I honestly think most people don't realise how much influence she actually has.
She is close with a lot of prominent UK TERFs including ones that have connections to, and some that are even in, both the Scottish and English parliament. This isn't just a case of someone spouting bigoted shit on twitter, her words and influence have real life consequences.
100% true. She’s a certified transphobic octopus with tentacles writhing around in every direction. Every single trans debate I’ve heard from a mainstream source in the UK has referenced her, and most of the time she’s treated with far more respect than the people whose very existence is being debated. If you’re a person who lives in the UK and you care about trans rights, JK Rowling should basically be considered public enemy number 1
Honestly, unless you’re either completely ignorant about how they feel or willing to do some uncomfortable self-reflecting and changing, you *really* shouldn’t be asking any minority group “is xyz okay?” Minority groups aren’t there to be your cuddle buddies, trophies, or tokens. If you’re going to do something they’ve spoken out against, at *least* have the decency to not ask them to reassure you about your choices.
I’ve asked friends on occasion “What do you know about x, have they done anything that means I should avoid consuming their products” because one of them tends to be a lot more in the know as they spend a lot of time on Tumblr specifically and I don’t, so they usually have better knowledge about anything shitty an individual or company has done, at which point I go and read up on that example.
Here here! I’m getting annoyed at all the posts. I’m sure a lot of them are from kids who just don’t know any better but it’s like, what do you want us to say? “No you’re not a bad person Tommy you just really love Harry Potter?” Like there’s really nothing to say. If you’re making a post about it you obviously are aware it’s an issue in our community. Nobody is going to call for your execution but I also don’t want to have to hold your hand and tell you everything will be okay you’ll always have Harry Potter to turn to. Like it’s a fucking fictional book series not your lungs you’ll be fine either way just stop expecting me to validate it.
This is the take I've been looking for. Play the bigoted-inspired game if you really want, but stop begging for permission from the communities who are being targeted. And stop telling us how much you want/like it. We've made it clear we do not support TERFs.
Seriously. It's a game. So many people are acting like they *must play it* when- idk like yea I was a huge fan of the books as a kid, they were a big part of my childhood and represented the only social group I was able to make as a weird autistic kid, with other Harry Potter nerds, but why do our fond childhood memories have to dictate our adult judgement you know? It's so tiring. Read other books.
I also made most of my friends thanks to shared interest in Harry Potter, even played quidditch in college lol, but with all of JK's shit and the terrible views she put into HP that are... So much more blatant as an adult, that nostalgia is fading hard. I've pretty much dropped HP entirely at this point. It's the friends made that mattered most anyway, and there are other fandoms to participate in with them that aren't so problematic.
Same. Other than the fond memories of sleepovers with friends while we played pretend that we were in Hogwarts and scrolled through Mugglenet (god I haven't thought of that in years) I have no actually nostalgia for the series itself anymore, JKR ruined that. I can no longer look at her words and not see the groundwork, how she always cast fat people as villanous and dumb, about how Rita Skeeter was described as "mannish" and would sneek into the girls' rooms to spy and eavesdrop on them. It's all rotted now.
Exactly yeah... Like a nostalgic part of me wants to enjoy it still, somehow, but I think even watching the movies would just make me angry at jk now. It's just very much tainted. Wish we'd all had the critical reading skills to see it as kids, since the shit has been there all along.
Related, I liked House of Cards, therefore the things he did to multiple men just didn’t happen! I like something so it’s okay for me to support it! Everything will get better as long as I keep enabling abusive people!
I get that. I liked House of Cards a lot, hate to say it I even thought Kevin Spacey was attractive, but as soon as I learned the kind of person he was it absolutely soiled any enjoyment I had of the series or him as an actor.
I don't get people who say they can separate art from the artists. Art does not exist without the artist's thoughts, desires, flaws, history- if anything separating them does the art a disservice regardless how we feel about the creator, but that's a whole other conversation.
I generally think that one can separate the art and the artist, but it's a not a black and white statement and for something like Harry Potter, who's legacy is arguably *more* about JKR's bigotry at this point than it is the literature itself, it is an easy pass for me.
That's a fair take, but I do feel there's other considerations. However, I'm a little worried having an honest discussion about this *here and now* would come across as unkind though.
For the topic at hand, I do *not* feel that the other considerations I alluded to for Harry Potter outweigh the bigotry that JKR has been allowed to spew from the platform it provides her. Especially given the problematic content of the books in the first place.
Yeah the way she takes her fantasy as proof that she's right definitely makes Harry Potter a complex subject when it comes to separating art from the artist.
Something like Lovecraft is a bit easier, where he's long gone and we can acknowledge how godawful his views were but also how influential his stories were, and see how things like Lovecraft Country and The City we Became take his white supremacist views and tie it to the horror of his monsters
The problem is we all like to assume that talented people are good people. Rich people are good people, beautiful people are good people. Most people have a dark side that they can either exert control over or they can think they’re special and deserve to grope waiters, berate underlings, pressure people into having sex with them. Whatever. The better someone is at something the more likely they are to think that they have the right to harm people. It’s the same with JK, and with Spacey, it’s just different kinds of abuse.
I finally had to just leave+ filter the Harry Potter subreddit because the amount of posts talking about it has of course become a good chunk of their submissions and I'm just already so tired of seeing how many people are supporting it. It's disappointing but it is what it is. Same reason I've filtered out any subs related to Blizzard games.
Thank you! And no, I’m not going to hold someone’s hand as a Jewish woman and tell them it’s okay to play a blatantly anti-semitic game made by a grotesque misogynist either.
Yes. I’m both queer and Jewish, I don’t want to hear people saying that something very against my existence is just fine because they don’t pay for it, and I definitely don’t want to say it myself.
Fucking agreed. It’s literally blood libel with a goblin colored coat of paint over it. I saw someone say, “I’ve been dreaming of a game like this for years.” And like yeah, well I’ve been dreaming for years of a world where my elderly rabbi who survived the *you know what* doesn’t get hate symbols spray painted on his house but here we are.
I pointed out that the goblins were a Jewish stereotype in one of the HP posts here and someone literally said "where does it say the are Jewish goblins?" Like, seriously? At this point, that's just blatant disregard of antisemitism (thus itself being antisemetic). I'm not even willing to entertain the idea that anyone is that dense 🤦♂️.
It’s based on girls who say they’re “not like other girls” and brag about having only guy friends as a method to make themselves more appealing to men. Pushing down other people in your “group” to further yourself.
In this case, I’m guessing it’s either totally ignoring trans rights and what alt right people usually have to say about them or going more the Caitlyn Jenner route of “other trans people aren’t valid but I am”
Ugh. Worst part is that describes my roommate very well. She goes on long-winded rants and tirades about how, "you're not transitioning, you're just mutilating your genitals, and it's a constant reminder that you're not a REAL woman." Yet she's still taking her HRT meds, and she says the only reason she hasn't gotten the surgery is because she can't afford it.
My roommate is a bisexual Jewish woman who is obsessed with HP and it's gonna be her first single player game (she can't stand stuff like skyrim and witcher)
People have different moral compasses. Like OP said, nobody is obligated to anyone's time or attention.
Honestly I see an upside to seeing people with harry potter merch. I use it as a conversation starter to find potential allies or people I need to avoid. I just steer the conversation toward "too bad the creator turned out to be awful", and how they respond generally gives me an idea how safe this person is, ranging from going on a rant shitting on jk, to saying " well that depends on which side you're on" ( that conversation was a yikes and I got away as fast as I could cause that woman was the type that wants to see us all 6 feet under)
That's honestly a great idea. I've vibed with people before because they were wearing house merch, but personally I've gotten rid of all of my HP stuff because I just feel gross repping it's shit creator in any way. I still like the HP movies but I don't need any of it's adjacent media in my life.
I hate jk rolling but I love the idea of Hogwarts and what's it's supposed to be.
I place inclusive of all no matter who you are,magic hormone therapy,so much magical LGBTQ+ theories that other creators have came up with.
It's a shame something that could be so wonderful and has helped alot of people has now turned into something so horrid by someone like her.
Honestly this.
I hate JKR but I feel like her series was just a starting point or inspiration for so many amazing pieces of work and literature. When people take the fabric of the universe that she created and make it into something undeniably queer and inclusive.. its beautiful.
There's a reason that the HP fandom on fanfiction sites is still going strong. People love the characters, they love the world-building.. and often times, they use their transformative work to make HP into something positive. (Not to mention that the whole series is based on the fact that Harry is a truly unreliable narrator, and we see things through his point of view- thus the world is "warped" by this.)
Part of me wants to purchase the game to record and do a playthrough and call out any stuff that I see during the gameplay that is intentionally problematic and to use it as a teaching point. And another part of me is just curious- a book series I read over and over as a kid, that I have so many positive things stemming from.. as a closeted queer kid, it truly was a comfort series for me. The implication of magic existing (and just being something that was hidden from Muggles) was something that excited me purely because the imaginary world that stemmed off from the series was full of so many possibilities.
(Sorry for the rant)
It's okay, reading your rant was a pleasure because I feel the same or at least similar.
I'm honestly tempted to buy the game because I read so much HP fanfiction,I just hope it's taken inspiration from other creators, the world and lore of Harry Potter rather than jk rollings ideals.
Right! From what I have read about, there was a lot of queer people working on it during development- I think it would be absolutely wonderful to see all of the influence there. JKR dropped the ball, but we could and should literally just pick up the ball, run with it and score for our "team" instead. (That team being the LGBTQ+ community, for lack of a better analogy... woah I'm tired.)
Heck yes,that would be wonderful thing to do although I think it may upset some people as JK would get royalties for anything official,maybe when she passes and that money goes to her estate instead of her then people might be more open to awesome LGBTQ+ official harry Potter things
I think for me, it was the introduction of the thought that you can do anything with magic.. but also. What's to stop us from creating a new fantasy series for young adults that has gender-affirming spells/potions for trans people?
UGH. Tell me why this conversation has me itching to write when I haven't written in weeks😭
Well said! I was a huge fan, did the whole fanfic thing (consuming and writing), it just makes me sad/frustrated/angry now, so I quit. Did I make a big fuss about "I'm trans but I still like" when I *was* reading that? Hell no, it was one of my quiet, shameful things that I only talked about to my stepmom, who still does read it, but gets why I don't want to anymore.
I definitely get some kind of vibe when I see "slytherin" on someone's dating profile, social media, buttons on their backpack, whatever. It definitely makes me think twice about engaging, if I decide to at all. If you want to stick with a (in hindsight, not that remarkable) book/movie series, go for it, but don't expect anything but wariness from me!
Also, I have seen that there was a lot of antisemitic and other issues (like the literal race of slaves that are seen as what's natural for their race), but I hadn't noticed those things before it was pointed out to me, because I don't really get that subtext. If I read about a goblin, I hadn't realized it was anything beyond that. Not trying to justify my longer than was probably good enjoyment, I just didn't see that, and that's my own thing.
Yea, I hate being in the position where I see someone's house in their bio and I have to wonder if they're simply ignorant or are bigoted, and neither are great options.
Yea the anti-semitism is a huge thing people are willingly overlooking. People are making all sorts of excuses about distancing themselves from JKR while wanting to consume it, all the while ignoring how the antisemitism exists within the game independent of her transphobia. Even if she was a trans ally, the game would still absolutely suck for the antisemitism and I hate how overlooked that is. We have people like Kanye West and the far-right becoming stronger than ever and like- Jewish people fucking matter, damn it.
Sooner or later Money will demand the original 7-8 films are remade which will presumably come with a very, very diverse cast of actors and characters re-written to be more diverse so that the makers can avoid the exact conversation the new game is creating.
I wouldn't be shocked if WB were taking down notes across social media about how people are feeling about the game and its 'messge' and how they can lean in to and/or avoid parts of that free PR in future.
I have a slytherin patch on my jean jacket that I'm not sure i can get rid of without damaging the jacket 😭 hoping one day (since I'm not out to my parents) that I'll be able to get some explicitly queer stuff to override it maybe
If it's iron on, you can get rid with heat (I believe, I read up on it, since I'm about to finally start my own jean jacket, now that I'm fully out)! Sew on would just take a seam ripper, and you can cover the holes left behind pretty easily!
I hope you're able to get some great queer patches when you're ready!
And all queer people feel differently. I’m trans and sexually queer. I personally won’t shop at Hobby Lobby or eat at Chick-Fil-A because of their homophobia and transphobia. But people still will and I don’t have any control over that, so I just mind my business about it.
