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terpia · 3 years

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Early Modern Drama Rec List (Non-Shakespeare)

So I just spend a year reading a lot of early modern drama and I thought I might as well put my degree to a good use and make a list of some of my favourite lesser known (i.e. not written by Shakespeare) early modern plays. All of these plays are in the public domain, so it should be very easy to find them online.

Comedies:

The Roaring Girl by Thomas Middleton and Thomas Dekker - a fictional story featuring a dramatized portrayal of a real person, Mary Firth, also known as Moll Cutpurse. Moll was a notorious pickpocket, wore a doublet and breeches, smoked a pipe, cursed, and was generally infamous for her 'mannish' behaviour. And she's a character in this play!

It is open to interpretation how positive the play's depiction of Moll really is, but she does play a very important role in getting the main pair of lovers together and ends the play happily continuing to live her life the way she wants, which is in itself pretty incredible. Overall, just a really fun read.

Galatea (or Gallathea) by John Lyly - a 16th century play that is both gay and trans??? Sign me up! In a village where the fairest virgin needs to be sacrificed to Neptune every 5 years (or he'll drown everyone), two fathers decide to disguise their beautiful daughters as boys and hide them in a nearby forest. While wandering around the forest the two girls meet and, falling for each other's disguises, fall in love. In the end (spoilers for the ending, but this is not exactly a play you read for the plot, lol), Diana stops Neptune, the two girls find out each other's true identities and decide they're still in love, and Venus turns one of them (we never find out which one) into a boy so that they can get married.

As must be clear from this summary, this comedy plays around with gender a lot. To add to the gender cocktail, remember that the two girls would have been originally played by boys. Although the ending was seen as heteronormative by early queer critics, the emergence of trans criticism within queer theory has led to a lot of interesting readings of the play. Well worth a read.

(also, if you have a device on which you can play DVDs and some money to spare, consider buying a DVD of the Edward's Boys production of the play. Edward's Boys is a group that replicates the format of early modern boys' companies, with all roles in their productions being played by boys. I will admit, when I bought a DVD of their 2014 production of Galatea, I expected to watch a glorified high school performance, but it turned out to be so good. All the boy actors were amazing, way better at performing Shakespeare than a lot of Hollywood actors. This just straight-up felt like a professional theatre production, I highly recommend it.)

The Knight of the Burning Pestle by Francis Beaumont - I don't even know how to describe this play other than 'fantastic and fun'. A meta-theatrical city comedy, which starts with a pair of audience members (who were actually two dressed-up boy actors from the boys' company performing the play) jumping onto a stage and demanding to see a different play than the the one being set up. Things get only wilder from there.

A genuinely really funny play. I don't know of anyone who has read it and hasn't immediately loved it.

The Sea Voyage by John Fletcher and Philip Massinger - one of the least well known plays out of this list, which is unfortunate because this play is really fun. Short and sweet, it's a story of a bunch of (surprisingly honorable) pirates, who get shipwrecked on an island inhabited by a tribe of Amazon-like women. Predictably, hijinks ensue. An interesting look into early modern gender relations (apparently the main reason why living without men would be difficult for women is because of how horny they would get? I think Fletcher and Massinger need to take a lesson or two from Lyly).

The Alchemist by Ben Jonson - want to see three assholes con a bunch of idiots in increasingly ridiculous ways? Then this is the play for you.

Jonson's city comedies, which satirize the people of early modern London, tend to be much meaner in tone than Shakespeare's comedies and the other comedies on this list, but in many ways, that's what makes them fun. Viciously clever and at times really funny, there's an edge to the writing that makes it very entertaining. I had a lot of fun reading this (Jonson's Epicoene is also great, if you want a comedy that's even meaner and also has some very questionable gay stuff in it).

Tragedies:

Doctor Faustus by Christopher Marlowe - probably the most famous non-Shakespeare early modern play, and for a good reason. It has everything; pacts with the devil, a melodramatic anti-hero protagonist, homoeroticism (I mean of course, it's Marlowe), and a suitably gory and tragic ending. What more can you ask for?

