Are You Ok 😭 Nearly All The Top Venom Posts Have Been Reblogged With Distraught Comments. I'm Just

to summarize: you have the moral backbone of a flatworm if your response every time harry potter comes up is to make it about your inability to give up a book

Let Me Let You Go - SatoSugu AMV

took me several days but i'm happy enough with the results i hope you like it and i'm sorry if you cry ily <3

~~~

Nobara AMV - Go Off (Doja Cat)

the thing abt the people defending that rape game is that they are genuinely misogynistic and are peddling both rape culture and blatant misogyny but they're dressing it up to sound like it's a matter of censorship when it genuinely isn't. you people are just so ROTTED by porn that you think that the abuse, intimidation and subjugation of women is "normal"; it's no secret that the porn industry (ie pornhub, brazzers, etc) peddles this shit so much that you think that rape is normal.

and fandom has contributed to that by, again, normalising it and making it seem as if it isn't outright inherently harmful to glorify, sexualise, and make porn of people's worst trauma; you sit in an echo chamber where rape porn is normal for long enough, and you begin to take on that belief yourself - the same way that if you spend a lot of time around people who enjoy rugby or football, you begin to enjoy the sport yourself.

what you people are saying is incel shit, to put it nicely.

you're sat there saying it's FINE for a man to make an entire game to get off on thinking and behaving like a rapist (and be rewarded for it), and that if women don't like it, then they're somehow evil fascists as opposed to, yk, not misogynists and not rightfully worried about games like that when we live in a world where Andrew Tate is platformed and upheld for his beliefs that abusing and raping women makes you a man. a world where the president of the United States is a rapist.

a world where people like Nigel Farage (who is an actual fascist) outright work with white men who are known abusers of women but then claim that they care abt women & girls just to push more hatred upon immigrants and people of colour and Muslims.

a world where the porn industry can make thousands of videos where women don't outright consent, where corrective rape of lesbians is abundant, where where incest is treated as a NORMAL FUCKING THING as opposed to sexual abuse as the result of grooming.

bc the fact is that you people who fucking defend shit like No Mercy and other depictions of rape as something to get off to, you don't give a fuck about women. you don't give a fuck about rape survivors. you only care about your ability to get off and to wank over people's worst trauma. THAT is what you care about.

you see all those women on tiktok, Facebook, Instagram, twitter, bluesky, Tumblr, whatever fucking social media you use - you see them fucking telling you that shit like No Mercy is wrong, and that it's inherently harmful and that it's misogynistic, and you do not give a fuck.

you only care about your fucking sexual libido, not who the fuck you are harming.

you can harp on about fucking "fiction doesn't equate to reality" and yeah, it DOESN'T. but fiction doesn't exist in a vacuum either, and there's no way that this game was not the product of a misogynistic man who wanted to spread and peddle misogyny as a whole, the same way that pornographic films do when they MAKE incest, corrective rape, and rape films. it doesn't exist in a fucking vacuum, and if you cannot be critical and evaluate where and HOW a fetish is presenting itself, then not ONLY are you peddling anti-intellectualism, but you're also contributing to misogynistic rhetoric and actions bc what you're doing is you are normalising and enabling these kinds of things, even exposing them to children (as Steam, especially, does NOT have ID-verification for age ratings).

do you genuinely think that games like RDR, Fallout, GTA, etc - all of which satirise these things and genuinely make you feel bad abt committing violent/bigoted actions - are ANYWHERE near the fucking Rape Simulator game?

the people who fucking defend games like No Mercy claim that they care MORE abt "real people", but the matter of the fact is that they DON'T. bc if they DID, then they'd be listening to the DOZENS (if not hundreds!) of women across social media who have VERY CLEARLY stated why and how games like No Mercy are DANGEROUS. are TRIGGERING. are VILE and sickening, esp in this day and age where women are subjugated to that kinda bullshit, be it rape threats or rape porn itself, 24 fucking 7 thanks to social media.

you people are fucking disgusting for turning around and outright mocking the (VERY REAL) women who are calling for this game to be banned. bc it SHOULD be. a fucking rape simulator game should hold NO PLACE in society whatsoever under any circumstances.

you people who defend that shit are fucking misogynistic, vile, little cunts.

