#anti-JKR

[dani-luminae]

BARBIE HAS SLAIN THE WIZARD

[hopeymchope]

Oh GOD the fiendish David Zaslav is rebooting Harry Potter with a new "extremely faithful" adaption of the seven books. J.K. TERFling is heavily involved, she's executive producing, and they've made a TEN-YEAR COMMITMENT already.

Five Rapid-Fire Thoughts I Had in Reaction to This News:

Fuck Zaslav. (Btw, did I mention that — after deleting half of HBO Max's original content — Zaslav has now announced a price hike to the newly christened "MAX" service? As if giving a shitload of money to the planet's most notable TERF wasn't enough fuckery. FUCK that fucking shitheel.)

See below.

3. All y'all who were like "Boycott Hogwart's Legacy or You're Automatically a Terrible Person" or whatever because Rowling was going to make like a 1% royalty off of that game had GODDAMN BETTER boycott HBO MAX (....uh, sorry, it's just "MAX" now, I keep forgetting bc that name sucks — "HBO MAX" wasn't all that good a name to begin with IMO, but now it's worse) from here on out. YES, I know it's harder to boycott an entire streaming service that may contain OTHER content you want, but c'mon now, just bootleg anything you want off MAX in the future. (I'll help! I will send you a link or whatever if you need assistance. Message me. It's cool.) Because this is going to make her SO MUCH MORE MONEY due to involving her FAR MORE DIRECTLY. FUCK. WHY. Why did they fucking do this.

4. There are so many things in the books that are either A) poorly explained workarounds for continuity/logic issues or B) extremely problematic that the movies were actually BETTER for ignoring them. Can't wait to see the scene where every single known Time-Turner gets accidentally broken shortly after Prisoner of Azkaban in order to ensure the characters can never use time travel to fix their problems again! SUPER excited for the plotline where Hermione has to learn that she's silly and wrong for trying to free slaves because the slaves are fucking happier being enslaved! OH BOY!

5. God, a ten-year production commitment UP FRONT. I hope they lose so much money on this stupid-ass project that they wind up dragging their feet to produce future seasons for so long that the contract runs out before they've gotten farther than like, the third novel, and then it just dies on the vine. Would be HILARIOUS.

[mighty-meerkat]

look i am absolutely not trying to retcon She Who Must Not Be Named into some kind of Secret Progressive, but like...

can anyone else who has read Goblet of Fire and also has a passing familiarity with the worst of British early-00s tabloid culture (think the Sun, the Mail, the Express), confirm that Rita Skeeter's hit-job on Hagrid bears more than a passing resemblance to the sort of transphobic harassment of random trans people that jkr now actively promotes?

[positively--speculative]

We need a new and better witch and wizard franchise. Harry Potter has taken up so much space in the fantasy genre that people cannot seem to fathom any sort of fictional witchcraft that doesn't align with what JK Rowling created.

Sorry, not sorry, but it's old and tired.

[hiya-itsamber]

people need to stopppp putting rules on fandom. if you don't like what someone writes block them and move on. it is literally futile trying to argue or change their mind or tell them to stop. fandom is meant to be fun - and may i remind you it's fictional, just let people enjoy putting their silly little guys into silly little scenarios, please.

[sjbattleangel]

What to play instead of H**wa*ts Le**cy:

Want to enjoy a great open-world, fantasy-adventure video-game...but don’t want to give money to She-who-must-not-be-named?

  Play these games instead:

If you want a game about school students who solve mysteries and/or challenge the status-quo: 

Final Fantasy VIII

Persona (series)

Fire Emblem: Three Houses

Neverwinter Nights

GimGrimore

If you want an open-world adventure, filled with tons of fun and a few little hidden secrets:

The Legend Of Zelda: Breath Of The Wild

The Witcher III: Wild Hunt 

Super Mario Odyssey 

Fable II

Xenoblade Chronicles (series)

Horizon: Zero Dawn AND Forbidden West

The Legend Of Zelda: The Wind Waker

Elden Ring

If you want experience brilliant stories with unforgettable characters in fantastical worlds:

Final Fantasy VII

The Longest Journey

Planescape: Torment

Baldur’s Gate I and II

Beyond Good & Evil

Final Fantasy IX

Final Fantasy VI

Final Fantasy X and X-2

Chrono Trigger

Suikoden II

Odin Sphere

Divinity: Original Sin I and II

If you just want something a bit more cosy, laid-back:

Animal Crossing: New Horizons

Stardew Valley

Spiritfarer

Kynseed

The Sims (series)

Witchbrook (upcoming)

Kitori Academy (upcoming)

I know there are few old games here but I promise you, they are absolutely worth playing. Plus, you won’t be giving your money to a hateful bigot. 