The Tragedy of Mariam by Elizabeth Cary - this play is more interesting than fun, but I think it's still well worth a read. It's the first original play written in English by a woman. The play takes place in ancient Palestine. It looks at the way Mariam, a Jewish queen, reacts to the news of the death of her husband, the tyrannous Herod (yes, the baby-killing guy from the Bible). Most people seem to be relieved. Except oops, Herod is not actually dead.

A fascinating look at gender ideology in the early modern period, with the play centering around the conflict of a woman who tries to live up to the ideals of a perfect wife and woman, while stuck in a marriage to a tyrant. This play would also be a great read for anyone interested in how gender and sexuality intersected with race in early modern England, because this play uses a lot of racialized language to describe women.

The Duchess of Malfi by John Webster - a classic revenge tragedy. A recently widowed Duchess wants to marry her steward, but her asshole brothers throw a fit. Intrigue and death ensue. At one point a fake wax hand and some fake wax corpses appear on stage.

This play basically reads like a good thriller. Fucked up in a way that only an early modern revenge tragedy can be, this is a fun and thrilling read.

The Changeling by Thomas Middleton and William Rowley - speaking of fucked up. If you're planning to read it, be mindful that this play contains sexual assault. It's a story of a young noblewoman called Beatrice, who wants to get rid of her fiancé after falling in love with a visiting nobleman. To do it, she enlists the help of her villainous servant De Flores. Things end up going extremely badly.

This play can get very uncomfortable at times, but just like The Duchess, it's as gripping as any good modern thriller. Very engaging. The ending is as engrossing as it is stomach-churning, although probably not for the reasons it was originally meant to (reading criticism about The Changeling, it is genuinely shocking and disheartening to see how long it took for critics to start addressing the clear issues of consent in the play). The story also includes a bizarre virginity test that uses a potion which makes you drowsy or which makes you sneeze and laugh depending on whether you had sex or not, so hey, at least that's fun?

Antonio's Revenge by John Marston - ok, so this is definitely the least... good of the plays I've recommended so far, but listen. Do you like trainwrecks? Do you like violence so over-the-top that people to this day wonder whether it's actually supposed to be a parody of the revenge tragedy genre? Are you looking for a reading experience that will make you go 'what the fuck' throughout? If so, this is the play for you!

Very much in the so bad it's good category. Ridiculously gory. The only thing that makes it better is knowing that it was originally played by children (on a related note, I haven't seen this production, but I know that this play has also been played by Edward's Boys). If you like horrible, gory horror movies, you'll probably enjoy this play.

That's it for now! Hopefully at least a few of these plays catch your interest.

Btw, LibriVox, which is an organisation that makes public domain recordings of public domain texts, has most of these plays available as free audiobooks, if you're interested!

#early modern drama #early modern england #book rec #i don't know how else to tag this #i keep spending way too much time on these extremely niche posts #but hey i had fun writing this and maybe it'll end up being useful to someone who knows #alex's boring history corner #kind of???#shakespeare

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vdemon-weeb · 2 years

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DmC tries so hard to be edgy, offensive and nearly satirical, but stopped on halfway and ended up being completely toothless about any of this. It just takes the idea, but never explores it or lead to some conclusion. If not this (and it having any real connection to actual DMC), then the game could have been more enjoyable.

"TV brainwashes you". Not new, but will you show it? "You eat poison in the shape of soft drinks". But will show something but the idea from Futurama? They just teased with ideas of corrupt politicians, government being bribed and blackmailed into doing terrible things, with television being full of lies etc. but don't even properly show it, relying on players to get the idea themselves knowing other media where this was done better.

So, first of all. DmC shouldn't have anything to do with original series. References (even not subtle) and inspiration are fine and acceptable (as well as parody), but it shouldn't have had any more connection.

Secondly, it should have been... no, not more edgy - it had to be actually satirical if they already started to hint in that direction. More aware of current world situation on some meta level, even if characters live their lives in a completely fictional world. Parodies of real people like politicians, celebrities etc. - to show how all of the world they belong to is corrupted and dirty. And then have characters who are and act like assholes, so when they show some sincere positive emotions to each other, it would feel heartwarming and endearing (not fake like most of the dialogues in the real game).

