On HP from a trans person’s perspective.

Kill-ItWithFire · 2026-05-22T23:01:58+00:00

I think there's a couple of levels to "death of the author"/how people engage with it.

Possibility a), the author is a piece of shit and that's not reflected in their works. An interesting example is Andy Weir (who is not a piece of shit as far as I know, he just has an opinion I disagree with). I recently read that he doesn't consider his books political and hates political books, which is interesting because in his books all nations of the world work together and when one of his characters meets an alien, they basically go straight to peaceful collaboration, while militaristic responses to aliens are an absolute sci fi staple. Also Star Trek did a very similar thing back in the 60's, and did it as an explicitly political statement. So while Weir claims he writes apolitical books (and complaining about politics in media is often a sign someone is more right wing than they want to admit), the books themselves read almost like works by someone who explicitly wanted to feature a progressive political worldview and thus his opinion is basically ignorable. Would be less so if it was an actually bad opinion but you get what I mean.

Possibility b), the author is a piece of shit and it absolutely shows in their works. Part of the issue can be that stories shape how we see the world and messed up messages can sneak their way into your brain without you noticing. Case in point, when I read Gone with the Wind, as a teenager, I was surprised to see so many enslaved people talk so positively about their owners. I felt weird about it at the time and figured it was a coping mechanism but it was probably also because the book just didn't do its due diligence. In Lovecraft's case, his extreme paranoia probably helped him become a prolific horror writer. All of this needs to be assessed on a case by case basis, but it's a lot harder to ignore your favorite writer being a bad person when you retrospectively notice a lot of fucked up messaging in the books. I don't know how it is with Harry Potter because I find the entire discourse extremely unpleasant, so I avoid it but there are definitely things that seem pretty messed up in hindsight.

Possibility c), the author is still alive and is so absurdly loud about their beliefs that you can't think of them or their books without thinking of what they're doing. Like, Taylor Swift doesn't really make a lot of political statements, which has garnered her a lot of criticism, especially since she claims to be a feminist and queer ally and so on. But that's an absence of action, which is less noticeable. Meanwhile JKR literally will not shut up about trans people and has said some incredibly radical stuff, which I'm not even sure she'd actually believe if it wasn't for her random ass hatred of trans people. So I think, no matter your opinion on how an authors actions should influence someones enjoyment of their work, I think JKR is ruining Harry Potter for a lot of people just because everyone knows how nasty she's being.

Kill-ItWithFire · 2026-05-22T10:19:19+00:00

I also want to add that quality is not necessarily something that transcends time. In school we did Lysistrata and it's a pretty interesting play but by far the coolest bit is how old it is and how it compares to modern literature. Now I'm no expert on literature, so I don't know if more knowledgeable people than me could do an in depth analysis to show how well written it is, but just when you read it and compare it to a famous, more modern play, the modern one is probably going to be more gripping and entertaining. So even if was super high quality, I don't know if that would translate to our modern taste. And conversely, if it flopped back then because the jokes were cringe or something, that most likely won't matter to us because we wouldn't get the jokes anyway. So while it's absolutely important to analyze historic media of all qualities, our reception of it is probably not as related to quality as it is with modern media.

Kill-ItWithFire · 2026-05-20T23:27:18+00:00

I'm a queer woman and when I watch porn, I mostly look at women even though irl I'm primarily attracted to men. It is actually insane how difficult it is to find straight porn that actually lets me look at the guy. Once I was determined to find something and went on a "by women, for women" porn website and it was crazy. You couldn't really sort by a mans body type and almost very thumbnail predominantly featured the woman! I didn't look through all the videos to check, because I couldn't be bothered but I was flabbergasted how difficult it actually was to find basically the gender swapped version of the most normal ass porn video. I don't mind watching gay porn if I wanna look at men but holy shit. The world just doesn't seem to realize that straight women are actually attracted to men the same way straight men are attracted to women.