Remember:

Isabelle says trans rights.

Aloy says trans rights.

Zelda says trans rights.

TRANS RIGHTS ARE HUMAN RIGHTS.

DON’T SUPPORT SHE-WHO-MUST-NOT-BE-NAMED

[nerianasims]

I want to trace this to the top. While JKR’s goblins are antisemitic (and no, goblins in fairy tales are not usually), WB ramped it up by making their noses big and hooked and putting Stars of David in their banks. Then WB knew that the lead developer for the horrible game was a Nazi and was perfectly cool with that.

There’s a person behind “WB” though. Someone made these decisions. Who? I guess I’ll have to try to figure it out if no one else has yet.

ETA: Oh ffs of course. They’re in the same company as HBO Max and all their horrible right-wing decisions. So, who? There are individuals with a whole lot of power deciding these things. They don’t just sort of magically happen out of nowhere.

[joaquinwhorres]

Writing for Harry Potter

I've received a few asks on here and some messages on AO3 + FFN asking if I've abandoned my HP fics or if I still write for Harry Potter over the past few months and up until now, I really didn't know how to answer that.

The Author of the Series worked really hard to kill my love of the series with her heinous views on trans-people and active participation in spreading transphobia and lobbying for anti-trans policies. How can I possibly work in a world created by such a person?

On the other hand, my experiences reading Harry Potter as a child and teen and young adult are what shaped me into who I am today. It taught me the very lessons that make me stand against The Author. It inspired me to write and sparked a lasting love for literature. It bonded me with some of my closest friends.

As I've considered what to do with my stories and interaction with the fandom, I've come to the following decisions for myself.

I am still writing for the stories I have created. I adore my characters and their stories and consider them founded in the beliefs that would oppose The Author. I am working to make the world more diversified and to call out the (for lack of better word) problematic things she has included in the text. That said, I will not be creating new characters or plot lines outside of what I already have.

I will not support The Author. I will not buy their new video games. I will not go to their upcoming movies or watch any reviews. I will not be on their website or whatever. I got rid of a lot of my Harry Potter merch and will not be buying any more.

I will be reminding everyone of how awful The Author is. At the top of each masterlist and work I will include links to a deep dive into the harm The Author has done to the trans community and places you can donate to support those she's harmed or stand against her policies.

Harry Potter means a lot to me personally, more than I feel comfortable sharing online, and because of that I am working to be a critical participant in its fandom. I could still walk away in the future, but this is where I'm at now.

As such, if you have stepped away from the fandom completely, I commend and respect your decision and will happily remove you from my tag lists. If you still write for the fandom actively, I support you and your decision (as long as you're able to at the end of the day say with your whole chest, "Fuck The Author.")

[rootbeergoddess]

Katya is the queen we need.

I always have loved her and I love how she continues to use her platform for good.

[my-humble-abode]

getting real fucking fed up of people who decide that playing a game is more important than the lives and wellbeing of people of colour, of trans people, of jewish people

[agentem]

Percy Jackson

I reread The Lightening Thief a few weeks ago because I knew the show was coming out.

I've very interested in book-to-film adaptations, as you might have noticed from my fandoms all being books or comic books that were adapted to TV or film.

What I noticed about the book is that it felt a little bit dated already. I had read them--not right when they came out--but maybe around the time The Last Olympian came out. In Percy's voice, maybe. Not just the techology already being outdated. He has that millenial-era snarky vibe.

And though voice-over narration is something I consider to be a bit of a cop out in terms of adapting a film to a movie, I think it works here. He seems more contemporary. The gods seem cooler.