Thirdly, if I already started to talk about the characters, protag should either be a villain protagonist or violent anti-hero, not a fakely edgy dude with zero braincells who doesn't even react in a believable way to stuff around him. You can keep antagonistic brother, but make him something more than a just another dump asshole who apparently didn't even talk to his supposedly dear "chosen" brother about what they'll do after the victory. Make him more of strategic type, who is planning to use and then get rid of a protag. And better no love interest, just a female ally who has at least some chemistry with the protag. And if the villain is going to have some sympathetic moments, build him better, then all of this "WELL I ripped your mother's heart out of her chest and ate it in front of you, WHY DID YOU KILL MY UNBORN CHILD? 😭" nonsense.

#personal #original post #I see I'#m going to bitch about this game from time to time

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mariemichonao3 · 3 years

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The concept of ‘Mary Sue’ - a change through the ages?

Due to current politics, I recently entered a discussion about today’s fan fiction stories with main characters that would generally fit the literary term ‘Mary Sue’, as far as the following specifications apply:

“A Mary Sue is a type of fictional character, usually a young woman, who is portrayed as unrealistically free of weaknesses. Originating in fan fiction, a Mary Sue is often an author's idealized self-insertion. Mary Sue stories are often written by adolescent authors.” (Sources, see Wikipedia)

For those in need to look it up, the term ‘Mary Sue’ was created in the early 70ies when fan fiction author Paula Smith wrote a Star Trek fanfiction parody(!) in 1973, "A Trekkie's Tale", which featured a certain female Lieutenant Mary Sue ("the youngest Lieutenant in the Star Fleet—only fifteen and a half years old") and in which she satirized that kind of female ‘original characters’ widespread at that time in Star Trek fanfiction.

This type of character, of course, appears in every fandom written by people of every gender and age, and although the ‘unrealistically free of weaknesses’ part can vary according to the writer’s own flaws, the ‘idealized self-insertion’ is what brings me here, today.

I’m not here to discuss the Mary Sue concept per se, au contraire, but to share an observation that really, really bothers me. And as a woman, I especially would love to warn inspire young writers to maybe rethink certain aspects of their idealized picture of themselves. I don’t want to write a boring scientific piece that nobody wants to read, so in short and without pointing out any story in particular that’s the situation observed:

Where, initially, the idealized kid actually had ambitions which went further than her/his bodily features and looks, I read more and more often that the teen’s abilities and dreams go no further than having and interest in social media/TV, make-up, clothing, accessory, and maybe connections/inherited titles/money and all their ambition is becoming and influencer/model/actress/singer/it-person.

Where the original parody showed Mary Sue as the smartest ever person to graduate from the star fleet academy and ever get a commission, showing unprecedented skill in everything from art to zoology, including karate and arm-wrestling, combining skills and sparking the interest of Kirk, Spock, and Dr. McCoy at once, the typical Mary Sue following through the years always featured at least one inspiring interest, skill or ambition. The most famous ones used to vary from being a nurse, vet or doctor, police, DA, PI, lawyers, judges, journalists, archaeologists, art experts, musicians, dancers, poets, librarians, all kinds of sports, arts, or magical abilities or being fighters, captains, gangsters or pirates. Even the girl in the most laughed at “50 Shades Of Grey” is an English literature major who wants to become a journalist. It has only become prevalent – or at least come to my attention in bigger numbers – in stories since “Twilight”, which knowingly was written with a religious background and reflected the ideal of Mormon world view ideals, that the girl ‘Bella’ had no further dreams or ambitions for herself beyond marriage (to a certain guy) and the following motherhood.

But why do I care at all what teen/twen kids today write? Why does it bother me so fucking much?

Because, HONESTLY! With showing that THAT is, where your interests, your dreams even, lie, you’re making it easy for them. You let those “Handmaid’s Tale”-patriarchy desiring, right wing, anti-female/diverse-rights loving assholes win! Where we had to fight for things like control over our own bodies, deciding whether we are allowed to vote, work or study and what we want to do with our lives – with or without influence or a paying partner/family, you apparently go back to dream of the idealized versions of uneducated eye-candy who do not bother or care for any ambition, or education, except for super shallow and superficial shit!

