Rachelcarrot - Untitled

“why do you have a problem with Simon becoming a shadowhunter at the end?”

oh boy. oh man. let’s do this.

The Mortal Instruments book series has a variety of very interesting parallels that sort of portray real life problems in a fantasy world, which is a good way of educating people on subconscious level about how repulsing some of the discrimination nowadays is. 

Yes, I am talking about racism, I am talking about sexism, misogyny, homophobia, unhealthy parent/child relationship, rape and abuse, manipulation- all things wrong in our society.

Take the shadowhunters/downworlders concept. A privileged community, considering itself superior to a group of minorities: a blatant, clear example of racism, which is being called out and fought against.  

That sounds good and what’s even better, one of the main characters (armed with the privileges of being white, male, heterosexual) becomes a downworlder and suddenly, he is apart of a minority too, and it does nothing to change or lessen the values he represents. 

Why, do tell me, was it necessary to not only break every single working rule of the Shadowhunters Chronicles fantasy world and come up with half-assed excuses to not only stop him from being apart of a minority, but also make him apart of the privileged community?

What’s the point of representing the fight for equality 6 whole books if at the end of the day, it is going to be proved that you are not valid if you’re not a certain thing. What’s the point of saying “Downworlders are not less than Shadowhutners” if your’e going to make a downworlder into a shadowhunter so that he is as privileged as they come? What was wrong with Downworlder Simon? Why was he any less than Shadowhunter Simon, if equality is something you root for?

Magnus and Alec were denied their happy ending: their chance to grow old together because if Magnus gave up his immortality, he would die of old age. Following the same logic, Simon should have died without his immortality, because he’s technically a vampire, an undead creature. The author went to poorly explained lengths to keep him alive and make him a Shadowhunter. Why couldn’t Magnus become mortal and stay alive in the exact same sequence is still a mystery. This is not even the case. 

The case is- I do understand that these are cassandra’s characters and she’s free to do to their fate whatever she pleases, but my point is that this plot twist is completely unnecessary and doesn’t really make sense. It literally went against everything she tried to make her books into. 

hey do you think you could expand a bit on separating the art from the artist? clearly you’ve done it with jk rowling but what are your thoughts on it as a general idea?

Okay, but you’re not going to like the answer.

Here’s the truth: you can’t separate the art from the artist. Not entirely. HP Lovecraft was an incredibly talented, but much more incredibly racist man. It would nice to say you don’t agree with his views but you can enjoy his works without that leaking in but.... well, I’m afraid that would be misunderstanding his books entirely.

Consider, for a second, that Lovecraft’s works were horror stories about extradimensional creatures having mutant children with humans; they were about invasions from distant aliens; they were about the purity of quaint, white, American towns being tainted. Now consider how this may have all been influenced by the fact that he just simply despised anybody who wasn’t white. Consider how his opinions on “mixing the races” might feed into this; consider why being unable to maintain the “purity” of white Americans was the scariest thing of all to him.

This extends to Rowling too.

I would love to say we can just acknowledge that she is an awful, racist, antisemitic, transphobic person and then say “but at least her books are good,” because, well, they are, aren’t they? I would say so, for sure. But to suggest that one can separate her from them is.... ridiculous, and it’s an insult to fans, can know and do better.

Consider why an antisemitic woman wrote about a species of goblins who live among us, but who for the most part keep to themselves and are maybe a little discriminated against on an individual level, but also hold all the cards, all the money, run the banks.

Consider why a racist woman would write about a species of slaves who loved being enslaved, who enjoyed working for no pay, and cleaning up after humans, with the only small caveat of that they didn’t want to be beaten. Imagine that only the most radical of their species wanted to be free, and he still spent the rest of his life working for no pay and helping out a little white boy and his friends wherever he could. Consider why the only person in the story who thought they should be free, that they should have rights, was treated as an overzealous joke, who was acting against the wishes of those slaves who really LOVE being enslaved. Consider that Rowling went on to say that she kind of considers that girl to be black, now.

Consider why JK Rowling, an open and proud transphobe, wrote Rita Skeeter as having a large square jaw, thick “manly” hands, and dressing incredibly gaudily with the most obvious fake nails and fake teeth and fake hair and fake everything. Consider why a woman who tweets about how trans women are “foxes pretending to be hens to get in the hen house” might write this Rita Skeeter character to then illegally transform her body in order to spy on children.

Harry Potter is full of Rowling’s bigotry, start to finish. Not even tangentially, like, “oh the goblins are bad, Rita Skeeter is bad, the house elves are bad, but most of it’s good!” because the deeper you dig and the longer you think the more you realise the entire story is based on her prejudices.

Harry Potter pretends to be an aracial story about found family, but if that were true, why are Harry’s distant ancestors important to who he is today even in the seventh book? Why does Harry have to live with his cousin and aunt and uncle? Because magic inherently prefers blood ties. Whilst Rowling was writing a story that seemed to say, “your heritage is not that important and doesn’t make you better than others” she was still writing a story about a boy who got all of his money through his bloodline, who was protected by living with his bloodline, no matter how evil, who was uniquely able to stop Voldemort because his bloodline passed down the invisibility cloak for generations and generations. Any step Harry takes he is compared to his perfect parents who were exactly like him — he looks just like his father, but he has his mother’s eyes, you know! — consider WHY a woman who is racist might’ve written a story like this. A story that on its surface, condemns a blood caste, but still in every step it takes, validates the idea that blood is thicker than water, and your geneological origin is what makes you special.

You can enjoy Harry Pottwr, of course you can. There are fantastic parts. I love a small group of teenagers deciding to become anarchist rebels and train to fight against fascism in secret. I love the murder mystery plots, I love how the series tells kids that it’s a good thing to be brave, and a good thing to fight injustice, and a good thing to challenge the government. But I cannot separate it from its author because it is such a product of its author. All of the structures of the world, the way things work in the universe, are drenched in Rowling’s beliefs, her bigotries. Of course they are: she made them.

Again. This doesn’t mean you cannot enjoy it. But I think we are past the day where we can pretend that disavowing a bigoted author is enough, and that that somehow separates the text from its bigotry. I think we are past the day where we can pretend that Harry Potter isn’t a deeply, inherently bigoted piece of media. Even the bits we love. I think we are beyond the day where we can truthfully pretend to separate it from her, because she is present through all of it. We MUST recognise its flaws. We MUST admit that she is in every part of it.

#sicklittlegames #therapy

Tag the song that made you fall in love with All Time Low 

I fucking love dogs

So one of my neighbors has a lawn Roomba or whatever they're called, and this thing trundles around looking like a background robot in the background of the original trilogy, and ABSOLUTELY BAFFLING THE DOGS.

They have concluded, I think, that it's some kind of prey animal because right after this video ended they decided to crouch down and stalk it, which means I'm 90% sure I'm going to have to stop Arwen from eating it at some point.

Now Caity spoke the TRUTH

I love that the internet saw people comparing women and other alienated groups of people and went, “they’re dating,” and, “they support each other.” We’re improving as a society.

Vote now for Ship of the Year by liking and reblogging your OTP here on Tumblr! Remember, notes = votes, so  be sure to show your favorite ship some love and tune into the 2016 @mtvfandom​ Awards on July 24th at 8/7c to see who wins!

Art by @samkatdiz

Beautiful 💙💕🤍

Rhianna Pratchett confirming her father wouldn't be a """gender critical""" activist (whatever the hell those GCs stand for) if he were still alive