The show is fun and captures the spirit of the series without everything being "exact." Percy Jackson is about that feeling you have that adults are lying to you about something (it's not just Santa Claus. It's a lot about history and religion). That's why Greek gods and superheroes and stories about girls who start revolutions and the men who incite them (recent THG microobsession) are exciting. That you could be a Hero with a capital H.

I recommend.

tl;dr under the cut

I decided not to get it for my nephew for Christmas. He is 8 but reads at a middle school level, which I am told is a great problem to have since many kids are behind in reading thanks to the pandemic. But he likes reading books with lots of pictures still so I mostly give him comics and graphic novels. But his Mom got him Harry Potter and I'm against giving You-Know-Who more money. I gave her enough when I was in that fandom and I can't unbuy the books or the merch I still have.

And he likes them. He is on book four and I am worried about that, not just because of my personal issues with JKR, but because it's getting to the point where people die and I don't think he's ready for it. Also because I didn't want my sister giving more money to You-Know-Who but it was her decision about her kid.

Anyway, I got my nephew the illustrated edition of One and Only Ivan (ironically, another Disney+ adaptation) instead of Percy Jackson because I wasn't sure if he knew Greek gods yet.

But it turns out he already read it. I thought I was so smart because he likes animals and zoology a lot. He cried at the zoo when the Red Panda wasn't available and for about a week after we were asked to not mention pandas arount him because it made him sad. But One and Only Ivan was the school-wide read-along.

So I did get him Percy Jackson when I had to return Ivan.

I'm interested to see what he knows about Greek gods. I would be thrilled if this new edition of the books is able to turn him into a Percy Jackson-kid instead of an HP kid. Because when I was a kid, I read Edith Hamilton's edition of Mythology over and over like there was going to be a quiz. (Never has been. Very upset.)

But if Nephew likes them then we could bond and I could be the "cool" aunt. Like my aunt who read "Lord of the Rings" was.

[kyliafanfiction]

One thing that I’ve noticed is that, even before JK.Rowling outed herself as a tone-deaf TERF caricature of who she’d been before, is that people attacked the Harry Potter series for things that other YA series don’t get the same attacks for.

Like, JKR sucks, but let’s let our attacks on her and her books exist in the realm of fair reason, hm?

The one that really stands out for me is the complaint that the Harry Potter series is bad because Harry didn’t.... fix all of the problems with the Wizarding World? 

This one has always baffled me. Like, leaving aside the fact that there was hardly room for fixing everything in a seven book series (what, did we want ten, twenty, thirty more books covering the rest of Harry’s life? I’m sorry, I don’t want to read Harry Potter and the Landlord’s Inspection followed by Harry Potter and the Series of Boring and Straight Forward Criminal Cases With No Plot Twists), How is it Harry’s responsibility to always, 100 percent of the time, be on the fore of solving all the world’s problems. Give him a freaking break, he spent seven years fighting for his life, let him have something nice!

Like, yes, the Wizarding World is packed full of problems. Many of them ones that J.K. Rowling deliberately included, and many that she doesn’t really see as problems (which is it’s own set of issues with her writing), but since when is it the responsibility of a book series to resolve literally every bad thing that exists in the world?

Yes, I’m all for a story about Aragorn’s tax policy, but I wouldn’t want that to be part of the Lord of the Rings proper, because that’s not what LOTR was. And I wouldn’t expect (or enjoy) a story where Aragorn literally fixes every single wrong in Gondor and then the rest of Middle Earth because that’s not how things work. Shit doesn’t get fixed like that, doesn’t get rendered perfect. (It’s telling that the loudest voices on this line of attack tend to be the kind of lazy socialist who thinks that everything can be solved by just screaming ‘eat the rich’ and ‘medicare for all’) Problems are solved, and the solutions raise new problems. They expend scarce resources. They require limited decision bandwidth. A solution for one group makes things worse for another. Or actually implementing the solution in a way that doesn’t accidentally kill innocent people becomes a challenge all it’s own.

And all this assumes that all the relevant figures in a society can be convinced to back a solution. Or you could use violence, but that doesn’t tend to work out all that well for anyone, by every single historical example we have. But sure, this time when we feed people to the Guillotine, it’ll work.

