Lokifan

Happy new year!

I’ve been trying to post about this for ages and having an ADHD procrastination about it. But it’s one of the big things of my 2025, so now seems like a good time.

I’ve been charged under the Terrorism Act for sitting in Parliament Square holding a sign. I’m currently waiting for a court date.

( cut for an explanation for people who haven’t heard about Palestine Action and the UK government’s repression )

So yeah, Defend Our Juries is basically a group that tries to defend free expression, the rule of law, etc, in the increasingly authoritarian UK. And their reaction to Palestine Action’s proscription was to try to make it unenforceable via mass civil disobedience. And I joined in.

Now, the ban is being challenged in court - right now, as it happens, but we don’t know what’s going on with that. The founder of Palestine Action wants the ban struck down, and if that happens, the thousands of people arrested over this will almost certainly go free. But we don’t know yet.

In August, over 500 people showed up to Parliament Square, and at 1pm they all sat down, wrote the words, ‘I oppose genocide, I support Palestine Action’ on a sign, and waited to be arrested. Then they were. 50% of them were 60 or older.

I couldn’t make it to that one, but I was there in September. That time almost 900 of us were arrested.

The idea is to make the law unenforceable in practice. In August, people had been arrested and given ‘street bail’; it had helped the police process them. So for September we were asked to refuse street bail. The London Met only has around 500 holding cells, so the system would strain to manage us. And that very clearly worked, at least from my POV.

( cut for the details of the day. Warning: SUPER long )

Which brings me to possible consequences, if you’re curious!

- Up to six months in prison. In practice not gonna happen, if only due to a different horrifying problem with the UK justice system; prison overcrowding is so severe that Labour doesn’t want anyone being sent to prison for less than a year.

- An unlimited fine; the level of it used to be £5k. I think this might happen. But my parents will help, and I think Defend Our Juries will be able to fundraise, though I won’t take money from them unless I have to.

- Permanent travel restrictions. Having a terrorism conviction does limit your ability to get a visa, which sucks; I may never be able to visit Japan, f’rinstance, and if I wanted to work abroad again it’d be harder.

- Potentially could affect jobs, because it’d likely come up on the criminal records check they do for teachers. Only potentially, though; teaching English as a foreign language is definitely a field that selects for pro-Palestine types, and I’d be able to explain the context of a case that’s been in the news. The only criminal offences that legally stop you from being hired as a teacher of kids or vulnerable adults are offences against kids or vulnerable adults, which this obviously isn’t.

Like I said, the ban might be struck down anyway. That said, I’ve lost confidence in that because the judge who was going to oversee the case, who’d refused government appeals to not have the judicial review of the ban at all, as replaced at the absolute last minute by three magistrates. Seems like a stitch-up.

Direct action is very satisfying, and this combines some of the causes I care about most: free speech, the rule of law, and a free Palestine. No regrets.

I’ll keep you posted.

I went to a bi speed-friending thing on Sunday (it was great) and one of the conversations I had there reminded me of this weird, hilarious moment of fandom-meets-normal-people I had a while ago.

So there were six of us sitting at a round table in a restaurant, having just done a fun activity for sodsta’s birthday. Me, sodsta, januarium, Januarium’s husband A, and our friends L and F. Importantly, L is a uni friend of A’s, and F is her partner. We’re definitely all big nerds together but I’m not sure even L knew that Januarium, Sodsta and I all met through Harry Potter fandom.

We did, though. And we’re part of a group of 11 friends who all have a lightning bolt tattoo - mostly about two inches long, on the inside of our wrists. They were drawn for us originally by lizardspots, because she wasn’t gonna get a tattoo herself but she was part of the group. None of us, I think - including the 4 or so of the group who are trans - regret the tattoos, because they’re a symbol of friendship rather than Potter in itself.

Sooooo like two years ago, we’re sitting around having dinner and F starts excitedly talking about how she’s reading HP for the first time, and really enjoying them. She’s very offline and you can tell from how she’s talking that she has no idea about JKR’s fall off the deep end - and her girlfriend L, who 100% knows, is trans. So she’s happily talking, and L is looking at us in desperation, clearly hoping we’re not about to burst F’s bubble with any information about JKR’s transphobic activism. And I think we all silently decide that if L doesn’t wanna have that conversation, we won’t inflict it. But we’re all kinda like ‘hmm, interesting’ lol, not really engaging about HP, more drawing the conversation towards like reading in general. You’d have no idea any of us had even read those books.

And then F goes something like ‘and the red dragon, the - I can’t remember, the - ’

Januarium: the Norwegian Ridgeback?

F: ???

Sodsta: the Chinese Fireball, wasn’t it?

