An Open Letter To Anyone Who Had Detention With Dolores Umbridge

I was 500 pages deep into Deathly Hallows when the skies first went black and the TERFnado touched down.

Aside from feeling like any 7th season of a TV show rushing to tie loose ends, that series is still great. The books are not bad.

I'll still never read them again.

For her to devolve into bigotry, to be unable to resist the urge to reveal her self-insert character was Dolores Umbridge all along, especially at a time when it feels like Death Eaters are real and among us, is not just unforgivable, but pathetic and sad.

The thread of that narrative, that together we are stronger against the darkness, is completely lost on its weaver. The person with such imagination to create such worlds can't see past their own prejudice; can't imagine trans people have a right to exist.

And I see a lot of people having the conversation, sometimes with themselves, "Well, the books were never any good anyway." You're lying to yourself not to get hurt.

This happened. This keeps happening. I've lost count of how many things I used to love but can't deal with anymore because their creators turned out to be scum in a way that makes it impossible to separate art from artist.

The pain is real. You have to feel it to move past it. The books, the movies, you name it, they were all good (except maybe Fantastic Beasts, but *Your Mileage May Vary), maybe they were even a significant part of you, but because you don't want to support a raving bigot, you have to leave them behind. And you know that's the choice.

That's why it hurts. This thing that meant so much to generations (plural) of people is sullied and stained forever. This beautiful thing that was a light to so many is a dark star feeding off of those that dare venture near. It has become a radioactive grotesquerie fueling the fires of her hatred because once IP is lucrative, the money never really dies. We have to put it into its sarcophagus and leave it to burn itself out.

I shouldn't even be bringing it up, but it took me this long to figure out what my two cents were to even give them.

Ultimately, there's more to life than the stories we read. We can still take from them the good lessons learned and try our best to make a better world.

Still, it would have been nice to be able to go back there from time to time...