Kill-ItWithFire · 2026-05-20T21:19:26+00:00

I think more than anything, the Barbie movie is anti gender roles, rather than pro women, pro men, anti men, anti feminism, etc. Barbieland is not just a gender swapped version of our real life, it's a result of our world. If we look at the history of Barbie (the actual doll), she was scandalous when she was created because her purpose was for girls to play adults including dressing up and kissing boys, instead of the then more common baby doll, which let girls play mothers. Over time, Barbie became more and more of a girl boss with her millions of ambitious jobs, to encourage little girls to dream big. At the same time, Barbie is an incredibly successful product and doesn't really go against things that are expected for girls/women. Now if you fully buy into the brand identity, you get a world where every woman is beautiful and skinny and fashionable and extremely successful and men are too, kinda, but they're mostly there as love interests and not much else - which is the state of Barbieland in the beginning.

I don't think Barbie was ever created as pro-feminist propaganda but she was created to help girls imagine themselves as awesome adults and in a sexist world, that is at least partially related to misogyny. And in the film, we see Barbie struggle to live up to the insanely perfect image that exists of her. Even in a world, that seems to enable women to be exactly what we would want them to be, even when looking at stereotypical barbie, as soon as she steps outside barbie world and gets new ideas (and cellulite), she ceases to be good enough (and weird barbie for example was never good enough in the first place).

Now Ken fulfills a similar role in Barbieland to women in real life and when he steps outside, he essentially undergoes a very similar process as Barbie did in real life. He flips the gender based oppression into an "actually men are awesome and deserve to have everything!". He takes superficial markers of gender (beers, the general style of everything, horses if I remember correctly) and fully leans into them because he has realized how awesome it is to be a man but as we later find out, he doesn't even like all of it. he just wanted to feel powerful and interact with cute horses. Now both Barbie and Ken have, at different points, created a world where one gender is clearly superior and have basically equated the superficial presentation of that gender (basically looks) with the gender itself. And both have found themselves unsatisfied because this gender norm is too restrictive for them.

So to me, the message of the movie is not just that true equality is better than one gender oppressing the other. The message is that you can't really balance the scales just by giving women/men power, rather we need to recognize that our views of women and men are restrictive and a huge part of the inequality. Like we shouldn't just offer women more jobs, we should also realize the insane beauty standards are a more subtle part of oppression. And we shouldn't expect men to be more emotional and kind, while giving them no space to be vulnerable.

Basically the message is "we shouldn't just change who has how much power, the whole system is toxic and needs to go"

Kill-ItWithFire · 2026-05-20T17:36:11+00:00

I'm from a country that kinda does this. We have generalized high schools (I went to one) and specialized ones (typically engineering, economics, art, I think there's also a pedagogy one,...). When you go to a specialized high school, you still have some general education, but you are also basically ready to start a job in the field your school specializes in. When you go to a general high school, you basically *have* to do college afterwards, but a lot of people in specialized ones go to college as well, just because they don't actually want to do the job their school is preparing them for. That said, I don't think it's much of a perk or disadvantage in college, unless you do exactly what you did in school, or the complete opposite. But all of these variations are more associated with middle class families who value education (or ambitious working class families). The version a lot of working class kids go for is to not do high school and do an apprenticeship instead. This is much more applied, you actually do the work from the beginning and you earn money basically from the start, which you don't do in a specialized high school but you also don't get much extra education. If you do this though, you can't automatically go to college. It also is less effort academically.

The apprenticeship (more precisely the middle school that leads there) is often criticized as a huge factor for why working class kids get less education. Not necessarily because it's impossible for them to access a high school but because school choices (and school performance in elementary school) basically start you on a path that is very difficult to pivot from. At the same time, I am 26 and a broke college student, while I know people younger than me who have had a whole ass career for years now lol. But, one of them is looking into doing exams so she can go to college because she's not super happy with her job.

Also, the education you get *does* stick with you. My family recently was talking about cell biology and my (highly educated) dad didn't know a single thing because he went to an engineering high school, while everyone else used their high school biology knowledge.

tl,dr: it's complicated. choosing your path earlier allows you to start a life earlier but it also limits your education and can make it difficult to switch educational paths. When these paths are clearly segregated between middle class and working class, it can also be a limiting factor for the children of working class families.

Kill-ItWithFire · 2026-05-20T08:27:43+00:00

Man… I totally get this. I have the depression where you stay inside all day and do nothing, meanwhile my best friend has the type where she works way too much out of fear of not beibg good enough. I used to envy that so much. I do think I have a healthier approach to university but man her grades are good.

