I’m know I’m not the first person to say this, but any newbies on tumblr really need to understand how different this is from a lot of other social media. Particularly tiktok.
I just saw a creator on tiktok reminding followers that it’s actually a problem when someone goes back to the earliest post and watches all the posts chronologically, liking and commenting along the way. The
stupidapp recognizes it as spam or something and then kinda puts a halt on their account? Literally punishing people for positive engagement?? 🥴🤦♀️I’ve already heard people saying years back how they don’t want to be “creepy” and go through a persons blog, liking and reblogging tons of stuff. But think how many more people are going to be worried about it now, thinking they might do actual damage! Most people, especially younger people, are so used to the way tiktok works now. So please, do not ever worry about this on here. Just remember-
You will never do any harm if you go on a like and reblog fest through someone’s tumblr blog! The only risk you’re taking is to make the blog owner weep for joy!! 😭🤣
made a positive meme for u
Okay, but legit, this works. Like, it really, really does work.
This is the most important mental health advice
Sometimes you’re 23 and standing in the kitchen of your house making breakfast and brewing coffee and listening to music that for some reason is really getting to your heart. You’re just standing there thinking about going to work and picking up your dry cleaning. And also more exciting things like books you’re reading and trips you plan on taking and relationships that are springing into existence. Or fading from your memory, which is far less exciting. And suddenly you just don’t feel at home in your skin or in your house and you just want home but “Mom’s” probably wouldn’t feel like home anymore either. There used to be the comfort of a number in your phone and ears that listened every day and arms that were never for anyone else. But just to calm you down when you started feeling trapped in a five-minute period where nostalgia is too much and thoughts of this person you are feel foreign. When you realize that you’ll never be this young again but this is the first time you’ve ever been this old. When you can’t remember how you got from sixteen to here and all the same feel like sixteen is just as much of a stranger to you now. The song is over. The coffee’s done. You’re going to breath in and out. You’re going to be fine in about five minutes.
rereading my own writing is just a constant fluctuation between “damn, girl, you wrote this? (affectionate)” and “damn, girl, you wrote this? (derogatory)”
It’s fine to want nothing to do with Harry Potter now that JKR is being regularly and publicly terrible (I’m listing that way myself even though I don’t want to because the association is just overpoweringly distasteful), but seeing the shift in how people discuss HP on this website to be like, “It seems obvious to me that this franchise was always poorly constructed, derivative drek littered with red flags anybody would notice with a cursory glance - there’s absolutely nothing genuinely appealing about it.” …That’s just very funny, sorry. Like yes that is unfortunately not how the relationship between a person’s moral character and their skills works, but mostly I was alive and had a developed consciousness between 2000 and 2008, so I cannot take this seriously. It wasn’t the biggest literature phenomenon of recent times because it had a uniquely strong marketing strategy, guys.
The books are well written with engaging characters, great worldbuilding, and a story that captured people like no other. There is literally no overestimating the phenom the books were. And no the movies did not make it. They were MASSIVE even before the films. Before the films even came out, the NYT made a separate children’s bestseller list because a ton of people complained that ‘kid’s books’ were taking up too many sports on the NYT bestsellers lists. It’s honestly ridiculous to argue that HP’s popularity was made by the movies. Come on.
And the thing about red flags, is that most things that are legitimately problematic in the books are fantasy staples. JKR didn’t invent the anti-semitic portrayal of goblins. It’s an old as hell trope that’s in countless fantasy stories. The house elves were based on Brownie folklore, even down to the tradition of their freedom coming from a piece of clothing being given to them. People were not talking a lot about the casual transphobia in doing things like describing Rita Skeeter’s hands as 'mannish’ because casual transphobia was so ubiquitous that it was the norm, and that transphobia was often actively violent. I just don’t think it crossed many people’s minds that 'wow JKR described Rita Skeeter’s hands as mannish once in the year 2000, so I think she’s probably a T*RF.’ And this doesn’t make it okay, and it doesn’t mean these aspects of the books aren’t problematic! But it does mean that like, no it wasn’t 'so obvious’ even to MANY progressive minded people. And I also don’t think it makes her a terrible person. What makes her a terrible person is what she’s doing NOW.
The idea that they’ve 'always been awful’ and we 'should have known’ is really and actually just… kind of cowardly? Instead of acknowledging that unfortunately yes, bad people can make good things, people are taking the easy way out and going 'well obviously a bad person makes bad art. it’s ALWAYS been bad, and my brain is so huge I know this’, because god forbid we have a more nuanced view and don’t see the world in the most simplistic terms possible. It sucks when bad people make good art, but you’re not special for not ever liking Harry Potter.