While I TOTALLY get that not all of you can dream of becoming chancellor or (vice) president or to pursue an academic or scientific career, save the climate or cure cancer, please, at least dream of something magical or fun, handcraft something, cook or plant herbs, draw comics, write romance novels, whatever, but please don’t let current politics or religion or shallow media content push you back to historic times and thinking it’s desirable to be nothing but a pretty and superficial arm candy whose interests are manicures, expensive handbags and make-up. Even back in archaic days everybody knew: “Behind every successful man there is a strong and intelligent woman(/lover)”. Dream of more, please.

#please discuss #mary sue #the handmaid's tale #star trek #fan fiction #AO3 #50 shades of grey #twilight #fandom

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thehollowprince · 3 years

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1.Hey just want to let you know that I am the first anon who asked about Jensen Ackles and Tyler Posey - I don't know which teen wolf anon you assumed I was, but that was the first time I send you an ask. I am a TP fan and check your blog for TP stuff and was surprised to see you reblogging jokes about Ackles being homophobic - since I see him facing the same issues that Posey did - a toxic fandom that bullies actors just because they don't subscribe to wanting two hot white men to get together.

2. Same anon. I don't think we should be throwing around words like homophobia lightly or based on rumors about how Ackles made a showrunner change the character based on his preferences etc. Ackles maybe homophobic - we don't know for sure. All I know is that from my experience, the Destiel fandom is as toxic as the Sterek fandom. Sure, Ackles shares part of the blame as he makes hundreds of thousands of dollars off these fans at the various cons - ( contd. in part 3)

3. But that does not mean that actors or their family should be subject to cyber bullying and online hate or that the showrunners should pander to this toxic fanbase. Scott would have been and was sidelined to pander to and queerbait Sterek fans and he was called homophobic when he pointed out how nonsensical the ship was. Destiel is the same and I don't mind Ackles not giving two shits about acting out a badly written scene pushed in to appease a toxic fanbase. Just my two cents.

Okay, first off, I want to say the only anon I've ever gotten that used Tyler Posey and "double-standards" in the same sentence has been the Asshole Anon I tagged. And given the fact that this anon was in my inbox within an hour of posting that ask, it stands to reason that my paranoia is well founded. This would not be the first time they've tried to trick anyone into a "Gotcha!" moment, and I was the next on the rotation of people they harass.

That being said and out of the way, let's get into this.

Starting off, you're right. Claims of homophobia shouldn't be a joke. Homophobia is a very real thing that affects many people around the world. And given the shipping fandoms that habe arisen in the past decade, along with thr use of social media by celebrities, it allows these fans to harass and belittle them from the comfort of their homes, no matter where said celebrity is. I would never make jokes regarding how fans treat the loved ones of their favorite celebrities, because I find it abhorrent. We saw something similar to his happen with the Star Wars fandom, particularly the R*ylos, when they doxxed and harassed Adam Driver's wife in the hopes that he and Daisy Ridley would get together, thus fulfilling the fantasy they have about their ship.

I don't keep up with the actors of Supernatural because I don't watch it anymore, but I imagine that's the case with Jensen's wife. Fans harassing her because she married him and they've based their entire personality and fandom experience around a ship between two fictional characters and the actor's personal life interferes with that fantasy. The fans that are harassing Jensen and his family aren't doing it out of any sense of morality in their efforts to fight homophobia, but because they want to see Dean and Cas together, and can't (or won't) accept that they're fictional characters played by two actors that have their own private lives.

Something similar happened with the Sherlock fandom, when they decided to cancel Martin Freeman and his wife because they asked fans to stop sending them NSFW fanart or J*hnl*ck, especially when they were with their children. I'll admit I'm a little fuzzy on that one, because I've never watched BBC Sherlock, but I did follow a few blogs that did so I remember the discourse. This all just feeds into the idea that shipping fandoms "own" the actors that play their favorite characters and has made for quite a toxic environment on most social media.

If the D*stiel fandom is anything like the St*r*k fandom or the J*hnl*ck fandom , than I applaud Jensen for standing his ground in the face of what I'm sure is countless inappropriate fics and art that are constantly thrown at him.