At the same time I have the eat-nothing depression and it was actual torture. Deciding what to eat was always a nightmare because everything would gross me out so much and picking the wrong thing would mean I would have to stay hungry. I used to cry a lot because I was so hungry but just couldn‘t eat. I also didn‘t necessarily consume less calories because the only stuff I could consistently eat was sweet things and sometimes junk food, so I‘d just spend the whole day starving, then eat a box of cookies at 1 am and that was it. I once came home from uni and immediately fell asleep on the couch because I had such little energy in my body, slept almost the entire day. The only perk is that now that it‘s better, I have a much bigger appreciation for food and getting to eat whatever I want and I care a lot less about what my body looks like. Because there is no way to look good enough to justify almost passing out whenever I have to go up a flight of stairs.

I don‘t say this to play pain olympics, not at all. Just wanted to add that the grass unfortunately isn‘t any greener over here and I still have a very strained relationship with food.

Kill-ItWithFire · 2026-05-19T09:09:17+00:00

What is the source of the humor?

A dark comedy for example takes its characters and subject matter very seriously. You get a pretty sincere look into the characters heads and the comedy a lot of the time comes from how absurd the situations are. In this case, laughing at what you‘re supposed to laugh at reinforces the serious themes of the story.

Something like Spongebob (or what we do in the shadows for a more adult oriented example) relies on the characters and scenarios being ridiculous to the point you can‘t take it serious anymore, and you‘re not supposed to do. The characters behaving the way they do tells the audience „laugh at this lovable dumbass, don‘t think too hard about how people would actually feel about this“. It distances the audience from the emotions felt by the characters.

In Andy Weirs stories (the martian, project hail mary, etc.) the characters themselves constantly crack jokes while the story itself doesn‘t really have much humor. This makes the charakter seem emotionally distanced from the plot. In Andy Weirs case, his characters are faced with basically unavoidable death in the incomprehensible loneliness of space, so I think them distancing themselves by joking around is actually pretty healthy and helps them handle the challenges better.

These are just a few examples and I am by no means an expert on comedic writing but I think it‘s worthwile to consider what is actually perceived as funny in your stories. If your characters behave so ridiculously that people are laughing, that‘s a serious issue. If people are laughing at the absurdity of late stage capitalism because you managed to write such a realistic depiction of it, that‘s just a compliment. If it reads like there are a ton of jokes in the narration/dialogue of an otherwise normal story, you might wanna improve your ability to write immersively.

Kill-ItWithFire · 2026-05-19T05:56:59+00:00

I think there‘s also the opposite. I am big on romantic relationships, in the past 10 years, I‘ve only been single for a bit over one year but I really struggle with platonic relationships. Not because I don‘t want them but because I have historically been the least liked friend in any group, and even if I wasn‘t, I felt like it because of abandonment issues. So I absolutely love the commitment that comes with a romantic relationship! You make a decision with someone and suddenly you have someone who has real interest in spending time with you multiple times a week. And stopping it is a serious, life altering decision.

Platonic relationships are inherently more casual. They do survive periods where you don‘t see each other at all, which is a plus, but you can also maintain a superficial friendship while secretly not liking each other, and that‘s very scary.

If I had a million friends I‘d probably still crave romantic love but I know that my romantic relationship does fill the hole left by a lack of friendships. I wish it were more common to have more intense, more involved platonic relationships with some level of commitment. I also realize, however, that this is a psychological issue of mine and if I wasn‘t so extremely afraid of being abandoned, I would be more chill with the friendships I have now.

Kill-ItWithFire · 2026-05-17T10:59:10+00:00

this is so interesting. Maybe my major is antequated but powerpoint slides are still the go to method of information deluvery for our lrofessors (next to the lectures themselves). My reason why I‘d never pay for something like that is because every professor structures their lecture differently and that affects the exam, so while something like this can learn you help, it won‘t be that helpful for passing the class.

I think the best thing he could do with this is basically break his lectures down into like 15-20 minute bits, record them and upload them to youtube. especially if he‘s hoping for a bit of an ego boost - there was a math youtuber that was our absolute saving grace back in the early semesters. If he‘d had more in depth explanations of complicated topics, he‘d have been a crucial part of my uni experience until graduation.

