#Rowling takes support of the Potter IP as support of her beliefs and so do UK terfs

[boot-prints]

Made the mistake of scrolling down the Hogwarts Legacy tag for a while, gonna blacklist it now so I can't keep doing it because it's not a helpful or productive thing to do. It's all kinds of infuriating though.

[kasunex]

I’ve got some thoughts (tm) on the Hogwarts Legacy controversy and boycott.

I will say upfront that I’m beyond tired of the Harry Potter franchise. I loved it as a child, of course, but in the years since the books ended it’s become increasingly clear just how shallow the world-building actually is. Basic questions like “how does the (British?) wizarding government actually function” are completely ignored and evaded. The fact that JK has dug her heels deeper and deeper into sexist transphobia hasn’t helped the legacy (npi) of the series either.

That said, this boycott talk comes off as incredibly silly. What exactly is the goal here?

Is the idea that playing Hogwarts Legacy will act as a gateway to anti-trans beliefs? Anyone who cares enough to boycott the game over JK Rowling being a terf has clearly had their minds made up on the subject. Meanwhile, anyone who might be vulnerable to anti-trans viewpoints is most likely going to ignore the boycott, though some may actually want to buy it just as a middle finger.

Are people trying to hurt the sales of the game? Given how famous and popular Harry Potter is as an IP, this game was pretty much guaranteed to do well no matter what. The tiny minority participating in this boycott aren’t going to hurt the sales of the game much at all, and a potential backlash to the boycott might actually boost the game’s publicity and sales.

So then, that leads me to the final conclusion that this is meant as virtue signaling, an exercise in drawing a line in the sand in support for trans people. That’s all well and good, and if that’s what you want to do, go ahead. It’s your right. But you must realize that criticizing others who take a different path just makes that cause off to be puritanically condescending. It’s not a good look.

It’s also frankly on shaky grounds from a hypocrisy standpoint. In an economy built off of boderline slave labor from developing countries and ripe with abuse of workers even within the first world nations, drawing the line at transphobic views seems beyond silly.

It’s this sort of condescending and puritanical hypocrisy that I find to be 75% of the problem with the left-wing.

[pg-17]

So about that new Hogwarts Legacy game…

It was a warm summer afternoon in 2013 when I got my first personal computer, at the age of 8. The very first video game I played on this computer was Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince. Even as an 8 year old idiot who’d only played 3 other games before on his cousin’s console, I could tell that Half-Blood Prince wasn’t exactly the cream of the crop when it came to games. But being the huge “Potterhead” I was, I couldn’t care less. It was a fun time.

Since then I have continued to play and enjoy many more games. My favorite video games tend to be RPGs and in 2019, I randomly got a strong urge to see an RPG set in the world of the Harry Potter books. Fast forward to 2023, and as it would appear, my wishes have been granted. Hogwarts Legacy, developed by Avalanche Software and published by Warner Bros. should be exactly what I was hoping for, but as we all know, it isn’t. Due to the actions and beliefs of its author, JK Rowling, since 2020, the Harry Potter IP has been tainted.

For those unaware, JK Rowling is a vitriolic transphobe who may refer to herself as a feminist but we all know that isn’t actually true. Since then she has rightfully received well-deserved criticism from many trans folks who grew up reading her books, identifying with the metaphor of Harry getting to escape the closet under the stairs. She is a disappointment and a pathetic hateful woman and there is no defending her. Many trans people are advocating to boycott her and I am fully in support of it.

Which brings us to the issue at hand: leading up to the release of Hogwarts Legacy, trans people on Twitter and Reddit (r/GCJ primarily) have attempted a disorganized boycott of the game by urging people around them and in their internet communities to not buy it. Unfortunately, as the mind-melting sales of the game show, this boycott has demonstrably been a failure. In fact, even if this may be upsetting to hear to some people, the boycott has provably made more people buy the game than not. Reactionary right-wingers who have no history with the series are buying the game just to, in their words, “own the libs”.

But I say instead of feeling powerless in this situation we should try to learn from our mistakes and be better. Why did this attempt fail? Well there are 3 reasons I see, all of them super depressing:

The average Joe is incredibly bigoted towards trans people and would never do an act of solidarity towards them.

The boycott was incredibly disorganized and mostly just consisted of trans people on Twitter calling anyone interested in the game transphobic which is obviously never gonna change anyone’s mind.

Trans people, especially trans women, have no political influence at all. This movement did barely anything other than serving as content for reactionary youtubers.

Here’s what we have to understand, anyone who wasn’t gonna buy this game had already made up their mind even before the game came out. I knew the moment I learned about Rowling’s beliefs that I would in no way financially support her ever. But the people who know about her and still don’t care cannot be persuaded unless there is a larger cultural shift in the discourse surrounding trans rights, and that is what we should be focusing on. Arguing with no-life chuds on social media is doing nothing but wasting our own time. We need to take a page out of 4chan’s book and learn to better organize our movements. Unified we may be able to create actual change instead of just inviting debate perverts who want to dehumanize LGBT people.

Also to the people wanting to play the game but not support JK Rowling, simply pirate it. That’s more ethical than giving money to corporations like WB and evil hags like Joanne.

#TransLiberationNow

That’s about all I had to say, buh-bye now!

[inknopewetrust]

Hey you are free to write what you want to write and I will still support your other fics but I’m not at all happy that you’re writing for Harry Potter

I know it’s fic but it feels like you’re at least indirectly supporting Rowling’s statements by doing so

Hi Anon… I’m going to be very blatantly honest here and I hope that’s ok, I think this is definitely a place where we can have this conversation.