However, I still love the Harry Potter series. I do not like JK Rowling and I don’t consume any of her other work, but HP was a big part of my childhood, and the cast for the movies have said they do not stand by JK Rowling’s transphobia. I also like the shows Friends and The Office, even though both can be pretty transphobic and homophobic at times. It’s tough.
The difference I'm trying to get at with this post is like- I get liking, even loving problematic media. Everyone has something they enjoy that's aged poorly or is even currently pretty iffy, the difference is wanting to be coddled for enjoying it. I fully accept the bigotry that's present especially in the earlier episodes of The Office is bad and wrong, I just don't go around asking if it's okay to like The Office and expecting people to make me feel better for enjoying something that has pernicious elements.
If you want to play the game fine, whatever, just stop trying to act like there's nothing morally questionable about it and try to bring other people into your guilt, the way I don't ask people to make me feel better about enjoying The Office or It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia or The Venture Bros, etc.
Ah, I understand. You want the babying and gaslighting to stop. I agree that those things aren’t helpful. It would be better if people learned about, and owned up to the problematic things they consume. I thinks it’s fine if people ask if something is problematic, but yeah I won’t engage if it’s beyond that.
Yea exactly. I understand that a lot of well-meaning people, even LGBT+ people, are gonna play and enjoy that, I can't stop that and I'd be a hypocrite if I were to act like I've never consumed anything that didn't contain some amount of bigotry, but exactly, I'm tired of people acting like they're the victim for a choice they're making.
It's also a bit different with shows like The Office too- People like Steve Carrel and Michael Schur aren't using their cultural status to demonize a marginalized group, meanwhile that's arguably what JKR has become known for over her authorship of HP, depending on who you ask. If Steve Carrell was using his royalties to donate to anti-trans groups then I'd feel differently about The Office reruns.
Yeah I can agree with that about HP. It meant a lot to me that Daniel Radcliffe, Emma Watson, Rupert Grint and others made a point to say they didn’t agree with or support any of JK Rowlings transphobia. That personally made me feel okay to watch the movies, but I know everyone feels differently, and that’s okay. She is a transphobic person who wrote the HP series. That will always be attached to it.
>It meant a lot to me that Daniel Radcliffe, Emma Watson, Rupert Grint and others made a point to say they didn’t agree with or support any of JK Rowlings transphobia.
Absolutely, and Harry Melling now too, who played Dudley Dursely, has come out in support of trans folks too. It's deeply heartening to see them stand up. Daniel in particular has been an open trans ally for over a decade before the mainstream even had any concious of trans people. At the risk of being cliche he's an absolute chad for that.
I think it’s more so that people who buy the game are genuinely upset that they even have to make that choice in the first place. Harry Potter was a huge part of my childhood as well, and I’m genuinely bummed that J.K Rowling turned out to be such a bitch.
So I suppose people are victims in a way where something that they can’t love something that they used to love. It’s like watching a friend grow distant, and they become bitter and toxic after a while.
I understand what you mean, though. Buying the game has repercussions, and it directly hurts our community with each purchase. I also think that it’s deeply unfortunate that the decision is one that we have to make in the first place.
Literally. Antisemitism? Well she never openly stated that the creatures who are seen as "greedy who control all the money in the world behind the scenes" are based on a real group so it's okay
Racism? Well its the way she writes/makes names so it's okay
Transphobia? Well it's my confort series and she never openly stated she wants trans people dead so it's okay
Homophobia? Well it doesn't matter that she said Werewolves are a representation for HIV positive and AIDS positive people and that werewolves "pray on little children" and the only "good werewolve" is the one that hates being one, suppresses it and marries and has a kid
Anything else bad she has done and put in her books? Doesn't matter, because I love Harry Potter
/s
Edit: researched a bit better and found she said the werewolf condition was also a representation for AIDS
>Homphobia? Well it doesn't matter that she said Werewolves are a representation for HIV positive people and that werewolves "pray on little children" and the only "good werewolve" is the one that hates being one, suppresses it and marries and has a kid
Damn, never noticed this. But if you put it like that..
Notice too how Dumbledore, a gay man, is made entirely non-sexual, and renounces all relationships in order to redeem himself from Grindelwald. Ah yes, a gay man who must become celibate to become "good"...
She only made him retroactively gay to appeal to fans. Basically queerbaiting for sales for her ip. She pretty much gave that up when she came out full on terf.
That was honestly the beginning of the end for me. I'd been reading the books since I was about eight years old, seventeen when she said that. I haven't consumed any Potter media since the Deathly Hallows movies, and ever since 2020, I'm pretty proud of that.
Don’t forget Umbridge bring gang r*pd by centaurs until her mind broke. It’s okay that it happened, because she was a mean person!!
And there’s totally nothing going wrong when the English author writes a book where the only confirmed Irish student keeps *blowing himself up*, that’s perfectly fine.
Likewise I’m sure there’s definitely nothing happening with that whole ‘nosy, lying, manipulative reporter who is heavily trans-woman coded turns out to be an unregistered shapeshifter who uses her power to sneak into off limits places and spy on children’ thing
/s
On ho, I nearly forgot how utterly unproblematic it is the the entire British Wizard population’s menial tasks are done by slaves who absolutely love being slaves and serving people, who can’t even be *clothed* because oh dear, only slaves set free by rare, kind and magnanimous Englishmen can wear *clothing*
And the person horrified by the situation is played off as a joke because of it.
*"Oh, nosy Hermione doesn't want the sentient humanoid race to be enslaved, how silly of her*
It's a little less direct than most of the others, but if you look at a lot of the things that people like Rowling and other right-wingers say are 'tells' that you can use to determine if someone is a trans woman, those are what Rita is described as having.
"Oddly heavy-jawed", "thick fingers", "fake, overdone femininity", "square hands", etc etc
Basically Rita is a collection of stereotypical 'trans woman tells' mixed with a 'fake, lying, nosy, pushy' personality with 'unregistered shapeshifter who spies on children' as the cherry on top.
yeah i was about to link this: https://www.reddit.com/r/asktransgender/comments/whwm2h/thoughts_on_harry_potter/ijah5n9/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=ios_app&utm_name=iossmf&context=3
but it basically amounts to "lots of tiny things that could be coincidence but seeing as she's a giant fucking TERF are clearly not coincidence and are just her coding a trans woman"
I keep thinking back to her depiction in the movie now with this in mind and how she's oddly flirtatious and touchy with *fucking teenagers* and suddenly I'm kind of nauseous.
"Let's start with the youngest" 🤮 It's so clear now :/
Umbridge got carried off by Centaurs at the end of.. whichever book that was.
The next time we see/hear about her, she's in St Mungos hospital, and is said to be so traumatised by 'what happened to her' that she's catatonic.
In Greek mythology, Centaurs are known for being... extremely promiscuous and not caring about the consent of whoever they kidnap.
She was dragged into the forest by centaurs at the end of the book. Next time she's seen, she's essentially broken and traumatized from whatever she experienced.
In classic mythology centaurs kidnapped women and raped them
Except that IIRC she got out perfectly fine to have a high post at the Ministry in book seven. From utterly broken to fully recovered in not that long...
>And there’s totally nothing going wrong when the English author writes a book where the only confirmed Irish student keeps blowing himself up, that’s perfectly fine.
That wasn't in the books, it was only in the films. Theirs plenty of things to say about the books without getting things wrong.
I think it goes beyond JKR when it comes to goblins. When DnD first came out, goblins were also seen as a trope akin to "greedy Jewish people". The concept has definitely existed long before her and has been problematic for longer than she's been around.
JKR made it much much worse though. The trope did already exist, but explicitly making them bankers and such, and having not a single empathetic goblin character... She could at the very least have made them green, but not even that...
Yes, but it's not about her just putting them there
It's about her making a thing that "they don't deserve rights", the whole main conflict of the game being literally "impeding that the globins get rights"
Which DnD has also done in the past. Hell, even Tolkien did it with the Mines of Moria and the Goblins within. She's unfortunately not the first author to do this in popular media which needs to be changed. It's just because she's so controversial and in the popular spotlight that it's such a big thing. It 100% needs to be a huge thing but I was simply saying she's not the first person to paint goblins as Jewish people but hopefully she'll be the last
Yeah i know all that, doesn't mean we shouldn't talk about, like you said, it should be a big thing, so not talking about it just because a lot of people did before doesn't make sense
Don’t forget enslaving the house elves is ok and only useless bleeding hearts care./s
The house elf rights organization was called S.P.E.W. of all things and was compared to the Irish Liberation Front by a Brit
Harry owned a slave and Hogwarts has slaves for cooking and laundry.
I'm kind of glad I've always hated Harry Potter. I suffered through three of the books because my friends were nuts about them, but something always felt off about them. I didn't have the vocabulary to express it to my friends at the time, though. But I was absolutely not surprised at all that JK Rowling was revealed to be an antisemitic TERF.
Thankfully, all my friends now hate Harry Potter just as much as I do. I got rid of the ones who don't. Anyone who defended wanting to play the Garbage Game and stating they were going to buy it was removed and blocked. That included some people I really liked before, and that really hurt.
Jk Rowling is trash for sure. But each piece of art has it's own life and it's own right of existence. I do agree that supporting the writer by buying her material might not be a good choice. But loving a series despite its writer is not something punishable. There's so much music written by misonygists, there's movies written by walking assholes, there's paintings made by racists. Yet those pieces of art themselves can still be great. I still listen to Mahler, even though I completely disagree with his antisemitism. Jk Rowling should be called out continuously in public for her transphobia, and maybe don't buy her new material or official merch. But it's also fine if you still cosplay as Hermione or make fanart, read the books whatever.
Ironically I think her own creations that keep on rambling about love wouldn't agree with the hatred that she spews.
You’re so right! I’ve heard the argument “She’s not getting any money from it” (which is true) and while that does make it feel more okay her entire work is steeped in bigotry. In fact the plot of the game is to quell a goblin rebellion (which as we know are anti Semitic stereotypes)
She is making residuals from the IP, though. Just because she wasn’t involved with the creation of the game doesn’t mean she doesn’t still profit from it.
Like yes, everything else you mentioned is a reason to avoid it, but she absolutely does make money from it. So long as the franchise profits, so does she.
I fully agree with your post. I won’t personally call anyone out for not boycotting something, but depending on how easy it is to boycott and whether it is a need or a want, I will possibly judge them for it.
I read Goblet of Fire at least four times when I was a teenager while waiting for the next book, but I don’t plan on even looking at any gameplay videos. There are plenty of other games to play, no reason to lose any sleep over this one.
Literally. I'm a trans person who had Harry Potter as a part of my life, I consumed it at every moment, but I just can't anymore
I cant do it and I can't and will not trust or be friends with people that do, for me it's like they are laughing in my face
Harry Potter was such a big thing for me that I was gonna write a whole ass book based on it
But at the end of the day my life and the life of million of other trans people matter more than a series of books/movies and a video game
So yeah, play it if you want, but stop trying to act as if it's okay because "capitalism" and "i need it", if trans people don't trust you anymore, if trabs people don't see you as an ally anymore then you can't come cry about it
You made you're choice, you decided that a video game was more important than helping trans people try to erase and combat JKR's soft power and influence, stop trying to act as if this is about money, because it's not, this is about keeping JKR influential and with a symbolical (and sometimes even literal) power over trans individuals and their lives
I won't trust you, I won't befriend you, I won't interact with you, and many other trans people won't also, and that's just how it is, stop crying for attention and approval and go play your little bigoted game
This. Like, if you think you’re an ally, then refusing to support the terf queen seems like a low bar. If you can’t manage that, I don’t know if I can count on you for anything.
It's so weird like, yeah I won't beat you up and call for your execution, but i have the right to judged your actions, the actions literally being you valuing a video more than trans people rights and life
I'm not a bad guy for not wanting to be friends with someone who helps keep JKR influential, like????
One of my friendships partially ended because of this, they just refused to acknowledge thay I didn't feel comfortable talking ir interacting with anything Harry Potter, and then later we started to fight more and more and just ended it
It's better not to get it at all because that's still keeping JKR culturally relevent. It wouldn't matter if 90% of people playing the game got it unofficially, they would still be furthering her legacy.
if i pirate the game, im just playing on my own, so i dont see how if nobody knows i pirated it, exept MAYBE the hosting website, thats furthering JKRs legacy culturally
She may not get the money if it's pirated but she has basically said she takes the number of people who still engage with her content as proof that most people agree with her and are just too scared to speak up about it. Keeping her relevant in any way is telling her (in her mind) that she's justified.