So yes, it’s not that it wouldn’t be interesting to read a series about a world like the Wizarding World being reformed, or even having a violent revolution (though if that violence led to a perfect utopia, I’d question the sanity of the writer). But that’s not what the Harry Potter series was, and I doubt JKRowling, with her abundance of character and writing flaws, would have been able to write it to the satisfaction of the people who bitch about it. And Harry Potter would hardly have been the right protagonist for that story anyway. But that’s not what the series was. It was a Juvenile fiction/YA series about an orphaned boy finding a place in the world, graduating school and defeating a Dark Lord. It’s not a particularly innovative model of a story, but it’s one that works well, and that is well established. It was very clear from the start what sort of story it was, and it was never gonna be ‘Harry Potter Fixes the World’.

I mean, it’s fine to want to read a story where someone discovers they belong to some secret, hidden world and then they set out to correct all the injustices of that world. And depending on how heavy-handed it was, and how unrealistic all that fixing was, I’d probably even enjoy it. But that isn’t what Harry Potter was. And getting angry at J.K. Rowling for not doing that in her seven book YA coming of age story is a bit like walking into a McDonalds and then screaming at them for not carrying vegan nonfat soy gluten free kale smoothies! It’s like going into a pizza place and wondering where the Chicken Tikka Masala is. You’re in the wrong place for what you’re looking for, and that’s not the proprietor’s fault.

And again - and this is what gets me - I have never seen any other YA author taken to task for this. I have seen tons of them attacked for bad representation, or lack of representation, or daring to have sex happen in the story, or for ‘sending bad messages about relationships to impressionable kids’, et cetera. 

But I’ve never seen - and maybe I’m just not looking in the right places - any sort of widespread idea that the author’s story was a failure because *looks at smudged writing on hand* “... they failed to have the protagonists resolve all the problems of the society...” That can’t be right?

Oh, but it is somehow what people expect here. I have not once, in my many years of reading fantasy fiction, Sci-fi, and YA stories encountered any novel or series that ended with everything being solved. Or even most things. It’s never been an expectation I’ve seen anyone throw at any other story. The fact of the matter is, even the most complex of stories is only going to resolve a small number of problems just from a logistics of writing approach. I can’t even begin to imagine how complex a story focusing on just a tenth of the major systemic problems of our society and their ‘fixing’ would be.

JKRowling is, now, trash. She’s an out of touch, elitist, tone-deaf, perpetual victim TERF who has more in common with the alt-right than anyone to the left of Richard Freaking Nixon. Her refusal to take even reasonable and mild criticism, and her constant and persistent doubling down on her nonsense while continuing to screech about how dare ‘cancel culture’ attack her shows how thin her skin is, how badly she takes even the slightest disagreement, the barest hint of a ‘no’. There are many problems with the HP series, and many in the Wizarding World, including the ones that she didn’t seem to see as problems. A lot of unexamined Very British Baggage, for instance. And had JK Rowling been able to do any self-reflection once she started getting criticism, maybe she could have addressed those problems, at least a little. But a lot of the attacks the books got, and still get, were and are unreasonable. Expecting things that no one had any legitimate reason to expect or by judging it by standards no one ever judges books by. If you graded books by ‘solve all the problems in the world’ every book gets an F. But I’ve never seen any series get hit with that same, persistent line of attack.

It’s unreasonable, and stupid, and more than anything else, it’s baffling. Why did anyone ever expect this of Harry Potter in the first place?

[hopeymchope]

Harry Potter-like series reveals a sexfluid character among its protagonists

Do YOU: A) Support trans/LGBTQ rights, BUT ALSO B) Want to be 100% free of any guilt while you enjoy/embrace a story that contains all of the following:

Up-and-coming young wizards/witches attend a magical academy together

Said academy is a castle in England

The students attend the academy for seven years

Classes include magical combat, potions, magical creatures, herbology, and broom-flying

While the students attend those classes, they simultaneously have adventures in and around the school's grounds, encountering dangerous beasts and dark wizards?

If that sounds like something YOU want, I legit recommend you try out Reign of the Seven Spellblades — a light-novel series which became a manga which has now become an anime!