Now, there are a few differences between how Jensen is being accused of being homophobic and how Tyler was accused of being homophobic. The first major difference is something you said in this ask. They're jokes. Keeping in mind that, yes, I did say we shouldn't joke about homophobia, all the "discourse" around D*stiel has been jokes due to a variety of reasons. From how uncomfortable Jensen looked in that scene (leading some to think they were filmed separately and not told how the other was reacting) to the fact that it was happening during election week before the election was called. The fact that the rumors that Putin was stepping down came out at the same time and the whole situation took on this hysterical, otherworldly quality, like this was a collective fever dream we couldn't wake up from. The jokes came about, breaking the tension that had consumed Tumblr and uniting a large number of people in the absurdity of everything.

There's also the fact that the jokes about Jensen being homophobic were just that - jokes! I'll admit that I haven't gone looking, but I haven't seen anyone calling for Jensen to be cancelled or for his career to be derailed or his life to be ruined because of that scene. No, I've seen countless jokes about how Dean looked constipated or memes of random images found on people's phones used to "recreate" that scene. The fact that Jensen apparently wrote into his contract that his character in The Boys wasn't to have a gay sex scene just added to the satirical nature of everything.

Now let's compare that to Tyler Posey. When asked about a crack ship (that had nothing to do with his character) for the umpteenth time, he said that, if that's what fans were watching for, they're probably watching for the wrong reasons. It never condemned the ship or mocked its fans, he simply said that they were watching for the wrong reasons. And given how this interview took place after filming was done for that season, that could be interpreted as him saving people from wasting their time on something that wasn't going to happen. Personally, I just think he was fed up and frustrated about being asked about a crack ship that had nothing to do with him.

And for that one simple sentence, he was (and still is) deluged with hate. He received death threats and threats against his mother while she was battling cancer, all because he said something that wasn't a glowing appraisal of a ship that the fandom made up. To this day, there are people hell bent on proving how Scott was the true villain of the Teen Wolf series, and how Tyler Posey is just an awful human being.

Did any of those things happen to Jensen? No.

Would those things have probably happened to Jared if he'd said something negative about D*stiel? Probably.

Would the Teen Wolf fandom have acted the way it did if it had been Hoechlin or O'Brien who shot down St*r*k? Definitely not. We know that because they both did say something against St*r*k and the fandom at large likes to pretend that it never happened.

So, as we can see, there is a very clear difference between how Jensen was treated and how Tyler was treated. Could racism play a part in that treatment? Most likely, though, many would never admit to that. But, at the end of the day, its important to look at the differences between these two actors and how they were treated by their respective fandoms for what they said in regards to ships that fans have based their entire fandom experience around.

#anon #fandom homophobia #double-standards #jensen ackles #anti destiel #(just in case)#tyler posey #anti sterek

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bondsmagii · 3 years

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2 4

thank you!

2: Least favourite book of 2020?

if you could see the face I just made. oh my god. I’m so mad I’m actually just. I cannot feel my fingers. I hated this book so fucking much.

fucking. Vernon God Little by DBC Pierre is my only 1-star rating for this year, and that is only because I couldn’t rate it 0 stars. if I could I would get every copy of this garbage book, burn them, gather the ashes, and systematically ram every ounce of the ashes up DBC Pierre’s ass and the asses of everyone who thought it was a good idea for this trash to win the fucking Booker Prize. honest to god I will never trust that prize from now on.

literally everything is wrong with it. it’s so fucking pretentious. it’s exactly what you fear when you think Pretentious White Male Writer. it’s disgusting. it’s edgy. it’s supposed to be a satire but it’s one of those satires that you can tell the author actually thinks that and thinks he’s oh-so clever for being the First Person Ever to make those observations. it’s misogynistic. it relies on the most nasty shit for shock value. in the crime that creates the situation the entire plot arises from, blatant detective protocol is ignored (probably because without it there would be no plot). it’s racist -- the only two majorly featured Hispanic characters are a mass murderer and a psychopathic conman (and this is in a book partially set in Mexico). I say “characters” in the loosest possible way, because all of the characters are two dimensional and fucking stupid. there’s nothing likable about any of them. there are some absolutely disgusting passages about the vaginas and underpants of teenage girls. the entire book made me feel physically dirty, and it takes a lot to make me feel uncomfortable in any way.