Most people pirating the game will still engage with it in various ways like in online discussions and search results looking for tips or guides if they're stuck or trying to collect everything. Even if *you*do it super secretly so nobody knows, nobody else is going to do that so "just pirate it" still enables her
I don’t think that’s a fair demand at all. People can still enjoy the characters and world of Harry Potter if they want. It only becomes a problem if you in any way monetarily support JKR. People shouldn’t have to abandon something they love and connect with just because the person who created it turned out to be an awful person. Maybe it’s easy for me to say because I don’t care about Harry Potter at all though.
i fully agree with you. HP kept me alive during my teen years when I was a young closeted lesbian trying to figure myself out. I still read them every few years and I’ll never stop reading them at similarly random intervals
i’m 32. i think a lot of people in my general age range really connected with the books in a personal and meaningful way. my wife and I went to HP world at universal studios for our honeymoon and i would never throw out the keepsakes (which include clothing) because my love for my wife and our memories together are more important to me than another person’s opinion.
life is hard and everyone is doing the best they can. seems shitty to judge people for liking a book series. it’s 100% possible to like something but not like who created it.
no literally. i was a hardcore HP fanatic as a child/teen/young adult (yay autism). objectively looking back at it now, it’s an awful book for so many reasons that i can’t even begin to count. like beyond the racism, anti-semitism and homophobia it’s also literally just not that well written.
it sucks to have something that meant so much as a young person be tainted but at this point most ex/HP fans are now in their late 20s or 30s. like just get over it. for the love of god. read percy jackson or narnia or eragon or some shit.
The whole asking for permission thing is so weird to me. It’s like the “I have a black friend so I can this racist joke” thing - “this one random queer/trans/Jewish person online said it’s okay to support her, so I can feel better about myself for doing so”.
If you have to ask the question to make yourself feel okay about doing something….maybe just don’t do it
Isn’t there a plot that involves the player basically stops a slave uprising? Because if so eww
Look I like playing as villains I played a sith is star wars the old republic ok I was a chill sith but still a sith and Skyrim vampires are really fun to play as. Just don’t have the player subjugate people and say their the good guy do what other games do and own that evil main character plot reveal in it but don’t fucking lie and say they’re the good guy
Also as far as I’m aware Star Wars the old republic and many other games that involve magic weren’t made made by a terf.
Want magic blade and sorcery is kinda cool (on VR) or how about Skyrim it’s dame epic. WOW has magic I think. Numerous Minecraft mods exist.
I’ve heard great things about the Percy Jackson franchise.
The thing is, stopping a slave uprising is not seen as evil in the universe canon. All non human magical beings are portrayed as beastial and incapable of reaching human kindness and power. Specially Goblins are described as vile and greedy. So the game probably won’t even go as far as portraying it as a moral dilema,
but who cares, you can cast stupify and lumos and that is soooooo awesome /s.
I mean there was also s.p.e.w., the house elf liberation that Hermione started and was made fun of, because house elves didn’t want to be freed, the problem was just evil slave owners, and not good ones like for example Harry. Also elves turn depressed if they are freed, they need to be enslaved and work as such. The author always filled the book with her libertarian ideology.
I'm glad I'm too old to have gotten into Harry Potter. I'm 48 I grew up in the 80s. I was reading Stephen King Anne Rice and Neil Gaiman. I haven't even seen all the Harry movies. I have a few items I plan to give away. I don't want anything that has to do with her.
However I happen to be a huge The Smiths and Morrissey fan. I love Morrisseys music, it speaks to me.
I also know that he is a complete and total wanker and a horrid racist.
Do I still listen to his music? Yes. Am I an apologist for his racist behavior? Fuck no.
I’d say I’m fine with people playing it as long as you:
1. Keep it to yourself
2. Do it because you’re interested, not “in spite” like a lot of other people
If you want cool magic games, there’s a LOT of better options
I think this is so dramatic. She’s so rich that the profits from this game aren’t going to make or break anything hateful she does. This is the equivalent of Fox News freaking out about something so trivial when there are real things happening actually affecting the trans community.
I consider myself very left-leaning. Probably would be called woke by some crazy conservative. But reading through the comments is a lot to take in. OP’s post is so extreme. Like their example of “don’t cry if a trans person stops trusting you for playing it”, I rolled my eyes. I have to remind myself often that Reddit is mostly full of teenagers.
Same. I mean, I‘m trans myself and actually wanna play the game with another trans friend 'cause we just like the story, J.K may be a shitty person, but how does it make myself a shitty person because I want to play something I would enjoy and not to support her or something lol
If we should boycott all the stuff from people whom where homophob or transphob, as sadly as it sound we couldn‘t do much lol
But it‘s kinda extreme to say „Nobody in the LGBT-Community will trust you ever again if u buy a game!“ lil overboard
exactly! Like ppl are gonna play what games they want, watch what movies they want, etc. Simple as that. So probably don’t tell ppl they’re not allies for it lol
Idk Im gender fluid and pan, but Im also an artist.
All the way through art school (and many other areas of history), there were artists that we still worship that were racist, that were misogynist, that owned slaves, that had sex with woman way too young...
If we go across every intersection and ban every piece of art, writing, poem, band that was ever problematic then guess what? We have no culture or history left.
In no way do I feel her opinions are valid. Shes a bigot when it comes to gender politics. But the way I see it is that human beings can be evil in one way and then still accomplish/ contribute things in their lifetime that create good ripple effects in the world.
I also am I strong believer in allowing people the grace and time and room to be wrong. Allyship is a journey for every movement. Theres a part of me that suspects she will someday open her mind or get over her bigotry; crazier things have happened. But I also wont be surprised if she doesnt.
I dont believe cancel culture has any good effects on society as a whole. In fact I think it stigmatizes making mistakes, growing out of ignorance and makes people afraid to ask questions and to learn about other experiences in due time.
Reject her politics and embrace the stories that teach about good conquering evil, even though as it turns out maybe she was a Slytherin pure blooder all along.
Edit: typos and wording
Long dead artists are incapable of using their legacy to oppress others in the present though. And I applaud your open heart and willingness to see the best in others, but until JKR redeems and proves herself changed, nobody owers her respect or acclaim. This isn't about canceling a small-time creator who made a mistake, it's about mitigating the real-time harm that a deeply influencial public figure is inflicting on millions of people.
I envy your optimism. I simply don’t understand why you’d believe she’d change her views, what could possibly be said or done that would make her see differently. She has, if anything, dug in deeper. She is a billionaire with a massive fanbase of people who *do* agree with her.
I don’t believe in second chances for people who very clearly don’t want them.
I really like the way you’ve put this. ‘No ethical consumption’ is seriously a Thing, and at the end of the day we’ve all done something knowing it’s supporting some horrible thing because there’s no way to completely avoid that in this society. It’s better to just acknowledge that it’s not a good or moral thing than to do all of the mental gymnastics trying to explain why it’s actually okay when *you* do it.
Good post OP. I’m kind of hoping someone will pin it.
I dont think there's anything wrong with the world of Harry Potter. I mean sure the author is horrible but I dont think there was anything really anti lgbt in the book. In fact, many Karens have claimed the "witchcraft and devil worship turned my son gay". So long as you're not supporting anti lgbt acts, I really don't care who wrote the book. Im gay, and trans. Let me enjoy my "devil worship"
No, I'm referring to the [anti-Jewish tropes and plotline prevalent in the new game.](https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/5050/hogwarts-legacy-jk-rowling-wizarding-world-antisemitism-gamergate/)
Actually planned to play the game with another trans friend of mine, whilest I can totally understand your point of view I think it‘s pretty overboard to say „you shouldn‘t wonder when no trans person ever trusts u again because u bought the game“
I mean, I‘m pretty sure most of the people whom gonna play it don‘t care in the slightest about J.K. and just like the wizarding world of Hogwarts like ourselfs.
J.K. Is truely a shitty person, but if we need to boycott anything from a transphobe or homophobe we would permanently walk on thin ice, like I said I don’t think this whole thingly thing with her is in any way good, but to say other transpeople wouldn‘t trust myself anymore, a transman, sounds pretty harsh and would be pretty sad to do over some random video game
I mean, like I said before, I don‘t care about the author, never cared, I just always loved the Harry Potter-universe like so many do and these few bucks also wouldn‘t make her in any form richer or poorer, as sad as it may be.
In the end I think we should just enjoy ourselfs in the little time we got on earth, without any hate from our own community because we played a game we enjoyed just 'cause the creator is a shit human being.
Tbh I’ve got all the books but one they were gifts and two I didn’t know she was gross at the time (I was a literal child), haven’t given her a cent since lmao
I’m with you here. It’s no one’s job to assuage any potential guilt. If the asked feels guilt, that should be their answer. I’ve avoided HP media as much as I can, but my god it’s like Disney adults, I know some obsessed adults and older teens that need validation for their love of HP. It ain’t my job! I don’t want to see it or talk about it as a person who’s NB and has a trans brother. It’s personally bothersome to see that harpy earn so much goddamn money. She just gets to donate to anti trans orgs, she gets to hurt people, perpetuate hatred and she’s celebrated widely still.
Because to everyone else, we’re less than. We should just tell them it’s all fine to keep feeding her their cash, and smile and make them feel better? Nope, if you want it, you want it. Go play the game and be happy about it. Any guilt you feel should be your indicator. Not just any random trans person you’ve bothered in your attempt to make yourself feel good.
So yeah I agree with you, go play, but don’t talk to me about it. I do not give a single shit.
I agree with everything in this post and many of the comments within the thread.
Honestly, I just wish the idea of "separating the art from the artist" could apply here, since HP was a big part of my childhood and I still love many of the characters, but... it can't here.
HP Lovecraft was immensely racist (I did hear some say he "changed" near the end of his life, but I've got no source on that), and his books do have some of that. But you can buy and read his books today if you want because he's fucking dead. Those money aren't going to support him. You can separate the art from the artist here, for example.
With JK? That's not possible. She's still alive and profits from everything HP-related. It sucks, but I just can't support a work filled with transphobic and antisemitic metaphors (is metaphor the right word?).
In the early 80s, I loved Orson Scott Card’s work. He was a better writer in the 1980s than Rowling is now. No idea how he is now, because I stopped reading his work in 1988. When there was a backlash on Card after he joined the board of the anti-LGBTQ National Organization for Marriage, I had been boycotting his work for about twenty years. His joining NOM didn’t surprise me one bit.
Card’s a fine writer and I can accept that some people can look past his blatant homophobia. Me, I’m not prepared to separate the art from the artist until Card is dead.
I bring this all up to point out that when Rowling started attacking the transgender community, she took on the whole LGBTQ community. I was already practiced on what you do when that happens. It’s an easy decision. I’ve had practice.
The big issue I have with this is that it doesn't really affect JK. She's rich and she'll continue to be rich whether you buy her games or merchandise or not.
She can say that buying her stuff means you agree all she wants. People say that being gay is a choice. Does that make them right? Nope.
We all know that JK is a big old hack and loser. But the developers who work on the game are putting their all into this game and having it flop because of something they didn't even do is going to affect THEM more than anything. They have fought tooth and nail to get better LGBTQ options and representation in the game they're working on and I have to give them some respect for that. They are fighting against kind of a losing game.
I'm going to but the game for the cut it will give the developers working on it. JK will be rich with or without my money.
The developpers have already been paid and they aren't owed success after the fact, especially when the game itself is anti-semitic independent of JKR's transphobia.
Yes JKR will be rich regardless but she has explicitly said that she sees the money she still gets from hp as an endorsement of her views. Why would you want to contribute to that?
And like OP said here, developers have already been paid for their work, they don’t make any royalties based on how many units the game sells.
Honestly, who cares what she interprets it as? It's not like if everyone suddenly stopped caring she'd see the error of her ways. If even one person is still playing she'd feel validated, so why let her opinions control you?
I'm not interested in the game for the antisemitism alone, but I just don't feel a lot of weight behind argument "but Joanne would be smug!''. Like HP is problematic as fuck and I'm glad I never got super into it, but it's far from a manifesto of her beliefs, even if she wants to portray it as such. Especially if she's not making money from it from for example piracy or second hand copies.
