Pink News has bad writers
This may be a contestant for the Most Passive-aggressive Subhead Ever prize:
A Harry Potter panel due to be held at London’s Comic Con event in October has been cancelled after conversations with an LGBTQ+ charity.
Who cancelled it? Who had the conversations? What is the connection between the cancelling and the conversations? What LGBXYZ charity?
Obviously a subhead can’t give all the relevant information, but that doesn’t mean it has to wrap itself in the passive voice repeatedly. It’s like the “activism” as a whole – all the creepy endless spying “something was said to someone by someone” hissing and pointing. Scandal-mongering without any scandal to work with. More succinctly: bad thinking leads to bad writing. That subhead is bad bad bad writing.
LGBTQ+ helpline Switchboard explained that the charity is due to appear at the event, which runs from 27 to 29 October, but that it raised “concerns” after finding out that a Harry Potter-themed panel was also due to take place.
More garbage writing. Also why does this clumsy writer – one Emily Chudy – put scare quotes on “concerns”? Why doesn’t Pink News get better writers?
“When we agreed to host a Pride Lounge at this year’s MCM London Comic Con, we did so with the aim of connecting with their diverse fan community,” Switchboard wrote on Twitter.
Ohhhh, I see – Pink News is working up a tweet into a news story. Ok, I do that myself often enough, so I don’t object to the principle, but then why pretend otherwise at the beginning?
“However, at that time we were unaware of their plans to feature any panels using the Harry Potter IP [intellectual property] … Upon learning about this, we felt compelled to express our concerns about the potential impact on our community, particularly trans individuals.”
Switchboard explained it had since been in “conversations” with the London Comic Con organisers, who were “receptive to our concerns and feedback from their fans”, and then decided to cancel the Harry Potter panel.
Yet more garbage writing. Who decided to cancel the panel? Switchboard, or the London Comic Con organisers? Whatever; it was one of them. The story is: London Comic Con had a Potter-themed panel on the schedule; some “activists” saw an opportunity to cancel something so they picked a fight on Twitter and got the panel cancelled. Let’s have a big round of applause for our winners.
H/t Mostly Cloudy
Yo Switchboard:
Attendance at panels is not required. No one will make anyone attend any panels. If you don’t like Harry Potter, don’t attend panels on Harry Potter. There will be plenty of other stufff at the Con to do and see.
Here’s an idea: how about those attendees not interested in, or distressed by, a Harry Potter panel not go to that panel? If they are so fragile that the mere presence of such a panel at a large event upsets them so, they are likely too unwell to go anywhere, or do anything, as there’s no telling how many times they might unexpectedly run into the words “Harry” or “potter” whilst in the course of their travels. Either one on its own is bad enough. The two together? It must be like encountering a critical mass of harmful, verbal material, resulting in permanent injury and psychic scarring. Louis Slotin redux, but with words instead of uranium. “Tickling the Wizard’s Tale” * perhaps? Maybe it would be best for them to stay at home.
As for those performatively posturing on behalf of these weepy wilters, maybe they could have just come up with a waver for them to sign. Or the charity could hve pulled out. I know that’s not going to let them be seen “doing something,” but I’d bet there would have been more people disappointed at the cancellation of the HP panel than traumatized by it. The Comic Con organizers are cowards. They bowed down to bullies, allowing themselves to used as another avenue to demonize and punish JK Rowling, which is the real point of this power play.
Surprisingly, this Pink News article includes a link to the podcast series The Witch Trials of JK Rowling, and actually gives Rowling the last word:
*Dr. Louis Slotin died of massive radiation exposure during a demonstration of critical assembly, when he accidentally brought two spheres of fissile material too close together, too quickly. This seat-of-the-pants demonstration was known as “tickling the dragon’s tail.” More about this small, fatal nuclear accident here: https://www.military.com/history/tickling-the-dragons-tail.html
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