and just so we are clear: if you are a TERF & see this post, you lot are also misogynistic and vile assholes and do not belong within this conversation either. you peddle the exact same rhetoric against trans women, so frankly, go fuck yourselves and stay away from this post.

And, there's more!

Lord forbid men with white and black hairs have a normal and happy Situationship without it being doomed as fuck :(

A trans character and black character in my seasonal anime bonding over the discrimination they’ve faced??? HELLO?!! This means the world to me. Thank you Watanabe. Always been an ally.

credit

Yo, correct me if I am wrong please, but didn't Hitler rise to power because he promised to fix the German economy and people really liked that so they looked past everything else he was doing??? Like exactly what's happening in America right now???

So many people said they voted for Trump, put a truly evil person in power, because he said he'd fix the economy, and a little voice in my head is going, "Isn't that what happened with fucking Hitler??"

But I've seen no one point that out so maybe I'm miss remembering???????

SPOILERS for to be hero x ep 2

"they were boyfriends! They were boyfriends your honour! boyfriends I tell ye!"

- i yell as they drag me away to the yaoi asylum.

The problem with house elves in Harry Potter.

Typical argument goes as follows: it is bad and irresponsible for an author to create enslaved people who love their enslavement and love their masters because of all the real world parallels to real slavery. Similar arguments were actually made about American slavery and every other slavery before or since. In our world such rhetoric is always propaganda. But in Harry Potter it’s portrayed as genuine.

For a children’s book especially, it’s not a good look. As a children’s book, Harry Potter contains too many dark and difficult topics and without satisfying lessons or conclusions it’s tempting to say – don’t introduce slavery into your story. Don’t create willing slaves, for starters.

But the problem is in the lessons or conclusions part, not the introducing part. And even willing slaves can be explored in interesting ways and really done justice when in hands of a competent writer with good politics.

How so? Well, don’t create such creatures just because. Make them into a coherent metaphor for something. There are several possible options, starting from less fitting:

1. House elves are dogs. Or children.

You can frame dogs as voluntary slaves if you don’t know much about dogs. Unlike house elves, they are perfectly independent creatures that do not have an inborn desire to obey humans. They need to be trained and even then they can be very stubborn and do not appreciate or even tolerate abuse like house elves do. Dogs are more like children. You have the position of authority over them but that makes you responsible and it is your job to make them happy and occupied.

But if you are really committed, you can frame childhood as slavery too. Being a child or a pet is a vulnerable position to be in. Your labor is sometimes exploited and you don’t control your life much. You know how it is.

So, there are creatures who love their sometimes actually slavery-like situations because they love their "caretakers" and you cannot solve this problem by just separating the two groups. It would be doing everyone a disservice.

But in Harry Potter, Hermione decides to free elves purely on philosophical ground and in her zeal doesn’t consider the reality of their special psychology. Who would even make such a silly mistake?

2. House elves are house wives. And Hermione is a lesbian separatist.

This angle really comes into focus when we meet Winky in the fourth book. She is a female elf and a loyal supporter of her master Barty Crouch Snr. You can very easily read her as this conservative fearful simple-minded wife that just wants to keep peace and make her husband happy above all else*. The only thing that is above the “husband” is her “son", her perfect boy who can do no wrong – Barty Crouch Jnr, a death eater and the main villain for most of the book.

In the beginning of the book, Winky gets "divorced" against her will, by her “husband”, for a public transgression that made him look bad. It’s this situation that shocks Hermione to the core and makes her believe that all elves should be free. But then Winky ends up in the Hogwarts kitchens (where elves live among themselves like in a convent) and we see that she’s devastated, blames herself, becomes an addict and never fully recovers. Hermione never gets strong evidence in the opposite direction and eventually abandons her activism.

This does sound like a cautionary tale a conservative would write about marriage. How feminism is women’s main enemy and how we all are deeply unhappy without the authority of a husband. Again, actual arguments that people make about modern society TODAY.

Obviously, that’s not how the real world works. But even here separatism is a bad solution. Yes, there is a rare house elf that can handle freedom**. There are women (not quite so rare) who don’t want to engage in relations with men. But it would really be doing everyone a disservice to force apartheid between men and women. Most wives love their husbands. Even when they are abusive. Most women can stop loving a particular man, but not men in general. There’s no escape from the biological prison of heterosexuality.