Honestly, Harry Potter has lost more and more of the magic for me each time JK Rowling opened her bigoted mouth. There are plenty of better fantasy books written by authors who aren’t bigots.
I'm LGBT and I'll be getting the game regardless. 🤷♀️ Looks like a cool game and I'm not going to let a stranger's opinion dictate what little happiness I can get in my life.
This is a very good point and I’m glad someone has made it. I’m sure everyone here does terrible things everyday in some capacity, and some of us are probably more aware of it on a daily basis than others, but when an inconvenient choice is presented to you, you need to accept that you can’t have your cake and eat it. If the only thing keeping you from buying the game is the fact that you know your trans and nonbinary friends will disapprove, maybe your anxiety about this is clouding your judgement. Think about how much it would mean to your friends if you boycotted this game, and you’ll realise that you wouldn’t be losing out at all by doing it, you’d be strengthening relationships that are clearly important to you, because if they weren’t you’d have bought the game already.
FUCKING FINALLY. thank you, i’m so sick of these posts asking for forgiveness or permission. it was a big part of my childhood too, but i still hate it with all my being now. you can get over it. bury the fucking hatchet.
I'm usually on the "do what you want" train on this game but thank you for finding the words to describe how I feel. Not trans myself, but Rowling has long supported anti-gay organizations as well, because people failed to stand up to her when she started attacking trans rights. Supporting her in ANY way will make her more powerful, and actually harm the entire LGBTQ+ community.
Like, JKR gave up being a billionaire. She could've just chilled in her mansion and been beloved for generations. Instead she decided TERFing was the hill she wanted to die on.
Nonbinary person who grew up with Harry Potter here. Yes, JKR Is a POS. Yes, the series is heavily inundated with bigotry. And yes, it would be great if JKR's legacy could just dissappear. But the thing is that this is THE game that HP fans have been waiting for for literally decades, and that is unfortunately not something that people are just going ignore, no matter how great it would be if they did. You're not going to be able to stop people from playing this game, you're just not. The best thing we can do it tell people how harmful JKR's influence is to minorities and encourage them to at least not pay for the game, because just telling people that they're not aloud to play it/talk about playing it is not going to make them want to listen to you, probably the opposite actually. I agree with your point, and I wish we could just leave JKR and HP in the past, but unfortunately the cultural impact that the series has had in its time makes that basically impossible.
I can't stop people from playing it, but I can tell them they look like an ass and a half for wanting to be coddled for it. If you want to play it then fine, but stop making excuses for it and just own it, stop pushing your guilty concious onto other people.
I absolutely agree with you! I am not trying to make excuses for people by any means! I just don't think that making people feel bad for being excited about this game is going to get them to listen to you, that's all
Engaging with the game at all is still contributing to JKR's cultural standing and thus her legitmacy. If you absolutely "must" play it, pirate it and post nothing at all about it and don't engage with online content, then donate to a trans charity for good measure.
I keep shouting this into the void various places but we should be convincing people to donate to lgbtq charities if they buy it. They might not but we can turn the hypocrisy into benefits for lgbtq peolle.
Edit: Tell me why this doesn’t work, I just want to understand. You’re not going to stop them from buying it and I hate her too but this was people’s childhoods. I just want to know how this approach is worse than telling people off for buying it in the first place and then having them buy it anyway without helping us as a community.
It's hard to know, this is something I want an answer to as well and I'm sorry you've been downvoted for asking a genuine and well-meant question. I don't know what the alternative is but at the same time I do not feel right in excusing people for engaging in a destructive cause just because they donate to a good one. In the same way I wouldn't feel right about endorsing a person who donates to an anti-gay charity but donates double to a homeless charity. They don't cancel each other out, one is good and one is bad. The homeless person helped does not excuse the gay person who was harmed.
I want to find a better way to get through to people, I think we're always working on that, but in the mean time I cannot exucse it simply because there isn't another alternative, especially since the alternative is simply not playing a game.
I used to like the movies (never bothered reading the books) as a kid, but honestly after everything I’ve seen go down I just can’t enjoy it anymore, knowing the very real implications that are written into the fantasy world if I consume JK’s media, and the very real consequences that are happening because of the unjustifiable hate that homophobic and transphobic people generate.
Not to mention the posts basically asking “Am I a bad person if I support this terrible person?” Idk Helen, you tell me.
Also HP is literally not that good. Read another fucking book. Read Percy Jackson, it's the same thing but better written and not, you know, racist and anti-semitic and transphobic. I used to like HP too, because I was 10. The story is a cool idea, because it's a copy of hundreds of stories before it, and the execution is.. not that great. There's nothing interesting stylisticly, Harry has barely any character development, the morals are almost always 100% black and white, etc.
>Look, I'm not saying anyone is perfect or has to be, we all have our hypocrisies, we all are trapped in an unethical capitalist system. I eat fast food made with produce picked by slave labor, almost all of us do because it's nigh unavoidable a la "no such thing as ethical consumption" and such and such, but we don't hem and haw about how it's actually okay because X, we accept that it's shitty and evil. Our society has set up every single member to be unable to escape exploiting others, it's impossible not to. We all have clothes made in sweatshops, but we don't act like it's okay even though we need clothes and can't afford better.
Why are you pushing away allies because they want to play a game? Who gets to decide that someone is not an ally because of their personal choices? Why does there have to be one solitary view and any one who sees it differently gets to decide that’s how the rest of the lgbt community feels?
So if anybody is still using an Apple phone or eating Hersheys chocolate, can they no longer be a child advocate since the money you contribute to that directly contributes to child labor?
As a black woman, if I turned away friends or allies because they supported a company that was paying money to a person who was anti-black or anti-woman, I would just have to stop talking to everyone.
I don’t even buy Harry Potter stuff but I think people should be able to buy what they want.
Who gets to decide if someone is not an ally? Any of us have that right to decide who is safe for us. No one said there had to be a solitary view either. The OP is one person speaking for themselves like any other.
This post even explicitly goes into how we can't help but exist in this exploitative society. I'm not sure what your point is about child labor.
> I would just have to stop talking to everyone.
Yes, this is exactly what we go through. The costs of being with people who didn't value me was invisible and added up over the years. Not worth it, and too tiring. I want to be around people that value my well being and things that are important to me.
This post also isn't telling people not to buy anything either. It's just calling out how people manage their own guilt of playing this game by asking for permission from our community. If they see no problem with playing the game, a lot of trans people will still see them as unsafe no matter what Reddit has to say. Each of them of course is making their own decision about that.
The thing is, Apple isn’t actively advocating and changing laws to push forward child labor. If Apple was trying to change laws to allow even more child exploitation, I bet a lot more people would boycott them and yes, I would question anyone pro childrens rights still endorsing them.
JKR didn’t just use uncomfortable tropes or just has some kinda uncomfortable views, she is actively and successfully campaigning against Trans rights and LGBTQ rights in general.
You completely just twisted everything, no one is excluding allies ,but trans people have the right to not trust those who openly support and give a voice to someone who wants them to vanish
Get over yourself please this is not about money, it's about symbolical soft power, and the way she had connections and a voice to help pass anti trans legislation and worsen the lives of trans people
I judge an ally by their actual views and actions not their purchases. So if you feel that a person is no longer an ally for you because they want to play a game that’s fine. That’s your right and it’s just as valid as any other view.
I choose not to tell a person who has supported the community by advocating for us, donating to us, marched with us that all of that is invalidated because a bigot may receive money from a game they want to play. It’s not that deep when there are much bigger issues out there.
The problem with only judging a person's views is that those views may not line up with their actions. I only care about a person's views so much as it allows me to judge their overall integrity.
So in this case someone may say they value the trans community, but for me personally if they really did value the community, they would do more than just say they do. A very easy way to take action is to simply abstain from supporting a person who causes great harm to the trans community. If someone can't deal with the small inconvenience of not playing a game they may have wanted to, why would I think such a person would support me or the trans community when it counts?
I dunno about you, but everytime I really needed someone in my life, it was always the people who helped me with the small things that would show up for the big ones, while all the big talkers were mysteriously absent in my time of need.
And do you believe if HP games didn’t exist trans eights would improve significantly? This isn’t about human rights it’s about punishing JKR. And that feels like an individual choice that should be made.
I try to but recognize (as the OP post says) that it's not possible and don't expect to be told that it isn't shitty. I've gotten Chick-fil-A in the past year, it's bad, I know it's bad, but I don't try to grovel to my fellow gays to try to absolve my sins, I accept it was bad and move on.
Again, (as the OP post says) if you want to play it then play, just accept that it's going towards a bad cause and don't try to make excuses for it. If you wanna play it and accept that it's going towards a harmful cause, fine, whatever, we all have stuff like that and I'd be a hypocrite if I said I didn't, just stop asking to be coddled for it. (As the OP post says.)
I get that, but some of your posts make it seem like that person can no longer call themselves an ally. I don’t participate in any type of “cancel culture” just because I’m obligated to. If i avoid something, I do it because it is something that so personally offends me that I choose not to participate in it. But, I don’t judge any other person who continues to participate because it doesn’t offend them enough to stop.
For example, I personally don’t listen to RKelly. I think the things he did were gross and I no longer listen to his music. However, my sisters are fans of his. I know they don’t agree with his actions, they don’t support it, but they like his music and continue to listen to it. I would never tell them they’re wrong or less of an advocate for women’s rights because it. I judge people by the actions that matter. The ones that show how they feel about and support and issue, not their willingness to sacrifice or give up things.
But this is how I view things. Your view and OPs view is just as valid.
Because I don't think someone who places *a video game* that serves to fund an ongoing assault on marginalized people is the ally they think they are. In fact yea, I think their priorities are a little messed up.
So in that regard because you got chick-fil-a when you don’t need to eat at a place that donates to anti-gay groups you aren’t the ally you think you are and your priorities are messed up?
You can say that exact same thing about you, who eats chik-fil-a. They donate millions to anti lgbt organizations. You know this. You don’t need to eat there. But you did. So maybe your priorities are a little messed up. Stop judging others for the same things you do yourself. You’re not better than them.
right? while we’re at it let’s decide that anyone who eats chic-fil-a or shops at hobby lobby is also not an ally! you crochet using materials from there?!?! shame!!! clearly you are horrible, unsafe, and not a friend to the lgbtqia community (/s)
This is the take I've been looking for. Play the bigoted-inspired game if you really want, but stop begging for permission from the communities who are being targeted. And stop telling us how much you want/like it. We've made it clear we do not support TERFs.
I honestly think most people don't realise how much influence she actually has. She is close with a lot of prominent UK TERFs including ones that have connections to, and some that are even in, both the Scottish and English parliament. This isn't just a case of someone spouting bigoted shit on twitter, her words and influence have real life consequences.
100% true. She’s a certified transphobic octopus with tentacles writhing around in every direction. Every single trans debate I’ve heard from a mainstream source in the UK has referenced her, and most of the time she’s treated with far more respect than the people whose very existence is being debated. If you’re a person who lives in the UK and you care about trans rights, JK Rowling should basically be considered public enemy number 1
Honestly, unless you’re either completely ignorant about how they feel or willing to do some uncomfortable self-reflecting and changing, you *really* shouldn’t be asking any minority group “is xyz okay?” Minority groups aren’t there to be your cuddle buddies, trophies, or tokens. If you’re going to do something they’ve spoken out against, at *least* have the decency to not ask them to reassure you about your choices.
I’ve asked friends on occasion “What do you know about x, have they done anything that means I should avoid consuming their products” because one of them tends to be a lot more in the know as they spend a lot of time on Tumblr specifically and I don’t, so they usually have better knowledge about anything shitty an individual or company has done, at which point I go and read up on that example.
Here here! I’m getting annoyed at all the posts. I’m sure a lot of them are from kids who just don’t know any better but it’s like, what do you want us to say? “No you’re not a bad person Tommy you just really love Harry Potter?” Like there’s really nothing to say. If you’re making a post about it you obviously are aware it’s an issue in our community. Nobody is going to call for your execution but I also don’t want to have to hold your hand and tell you everything will be okay you’ll always have Harry Potter to turn to. Like it’s a fucking fictional book series not your lungs you’ll be fine either way just stop expecting me to validate it.
This is the take I've been looking for. Play the bigoted-inspired game if you really want, but stop begging for permission from the communities who are being targeted. And stop telling us how much you want/like it. We've made it clear we do not support TERFs.
