#and I'll admit I gave jk the benefit of the doubt in 2018 re: her liking that tweet! I wanted to give her a chance to learn and grow

[thelaurenshippen]

cw: harry potter, jk rowling, transphobia

I occasionally see posts/get messages about the various harry potter references in the bright sessions, etc. and I've gotten a bunch of new followers recently so just so any new/younger listeners of my shows know:

jk rowling is a terrible transphobe whom I hold zero respect for and I haven't given a dime of my money to her since she revealed who she truly is. I want the whole bright universe to be a safe space for trans people (including the trans folks in our cast and crew!) and if I could go back and remove those references, I would. but I can't! harry potter was an extremely significant part of my life until...well, until it became very clear who she really was. it makes me so sad to think that folks might be finding TBS now and get thrown out of the story by these references, but just know that the people who made the show do not stand by jk, and that in many ways, the show is a product of its time.

#the bright sessions #harry potter #jk rowling #transphobia #I know there's PLENTY to say about the bigotry in the actual books and I think there's a lot of merit to those criticisms #and I'll own to choosing not to see some of that stuff before all this went down bc the books were meaningful to me #(this is not HP specific - another beloved childhood book series that was EVEN more formative to me growing up) #(is also something I've grappled with in recent years bc I think the author is actually probably wildly misogynistic) #(even though he's never behaved badly (far as I know) in his public life - there's stuff in the text) #BUT ANYWAY #it can be so hard to remember that we didn't have ANY inkling of her bigotry in this regard until 2018 #all of the original run of TBS was written before that #and I'll admit I gave jk the benefit of the doubt in 2018 re: her liking that tweet! I wanted to give her a chance to learn and grow #and she did....not do that #but TAMA was written in that little grace period #and then a few references in TCT were taken out during recording bc june of 2020 was when she really started to go mask off #and so we were making changes in real time #we didn't know what to do about quidditch #bc we were like 'this is a sport that people play in college and it's just called that?' #'and it's already canon that caleb plays?' #and it wasn't called quadball yet #anyway not trying to make excuses! #just know that none of those references were put in with any malice #and I guess I *could* go back and rerecord all those lines and replace them #but I know enough about my original audio engineering to know that it woudl be VERY hard to make it sound natural #and idk I do think there's something to be said for not covering up errors in old work #I'm not going to try to pretend HP wasn't important to me #EDIT: I've turned off reblogs for this post #also this is not me trying to tell other people how to approach their own HP fandom #fanworks especially - there's no benefiting jo in that - and I think it's totally legit for ppl to want to take HP as their own!