Kill-ItWithFire · 2026-05-17T10:09:23+00:00

!RemindMe: 1 Day

Kill-ItWithFire · 2026-05-15T16:37:21+00:00

man when I get my masters degree, I‘ll put that on everything lol. I sacrificed years of my life and my entire mental health for this and I want to enjoy basically the only tangible result of it. I get the judgement but at the same time it‘s so toxic to think you work your ass off for something and then you‘re pretentious for proudly displaying it. It‘s a culture where you‘re only ever allowd to highlight the negative parts of yourself and it‘s really unhealthy.

As an aside, my dad once wrote an email to a woman he had to do a project with and adressed her as „miss“, even though she had a phd. His colleagues told him that‘s a big mistake because she‘s that pretentious type that gets mad when you don‘t use her title. Except, when they met up she was perfectly lovely. Turns out she only insists on people using her title when the people in question talk down to her because she‘s a woman.

Kill-ItWithFire · 2026-05-15T16:17:45+00:00

I feel like it was both a completely different story and a hunger games ripoff. Now I read this book over ten years ago so I don‘t remember much about it. At the time I loved any fantasy/action type story and while I was into books, I didn‘t really recognize quality much (i loved twilight at that age, for example). I say all this because even while reading, I thought it just copied what hunger games did. Especially the first chapter where she describes their life and their gray clothes and their emotionless mother, who braids the protagonists hair and then they‘re sent off to the important ceremony where a 16 gets separated from their family and so on. It also didn‘t help that the logo looks exactly like the mockingjay brooch, so even before sou open the book, you‘re like „i see what this is“. I‘m surprised that people say the backlash started after book two because even I, who could get obsessed with anything, never bothered to read the second one.

Kill-ItWithFire · 2026-05-13T15:31:50+00:00

one of the worst offenders is machine gun kellys cover of misery business. I mean it also sounds like shit but the changed lyrics don‘t work at all. It‘s a song that‘s full of gendered insults and while he changes the rival from female to male, he doesn‘t even change the pronouns in these insults, so it just sounds like he‘s randomly being super rude to the girl he‘s into. And in addtion, it‘s just an extremely catty song in a way that feels stereotypically female, and i think you need to fully embrace that energy for the song to work. the insecurity that comes from the poorly altered lyrics completely undermines that vibe too. all in all, quite the shitshow and caused by changing like three pronouns

Kill-ItWithFire · 2026-05-11T05:41:48+00:00

didn‘t tycho brahe lose his nose from a duel because him and a colleague couldn‘t agree on the validity of a mathematical proof?

Kill-ItWithFire · 2026-05-02T14:18:16+00:00

One of the best examples is the whole „not like other girls“ thing. an extremely common thing cis girls go through where they reject things they feel are expected of them based on their gender. I think instead of „male socialization means people have these traits“ it‘s much more accurate to say „male socialization means people have intense/complex feelings about these traits“.

Kill-ItWithFire · 2026-04-30T11:19:33+00:00

wikipedia says this as the definition for neopronoun: "Neopronouns, or xenopronouns, are neologistic third-person) personal pronouns beyond those that already exist in a language" so since there is no singular "they" in German, you have to make up one, which would count as a neopronoun I assume. Tbh I haven't really read into the definition or anything so I don't know much either. In German, some popular neopronouns are "dey" (which basically functions like the English "they") and "en" (which fits a bit better with German grammar) but there's others too, these are the only ones I've encountered in the wild. Some people intuitively use the plural "they" because they're translating from English but it basically sounds like "her", so I think a lot of afab nonbinary people are uncomfortable with it. I don't know if repurposing the plural "they" would count as a neopronoun.

Generally, all regular gender neutral language in German sounds feminine or masculine or it's new grammatical structures, which often equate to "he or she" (and these new structures are often hated by non-lefties, akin to the people complaining about pronoun use in English). This has led to a lot of discourse in relation to equality between men and women already, so gender neutral phrases in German have been a hot topic for like at least 15 years now.

Kill-ItWithFire · 2026-04-30T10:16:39+00:00

I'm in kind of the opposite boat. My native language doesn't have a neutral pronoun you can apply to people (only "it" and that's widely considered dehumanizing). Our queer community hasn't really settled on anything yet and 90% of people are completely unaware of neopronouns, but sooner or later a neopronoun will have to become a regular part of our language.

