Peregrine Lake – A Weekly Webcomic Written by Trae Dorn and Drawn by Ethan Flanagan

So this situation just honestly amuses me so much that I had to share. It also requires a lot of background, so please bear with me as I try my best to explain.

I actually got this email a couple of weeks ago, but I needed to share it with y’all because… well, because. Unless this is your first time reading anything I’ve ever written, you probably know that I’m one of the people behind Nerd & Tie, which is primarily a podcast network these days. We also still dabble in convention news coverage, but between 2014 and 2018 we ran the “Mega Blog” on the site where we covered pop culture news. Was that a long time ago? Yes. Was that only for a brief period in the site’s twelve year history? Also yes.

But because of that our tips email has ended up in the hands of people who want to send out releases and blast every nerd news site they can find. Which is, y’know, absolutely fine. It’s a dedicated mailbox, and that’s literally what it’s for.

And most of the stuff that gets sent there is pretty typical and what you expect… and then, there are emails like this one.

Before we start, I want to mention something important: Nerd & Tie is a primarily queer run network. There are not an insignificant number of trans creators involved, and I personally am nonbinary. Anyone who has spent more than five minutes with our content would know this, and knows our current distaste for anyone supporting a certain wizarding franchise and its creator. Said wizarding franchise has a new TV adaption coming out soon, and they’ve done something which will always send the worst people you’ve met into a tizzy: they cast a non-white actor in a role that was white in the original version.

So yeah, the racists are losing their god damned minds — and they emailed us about it.

To be fair, this was clearly a form email they sent to a ton of folks, but since it wasn’t BCC’d, it means they thought of us specifically, and that makes it all the funnier. They’re really trying to sound formal and professional with this wacky-ass thing, so, with the subject line “Media coverage request: HBO Max controversy, #NotMySnape movement and the silencing of fan voices,” this is the email I got:

Dear editorial team,

I’m reaching out to draw your attention to a situation currently causing major unrest within the global Harry Potter fan community — a story I believe deserves media coverage.

HBO Max previously announced a new Harry Potter TV series, claiming it would stay true to the original books by J.K. Rowling. However, over the past months, rumors surfaced about a casting direction focused on inclusivity, raising concerns about deviations from the canon.

A few days ago, HBO officially announced Paapa Essiedu, a Black actor, as Severus Snape — a character explicitly described in the books as “sallow-skinned” and “deathly pale.” The announcement was posted with comments disabled, preventing fans from voicing their reactions. As a result, the community rallied on other official pages (such as @hbo itself, @StreamOnMax and @HarryPotter on Instagram), giving rise to the #NotMySnape movement.

Unfortunately, HBO appears determined to silence dissenting voices by reporting comments as spam and ignoring legitimate criticism. Millions of fans feel unheard and censored, all in the name of a “woke” culture that should, in theory, embrace diversity — including diversity of thought and opinion.

I kindly ask if you could consider writing an article on this matter, highlighting the injustice and double standards in HBO’s handling of the situation.

Thank you for your time and commitment to independent journalism.

Best regards,

V.

This is, frankly, the funniest god damned thing I’ve ever read. From the word woke in scare quotes to the “diversity of thought and opinion” we are getting the dog whistles in full on symphonies. I like how they describe HBO deleting overt racism as an injustice.

Like imagine living in 2025 and this is your biggest problem.

The best part is, a lot of people on the left don’t want this show to exist at all, and think it’s weird they made the in-canon wizard-racist character black. Like that’s sort of problematic for a myriad of reason, but none of them are what these bozos are angry about.

And honestly I personally would LOVE IT if this show failed, so if the racists don’t tune in… and the leftists don’t tune in… that’s awesome. Good job Warner Bros, you really did it with this one.

The email also attached a bunch of screenshots of HBO social media, I guess to prove the censorship? I don’t honestly didn’t give a shit and ignored them.

To top it off, I got a second email about it a week later from another sender titled “Recast Snape! Not my Snape movement,” and it’s just as funny as it tries to argue about the casting with book quotes:

Dear people who care about our voices,

HBO has casted Snape as a version that doesn’t match the books entirely:

-“Snape’s sallow skin had gone the color of sour MILK.” From Prisoner of Azkaban, Chapter 14, page 285

– “Snape was hanging upside down in the air I…] revealing skinny, PALLID legs.” From Order of the Phoenix, Chapter 28, page 647

– “Voldemort, looking into Snape’s PALE face…” From Deathly Hallows, Chapter 32 page 655

We are not racists who put our eyes on the actor’s race. What we deeply care about and is concerned is the film presenting the accuracy of the books. When HBO announced the remake, they promised that the main purpose to remake the series was to stick to the books as much as possible. However, the results are highly disappointing.