Me, joining in for the fun of it: or the Welsh Green?

F: …wait…

Januarium, sodsta and I: :look at each other, then slowly slide our wrists onto the table and pull back our sleeves to reveal our tattoos as one:



So we basically did a big reveal that we’d secretly been in a cult the whole time, lmao.

Speaking of favourite Christmas music - I’ve put some faves below the cut, and I’d be curious about yours! My housemate K loves Christmas pop like Mariah Carey and Wham! But I tend to go for the earnest and slightly weird, or the comedy stuff.

( Vienna Teng, Tim Minchin, and musicals )

The five questions meme! If you would like questions, say "Jacobins!"

I've got some great questions from sabethea and oursin ( under the cut )

The last twenty-four hours in South Korea have been wild and terrible, but inspiring. I think a lot of the details are still-to-be-confirmed, but in case you missed it:

( the people stopped a coup )

I saw Hadestown at the weekend - even better than the last time! I saw it in 2018 and was like ‘hmm, I see why people like it but it didn’t set my world on fire’. This time I enjoyed it way more, though I find its politics good but depressing.

( details under cut )

princessofgeeks recently posted in bewilderment that Rings of Power doesn’t use almost any of Tolkein’s story, even the things they have the rights to. I must admit I don’t know anything about it - I’ve read very little Tolkein - but it reminded me of my enormous ????? around the Dirk Gently TV programme from a couple of years ago.

I just really don’t get why they even used the name? The book and TV programme are completely different. Only one character, Dirk himself, even has the same name, and he’s nothing like his book incarnation - he’s now a young, posh, handsome Englishman-in-America with superpowers. Nothing like the book Dirk, who I admit I remember vaguely but indelibly - he’s vague, a bit shambling, generally in a crumpled hat, and arguably psychic but in a 'does fortune telling' way not a 'weird government agency backstory' way. I’ve wondered if Derk from Dark Lord of Derkholm has some of Dirk in his DNA, actually.

None of the other book characters are there; at first I was expecting Todd, the ordinary guy caught up in Dirk’s whirlwind, to be a Richard analogue, but no.

The plot doesn’t have the slightest resemblance to the book; the concept of a ‘holistic detective agency’ is all that links them, and some time-travel. They’re definitely both weird, but it’s a totally different kind of weirdness. The amount of blood and death and torture! I was shocked. Not from the violence in and of itself but because it’s worlds away from the ambling whimsy of the book. I mean, a central mystery of the book is how a sofa jammed halfway up some stairs got there, and how it can be got out, when both seem physically impossible. Then there’s somehow a horse in a bathroom. In the TV show the mysteries are like ‘who tortured these people to death?’

I did end up watching the first season and some of the second; it’s not bad! But I’m still baffled by why it has that name attached. Like, I don’t think Dirk Gently’s Holistic Detective Agency has that much name recognition in the US (it was made by BBC America) so why bother trying to get that fanbase? You could’ve edited the stuff that’s copyrighted out, it wouldn’t take much. I dunno, I’m sure whoever wrote/made it was a fan of the book and Douglas Adams, but it’s just so different that I feel like other people like me, who saw the name and did start watching out of name recognition, were probably also like “oh my god NO was not prepared!” I don’t think I would’ve kept watching that first episode if I wasn’t watching with C. I love horror and I enjoy a lot of stuff with that level of violence but Dirk Gently meant I was expecting something totally different. I did keep watching (partly out of morbid curiosity re: would anything from the book appear) so I guess they got me??? But idk. The basic premise, the characters, and most especially the tone are all gone so what’s the point?

Would love to hear any of your theories, I’m genuinely baffled!

TL;DR: so there’s this HP fandom person, MelusinaHP, who I was friends with for years. She’s a militant TERF now. I wrote her birthday fic or fic to her prompts way back in the day. Should I delete her name off the Author’s Notes on AO3 given how comprehensively over our friendship is, and given she might still be a bit of a presence in HP fandom?

( slightly longer version under the cut )

Here's the link to the Stonewall guidance - there's different guidance depending on how much time you have.

I just got round to it like an hour ago so I thought I'd link just in case. I'm a tutor at an international FE college, so aside from all the general points, I pointed out that in my case, requiring me to tell parents of even just our under-18s meant requiring me to tell not only parents who could abuse them and we'd have no way of doing anything, but often government sponsors from countries where being trans is illegal.

I mean, I'd obviously just flagrantly ignore the guidance but they don't know that.

The plagiarism saga rolls on but I don’t have the energy! So an end-of-year meme. Every year I read other people’s and vaguely mean to do it myself and don’t. But this is the year!

( cut for questions )