1. Thank you for having read my works before. As I have said, I am very grateful for anyone who takes the time to read my fics when there are a billion others you could read.

2. I really wish this wasn’t an anon post. I completely understand where you are coming from and I would like you to believe me when I say: I hate that (excuse my language) bitch. I have never once supported her nor aided to her financially since she’s talked about her beliefs.

3. There are a lot of things hp fanfic authors struggle with because of this. I don’t profit from fanfics, I never ever support her ideologies in my fics (or in real life, for that matter) and many of us are using fanfics as a way to reclaim characters that have grown up with us (I was a hp generation kid growing up) and building new stories around them. It is never the intent of hp fanfic authors to support the original author, but the only think that links us is the IP.

4. Reclamation can be a powerful tool against hate. I really, really never ever ever in my life want to be associated with her ideologies. Unfortunately, a lot of authors have done horrible things but we write or create for those characters anyway.

5. And I am debating on taking it down because apparently no one is even interested in reading it which really sucks to be honest but this kind of sealed the deal… I hope you read all this and maybe it makes sense. You can always send another Anon message to let me know

Update: I deleted it because no one read it anyway and I’d rather not lose followers so idk what that says about me but I have no self esteem ig

[cis-splained]

Stop Making Me Talk About JKR

If you were sent here, then a boundary of some kind is being set. Read through this in its entirety, and check to see if any of your questions are answered here. The person that sent you this post might not wish to continue talking about Harry Potter, Hogwarts Legacy, or anything related to JK Rowling, in any context. Please confirm their comfort levels, after you have read and reflected, if they have not already been stated.

Respect their decision, even if you do not like the answer you receive.

Now, with the standard, trademark disclaimer-slash-introduction neatly out of the way:

Some Points of Clarification

The LGBTQIA+ community, self included, has been attempting to point out the red flags of JKR’s dangerous beliefs for years. These attempts have largely been in vain until she published the essay in 2020. 

JKR owns Harry Potter. She profits monetarily off of everything associated to the franchise. She is Harry Potter, and she has worked hard to ensure this.

Having no creative control is not the same as making zero profit. Neither of these things detract from her continued relevancy in the global consciousness.

There is a long history of tokenism, retroactive virtue signaling, regular virtue signaling, fatphobia, homophobia, transphobia, misogony, and many, many other things present in all of her works, social media, interviews, etc. Some of these are mentioned in the link above, the rest is easily found with a Google search.

JKR also publishes under the penname Robert Galbraith. Some of these themes are more apparent in those titles, as they are intended for adult audiences.

Including the option to have trans characters in Hogwarts Legacy is problematic because of its execution, the controversy around it from within the studio, and furthermore, is not the gotcha one might think it is. JKR does not believe that she is a terf. She fully believes that she is acting in the best interest of the trans community. You can’t pull a fast one on somebody that fully believes themselves to be an ally.

Why are people tired of talking about this?

A myriad of reasons, some of which are alluded to or stated outright above, or in the link at the top of the post.

JKR is celebrated, loudly, not just for her body of work, but for these opinions that cause real world harm to the trans community. It is exhausting to explain the reasons, scientific or otherwise, that she is wrong, how she is causing harm, and why it feels like a betrayal. 

It is exhausting to spend all of this time, effort, and energy justifying and defending your very existence and extremely real emotions, just to hear “well I still like Harry Potter” at the end of it.

It is exhausting to feel like your emotions do not matter, particularly while trying to tackle your own grief and conflicting desires to separate the franchise from its creator.

It is difficult to try to remember that your friends, family, and people who otherwise support you entirely are not trying to hurt you. That it probably isn’t willful ignorance that leads to them ignoring you. 

It is possible to be rationally and logically aware that someone who supports you is defending Harry Potter because of their own hurt feelings, and still be hurt by the fact that they’re trying to defend it to you.

We know that we have no recourse. Frankly, it sucks.

We can’t boycott Harry Potter in any meaningful way. Unfortunately, we do not live in a world where harmful rhetoric and transphobia will nuke you from the global consciousness.

An entire essay full of hatred and misinformation would, in a perfect world, remove you so thoroughly from pop culture you suffered the same fate as Game of Thrones: never discussed again, not even to say how much you hated the ending.

This is not what happened here.

People will continue to support her. People will continue to support the franchise. We can not hurt her financially, and we know this. Somebody with millions of subscribers and followers might be able to convince a fraction of their fans that she should not be supported. Even if that scenario is replicated a thousand times over, it’s not enough.

Because nobody has a platform that can realistically rival hers.

This unfortunate reality means that every article, every Tweet, every video essay only serves to grow or maintain her platform. Every time that Harry Potter is mentioned, her relevancy is ensured to continue. 

And she will always win while she is relevant, such is the strength of her platform. She is, and always will be, Harry Potter and the Wizarding World.

Even if she never earns another penny from her IPs, she will never suffer financially. Even if she is never discussed again, the damage she has already caused will take years, if not an entire lifetime, to erase.

All of this is adds to our exhaustion and burnout.

In the end, it’s a zero sum game with no clear answers.

Consume consciously. Respect the trans people in your life. Respect the trans people in your online communities. Elevate their voices. Remember that the trans community is burdened significantly by constantly being put in a position where they must educate others. Remember that there is significant emotional labor that goes into this education, justifying your existence, and also with justifying your emotions. Respect our boundaries. Listen to what we have to say. Take the things that you learned and put it into action.

As always, reblogs and shares are welcome. Safeguard your mental health. Guard your boundaries. This was, once again, written with the express purpose of helping people within the community do both of those things.

Here’s a Tiny URL to make that easier:

https://tinyurl.com/ebmsusa