basically this asshole thinks he’s Chuck Palahniuk, but the major difference between Pierre and Palahniuk is that one of them is Chuck Palahniuk and the other is a sentient turd who fell off the back of a waste refuse truck and transmorphed itself into the brain of a 12-year-old boy who then promptly decided to write a book. Palahniuk does satire well because a) he’s aware it’s satire and b) he’s not taking himself too seriously and he’s having fun with it. DBC Pierre thinks he’s the smartest man to walk the planet and I want to throttle him with my bare hands. he used to reside in Ireland but as of 2020 has apparently moved to England, probably because word got back to him that I had challenged him to a duel in my Goodreads review.

anyway. not to go off but fuck that book.

4: Favourite non-fiction book?

I read a lot of really good non-fiction this year! would recommend any of the following:

When the Germans Came by Duncan Barrett

Angela’s Ashes by Frank McCourt

Into Thin Air and Into the Wild by Jon Krakauer

The Day That Went Missing by Richard Beard

Unexplained: Supernatural Stories for Uncertain Times by Richard MacLean Smith

Born Survivors by Wendy Holden

Dead Mountain by Donnie Eichar

Rebel Hearts by Kevin Toolis

Bad Blood: A Walk Along the Irish Border by Colm Tóibín

The Underground Girls of Kabul by Jenny Nordberg

there’s probably more but that’s already quite a list lmao

> 2020 reading ask meme 📚

#2020 reading ask meme #anon #asks

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janiedean · 6 years

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Why don't you like Harry Potter?

I could reply ‘because it’s not a given that anyone would like it’ but if we want to be specific (SORRY ANYONE WHO LIKES IT TAKE IT AS MY PERSONAL OPINION):

I tend to not care about things where the protagonists are teenagers and in high school (asoiaf is the exception and the teenagers/children aren’t all of it and they’re not in high school) in general and HP is basically that except with magic

I am absolutely not into **magic** stuff when we’re discussing fantasy - I like lotr and asoiaf and discworld (which is satire/trope subversion anyway) and I have other exceptions but stuff like WIZARDS AND WITCHES AND STUFF is one of the things that I can care less as far as fiction is concerned

I find it really too simplistic in plot conception and execution, like I read maybe a bit of it and I couldn’t get into the style whatsoever because I thought it was nothing special

I watched like movie four and a part of two and I fell asleep during both for how little I could care

there is like one damned gray character in those books/films - ONE - and I’ve been hearing discourse about whether he’s GOOD OR BAD since I was in middle school

I’ve been withstanding snape discourse since middle school excuse me if I can’t stand it anymore

my friends back in the day couldn’t talk about literally anything else so if you didn’t care you either were uncool or you just had to listen to them harping about it when I was just like CAN WE TALK ABOUT ANYTHING ELSE

they also proceeded to spoil me the entire thing at least for the main stuff so why the hell would I be interested if I already know everything and excuse me it sounds like the least interesting chosen hero story in existence to me at least

(no honestly harry is such a Chosen Hero trope in all the worst ways like sorry I really don’t care)

I’ve read/seen so much shit with the same moral which was better written and conceived that I’m nowhere near interested in getting into that, too

I really don’t care about wizards under the age of eighteen (and over the age of eighteen it’s... a very selected choice)

I can’t stand that this fandom is so entitled that they got eight movies, one play, the books, THE PREQUELS, I don’t even know how fucking much extra canon and so on and THEY HAVE TO KEEP COMPLAINING ABOUT IT EVERY OTHER MOMENT and the play was shitty, and the prequels are cash grab and the movies sucked and HERMIONE’S DRESS WAS PINK AND NOT BLUE AND THAT WAS A PLOT POINT THAT I HAD TO SEE DISCUSSED FOR ANOTHER THREE YEARS LIKE WHY DO YOU FUCKING CARE WHAT HERMIONE’S DRESS LOOKS LIKE, never mind that y’all have such a large fandom you can find virtually any pairing or ship or kink in it but of course I only see wanking about stuff when my favorite fantasy series is a perpetual yuletide fave, my otp has twenty fics half of which are tied to me somehow and got one shitty movie after years which sucked ass but of course AFTER EIGHT MOVIES THE PROBLEM IS *HERMIONE’S DRESS*