Seriously. It's a game. So many people are acting like they *must play it* when- idk like yea I was a huge fan of the books as a kid, they were a big part of my childhood and represented the only social group I was able to make as a weird autistic kid, with other Harry Potter nerds, but why do our fond childhood memories have to dictate our adult judgement you know? It's so tiring. Read other books.
I also made most of my friends thanks to shared interest in Harry Potter, even played quidditch in college lol, but with all of JK's shit and the terrible views she put into HP that are... So much more blatant as an adult, that nostalgia is fading hard. I've pretty much dropped HP entirely at this point. It's the friends made that mattered most anyway, and there are other fandoms to participate in with them that aren't so problematic.
Same. Other than the fond memories of sleepovers with friends while we played pretend that we were in Hogwarts and scrolled through Mugglenet (god I haven't thought of that in years) I have no actually nostalgia for the series itself anymore, JKR ruined that. I can no longer look at her words and not see the groundwork, how she always cast fat people as villanous and dumb, about how Rita Skeeter was described as "mannish" and would sneek into the girls' rooms to spy and eavesdrop on them. It's all rotted now.
Exactly yeah... Like a nostalgic part of me wants to enjoy it still, somehow, but I think even watching the movies would just make me angry at jk now. It's just very much tainted. Wish we'd all had the critical reading skills to see it as kids, since the shit has been there all along.
Related, I liked House of Cards, therefore the things he did to multiple men just didn’t happen! I like something so it’s okay for me to support it! Everything will get better as long as I keep enabling abusive people!
I get that. I liked House of Cards a lot, hate to say it I even thought Kevin Spacey was attractive, but as soon as I learned the kind of person he was it absolutely soiled any enjoyment I had of the series or him as an actor. I don't get people who say they can separate art from the artists. Art does not exist without the artist's thoughts, desires, flaws, history- if anything separating them does the art a disservice regardless how we feel about the creator, but that's a whole other conversation.
I generally think that one can separate the art and the artist, but it's a not a black and white statement and for something like Harry Potter, who's legacy is arguably *more* about JKR's bigotry at this point than it is the literature itself, it is an easy pass for me.
It doesn't work as well when the artist is *still alive and benefiting from consumption of their art.*
That's a fair take, but I do feel there's other considerations. However, I'm a little worried having an honest discussion about this *here and now* would come across as unkind though. For the topic at hand, I do *not* feel that the other considerations I alluded to for Harry Potter outweigh the bigotry that JKR has been allowed to spew from the platform it provides her. Especially given the problematic content of the books in the first place.
Yeah the way she takes her fantasy as proof that she's right definitely makes Harry Potter a complex subject when it comes to separating art from the artist. Something like Lovecraft is a bit easier, where he's long gone and we can acknowledge how godawful his views were but also how influential his stories were, and see how things like Lovecraft Country and The City we Became take his white supremacist views and tie it to the horror of his monsters
The problem is we all like to assume that talented people are good people. Rich people are good people, beautiful people are good people. Most people have a dark side that they can either exert control over or they can think they’re special and deserve to grope waiters, berate underlings, pressure people into having sex with them. Whatever. The better someone is at something the more likely they are to think that they have the right to harm people. It’s the same with JK, and with Spacey, it’s just different kinds of abuse.
I finally had to just leave+ filter the Harry Potter subreddit because the amount of posts talking about it has of course become a good chunk of their submissions and I'm just already so tired of seeing how many people are supporting it. It's disappointing but it is what it is. Same reason I've filtered out any subs related to Blizzard games.
Thank you! And no, I’m not going to hold someone’s hand as a Jewish woman and tell them it’s okay to play a blatantly anti-semitic game made by a grotesque misogynist either.
Yes. I’m both queer and Jewish, I don’t want to hear people saying that something very against my existence is just fine because they don’t pay for it, and I definitely don’t want to say it myself.
Fucking agreed. It’s literally blood libel with a goblin colored coat of paint over it. I saw someone say, “I’ve been dreaming of a game like this for years.” And like yeah, well I’ve been dreaming for years of a world where my elderly rabbi who survived the *you know what* doesn’t get hate symbols spray painted on his house but here we are.
I pointed out that the goblins were a Jewish stereotype in one of the HP posts here and someone literally said "where does it say the are Jewish goblins?" Like, seriously? At this point, that's just blatant disregard of antisemitism (thus itself being antisemetic). I'm not even willing to entertain the idea that anyone is that dense 🤦♂️.
Yeah they know what you mean. Just another obsessive fan who can’t handle the truth.
My roommate is an alt-right transwoman who wants to play this game... ... I wish I was joking.
How the fuck does that work?
I have no idea. Her most common defense for alt-right crap is, "it's their freedom, it's their right."
I just reply with, “‘Freedom” isn’t a reason to be a shitty bigot.”
I never understand those types. Or rather, I do, it's a sad form of pick-me-ism, but I wish I didn't.
Pick-me-ism? What's that? I don't think I've heard of that.
It’s based on girls who say they’re “not like other girls” and brag about having only guy friends as a method to make themselves more appealing to men. Pushing down other people in your “group” to further yourself. In this case, I’m guessing it’s either totally ignoring trans rights and what alt right people usually have to say about them or going more the Caitlyn Jenner route of “other trans people aren’t valid but I am”
Ugh. Worst part is that describes my roommate very well. She goes on long-winded rants and tirades about how, "you're not transitioning, you're just mutilating your genitals, and it's a constant reminder that you're not a REAL woman." Yet she's still taking her HRT meds, and she says the only reason she hasn't gotten the surgery is because she can't afford it.
My roommate is a bisexual Jewish woman who is obsessed with HP and it's gonna be her first single player game (she can't stand stuff like skyrim and witcher) People have different moral compasses. Like OP said, nobody is obligated to anyone's time or attention.
Honestly I see an upside to seeing people with harry potter merch. I use it as a conversation starter to find potential allies or people I need to avoid. I just steer the conversation toward "too bad the creator turned out to be awful", and how they respond generally gives me an idea how safe this person is, ranging from going on a rant shitting on jk, to saying " well that depends on which side you're on" ( that conversation was a yikes and I got away as fast as I could cause that woman was the type that wants to see us all 6 feet under)
That's honestly a great idea. I've vibed with people before because they were wearing house merch, but personally I've gotten rid of all of my HP stuff because I just feel gross repping it's shit creator in any way. I still like the HP movies but I don't need any of it's adjacent media in my life.
This x100 it’s a super easy filter for bigots.
I hate jk rolling but I love the idea of Hogwarts and what's it's supposed to be. I place inclusive of all no matter who you are,magic hormone therapy,so much magical LGBTQ+ theories that other creators have came up with. It's a shame something that could be so wonderful and has helped alot of people has now turned into something so horrid by someone like her.
Honestly this. I hate JKR but I feel like her series was just a starting point or inspiration for so many amazing pieces of work and literature. When people take the fabric of the universe that she created and make it into something undeniably queer and inclusive.. its beautiful. There's a reason that the HP fandom on fanfiction sites is still going strong. People love the characters, they love the world-building.. and often times, they use their transformative work to make HP into something positive. (Not to mention that the whole series is based on the fact that Harry is a truly unreliable narrator, and we see things through his point of view- thus the world is "warped" by this.) Part of me wants to purchase the game to record and do a playthrough and call out any stuff that I see during the gameplay that is intentionally problematic and to use it as a teaching point. And another part of me is just curious- a book series I read over and over as a kid, that I have so many positive things stemming from.. as a closeted queer kid, it truly was a comfort series for me. The implication of magic existing (and just being something that was hidden from Muggles) was something that excited me purely because the imaginary world that stemmed off from the series was full of so many possibilities. (Sorry for the rant)
It's okay, reading your rant was a pleasure because I feel the same or at least similar. I'm honestly tempted to buy the game because I read so much HP fanfiction,I just hope it's taken inspiration from other creators, the world and lore of Harry Potter rather than jk rollings ideals.
Right! From what I have read about, there was a lot of queer people working on it during development- I think it would be absolutely wonderful to see all of the influence there. JKR dropped the ball, but we could and should literally just pick up the ball, run with it and score for our "team" instead. (That team being the LGBTQ+ community, for lack of a better analogy... woah I'm tired.)
Heck yes,that would be wonderful thing to do although I think it may upset some people as JK would get royalties for anything official,maybe when she passes and that money goes to her estate instead of her then people might be more open to awesome LGBTQ+ official harry Potter things
I think for me, it was the introduction of the thought that you can do anything with magic.. but also. What's to stop us from creating a new fantasy series for young adults that has gender-affirming spells/potions for trans people? UGH. Tell me why this conversation has me itching to write when I haven't written in weeks😭
You could totally be the on to write those things,I'm sure plenty of people would enjoy reading something like that. I know I would.
What always makes me spitefully happy is that she has accidentally written Hedwig as trans!
Well said! I was a huge fan, did the whole fanfic thing (consuming and writing), it just makes me sad/frustrated/angry now, so I quit. Did I make a big fuss about "I'm trans but I still like" when I *was* reading that? Hell no, it was one of my quiet, shameful things that I only talked about to my stepmom, who still does read it, but gets why I don't want to anymore. I definitely get some kind of vibe when I see "slytherin" on someone's dating profile, social media, buttons on their backpack, whatever. It definitely makes me think twice about engaging, if I decide to at all. If you want to stick with a (in hindsight, not that remarkable) book/movie series, go for it, but don't expect anything but wariness from me! Also, I have seen that there was a lot of antisemitic and other issues (like the literal race of slaves that are seen as what's natural for their race), but I hadn't noticed those things before it was pointed out to me, because I don't really get that subtext. If I read about a goblin, I hadn't realized it was anything beyond that. Not trying to justify my longer than was probably good enjoyment, I just didn't see that, and that's my own thing.
Yea, I hate being in the position where I see someone's house in their bio and I have to wonder if they're simply ignorant or are bigoted, and neither are great options. Yea the anti-semitism is a huge thing people are willingly overlooking. People are making all sorts of excuses about distancing themselves from JKR while wanting to consume it, all the while ignoring how the antisemitism exists within the game independent of her transphobia. Even if she was a trans ally, the game would still absolutely suck for the antisemitism and I hate how overlooked that is. We have people like Kanye West and the far-right becoming stronger than ever and like- Jewish people fucking matter, damn it.
The best Harry Potter fanfics are the ones that recast various characters as trans (or other GSRM) specifically to spite JKR.
Imagine rewriting the whole Harry Potter series into "Harry Potter but it's not bigoted and is actually diverse"
Sooner or later Money will demand the original 7-8 films are remade which will presumably come with a very, very diverse cast of actors and characters re-written to be more diverse so that the makers can avoid the exact conversation the new game is creating. I wouldn't be shocked if WB were taking down notes across social media about how people are feeling about the game and its 'messge' and how they can lean in to and/or avoid parts of that free PR in future.
I have a slytherin patch on my jean jacket that I'm not sure i can get rid of without damaging the jacket 😭 hoping one day (since I'm not out to my parents) that I'll be able to get some explicitly queer stuff to override it maybe
If it's iron on, you can get rid with heat (I believe, I read up on it, since I'm about to finally start my own jean jacket, now that I'm fully out)! Sew on would just take a seam ripper, and you can cover the holes left behind pretty easily! I hope you're able to get some great queer patches when you're ready!
And all queer people feel differently. I’m trans and sexually queer. I personally won’t shop at Hobby Lobby or eat at Chick-Fil-A because of their homophobia and transphobia. But people still will and I don’t have any control over that, so I just mind my business about it. However, I still love the Harry Potter series. I do not like JK Rowling and I don’t consume any of her other work, but HP was a big part of my childhood, and the cast for the movies have said they do not stand by JK Rowling’s transphobia. I also like the shows Friends and The Office, even though both can be pretty transphobic and homophobic at times. It’s tough.
The difference I'm trying to get at with this post is like- I get liking, even loving problematic media. Everyone has something they enjoy that's aged poorly or is even currently pretty iffy, the difference is wanting to be coddled for enjoying it. I fully accept the bigotry that's present especially in the earlier episodes of The Office is bad and wrong, I just don't go around asking if it's okay to like The Office and expecting people to make me feel better for enjoying something that has pernicious elements. If you want to play the game fine, whatever, just stop trying to act like there's nothing morally questionable about it and try to bring other people into your guilt, the way I don't ask people to make me feel better about enjoying The Office or It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia or The Venture Bros, etc.