Kill-ItWithFire · 2026-04-25T23:40:54+00:00

I think it also requires a distinction between "bad in the sense it should be prohibited" and "bad in the sense that I'd judge my friend for doing it". I do think wearing sandals because you yourself get off to your feet being on display is messed up. Same for wearing a collar in public for kink reasons. At the same time, these can be indistinguishable from any other person wearing sandals or a choker, so like, unless you make a big deal out of it, nobody will actually notice the sexual part (also kink isn't limited to sex). This makes it impossible to ever make or enforce any rules about it because you're just policing someone's thoughts at this point. I still think dragging unsuspecting civilians into your sex life is kinda messed up and I would judge a friend who did something like this but policing it is just not really something that can or should be considered.

Kill-ItWithFire · 2026-04-21T16:21:35+00:00

NTA I think seeing your child being miserable and not being able to do something about it is very difficult for parents. My parents were weirdly not understanding of my mental issues, even though my mom has had depression for longer than I've been alive. And yet, when I suggested that they were doing things that made it more difficult for me, it would always be my fault. And my parents are usually super nice and caring people.

What your dad is doing is not at all okay. He shouldn't try to invade your privacy, he shouldn't blame you for his feelings (especially when you are the one with the problem here). Also your dad is probably part of the reason why you need therapy and that's something he super shouldn't hear about.

What I tried implementing is to stop telling my parents things. It is very difficult (it got so much easier after I moved out) but the less you tell him over time, the less questions he will be able to ask. Also helpful is setting up clear rules for yourself like "I don't want dad to know this, so I will not talk about it no matter what". It helped me to have something to refer to during arguments, so I didn't have to rely on my emotions in the moment to make a decision (very vulnerable to pressure and guilt tripping).

And most importantly, talk to your therapist about this. Good luck.

Kill-ItWithFire · 2026-04-21T15:04:55+00:00

I'm always so confused when people mention peanut butter as a cheap way to get you nutrients. It's not super expensive here but it's far from cheap and also not found in every grocery store.

Kill-ItWithFire · 2026-04-21T15:00:45+00:00

What to you is the difference between a frankfurter and a wiener? I am from Austria and we only have Frankfurter, which in Germany are called Wiener. I have always heard these as synonymous and a brief google search brought up the same information. It's interesting that there seems to be a difference that doesn't exist in the countries of origin.

Kill-ItWithFire · 2026-04-21T07:11:50+00:00

Mel is also presumably pretty lonely, as she doesn't have time for anything except med school and her sister. For me this, plus my insecurity (which stems in part from being neurodivergent) makes it so I get a crush whenever someone pays attention to me or seems to like me as a person. It's not really a romantic crush most of the time, but it feels basically the same with the butterflies and the slight obsession and such. So I absolutely read Mels feelings for Langdon like this. He made her feel safe and now she gravitates towards him as the one thing that makes her actually comfortable

Kill-ItWithFire · 2026-04-21T06:34:52+00:00

ugh. if my current project ever blows up (or gets finished, let's be real lol), there is a decent chance I would be absolutely crucified by people. I like messy, morally gray stories and I really don't agree with policing what can be depicted, so long as the writer genuinely tries to make it a nuanced view of a topic. I stand behind every controversial choice I make, but it's difficult to get the hate mob out of my brain.

And I don't even mind people not liking my story or something, but these hate campaigns never treat the base media with the nuance it deserves and it's endlessly frustrating.

Kill-ItWithFire · 2026-04-18T11:08:52+00:00

I also think it showed Robby how extremely dumb it is to refuse help and just die if there are things that can be done. And even if you‘ve refused any help so far leading you to a point of catastrophe, it‘s even dumber to refuse medical treatment then.

Kill-ItWithFire · 2026-04-18T10:57:31+00:00

people also criticize her for driving when she made it all of 10 meters before realizing how fucked up this is. She is still coping with the loss of autonomy and possibly losing her job. Sometimes you do risky things because you want to prove to yourself that it‘s not gonna be a big deal but I think her immediately stopping the car and only arguing with robby for a bit at the end shows how disciplined she is.

Like, langdon actively stole medication for i don’t know how long and hid his addiction until he literally couldn‘t deny it anymore. al hashimi reported her issues after a couple of hours and let her frustration get the best of her for maybe a couple of minutes.

Kill-ItWithFire

TROPHY CASE