blue@diagonlemmy @ blueberry @diagonlemmy.social

Coder, Artist, Blogger (https://fungiverse.wordpress.com/, https://philpape

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1 yr. ago

https://diagonlemmy.social

Its H.P. themed not Rowling themed. If they want to talk about Bad Blood in the literature section, sure. Like on all other literature instances, too. If its explicitly transphobic, its not.

I love to be able to reclaim works from their hateful authors, especially cultural ones. I’m a big fan of Lovecraft, and that dude was hateful. He makes JK Rowling look sweet and kindly. But it’s a lot easier to reclaim the narrative and make it a part of our culture when the author is literally dead.

Agreed. The athmosphere he creates is great but that dude was really problematic.

I understand that HP is important to a lot of people. It was a cultural phenomenon. But we aren’t leaving it behind just because JK Rowling said something offensive. We’re leaving it behind because the author is actively using our consumption to fund hate and campaigning to deny rights to trans people.

Sure, we find ourselves in a pickle, there. On the one hand, she is actively harming people and this will stay this way until it eventually becomes part of the public domain.

However, boycotting Harry Potter also comes as a price that, at least I would argue, also hurts minorities. Because the places create structure, which protects vulnarable people.

Why don't we replace it with something else that does the same? Well, because in my opinion, Harry Potter culturally serves as a mythologization of the digital. People use it to understand the digital world. In past centuries, humans always made up stories and myths to understand complex concepts. The same thing is happening with the digital world and Harry Potter is one of the first to do this. It has a unique and central societal purpose.

That doesn't mean that it can be improved, as can be seen in Hogwarts Legacy, which is kind of progressive, and also still slightly antisemetic, which is not so great, BUT I think overall the books still do much more good for vulnarable people than anything Rowling does against them, if she wants it or not.

So at the end of my line of thought, I always end up with two options: either create something new that does the same thing as H.P. while being more progressive but still hugely popular (which is hard to impossible), or to use H.P. and build on top of it to make it more modern (which is much easier).

What I would like to see more in these discussion is the question how EFFECTIVE Rowlings actions really are and if boycotting doesn't hurt more than it helps.

I think the biggest challenge at the start will be keeping community alive. I know from experience that if you are the only person posting it is disheartening, and it leads to very fast burnout.

Yeah, I think so, too. I fear that Harry Potter memes could play a crutial part here, but I'm not yet confortable enough to enable images. Let's see how it goes ...

<3

Is it possible to separate the creatOR from the creatION? Yes. But not for everyone, and many of those who can’t will see your support as support of their own shitty ideals that match the creators’.

If it would be that easy, yes. But you ignore that H.P. does have a cultural value to it. Now you could try to re-build this, but first of all: it will be pretty hard to come up with something that no one feels offended by. And second of all: it will be pretty hard to come up with something that is equally popular.

For me, this is about post-structuralism vs. structuarlism. The current zeigeist is all about "deconstruction", but if you de-construct everything, you are left with nothing. You need to build something new and that structure will always leave some room to deconstruct.

So I'm for leaving some of these cultural structures even if they are in parts worth overcoming. In case of the social web, which the Fediverse tries to create: it will not work without some kind of cultural structure on which it is build. People don't want to spent time in a non-place, the Metaverse already failed because of that (at least its first try).

Post-structuralism is bad. Its anti-liberal and currently a big problem on the left imo.

Thanks :)

The more the merrier. I will check it out sometime if I find the time.

diagonlemmy.social

Thanks for the tips, they are very helpful.

I think I will exclude "queer friendly" again. It raises some false promises that I think I cannot hold. I like the term “no tolerance towards transphobia”.

When you say “queer friendly”, are you, the admin of the instance, gender diverse and thus directly impacted by Rowling’s transphobia?

No, I'm not. With "queer friendly" I wanted to signal my good intentions here. I don't want to call it a safe space, because I'm not able and also not willing to provide this. Possibly in the future there will be other H.P. instances that are also safe(r) spaces.

So yeah, "queer friendly" is more like a ideal/commitment that I want to try to hold rather than a promise/claim. Or that what was I tried to do here.

If you have a different phrase that could reflect this more accuratly, I will be happy to consider it.

Ok thanks :)

Did this even went through?