the harry/hermione vs ron/hermione shipwar that people still can’t let go about wanted to make me go murder people back when I had to read discourse about it oN LIVEJOURNAL, ON TUMBLR, ON FB AND IRL at the same time

the fucking snape discourse

the fact that people can’t seem to tag their posts with hp assuming that everyone likes it so I had to blacklist that, snape, hermione and idk how many characters just to make sure that shit wasn’t on my dash anymore and I still see it

once I said that I wasn’t gonna read it anyway because if I did I’d only care for some of the adults and I knew they were gonna die since everyone spoiled it for me already and then someone had the disgrace to say ‘if you liked theon in asoiaf you’d probably like snape as a character’ and I had to go through four hours of anon wanking about SNAPE DISCOURSE when I didn’t even know how to reply and my experience with this fandom is ALWAYS like that

I find it utterly boring and predictable and I can’t care less

also: let’s get it out of the way that I watched fantastic beasts with friends who dragged me and I didn’t dislike it actually I thought it was cute and GUESS WHY IT WAS BECAUSE EVERYONE WAS AN ADULT AND DIDN’T GO TO SCHOOL and it was touching somehow more serious themes than your usual trite YA stuff that the original is, and obviously the fandom is so full with discourse I’d never even touch it with a ten foot pole but it also shows people can’t seem to read/interpret anything related to HP in a sane way and without realizing that IT’S NOT ALL BLACK AND WHITE GDI, same as apparently they can’t let go of the fact that they have to put poor snape in one specific box instead of admitting that assholes can do good things for a good cause without meaning they aren’t assholes and be fucking done with it already. I also have no ill will towards poor jkr who has decent political views and only made money out of doing what she liked but which I have a feeling is a way better adult writer than YA writer but she never will have the chance to because if she gets out of the HP sphere no one cares about what she produces and/or doesn’t get it (guys I had to read there wasn’t racism talk in FB when it was set in the US like what did you think wizards not being able to marry normal humans was standing for).

but tldr: I find it a bunch of YA re-heated tropes put together in a way that can work for kids and was very smartly put together but is not really greatly written and does not work for me and I can’t give less of a fuck about the original series especially about teenager protagonists, the fandom is the incarnation of walking discourse, I hate that everyone seems to assume that you have to like HP and that it’s impossible that you might actually not give a fuck, I hate that I’ve had to hear HP discourse/talk since I was nine years old ie for the previous twenty years of my life, I hate that I can’t seem to escape idiotic discourse even if I try to get it out of my way and ah I forgot, I can’t anymore with people fighting bloody battles over freaking hogwarts houses and ah wait again I hate how in any small fandom in existence you won’t find a lot of things but THE HOGWARTS AU HAS TO BE THERE and if you don’t care for it you’ll have to read it anyway while being bored out of your mind because you really just don’t care for that setting.

ah, and I’m sick tired of having to justify the fact that I don’t like HP to about everyone I know irl because apparently it’s impossible that I can, you know, not like something that everyone else likes.

¯\_(ツ)_/¯

again: I don’t mind discussing it on my terms and with people I know who also know I’m not interested in reading or watching it, but I’m really sick tired of seeing it everywhere after twenty years of telling everyone I don’t care. I mean. twenty years. I’m glad people enjoy it and I’m glad it got people into books and I absolutely don’t want to tell people they shouldn’t enjoy it because I can’t get into it - it’s their childhood and their favorite series and I’m sure it was great for them same as the stuff I liked was good for me - but it doesn’t mean I actually have to like it. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

#1 #2 #3 #4 #5 #hp for ts #harry potter for ts #GUYS DON'T GO EXPLAINING ME WHY I'M WRONG OR WHY I SHOULD GIVE IT A TRY #OR WHY I DIDN'T UNDERSTAND ANYTHING ABOUT IT #I know I don't get it #no I still don't care #you can like it I don't have to #peace out ¯\_(ツ)_/¯#Anonymous #ask post

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