Anyway, those are all bad metaphors that require a lot of stretching. House elves don't look like creatures that evolved to cooperate with humans like domesticated animals or humans themselves. They are too subservient. Such a thing wouldn't happen naturally. They seem to be created (or altered) artificially to accept humans unconditionally***.

3. House elves as perfectly aligned Artificial Intelligence.

House elves have stronger magic than wizards, they think differently from them but still are perfectly loyal and obedient to those they consider their masters.

This is the best metaphor, in my opinion. After all, science is similar to magic. They are both really powerful. And both can be used for better or worse. You don’t have to write sci-fi to talk about any futuristic concept. Those are just aesthetics, really****. And that’s a pretty cool question to ask – if people could create a house elf… would they? Not a far fetched idea at all.

So, when written well a house elf can be a perfectly good narrative device. Introduce them into your story as a metaphor for domestic servitude or AI, an enslaved god in a box. You can even mix those metaphors. Make your house elf a stand-in for a waifu simulator. Make them Joi from Blade Runner 2049. Make it real dark.

Tone it down for a YA audience, of course, but still, why not? There are real life implications here. You can even start with the SPEW plot as well. Show that brute force lesbian separatism or rewriting the code of a perfectly happy and aligned AI is stupid and, in the latter case especially, really dangerous. Don’t separate families on the basis of some abstract philosophical grievance you made up. Don’t kidnap people’s pets. Sure!

What’s next, though? What do you do with a subservient creature you cannot just free?

In the real world we have laws surrounding all of these issues, protecting all spouses, children and pets from abuse. And when sentient waifus become a thing we will have to intervene as well.

How come this point never crosses Hermione’s mind? How come she gives up on SPEW and never finds a third alternative?

A better written Hermione would say: “Okay, Hagrid, I concede that house elves should not be taken from their homes. Fine. But are we really also fine with families like Malfoy’s treating their elves like dirt? Elves do become distressed when it happens, we can all clearly see that. Harry was right to free Dobby, we all agree on that. But do we agree that it was Harry’s responsibility to do that? No authority had taken Dobby away from his masters even though Dobby actively wanted to be taken. No authority had permanently taken the right to own house elves from Malfoys. They can just buy a new one and abuse them as well! I know you don’t have child protective services either, so we should probably start with that but can we at least agree that it's a goal for the future? There’s a pile of clothes for elves who want freedom in the kitchens now. That’s a good thing, right?”

But such a conversation can never happen in Harry Potter, about any issue*****. Because that would imply a systemic change. It would imply that the Ministry of Magic, portrayed as useless and incompetent most of the time, has to do something. And we can’t have that.

Instead we have a toothless morality that we should just all be better as individuals. We should help victims when some injustice really stares us in the face. And we should treat our own elves better. Be nice to your wife. Be kind to your children. Don’t hit your dog. Don’t inflict pain on your waifu simulator. What happens behind the closed doors of your neighbors is really none of your business. Family is the cornerstone of society and the government should not meddle in its affairs.

This is what makes Harry Potter's house elves irredeemable. Not their existence but all the lessons we expected to not learn from them. A competent writer with good politics wouldn’t stop the conversation on “well, they enjoy slavery so we must not intervene”. In a bad situation there’s always a less ridiculous alternative to doing nothing.

_____________________

* There are no sexual relations between wizards and elves anywhere in the books as far as I know. I’m only talking about the social dynamic of traditional marriage, nothing more. (Although in real world sexual abuse does happen in all of the situations discussed here)

** The only one we see is Dobby but even he was not free from his affection for wizards. He just switched from serving his family to serving the main character, not de jure but de facto. He risks his life and suffers abuse for Harry and in the end he dies saving Harry’s life.

*** As far as I know it was never confirmed how elves came to be in Harry Potter. Which is bizarre considering this author's love for writing extra worldbuilding. That suggests to me that she was uncomfortable with the topic herself and didn’t really want to make it into a coherent metaphor. Else she could have given them any origin story she deemed fit.

****I do mean that fully. A spell that reads minds and computer chips in brains can and should serve the same narrative purpose. You can go full Black Mirror in your fantasy novel. That one episode where people’s eyes film everything they see – literally a pensieve.

*****They ponder once that they sort children into houses a bit early and even though it would be a comparatively easy fix they still do nothing. They never do anything!