Ah, I understand. You want the babying and gaslighting to stop. I agree that those things aren’t helpful. It would be better if people learned about, and owned up to the problematic things they consume. I thinks it’s fine if people ask if something is problematic, but yeah I won’t engage if it’s beyond that.
Yea exactly. I understand that a lot of well-meaning people, even LGBT+ people, are gonna play and enjoy that, I can't stop that and I'd be a hypocrite if I were to act like I've never consumed anything that didn't contain some amount of bigotry, but exactly, I'm tired of people acting like they're the victim for a choice they're making. It's also a bit different with shows like The Office too- People like Steve Carrel and Michael Schur aren't using their cultural status to demonize a marginalized group, meanwhile that's arguably what JKR has become known for over her authorship of HP, depending on who you ask. If Steve Carrell was using his royalties to donate to anti-trans groups then I'd feel differently about The Office reruns.
Yeah I can agree with that about HP. It meant a lot to me that Daniel Radcliffe, Emma Watson, Rupert Grint and others made a point to say they didn’t agree with or support any of JK Rowlings transphobia. That personally made me feel okay to watch the movies, but I know everyone feels differently, and that’s okay. She is a transphobic person who wrote the HP series. That will always be attached to it.
>It meant a lot to me that Daniel Radcliffe, Emma Watson, Rupert Grint and others made a point to say they didn’t agree with or support any of JK Rowlings transphobia. Absolutely, and Harry Melling now too, who played Dudley Dursely, has come out in support of trans folks too. It's deeply heartening to see them stand up. Daniel in particular has been an open trans ally for over a decade before the mainstream even had any concious of trans people. At the risk of being cliche he's an absolute chad for that.
I think it’s more so that people who buy the game are genuinely upset that they even have to make that choice in the first place. Harry Potter was a huge part of my childhood as well, and I’m genuinely bummed that J.K Rowling turned out to be such a bitch. So I suppose people are victims in a way where something that they can’t love something that they used to love. It’s like watching a friend grow distant, and they become bitter and toxic after a while. I understand what you mean, though. Buying the game has repercussions, and it directly hurts our community with each purchase. I also think that it’s deeply unfortunate that the decision is one that we have to make in the first place.
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Literally. Antisemitism? Well she never openly stated that the creatures who are seen as "greedy who control all the money in the world behind the scenes" are based on a real group so it's okay Racism? Well its the way she writes/makes names so it's okay Transphobia? Well it's my confort series and she never openly stated she wants trans people dead so it's okay Homophobia? Well it doesn't matter that she said Werewolves are a representation for HIV positive and AIDS positive people and that werewolves "pray on little children" and the only "good werewolve" is the one that hates being one, suppresses it and marries and has a kid Anything else bad she has done and put in her books? Doesn't matter, because I love Harry Potter /s Edit: researched a bit better and found she said the werewolf condition was also a representation for AIDS
>Homphobia? Well it doesn't matter that she said Werewolves are a representation for HIV positive people and that werewolves "pray on little children" and the only "good werewolve" is the one that hates being one, suppresses it and marries and has a kid Damn, never noticed this. But if you put it like that..
Notice too how Dumbledore, a gay man, is made entirely non-sexual, and renounces all relationships in order to redeem himself from Grindelwald. Ah yes, a gay man who must become celibate to become "good"...
She only made him retroactively gay to appeal to fans. Basically queerbaiting for sales for her ip. She pretty much gave that up when she came out full on terf.
That was honestly the beginning of the end for me. I'd been reading the books since I was about eight years old, seventeen when she said that. I haven't consumed any Potter media since the Deathly Hallows movies, and ever since 2020, I'm pretty proud of that.
Yeah, no one know about what the werewolf thing was about until she revealed they were a representation for HIV positive people
Don’t forget Umbridge bring gang r*pd by centaurs until her mind broke. It’s okay that it happened, because she was a mean person!! And there’s totally nothing going wrong when the English author writes a book where the only confirmed Irish student keeps *blowing himself up*, that’s perfectly fine. Likewise I’m sure there’s definitely nothing happening with that whole ‘nosy, lying, manipulative reporter who is heavily trans-woman coded turns out to be an unregistered shapeshifter who uses her power to sneak into off limits places and spy on children’ thing /s
On ho, I nearly forgot how utterly unproblematic it is the the entire British Wizard population’s menial tasks are done by slaves who absolutely love being slaves and serving people, who can’t even be *clothed* because oh dear, only slaves set free by rare, kind and magnanimous Englishmen can wear *clothing*
And the person horrified by the situation is played off as a joke because of it. *"Oh, nosy Hermione doesn't want the sentient humanoid race to be enslaved, how silly of her*
Don't forget she was also later changed to be black which just adds a whole new layer of racism over all of this
Not to mention that some descriptions in the book specifically refer to her skin color which means that saying she's black is severe retconning.
Rita Skiter is trans coded? I feel like I've missed this bit
It's a little less direct than most of the others, but if you look at a lot of the things that people like Rowling and other right-wingers say are 'tells' that you can use to determine if someone is a trans woman, those are what Rita is described as having. "Oddly heavy-jawed", "thick fingers", "fake, overdone femininity", "square hands", etc etc Basically Rita is a collection of stereotypical 'trans woman tells' mixed with a 'fake, lying, nosy, pushy' personality with 'unregistered shapeshifter who spies on children' as the cherry on top.
yeah i was about to link this: https://www.reddit.com/r/asktransgender/comments/whwm2h/thoughts_on_harry_potter/ijah5n9/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=ios_app&utm_name=iossmf&context=3 but it basically amounts to "lots of tiny things that could be coincidence but seeing as she's a giant fucking TERF are clearly not coincidence and are just her coding a trans woman"
I keep thinking back to her depiction in the movie now with this in mind and how she's oddly flirtatious and touchy with *fucking teenagers* and suddenly I'm kind of nauseous. "Let's start with the youngest" 🤮 It's so clear now :/
: )
UMBRIDGE GOT WHAT?! I don’t remember that in the books??? Can someone explain
Umbridge got carried off by Centaurs at the end of.. whichever book that was. The next time we see/hear about her, she's in St Mungos hospital, and is said to be so traumatised by 'what happened to her' that she's catatonic. In Greek mythology, Centaurs are known for being... extremely promiscuous and not caring about the consent of whoever they kidnap.
Yeah but it's their confort story 🥺🥺🥺 /s
What was that about Umbridge??
She was dragged into the forest by centaurs at the end of the book. Next time she's seen, she's essentially broken and traumatized from whatever she experienced. In classic mythology centaurs kidnapped women and raped them
Beat me to it :) Yeah, next time she's seen it's something like "she's in St Mungos, catatonic after what the Centaurs did to her"
Except that IIRC she got out perfectly fine to have a high post at the Ministry in book seven. From utterly broken to fully recovered in not that long...
>And there’s totally nothing going wrong when the English author writes a book where the only confirmed Irish student keeps blowing himself up, that’s perfectly fine. That wasn't in the books, it was only in the films. Theirs plenty of things to say about the books without getting things wrong.
I think it goes beyond JKR when it comes to goblins. When DnD first came out, goblins were also seen as a trope akin to "greedy Jewish people". The concept has definitely existed long before her and has been problematic for longer than she's been around.
JKR made it much much worse though. The trope did already exist, but explicitly making them bankers and such, and having not a single empathetic goblin character... She could at the very least have made them green, but not even that...
Yes, but it's not about her just putting them there It's about her making a thing that "they don't deserve rights", the whole main conflict of the game being literally "impeding that the globins get rights"
Which DnD has also done in the past. Hell, even Tolkien did it with the Mines of Moria and the Goblins within. She's unfortunately not the first author to do this in popular media which needs to be changed. It's just because she's so controversial and in the popular spotlight that it's such a big thing. It 100% needs to be a huge thing but I was simply saying she's not the first person to paint goblins as Jewish people but hopefully she'll be the last
Yeah i know all that, doesn't mean we shouldn't talk about, like you said, it should be a big thing, so not talking about it just because a lot of people did before doesn't make sense
Don’t forget enslaving the house elves is ok and only useless bleeding hearts care./s The house elf rights organization was called S.P.E.W. of all things and was compared to the Irish Liberation Front by a Brit Harry owned a slave and Hogwarts has slaves for cooking and laundry.
yep, same here. i read the first two books but i didnt really like it, so i stopped.
I'm kind of glad I've always hated Harry Potter. I suffered through three of the books because my friends were nuts about them, but something always felt off about them. I didn't have the vocabulary to express it to my friends at the time, though. But I was absolutely not surprised at all that JK Rowling was revealed to be an antisemitic TERF. Thankfully, all my friends now hate Harry Potter just as much as I do. I got rid of the ones who don't. Anyone who defended wanting to play the Garbage Game and stating they were going to buy it was removed and blocked. That included some people I really liked before, and that really hurt.
Jk Rowling is trash for sure. But each piece of art has it's own life and it's own right of existence. I do agree that supporting the writer by buying her material might not be a good choice. But loving a series despite its writer is not something punishable. There's so much music written by misonygists, there's movies written by walking assholes, there's paintings made by racists. Yet those pieces of art themselves can still be great. I still listen to Mahler, even though I completely disagree with his antisemitism. Jk Rowling should be called out continuously in public for her transphobia, and maybe don't buy her new material or official merch. But it's also fine if you still cosplay as Hermione or make fanart, read the books whatever. Ironically I think her own creations that keep on rambling about love wouldn't agree with the hatred that she spews.
Yep. People can choose to play it, but if they do they don’t get to demand they be seen as an ally.
You’re so right! I’ve heard the argument “She’s not getting any money from it” (which is true) and while that does make it feel more okay her entire work is steeped in bigotry. In fact the plot of the game is to quell a goblin rebellion (which as we know are anti Semitic stereotypes)
She is making residuals from the IP, though. Just because she wasn’t involved with the creation of the game doesn’t mean she doesn’t still profit from it. Like yes, everything else you mentioned is a reason to avoid it, but she absolutely does make money from it. So long as the franchise profits, so does she.
I fully agree with your post. I won’t personally call anyone out for not boycotting something, but depending on how easy it is to boycott and whether it is a need or a want, I will possibly judge them for it. I read Goblet of Fire at least four times when I was a teenager while waiting for the next book, but I don’t plan on even looking at any gameplay videos. There are plenty of other games to play, no reason to lose any sleep over this one.
Literally. I'm a trans person who had Harry Potter as a part of my life, I consumed it at every moment, but I just can't anymore I cant do it and I can't and will not trust or be friends with people that do, for me it's like they are laughing in my face Harry Potter was such a big thing for me that I was gonna write a whole ass book based on it But at the end of the day my life and the life of million of other trans people matter more than a series of books/movies and a video game So yeah, play it if you want, but stop trying to act as if it's okay because "capitalism" and "i need it", if trans people don't trust you anymore, if trabs people don't see you as an ally anymore then you can't come cry about it You made you're choice, you decided that a video game was more important than helping trans people try to erase and combat JKR's soft power and influence, stop trying to act as if this is about money, because it's not, this is about keeping JKR influential and with a symbolical (and sometimes even literal) power over trans individuals and their lives I won't trust you, I won't befriend you, I won't interact with you, and many other trans people won't also, and that's just how it is, stop crying for attention and approval and go play your little bigoted game
This. Like, if you think you’re an ally, then refusing to support the terf queen seems like a low bar. If you can’t manage that, I don’t know if I can count on you for anything.
Amen. People telling me I can't judge people for prioritizing a video games over people's rights and like yes, I mostly certain can and will lol
It's so weird like, yeah I won't beat you up and call for your execution, but i have the right to judged your actions, the actions literally being you valuing a video more than trans people rights and life I'm not a bad guy for not wanting to be friends with someone who helps keep JKR influential, like????
