HereBeSherlocks

Medieval garden vase, ready for the kiln!

I found a botanical manuscript and was possessed

Well you see. There was a good gif of the new harry potter series on my mutual's blog. And I reblogged it.

Less facetiously: people are allowed to think whatever they want about jk rowling. However, the most-sold book series in history doesn't just... y'know, vanish from culture at-large because people stopped liking its author.

For the past decade and a half the political side of fandom culture has continuously been trying to turn Harry Potter into a shibboleth. Originally it was that you showed you were a good progressive ally by comparing every conservative political figure to Voldemort and the Death Eaters and anyone opposing them as plucky young adult protagonists. I distinctly remember the exasperated refrain of "read another book" because political discourse was just that oversaturated with such comparisons.

And then Rowling went against the mainstream progressive grain on gender politics and went from a celebrated leftist figure to The Actual Devil more or less overnight, and suddenly the way to show off how enlightened and progressive you were was by how much you hated the series and how hard you could harass people who didn't hate it enough. It has progressed firmly past the point of any actual criticism of the books or of rowling herself and into 'if you like this thing or are even neutral towards it, it is because you are The Outgroup' territory. It's boogeyman thinking.

Nada. Zilch.

You are not entitled to someone’s time and energy because you like the things they make. You are not entitled to them engaging with you. You are not entitled to them agreeing with you.

Enjoy the thing they chose to share with you. Appreciate the work that went into it. Show support if you’re feeling kind.

But if your response is to keep showing up demanding attention, demanding content, complaining when they do anything you like less, bringing drama to their doorstep, demanding their opinions align with yours, and trying to guilt trip or concern troll them into engaging with you, and they don’t like that, the problem is not that the creator is “mean.”

The problem is that you decided for whatever reason that other person’s boundaries and the notion of giving them basic respect were optional.

Because they’re not allowed to say no or have feelings or opinions, they just have to keep giving. (Apparently.)