in the 90's. She knew damn well what she was doing.
Remember the house elves? Remember how most of them loved to serve and needed to have a home and a master or else they just wouldn't know what to do with themselves?
Did you know that's literally what slavers in the American South said about the Black people they kept enslaved? Go look up the happy slave myth.
Do I even need to get into the goblins and the antisemitic tropes they're based on? No, folkloric goblins were not gold-hoarding bankers waiting for their chance to stab humanity in the back.
"But the characters are so good!"
Are you kidding me?
Most of her characters are pretty one-dimensional, including Harry. Her idea of making a morally complicated character is giving a tragic past to a bully. Numerous characters are little more than stereotypes. (Looking at Fleur right now.) Literally anybody, including you, can easily make dozens of characters just as good, if not better. (It doesn't exactly take a lot of character designing skill to go, "hey, actually, having a sad backstory doesn't make it okay to bully children" or "hey, maybe I should not base a character on the first stereotype that pops into my head.")
"But the rest of the worldbuilding!"
Sorry, but her worldbuilding is just as basic as her characters. Magical castles and secret passages are stock tropes. Magical people who keep their true nature secret from humanity is the premise of pretty much every White Wolf TTRPG. Most of her fantasy creatures are just common European fairy tale and folklore creatures with shitty stereotypes projected onto them.
I'm not saying "basic worldbuilding bad." I'm saying, you could do just as good, if not better, with minimal effort.
Also there's her magical bioessentialism, where only Harry's abusive blood relatives could provide him with supernatural protection from Voldemort. Rowling thus effectively declared that non-biological family isn't quite real family, and that abusive biofamily can give you some essential thing that a loving, supportive family that isn't related to you just can't.
The Hogwarts houses are one of the most insidious elements of her worldbuilding. The idea of being sorted gives you a little dopamine hit because wow now you have a li'l niche where you belong!
But the actual function of the houses and sorting system and the House Cup is teaching children to see each other as rivals, and ensure that the most toxic views of the upper class get passed on to every new batch of kids sorted into Slytherin.
Hogwarts effectively prepares children for a dystopia where magic serves to distract its citizens from how nightmarishly awful it is. Economic inequality is so bad that people like Arthur and Molly Weasley can barely afford to put their kids through school, casual sadism is just an accepted norm in everyday society, and non-humans are second class citizens. Rowling sorta acts like she thinks this is a bad thing with certain lines she gave to Dumbledore, but in the end, her special boy protagonist becomes an auror; IE, a defender of the status quo. So.
If you've never seen it, Lily Simpson's video goes into even more detail on how the worldbuilding of Harry Potter is actually incredibly fucked up, and how it betrays small-minded attitudes on Rowling's part. There's no separating the art from this artist, because Rowling's rotten values pour out of nearly every page.
Yes, there are many things in Harry Potter that evoke feelings and inspire people, but there's absolutely nothing in it that this series has a monopoly on. You can find those same experiences in much, much better media.
oh yeah im an art blog, heres some WIPs im working on. below the cutoff be aware of: guns.
Enjoy seeing some WIPs that if you talk with me on discord youve 1000% seen.
Wip of V1 ultrakill while i was learning mecha, im GONNA finish this, some day. i swear.
and this is an adopt i brought that now im redesigning into a full character, fell in love with him fr.
reblog to cast level 5 spell: everyone who reads this gets a full night sleep
pixlgirl has been posting generated AI (targeting fandoms) without disclosing it, passing it off as their genuine art and has apparently scammed at least one person into ācommissioningā them. this is a public PSA so yall can block them, and not interact. please do not harass them!
itās incredibly shitty to be disingenuous while posting AI but even shittier to scam people with it 𤢠stay diligent yall
First ever humanoid walk cycle! X3 there are some things I feel I could make better but eh- too tired now lol.
Iāll keep them in mind for next time X3
We need to bring back the bait fish because sometimes it feels like yall can't tell when someone is trolling you
Look at him! He's so cute and he knows that someone posting stupid, brain dead or offensive comments is just trying to get you mad, and you should make fun of them for that.
We as a website need him back in our lives
I love you nine sols
award-winning palestinian children's illustrator baraa awoor writes:
"what use is it to be an illustrator of children's books when the world has sentenced the children of your country to the death penalty, to vanish, to genocide?"
some of baraa's illustrations:
this is an illustration for youssef, whose mother is remembered running desperately into the hospital asking if anyone had seen a "small white boy with beautiful curly hair, his name is youssef," a description which was remembered by millions when she finally identified his body:
this illustration is for young omar, who was hugging his little brother and teaching him how to repeat the shahada after him (a prayer spoken by muslims before their death) as he lay on his hospital bed:
"we want a new year that doesn't kill us or our children, we want it a year without blood, without screaming, without pain, we want a new attempt to get our lives back, or something that resembled our life, even if life is a lie we still cling to it, return life to usāa new year's card unlike any other year:"