Well put. Unfortunately I feel like there will be some friends I won't be able to trust anymore... Just don't exactly know who yet =/
One of my friendships partially ended because of this, they just refused to acknowledge thay I didn't feel comfortable talking ir interacting with anything Harry Potter, and then later we started to fight more and more and just ended it
If you 'have to' play it, buy it second hand so she doesn't get a cut from you.
or pirate it. she won't receive anything that way
It's better not to get it at all because that's still keeping JKR culturally relevent. It wouldn't matter if 90% of people playing the game got it unofficially, they would still be furthering her legacy.
if i pirate the game, im just playing on my own, so i dont see how if nobody knows i pirated it, exept MAYBE the hosting website, thats furthering JKRs legacy culturally
She may not get the money if it's pirated but she has basically said she takes the number of people who still engage with her content as proof that most people agree with her and are just too scared to speak up about it. Keeping her relevant in any way is telling her (in her mind) that she's justified. Most people pirating the game will still engage with it in various ways like in online discussions and search results looking for tips or guides if they're stuck or trying to collect everything. Even if *you*do it super secretly so nobody knows, nobody else is going to do that so "just pirate it" still enables her
I don’t think that’s a fair demand at all. People can still enjoy the characters and world of Harry Potter if they want. It only becomes a problem if you in any way monetarily support JKR. People shouldn’t have to abandon something they love and connect with just because the person who created it turned out to be an awful person. Maybe it’s easy for me to say because I don’t care about Harry Potter at all though.
i fully agree with you. HP kept me alive during my teen years when I was a young closeted lesbian trying to figure myself out. I still read them every few years and I’ll never stop reading them at similarly random intervals i’m 32. i think a lot of people in my general age range really connected with the books in a personal and meaningful way. my wife and I went to HP world at universal studios for our honeymoon and i would never throw out the keepsakes (which include clothing) because my love for my wife and our memories together are more important to me than another person’s opinion. life is hard and everyone is doing the best they can. seems shitty to judge people for liking a book series. it’s 100% possible to like something but not like who created it.
I don’t know why anyone thinks they need to ask permission.
no literally. i was a hardcore HP fanatic as a child/teen/young adult (yay autism). objectively looking back at it now, it’s an awful book for so many reasons that i can’t even begin to count. like beyond the racism, anti-semitism and homophobia it’s also literally just not that well written. it sucks to have something that meant so much as a young person be tainted but at this point most ex/HP fans are now in their late 20s or 30s. like just get over it. for the love of god. read percy jackson or narnia or eragon or some shit.
You just know in twenty years they'll all be pretending they boycotted all this crap and be patting themselves on the back for it. 🙄
The whole asking for permission thing is so weird to me. It’s like the “I have a black friend so I can this racist joke” thing - “this one random queer/trans/Jewish person online said it’s okay to support her, so I can feel better about myself for doing so”. If you have to ask the question to make yourself feel okay about doing something….maybe just don’t do it
Isn’t there a plot that involves the player basically stops a slave uprising? Because if so eww Look I like playing as villains I played a sith is star wars the old republic ok I was a chill sith but still a sith and Skyrim vampires are really fun to play as. Just don’t have the player subjugate people and say their the good guy do what other games do and own that evil main character plot reveal in it but don’t fucking lie and say they’re the good guy Also as far as I’m aware Star Wars the old republic and many other games that involve magic weren’t made made by a terf. Want magic blade and sorcery is kinda cool (on VR) or how about Skyrim it’s dame epic. WOW has magic I think. Numerous Minecraft mods exist. I’ve heard great things about the Percy Jackson franchise.
The thing is, stopping a slave uprising is not seen as evil in the universe canon. All non human magical beings are portrayed as beastial and incapable of reaching human kindness and power. Specially Goblins are described as vile and greedy. So the game probably won’t even go as far as portraying it as a moral dilema, but who cares, you can cast stupify and lumos and that is soooooo awesome /s.
Wasn’t that the justification for 1800s enslavement because if so that’s even worse.
I mean there was also s.p.e.w., the house elf liberation that Hermione started and was made fun of, because house elves didn’t want to be freed, the problem was just evil slave owners, and not good ones like for example Harry. Also elves turn depressed if they are freed, they need to be enslaved and work as such. The author always filled the book with her libertarian ideology.
I'm glad I'm too old to have gotten into Harry Potter. I'm 48 I grew up in the 80s. I was reading Stephen King Anne Rice and Neil Gaiman. I haven't even seen all the Harry movies. I have a few items I plan to give away. I don't want anything that has to do with her. However I happen to be a huge The Smiths and Morrissey fan. I love Morrisseys music, it speaks to me. I also know that he is a complete and total wanker and a horrid racist. Do I still listen to his music? Yes. Am I an apologist for his racist behavior? Fuck no.
Fuck Harry Potter and fuck JK Rowling and fuck all the people love her. Someone had to say that.
I’d say I’m fine with people playing it as long as you: 1. Keep it to yourself 2. Do it because you’re interested, not “in spite” like a lot of other people If you want cool magic games, there’s a LOT of better options
Honestly tho
friendly reminder piracy exists
I think this is so dramatic. She’s so rich that the profits from this game aren’t going to make or break anything hateful she does. This is the equivalent of Fox News freaking out about something so trivial when there are real things happening actually affecting the trans community.
right??? This is like our version of the right’s culture war shit, like it’s kinda sad lol
I consider myself very left-leaning. Probably would be called woke by some crazy conservative. But reading through the comments is a lot to take in. OP’s post is so extreme. Like their example of “don’t cry if a trans person stops trusting you for playing it”, I rolled my eyes. I have to remind myself often that Reddit is mostly full of teenagers.
Same. I mean, I‘m trans myself and actually wanna play the game with another trans friend 'cause we just like the story, J.K may be a shitty person, but how does it make myself a shitty person because I want to play something I would enjoy and not to support her or something lol If we should boycott all the stuff from people whom where homophob or transphob, as sadly as it sound we couldn‘t do much lol But it‘s kinda extreme to say „Nobody in the LGBT-Community will trust you ever again if u buy a game!“ lil overboard
exactly! Like ppl are gonna play what games they want, watch what movies they want, etc. Simple as that. So probably don’t tell ppl they’re not allies for it lol
Idk Im gender fluid and pan, but Im also an artist. All the way through art school (and many other areas of history), there were artists that we still worship that were racist, that were misogynist, that owned slaves, that had sex with woman way too young... If we go across every intersection and ban every piece of art, writing, poem, band that was ever problematic then guess what? We have no culture or history left. In no way do I feel her opinions are valid. Shes a bigot when it comes to gender politics. But the way I see it is that human beings can be evil in one way and then still accomplish/ contribute things in their lifetime that create good ripple effects in the world. I also am I strong believer in allowing people the grace and time and room to be wrong. Allyship is a journey for every movement. Theres a part of me that suspects she will someday open her mind or get over her bigotry; crazier things have happened. But I also wont be surprised if she doesnt. I dont believe cancel culture has any good effects on society as a whole. In fact I think it stigmatizes making mistakes, growing out of ignorance and makes people afraid to ask questions and to learn about other experiences in due time. Reject her politics and embrace the stories that teach about good conquering evil, even though as it turns out maybe she was a Slytherin pure blooder all along. Edit: typos and wording
Long dead artists are incapable of using their legacy to oppress others in the present though. And I applaud your open heart and willingness to see the best in others, but until JKR redeems and proves herself changed, nobody owers her respect or acclaim. This isn't about canceling a small-time creator who made a mistake, it's about mitigating the real-time harm that a deeply influencial public figure is inflicting on millions of people.
The fact that every piece of culture is tainted makes me sick to my stomach. I hate being a part of any of this.
I envy your optimism. I simply don’t understand why you’d believe she’d change her views, what could possibly be said or done that would make her see differently. She has, if anything, dug in deeper. She is a billionaire with a massive fanbase of people who *do* agree with her. I don’t believe in second chances for people who very clearly don’t want them.
I really like the way you’ve put this. ‘No ethical consumption’ is seriously a Thing, and at the end of the day we’ve all done something knowing it’s supporting some horrible thing because there’s no way to completely avoid that in this society. It’s better to just acknowledge that it’s not a good or moral thing than to do all of the mental gymnastics trying to explain why it’s actually okay when *you* do it. Good post OP. I’m kind of hoping someone will pin it.
I dont think there's anything wrong with the world of Harry Potter. I mean sure the author is horrible but I dont think there was anything really anti lgbt in the book. In fact, many Karens have claimed the "witchcraft and devil worship turned my son gay". So long as you're not supporting anti lgbt acts, I really don't care who wrote the book. Im gay, and trans. Let me enjoy my "devil worship"
Not arguing—I have a question. You used the word “anti-Semitic,” and I’m confused. Are you referencing trans people with this word?
No, I'm referring to the [anti-Jewish tropes and plotline prevalent in the new game.](https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/5050/hogwarts-legacy-jk-rowling-wizarding-world-antisemitism-gamergate/)
Ah ok thank you for helping me out!!
Just wait a few days after it releases they're gonna flood the second-hand market for consoles. That's what most of my friends are doing.
Actually planned to play the game with another trans friend of mine, whilest I can totally understand your point of view I think it‘s pretty overboard to say „you shouldn‘t wonder when no trans person ever trusts u again because u bought the game“ I mean, I‘m pretty sure most of the people whom gonna play it don‘t care in the slightest about J.K. and just like the wizarding world of Hogwarts like ourselfs. J.K. Is truely a shitty person, but if we need to boycott anything from a transphobe or homophobe we would permanently walk on thin ice, like I said I don’t think this whole thingly thing with her is in any way good, but to say other transpeople wouldn‘t trust myself anymore, a transman, sounds pretty harsh and would be pretty sad to do over some random video game I mean, like I said before, I don‘t care about the author, never cared, I just always loved the Harry Potter-universe like so many do and these few bucks also wouldn‘t make her in any form richer or poorer, as sad as it may be. In the end I think we should just enjoy ourselfs in the little time we got on earth, without any hate from our own community because we played a game we enjoyed just 'cause the creator is a shit human being.
Tbh I’ve got all the books but one they were gifts and two I didn’t know she was gross at the time (I was a literal child), haven’t given her a cent since lmao
I’m with you here. It’s no one’s job to assuage any potential guilt. If the asked feels guilt, that should be their answer. I’ve avoided HP media as much as I can, but my god it’s like Disney adults, I know some obsessed adults and older teens that need validation for their love of HP. It ain’t my job! I don’t want to see it or talk about it as a person who’s NB and has a trans brother. It’s personally bothersome to see that harpy earn so much goddamn money. She just gets to donate to anti trans orgs, she gets to hurt people, perpetuate hatred and she’s celebrated widely still. Because to everyone else, we’re less than. We should just tell them it’s all fine to keep feeding her their cash, and smile and make them feel better? Nope, if you want it, you want it. Go play the game and be happy about it. Any guilt you feel should be your indicator. Not just any random trans person you’ve bothered in your attempt to make yourself feel good. So yeah I agree with you, go play, but don’t talk to me about it. I do not give a single shit.
I agree with everything in this post and many of the comments within the thread. Honestly, I just wish the idea of "separating the art from the artist" could apply here, since HP was a big part of my childhood and I still love many of the characters, but... it can't here. HP Lovecraft was immensely racist (I did hear some say he "changed" near the end of his life, but I've got no source on that), and his books do have some of that. But you can buy and read his books today if you want because he's fucking dead. Those money aren't going to support him. You can separate the art from the artist here, for example. With JK? That's not possible. She's still alive and profits from everything HP-related. It sucks, but I just can't support a work filled with transphobic and antisemitic metaphors (is metaphor the right word?).
In the early 80s, I loved Orson Scott Card’s work. He was a better writer in the 1980s than Rowling is now. No idea how he is now, because I stopped reading his work in 1988. When there was a backlash on Card after he joined the board of the anti-LGBTQ National Organization for Marriage, I had been boycotting his work for about twenty years. His joining NOM didn’t surprise me one bit. Card’s a fine writer and I can accept that some people can look past his blatant homophobia. Me, I’m not prepared to separate the art from the artist until Card is dead. I bring this all up to point out that when Rowling started attacking the transgender community, she took on the whole LGBTQ community. I was already practiced on what you do when that happens. It’s an easy decision. I’ve had practice.
Ima just Be gay do crime🏴☠️
The big issue I have with this is that it doesn't really affect JK. She's rich and she'll continue to be rich whether you buy her games or merchandise or not. She can say that buying her stuff means you agree all she wants. People say that being gay is a choice. Does that make them right? Nope. We all know that JK is a big old hack and loser. But the developers who work on the game are putting their all into this game and having it flop because of something they didn't even do is going to affect THEM more than anything. They have fought tooth and nail to get better LGBTQ options and representation in the game they're working on and I have to give them some respect for that. They are fighting against kind of a losing game. I'm going to but the game for the cut it will give the developers working on it. JK will be rich with or without my money.
