Cutie Corner

what is happening in sudan?

the hunger crisis in al fashir

the uae’s complicity in darfuri genocide

how can i stay updated on the situation in sudan? sudan war monitor, radio dabanga, ayin weekly news bulletin, msf sudan, darfur human rights monitor

how to help individual sudanis

donate towards a community kitchen in al fashir

help sudani women receive menstrual products

darfur women group: action steps

underfunded sudani fundraisers

donate to help disabled sudanis in the nuba region

yemen:

what is happening in yemen?

the malaria crisis in yemen | the cholera outbreak in yemen

the flooding crisis in yemen

how can i stay updated on the situation in yemen? yemen online, live event coverage, yemen news agency

how to help individual yemenis

donate towards food, healthcare and education in yemen

dr congo:

what is happening in dr congo?

the congolese rape crisis

coltan mining in the drc / ethically sourcing electronics

the 2025 ebola outbreak in dr congo

how can i stay updated on the situation in drc? all africa, al jazeera, team congo

donate towards humanitarian aid in the drc

donate to support women in the drc

donate to build a school in doma, drc

tigray:

what is happening in tigray?

the displacement crisis in tigray

the ongoing tigray famine

how can i stay updated on the situation in tigray? omna tigray, tghat media, weghata facts

donate towards displaced people in tigray

haiti:

what is happening in haiti?

the displacement crisis in haiti

how can i stay updated on the situation in haiti? the haiti times, haiti libre, le facteur haiti, ayibopost

donate towards individual haitians

donate towards education for haitian children

gaza:

what is happening in gaza?

1948 nakba-now

the famine crisis in gaza

how can i stay updated on the situation in gaza? eye on palestine, quds news network, al jazeera

donate to help individual gazans

donate towards soup kitchens in gaza city

donate towards menstrual kits for gazan women

general resources:

decolonizemyself

so informed

guttmacher institute

middle east matters

code pink

bds movement

this is a non exhaustive resource. violence, oppression and genocide towards minority groups is widespread and ongoing, and not limited to these groups or resources. remaining uneducated is a choice, and an inexcusable one to make. the same systems used to oppress and kill ethnic groups across the world can be used on you, too.

if i have misspoken or added something that should not be here or is problematic, please let me know in the notes. please also feel free to make your own additions to this post.

You belong in pictures. A fear submitted by Guilherme to deepdarkfears.com/submit

I'll be at Comic Arts Los Angeles this weekend selling books and original artwork - hope to see you there! www.comicartsla.com

I’m trained in literary criticism, I personally study a lot of stuff from people with stupid opinions in my freetime, including opinions about people like me, I enjoy reading in general. What is it about Harry Potter that makes me just not want to come back to it?

I think it’s kind of how it became a part of culture for a while. And at the time it wasn’t criticized as heavily as other things I witnessed, at least from my child’s perspective. Poking holes in media has been a favorite pastime of mine for long time, including with Harry Potter, but the fundamental emotional core of the thing never quite felt flawed.

Yes Rowling put some stupid things in there but that’s to be expected from a white woman in Britain who has had most of her life being taken care of for her. At the end of the day, the intentions always felt solid even if the execution was less than perfect.

Then came the slow eroding of her reputation. I picked up on it before most people did. The moment she went “mask off” in 2020 I and many others were surprised that people saw it that way. She’d been consorting with transphobes for years at that point. In online trans spaces she’d been a known radfem apologist for a long time.

But then she got worse. Like she started materially hurting people with her money. And that’s about when to me I really started to get sick when thinking about Harry Potter.

It’s like. She’s not just a privately bigoted person who accidentally made a story about misfits finding a place that they belonged. She’s taking the power that the marketing machine behind that series granted her to cause active harm right now.

It’s at about that point I no longer found myself with the ability to turn on my critical brain trained in the ways of lit analysis or my casual consumer brain just liking fun things even if they’re bad. I just felt a pit in my stomach. I moved the family copies of the Harry Potter books from my room into the communal family bookshelf and then into my dad’s room because I couldn’t stand looking at them anymore.

It’s not just that Rowling is an author with bad opinions. I’ve read plenty of those. It’s not just that the series isn’t what I thought it was. That’s par for the course of most things you read as a child and revisit as an adult. It’s the combined power of her and her brand being everywhere and inescapable and her currently using the power that gives her for evil. Not only was the core of the series disingenuous but the series itself is currently actively causing people harm and normies just casually walk by it at Barnes and noble vaguely wondering if they should buy a mug for their cousin not knowing or not caring what that actually represents.

I can read dumb shit. I can handle my beloved childhood media being worse than I remember it. I can even handle my favorite authors turning out to be absolute garbage but the level of how all this happened with Harry Potter almost has no equivalent that I can think of because it is so big and so destructive and so intertwined with its author in the way that very few other things are.

The author cannot be dead with Harry Potter because she keeps coming back in to twist the knife. She has implanted herself into the series itself so firmly that trying to remove her from it make the entire thing implode on itself into something else entirely. And she uses that firm rooting that she’s established to materially harm people. People like me just one continent over. I’m sure she’d also interfere in other countries politics if she legally could.

It’s like. You can’t think critically through the full scope and ramifications of something when she hasn’t even stopped twisting that knife of hers. I can playfully stick my tongue out at shakespeares bad opinions because he isn’t alive right now spending his money on bad things. And even most authors alive now don’t have financial knives big enough to make much of a difference.

Rowling though? She can just throw a million dollars at something. It’s no wonder I can’t look at those books. My siblings are being threatened with them. It’s a lot easier to study a knife in a museum than one that’s currently being held to someone’s throat.

woman: OOOOoOOH NoO!!!! It’s meelltIINNGG!!

*ring melts off woman’s hand*

woman: MY PRECIOUS POWERRrRR RING! GONE FOORRVVERrrr..