i've mostly stopped listening to "serious" podcasts (aside from blowback when that comes out, and the occasional episode of citations needed) and now listen mostly to communists talking about the politics of childrens cartoons

• a more civilized age: covers star wars in vaguely chronological order, talking about the political and philosophical implications of the worldbuilding therein. most of the podcast is covering the clone wars and rebels kids shows, but they do the movies and live action shows as well
• the great gundam project: 2 people watch all of gundam in release order and become communists along the way to understand the worldbuilding better. great coverage of a fascinating franchise that covers so much ground
• the shrieking shack: people who grew up with harry potter revisit it as adults to talk about just how rancid that series is and how dogshit the writing is in the later books. has the bonus of coming out as jkr started to go mask off so if you're curious about her journey there they cover it in a lot of detail
• homestuck made this world: leftist academics talk about homestuck and why it's a fascinating microcosm of the broader internet and how culture has developed

yeah the last line of the last book (before the epilogue) is harry thinking "gee, i sure hope my slave brings me a sandwich," as he lounges in bed. i didn't talk about the house elf stuff because my focus was on the goblins but it's just as, if not more, rancid and evil. many such bits in the books, rita skeeter was really the first sign of jkr's transphobia

very good podcast! i'm a little behind their catching fire read which is still a delight

i don't know why i'm responding to this, but whatever. doing this all in one post, but i'm responding to both of yours, which is why this is so long. it's also long because i'm actually responding to the things you say, which isn't something you seem to know how to do

first things first, that substack you linked. many things wrong there. immediately, you're invoking 'i know a jewish person who says it's fine.' ok, on my end i know jewish people who think it is extremely not fine. in fact they were the ones who explained to me why the goblins in harry potter are problematic. second, having read the article it just blatantly lies in its base premise.

Goblins, the fantasy creature that has existed in various incarnations for centuries, may have initially been based on antisemitic stereotypes - short, big noses, greedy money-hoarders. Therefore, fantasy that depicts goblins (even if in a complex or sympathetic way that subverts some of the tropes) is automatically inherently antisemitic because goblins are representing Jews, and doing it in the most harmful stereotypical way possible. (note that I have yet to personally see this standard applied to a fantasy series other than HP)

this just isn't a claim anyone is making. the claims about harry potter are much more specific about that. there are antisemitic tropes in the water surrounding goblins, but jkr ramped that up dramatically. this author just breezes past the fact that the goblins are bankers which is a whole lot more specific than a generic greed! people don't say that shit about tolkien (as much, because people do rightly point out problematic elements in tolkien's goblins quite a bit if you don't ignore that to try and lie about how people are being mean to a bigoted billionaire) because tolkien goblins don't run the banks!!! this shit is so blatant it's unsurprising anyone trying to carry water for rowling has to just ignore it

she also claims that there's no actual child kidnapping in the game, and that if there was it would be fine because other fantasy stories contain bits where people kidnap children to use their blood. i'm pretty sure the first point is untrue, because i can find many references to the goblins wanting to use the main character (who is 15 years old, so firmly a child)'s blood for a ritual, but i haven't played the game and am not going to so i suppose it's possible everyone referencing this just made it up in some kind of mass hysteria for some reason. but crucially that second bit is such bullshit it doesn't matter. the problem is taking all these things together! when you have someone stealing a child's blood for a magic ritual that is not problematic or blood libel on its own, but it becomes so once you have it done by members of the greedy hook nosed race that run the banks and don't think it's possible to own property and prefer to eat raw bloody meat and stab the heroes in the back and have stars of david on the floors of their banks. that shit is antisemitic, a lot more so than the culture broadly already is.

similarly it isn't a pogrom when violence against goblins happens in other fantasy media because those goblins don't run the banks and aren't nearly as coded!!!!! what are you even fucking talking about!!!! anyways as you can see i read her whole piece and it was all wrong and poorly argued. next!

sorry this is so long it had to be split up anyways, despite my efforts. you're just too wrong to fit into the character limit!

ok fine, i'll try and be as clear as possible

sometimes things are bad and are bad at their core (both because they financially support someone who is doing so much to make the world more transphobic than it already is and also all the antisemitism, racism, classism, misogyny, transphobia, and just plain old bad writing decisions at the core of the story) and we just need to let go and stop participating in the fandom because it inevitably leads to people saying shit like "oh i can just buy this harry potter game even though i know jkr sucks and this gives money to her that she will use to fund bigotry, it belongs to the the fans now!" when it doesn't, as long as jkr is alive it's her space and spending time in it will eventually lead to money making its way over to her!!!

and the game itself is bad because it's about the goblins, who have long been noted to be fairly antisemitic caricatures in harry potter, being swarthy hooked nosed creatures who run the banks, have a long history of pogroms being run on them, have different moral values around ownership (very similar to accusations of judeo bolshevism) and have a literal star of david as their symbol in the films. and in this game they kidnap children for ritual purposes which is just straight up blood libel

if you still aren't sure what's antisemitic here and you somehow aren't a bad faith poster, look up judeo bolshevism, look up blood libel, look up images of antisemitic caricatures and compare them to descriptions of goblins in harry potter. there are so many antisemitic tropes in there it's impossible to imagine no one was aware

sadly it still shovels money into her pockets and is about the cabal of hooked nose bankers stealing children to perform rituals

i figure it's a good point that'll get most people most of the way there. not too confusing

sleggar
jamitov
bajeena
revive
bring
harry

i use it for podcasts, mostly

the thing is b tier?????

anyways watch tetsuo the iron man

i want him to get more star wars shows, because andor rules so hard. spending the episode after a massive heist almost entirely focused on the empires response to it and all the politics involved is truly :galaxy-brain:

i wanna see a dave filony tony gilroy collaboration, just to see the clashes in their styles

filoni: so these rebel soldiers are true heroes, they’re risking it all to stop this great evil hanging over the galaxy, i wanted to explore this squad more and see what they were doing when luke wasn’t around, and to explore their connection to the force. this one has a lightsaber she found but doesn’t know how to use, and over the course of the series she’s going to learn to be in tune with the force and become a powerful jedi

gilroy: anyways i felt it was important that after the combat we spent a few episodes going over the impact of the death star’s destruction on the galaxy, and the logistics of the rebel alliances movements over time. plus i thought we needed to know wedge antilles’ ideological reasons for fighting the empire, so we learn he’s a gerrerite when he executes a former seperatist fighter for the war crimes he committed on wedges home planet and frames bria tharen for it