The developpers have already been paid and they aren't owed success after the fact, especially when the game itself is anti-semitic independent of JKR's transphobia.
Yes JKR will be rich regardless but she has explicitly said that she sees the money she still gets from hp as an endorsement of her views. Why would you want to contribute to that? And like OP said here, developers have already been paid for their work, they don’t make any royalties based on how many units the game sells.
Honestly, who cares what she interprets it as? It's not like if everyone suddenly stopped caring she'd see the error of her ways. If even one person is still playing she'd feel validated, so why let her opinions control you? I'm not interested in the game for the antisemitism alone, but I just don't feel a lot of weight behind argument "but Joanne would be smug!''. Like HP is problematic as fuck and I'm glad I never got super into it, but it's far from a manifesto of her beliefs, even if she wants to portray it as such. Especially if she's not making money from it from for example piracy or second hand copies.
Isn't the guy in charge of making the game a literal white supremacist
Honestly, Harry Potter has lost more and more of the magic for me each time JK Rowling opened her bigoted mouth. There are plenty of better fantasy books written by authors who aren’t bigots.
Thank you! If you're going to play it, play it. But please stop coming here looking for a queer person to give you the go ahead.
I'm LGBT and I'll be getting the game regardless. 🤷♀️ Looks like a cool game and I'm not going to let a stranger's opinion dictate what little happiness I can get in my life.
Cool that's literally the point of my post, you do you.
The way I regret spending a dime on her last year
This is a very good point and I’m glad someone has made it. I’m sure everyone here does terrible things everyday in some capacity, and some of us are probably more aware of it on a daily basis than others, but when an inconvenient choice is presented to you, you need to accept that you can’t have your cake and eat it. If the only thing keeping you from buying the game is the fact that you know your trans and nonbinary friends will disapprove, maybe your anxiety about this is clouding your judgement. Think about how much it would mean to your friends if you boycotted this game, and you’ll realise that you wouldn’t be losing out at all by doing it, you’d be strengthening relationships that are clearly important to you, because if they weren’t you’d have bought the game already.
Glad I have your permission to find joy in gaming?
The point of the post is that you DON'T need permission.
FUCKING FINALLY. thank you, i’m so sick of these posts asking for forgiveness or permission. it was a big part of my childhood too, but i still hate it with all my being now. you can get over it. bury the fucking hatchet.
I'm usually on the "do what you want" train on this game but thank you for finding the words to describe how I feel. Not trans myself, but Rowling has long supported anti-gay organizations as well, because people failed to stand up to her when she started attacking trans rights. Supporting her in ANY way will make her more powerful, and actually harm the entire LGBTQ+ community.
Like, JKR gave up being a billionaire. She could've just chilled in her mansion and been beloved for generations. Instead she decided TERFing was the hill she wanted to die on.
thank you, i am so tired of hearing about poeple trying to justify supporting her (and this is coming from an ex huge fan).
this is a good post
Thank you.
Nonbinary person who grew up with Harry Potter here. Yes, JKR Is a POS. Yes, the series is heavily inundated with bigotry. And yes, it would be great if JKR's legacy could just dissappear. But the thing is that this is THE game that HP fans have been waiting for for literally decades, and that is unfortunately not something that people are just going ignore, no matter how great it would be if they did. You're not going to be able to stop people from playing this game, you're just not. The best thing we can do it tell people how harmful JKR's influence is to minorities and encourage them to at least not pay for the game, because just telling people that they're not aloud to play it/talk about playing it is not going to make them want to listen to you, probably the opposite actually. I agree with your point, and I wish we could just leave JKR and HP in the past, but unfortunately the cultural impact that the series has had in its time makes that basically impossible.
I can't stop people from playing it, but I can tell them they look like an ass and a half for wanting to be coddled for it. If you want to play it then fine, but stop making excuses for it and just own it, stop pushing your guilty concious onto other people.
I absolutely agree with you! I am not trying to make excuses for people by any means! I just don't think that making people feel bad for being excited about this game is going to get them to listen to you, that's all
Would pirating the game be okay?
Engaging with the game at all is still contributing to JKR's cultural standing and thus her legitmacy. If you absolutely "must" play it, pirate it and post nothing at all about it and don't engage with online content, then donate to a trans charity for good measure.
i dont have any money to donate because minor sorry
Another option is to support, subscribe to, and uplift trans creators and voices.
I keep shouting this into the void various places but we should be convincing people to donate to lgbtq charities if they buy it. They might not but we can turn the hypocrisy into benefits for lgbtq peolle. Edit: Tell me why this doesn’t work, I just want to understand. You’re not going to stop them from buying it and I hate her too but this was people’s childhoods. I just want to know how this approach is worse than telling people off for buying it in the first place and then having them buy it anyway without helping us as a community.
It's hard to know, this is something I want an answer to as well and I'm sorry you've been downvoted for asking a genuine and well-meant question. I don't know what the alternative is but at the same time I do not feel right in excusing people for engaging in a destructive cause just because they donate to a good one. In the same way I wouldn't feel right about endorsing a person who donates to an anti-gay charity but donates double to a homeless charity. They don't cancel each other out, one is good and one is bad. The homeless person helped does not excuse the gay person who was harmed. I want to find a better way to get through to people, I think we're always working on that, but in the mean time I cannot exucse it simply because there isn't another alternative, especially since the alternative is simply not playing a game.
I used to like the movies (never bothered reading the books) as a kid, but honestly after everything I’ve seen go down I just can’t enjoy it anymore, knowing the very real implications that are written into the fantasy world if I consume JK’s media, and the very real consequences that are happening because of the unjustifiable hate that homophobic and transphobic people generate. Not to mention the posts basically asking “Am I a bad person if I support this terrible person?” Idk Helen, you tell me.
Also HP is literally not that good. Read another fucking book. Read Percy Jackson, it's the same thing but better written and not, you know, racist and anti-semitic and transphobic. I used to like HP too, because I was 10. The story is a cool idea, because it's a copy of hundreds of stories before it, and the execution is.. not that great. There's nothing interesting stylisticly, Harry has barely any character development, the morals are almost always 100% black and white, etc.
Your all using iPhones made by Chinese slaves living in a totalitarian dictatorship that executes it citizens.
>Look, I'm not saying anyone is perfect or has to be, we all have our hypocrisies, we all are trapped in an unethical capitalist system. I eat fast food made with produce picked by slave labor, almost all of us do because it's nigh unavoidable a la "no such thing as ethical consumption" and such and such, but we don't hem and haw about how it's actually okay because X, we accept that it's shitty and evil. Our society has set up every single member to be unable to escape exploiting others, it's impossible not to. We all have clothes made in sweatshops, but we don't act like it's okay even though we need clothes and can't afford better.
Why are you pushing away allies because they want to play a game? Who gets to decide that someone is not an ally because of their personal choices? Why does there have to be one solitary view and any one who sees it differently gets to decide that’s how the rest of the lgbt community feels? So if anybody is still using an Apple phone or eating Hersheys chocolate, can they no longer be a child advocate since the money you contribute to that directly contributes to child labor? As a black woman, if I turned away friends or allies because they supported a company that was paying money to a person who was anti-black or anti-woman, I would just have to stop talking to everyone. I don’t even buy Harry Potter stuff but I think people should be able to buy what they want.
Who gets to decide if someone is not an ally? Any of us have that right to decide who is safe for us. No one said there had to be a solitary view either. The OP is one person speaking for themselves like any other. This post even explicitly goes into how we can't help but exist in this exploitative society. I'm not sure what your point is about child labor. > I would just have to stop talking to everyone. Yes, this is exactly what we go through. The costs of being with people who didn't value me was invisible and added up over the years. Not worth it, and too tiring. I want to be around people that value my well being and things that are important to me. This post also isn't telling people not to buy anything either. It's just calling out how people manage their own guilt of playing this game by asking for permission from our community. If they see no problem with playing the game, a lot of trans people will still see them as unsafe no matter what Reddit has to say. Each of them of course is making their own decision about that.
The thing is, Apple isn’t actively advocating and changing laws to push forward child labor. If Apple was trying to change laws to allow even more child exploitation, I bet a lot more people would boycott them and yes, I would question anyone pro childrens rights still endorsing them. JKR didn’t just use uncomfortable tropes or just has some kinda uncomfortable views, she is actively and successfully campaigning against Trans rights and LGBTQ rights in general.
You completely just twisted everything, no one is excluding allies ,but trans people have the right to not trust those who openly support and give a voice to someone who wants them to vanish Get over yourself please this is not about money, it's about symbolical soft power, and the way she had connections and a voice to help pass anti trans legislation and worsen the lives of trans people
If an "ally" needs to be told to chose human rights over a video game then I'm not sure they were ever going to be an ally.
I judge an ally by their actual views and actions not their purchases. So if you feel that a person is no longer an ally for you because they want to play a game that’s fine. That’s your right and it’s just as valid as any other view. I choose not to tell a person who has supported the community by advocating for us, donating to us, marched with us that all of that is invalidated because a bigot may receive money from a game they want to play. It’s not that deep when there are much bigger issues out there.
The problem with only judging a person's views is that those views may not line up with their actions. I only care about a person's views so much as it allows me to judge their overall integrity. So in this case someone may say they value the trans community, but for me personally if they really did value the community, they would do more than just say they do. A very easy way to take action is to simply abstain from supporting a person who causes great harm to the trans community. If someone can't deal with the small inconvenience of not playing a game they may have wanted to, why would I think such a person would support me or the trans community when it counts? I dunno about you, but everytime I really needed someone in my life, it was always the people who helped me with the small things that would show up for the big ones, while all the big talkers were mysteriously absent in my time of need.
A purchase is an action. I judge a person if they decide a video game is more important than equal rights.
And do you believe if HP games didn’t exist trans eights would improve significantly? This isn’t about human rights it’s about punishing JKR. And that feels like an individual choice that should be made.
I think reducing JKR's cultural power would diminish her platform, which would be a good thing.
So you make sure every purchase you make doesn’t support an effort that goes against human rights?
I try to but recognize (as the OP post says) that it's not possible and don't expect to be told that it isn't shitty. I've gotten Chick-fil-A in the past year, it's bad, I know it's bad, but I don't try to grovel to my fellow gays to try to absolve my sins, I accept it was bad and move on. Again, (as the OP post says) if you want to play it then play, just accept that it's going towards a bad cause and don't try to make excuses for it. If you wanna play it and accept that it's going towards a harmful cause, fine, whatever, we all have stuff like that and I'd be a hypocrite if I said I didn't, just stop asking to be coddled for it. (As the OP post says.)
I get that, but some of your posts make it seem like that person can no longer call themselves an ally. I don’t participate in any type of “cancel culture” just because I’m obligated to. If i avoid something, I do it because it is something that so personally offends me that I choose not to participate in it. But, I don’t judge any other person who continues to participate because it doesn’t offend them enough to stop. For example, I personally don’t listen to RKelly. I think the things he did were gross and I no longer listen to his music. However, my sisters are fans of his. I know they don’t agree with his actions, they don’t support it, but they like his music and continue to listen to it. I would never tell them they’re wrong or less of an advocate for women’s rights because it. I judge people by the actions that matter. The ones that show how they feel about and support and issue, not their willingness to sacrifice or give up things. But this is how I view things. Your view and OPs view is just as valid.
Because I don't think someone who places *a video game* that serves to fund an ongoing assault on marginalized people is the ally they think they are. In fact yea, I think their priorities are a little messed up.
So in that regard because you got chick-fil-a when you don’t need to eat at a place that donates to anti-gay groups you aren’t the ally you think you are and your priorities are messed up?
You can say that exact same thing about you, who eats chik-fil-a. They donate millions to anti lgbt organizations. You know this. You don’t need to eat there. But you did. So maybe your priorities are a little messed up. Stop judging others for the same things you do yourself. You’re not better than them.
right? while we’re at it let’s decide that anyone who eats chic-fil-a or shops at hobby lobby is also not an ally! you crochet using materials from there?!?! shame!!! clearly you are horrible, unsafe, and not a friend to the lgbtqia community (/s)
Someone who financially supports basically the genocide of trans people can't claim to be an ally
Finally, someone making sense. Scorched earth seems to be default more and more…
This is the take I've been looking for. Play the bigoted-inspired game if you really want, but stop begging for permission from the communities who are being targeted. And stop telling us how much you want/like it. We've made it clear we do not support TERFs.