Leon

He’s not yellow enough and she’s too old for this comparison to really work though.

Traditionally, vegetarian meant what we often call vegan or plant based today. If you consume eggs and dairy you’re a lacto-ovo vegetarian. I usually just use vegetarian as short hand, even though I on occasion have eggs or cheese.

As a life long lacto-ovo vegetarian, if it came from something that shits, it’s inedible to me.

Your example tomatoes aren’t a problem, but I don’t for example eat gelatin.

I’m also really against faux-meat, like the incredibly burger or whatever. If it’s too much like meat it grosses me out.

Ahah! We don’t basil shame here! All basil is good basil :)

Oh my sides! This is too good.

Ah, it depends on the type of basil. This is a variety called mammoth, or lettuce leaf because of how large the leaves are. It’s not the same as genovese.

Your four year old has fantastic taste! Or maybe I have the taste of a four year old. Maybe we’re both fantastic. Who’s to say?

I enjoy making my pesto thicc, and then I serve it with lots and lots of fresh, juicy tomatoes. Used to grow this massive basil. I’d grab a few leaves and quickly whip up some pesto with that. So good.

Several communities have grouped together to protest the efforts. In face of a common enemy and all that. That’s the one good thing to have come out of all this bullshit; some class camaraderie that crosses the lines of political parties.

That’s not me saying that it wouldn’t have been better had this bullshit never come around.

Realistically, I think characters like these would be designed and run by committee, just like all other corpo slop media we’ve been getting. Games, music, series, and films that have been written by teams of people, and then molded by data gathered on viewership and control groups. No daring creative decisions can be allowed, as everything has to be backed by market research to ensure mass appeal, marketability, and dreadful mediocrity.

It makes me think of the On-Lyne side story in Warframe.

Been thinking a lot lately about some words I saw in your Technocyte Coda debrief: predictable, standardized, and controlled. Music to my eyes right now. The only thing predictable about pop stars these days is their whining and complaining. Fame really goes to their perfectly coiffed heads.

Predictable, standardised, controlled. That’s what they want. Workers being complex individuals with their own passions and lives is so annoying. You can’t work them 24/7, and they might get silly things like ideas, and thoughts of their own.

Eeeh! I put a tonne of garlic in my pesto. As much as I love pesto, I don’t want it in my bussy.

I firmly believe that after a certain amount of money there is no longer “joy” in having money and they all have to find something else to get their fix so to speak.

That tracks, since it turned out that all the billionaires get off on raping children.

There are a lot of debates. Vegan as a diet vs. lifestyle for example.

Some call themselves vegan when they have a plant-based diet, some insist that it’s a lifestyle and extend beyond just diet, into other aspects of life. Some are pro pets, others are against keeping animals at all.

Yeah, I can believe the film producers cutting down a lot. Partially since they are books and adapting that into a film requires some cutting, but also partially because some of the stuff she wrote was really out there.

I don’t think the new adaptation has the same sense though. I cringed a little when I heard that they decided to cast a black guy as Snape, because the scene that immediately came to my mind is the one where he’s being bullied and hung off a tree by Harry’s father back when they were kids. When you make the target of that a black guy… it kind of paints a different picture.

In a vacuum it shouldn’t matter, you don’t do that to people. But there’s this historic precedent with white people hanging black people from trees. I’m not against gender-bending or race-bending characters at all, but you have to think of the context in which it happens. Dumbledore or McGonagall would’ve made more sense. Or Hermione, which Rowling herself has previously said could be black, why not put that money where her mouth is?

I’ve said it previously, I enjoyed the books as a kid. I’ve fond memories of reading them when I was really sick for a while. I enjoyed seeing the films in the cinema. Back then I was ignorant to many of the horrible things in the world.

I’m not anymore, and I really struggle to believe that Rowling was that naïve. Hell, she was 50-ish when she likened lycanthropy to HIV/AIDS, like that was literally just 10 years ago.

Haha, I actually use the regular phi95 theme, mostly because it is a little nostalgic. :)

I’m getting pretty tired of this tirade, honestly.

Rowling’s hateful and bigoted ideology is reflected in the books, it’s right there for anyone to see. You cannot extricate that from the story she tells. The story is bad, because her ideology is bad.

That’s not to say that there aren’t redeemable moments. Hitler treated most anyone badly, but he was pro animal-rights. I somehow don’t find that redeems him or his works as a whole. Apply the same to Rowling.

Yeah. I enjoyed these books as a kid, which makes sense because I was oblivious to the prejudices of society. One could argue that maybe Rowling was too, but given her actions I just don’t believe that.

Also, are we just going to ignore Professor McGonagall being childless and devoted to her career in academia in which she thrives and holds the respect of her peers and pupils?

You know what, that’s fair. McGonagall is a mostly unproblematic character, I feel. There are some moments where I feel like she meted out very strange punishments, like sending the kids out into a dangerous forest they were prohibited from being in because it’s potentially lethal, or when she locked Neville out of the Gryffindor common room while a murderer was on the loose.

That said, Caroline Easom did a video on the female characters that appear in the top 100 characters by mention in the books and there are some less savoury patterns in how Joanne portrays women.

Ah yeah, I’d forgotten about that. Pulled up the book to that chapter, and came across this

“Can Dobby give Harry Potter his present?” he squeaked tentatively.

“’Course you can,” said Harry. “Er . . . I’ve got something for you too.”

It was a lie; he hadn’t bought anything for Dobby at all, but he quickly opened his trunk and pulled out a particularly knobbly rolled-up pair of socks. They were his oldest and foulest, mustard yellow, and had once belonged to Uncle Vernon. The reason they were extra-knobbly was that Harry had been using them to cushion his Sneakoscope for over a year now. He pulled out the Sneakoscope and handed the socks to Dobby, saying, “Sorry, I forgot to wrap them. . . .”

[…]

Dobby now handed Harry a small package, which turned out to be — socks.

“Dobby is making them himself, sir!” the elf said happily. “He is buying the wool out of his wages, sir!”

The left sock was bright red and had a pattern of broomsticks upon it; the right sock was green with a pattern of Snitches.

“They’re . . . they’re really . . . well, thanks, Dobby,” said Harry, and he pulled them on, causing Dobby’s eyes to leak with happiness again.

A boy with a vault full of gold, couldn’t give his supposed friend something better than his uncle’s knobbly, “oldest and foulest, mustard yellow” socks. His slave friend appreciates it nonetheless, but like, surely he had nicer socks?

I can’t with this author. The fact that at the end of all of this, nothing has changed; people’s worth is still determined by breeding and bloodline, the slave race is still enslaved, just kind of makes the entire journey seem pointless to me.

Oh yeah, you killed wizard-Hitler but the wizard-nazi ideology is not just at large, but commonly practised by everyone, including by the good-guy rich-orphan turned wizard cop and his friends.

Pirating Harry Potter media is the only ethical way of consuming it. When I quoted the books here it was from an epub I obtained the same way the big corpos do it.

No, they’re bad entirely on their own merit.

Given that Rowling is still making money and is actively using that money to harm people, you cannot extricate the art from the artist.

If one want a whimsical world of magic, I’d recommend Terry Pratchett’s Discworld series. If one wants a little darker story about a magical school, I’d recommend the Scholomance series by Naomi Novik.