Also, HBO deleted ALL our comments on one of their posts about the remake (

https://www.instagram.com/reel/DI0fcvdPi8o/?igsh=MWkxdHdycTdkejI4eg==

), silencing over hundreds of voices from us. Not to mention they closed off comments of the post where they announced Snape’s cast. They are silencing over hundreds of our voices and refuse to listen nor communicate with us.

Please, if you care about the voices and the freedom of speech of our people, report this and let more people know.

Thank you!

I’m just… I’m just laughing. “We’re not racist, but… it’s just super important to us that the character is white!” Like I could argue with this on the basis of adaptation, or that it’s not important to the background of the character — but who gives a shit? Imagine spending this much energy on fucking TV adaptation casting of the TERF-owned wizard franchise. Imagine sending this to me of all people an expecting a sympathetic ear. If you don’t like an adaptation choice, don’t watch it. Feel free to criticize it too — but to send things like this to me of all people… wow.

I wonder what living a life that privileged is like.

It just made me laugh.

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On Monday night a storm rolled through town. It only took a half an hour for the rain and wind to hit and leave, but in that time a tornado passed by about fifteen miles south of where I live. It was one of four that hit Eau Claire county during that storm, but thankfully those tornados hit mostly unoccupied farmland.

While there was property damage, no one got hurt.

Besides a period of time where Crysta and I awkwardly stood by our bathroom so we could avoid windows, we were largely unaffected by the entire thing. It almost felt like a metaphor though for everything that’s happening in our lives right now. Bursts of chaos that we know will pass, but we can’t ignore them while they happen.

I don’t want to make it sound like everything is doom and gloom. There are definitely some bad things happening (like my nonagenarian grandmother being in hospice, and y’know, *gestures at the American government*), but I still find joy in what I’m doing. There was a rainbow after the storm passed, and the metaphoric rainbows are happening too.

I don’t know, when things get like this I get a bit fried. I’ve got so much writing to do right now and I’m weeks behind where I want to be right now on both Peregrine Lake scripts and the novel I’m working on. We’ll be going up to our annual week at the cabin soon, and I’m hoping to get some stuff words down then. It’s just hard to get work done when your brain is lit up like a Christmas tree.

On the upside, I’m super happy with how this month’s episode of BS-Free Witchcraft turned out. It was supposed to be a quick and dirty episode on the Pagan Invasion, a 90s piece of Evangelical Christian satanic panic era propaganda, but I ended up researching way deeper than I intended. I’m really happy with the way it turned out, and it’s one of the few episodes where I think the video version is genuinely a better experience than the audio only version.

I don’t know. We’re getting things done and moving forward. All storms eventually pass, and we will find the sunlight and pick up the wreckage afterwards. Find the rainbows where you can, and let’s keep moving.

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So I just got home from traveling out to Maryland to visit my sister and her family for the Easter weekend. We got in the truck and drove the almost exactly one thousand miles to her home in Rockville, MD. It’s the second time we’ve done this, and we genuinely spend twice as much time traveling as we do actually spending time with family.

I genuinely love a good road trip, and the journey, which crosses through Wisconsin, Illinois, Indiana, Ohio, Pennsylvania, and Maryland, is deeply satisfying. Almost exactly in the middle, of course, is Pokagon State Park in Indiana.

Searching through my blog, somehow I’ve never mentioned Pokagon by name here, though it has come up. We first went there almost ten years ago for our fifth wedding anniversary, and we fell in love with the place. Indiana has a historic inn system in its state parks, and Pokagon sits on a beautiful lake. I know Crysta doesn’t enjoy the traveling as much as I do, so I think visiting Pokagon is the only reason she hasn’t demanded we switch to flying out to Maryland when we make the trip.

I love the journey though, I really do. And I love seeing my family so much. It’s easy to feel isolated from them when we’re often so far away. It’s been an amazing six days. Besides my sister, her husband, and my two niblings, my parents, my brother and his long time girlfriend were also there. We won’t be together again until this summer, and that won’t come fast enough.

That said, it feels so amazing to be sitting in my own chair in my own home again right now. One of the best parts of a long trip like this is feeling yourself relax when your travels are over. Of course, we don’t get to relax for long with a con this weekend — but I’m going to take it where I can get it.

The world never stops.

This Saturday, April 26th, I’m going to be at Concinnity in Milwaukee, WI! Stop on by and say hi if you’re in town!

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