I first came into this series via the current anime. And as the headline up above states, said anime recently revealed one of heroes in the focal circle of friends has literal sexfluidity. (Like, they're not merely genderfluid. They actually switch their physical sex. ["If only it were that easy," amirite?])

Episode 7 (i.e., the one right after that big twist/reveal I wrote about previously) begins with one of our protagonists, Pete Reston, waking up from a strange dream to reveal that the character-formerly-known-as-"he" is hiding breasts under their shirt. Upon my first viewing, I naturally thought we were learning that Pete was secretly transmasc this whole time, which would've been a cool enough touch. But I've already spoiled that that's NOT where this story goes, so...

Ultimately, Oliver (Pete's roommate and the series' co-lead) notices that Pete's... shaped differently, and Pete is forced to admit that they don't even know what's happening to them. Lucky for Pete, then, that Oliver has read up a LOT on the magical world. He's always there to drop a knowledge bomb. Like this one.

Not only does Pete then get the full support of his friends (who finally learn all about this in episode 9 and are happy for him/have no problem with it), his class president also steps in to share with him a secret meeting place for people just like himself.

QUEER MAGIC CLUB QUEER MAGIC CLUB

So yeah; it's been a pretty cool little touch. Plus it feels like they're gently flipping the bird at the creator of Rot7S' obvious inspiration.

[willowlark369]

What is your Hogwarts house?

Amazingly, it still hasn't changed from the last time you sent me this ask, Anon.

However, this is a wonderful opportunity for me to remind everyone that JKR is a bigot who is actively trying to take away the rights of trans people (especially trans autistics) to exist. Any time you buy a licensed product (including licensed games), watch a licensed show, or visit a licensed theme park, you are giving money to this cause.

Regardless of what you tell yourself, that means you are supporting the same cause. You are being bigoted.

Support *fandom*, not JKR.

[positively--speculative]

Amazing how I remember whole Evangelical groups organizing get togethers to either burn or rip up the Harry Potter books as protest against the spread of witchcraft and then two decades later, these same people are treating JKR as a martyr.

Here's your reminder that conservatives stand for absolutely nothing but power and hatred.

[tobiasdrake]

I think it's time we all accepted that J.K. Rowling is not some two-bit indie content creator who said a few bad things on Twitter. She's a bigot who became very rich and very famous because she wrote some wizard books that, despite their red flags, became really popular. Now she uses her wealth and her influence to advance her bigoted ideology.

Those of us who grew up in the Harry Potter fandom made this monster when we kept letting things slide when we were reading the books.

"Slavery is both legal and normalized in the wizarding world? I'm sure it's fine. Harry has a favorite slave that he helped free, so that's fine."

"Hogwarts has a whole house dedicated to blood purity that churns out angry racists? I mean, that's the bad guy house. I'm sure it's fine that the institution nonetheless condones and continues to enable their belief system."

"Oh, the goblins are super racist? It's probably an accident. Rowling retconned Dumbledore into being gay so she must be a progressive icon."

But it wasn't an accident. Fiction is a tattle-tale. The media you create informs on your values, and the values presented in the wizarding world of Harry Potter aren't fantastic. It is at best a horrifying dystopian state more concerned with the politics of civility than with equity, and it goes unchallenged throughout the series.

The closest it ever gets to being challenged is when Hermione tries to liberate House Elves. And that's unambiguously depicted as one crackpot teen liberal being naive and overenthusiastic; Not only is Hermione foolish to believe she could affect change, but her change isn't even desired because of "Happiness in Slavery".

The House Elves are happy with their lot in life, and well-meaning white girl liberals should just let them be and stop trying to uplift them. These are the politics of Harry Potter.

Rowling wasn't radicalized by getting validation from some right-wing YouTuber, as I sometimes see people try to frame her as. She's the same person who wrote those books. We just liked the books so much that, without even thinking about it, we forgave her for the troublesome things she wrote. And now we've made her rich and powerful enough to turn those troublesome things into social and political influence on the real world.

J.K. Rowling and her army of followers who care more about a video game than about trans and Jewish people are the consequence of shutting up and just letting people enjoy things.