Okay I lied, one more post about the blatant antisemitism that isn't getting as much as attention as the creator's cissexism.
Thread from Unsidhe, Artist&Vtuber|Illust/Live2D OPEN on Twitter:
cw: antisemitism 1 of the 'goblin artifacts' you can find in That Wizard Game is literally just a shofar, a Jewish musical instrument, described as being 'used to annoy witches and wizards'. In it's description is the year 1612, which was when the Fettmilch uprising took place.
This uprising was followed by an outright massacre of Jewish people. If you STILL think it's just "a coincidence based on unfortunate folklore about goblins" and not literally an antisemitism propaganda simulator, fucking BLOCK ME. I want nothing to do with you.
People are trying to tell me "but it's not a shofar because it's painted" like, you're grasping at straws for excuses at this point.
Learning that they wrote 'stuffed with gorgonzola to silence it' about the horn, and finding out that gorgonzola specifically is not a kosher cheese... when they could have just written 'stuffed with cheese' for the Haha Funney Points really says a lot someone had to think.
/end thread
Thread from Yonah Gerber on twitter:
For those saying Hogwarts Legacy isn’t antisemitic, the game devs made it canon that goblins use shofar
“Generally annoy witches & wizards” literally the text in the game is that Jewish practices are just an annoyance like what the fuck
To address the dumbassery in my responses: assume good intentions must be earned. If this was the first time a Rowling property has been antisemitic, that's a woopsie. But it's not.
Here's the facts as they exist: - The object is a war horn - The artifact in the game is located at a place named after a pig & stuffed with dairy products to stop its music - The year of its most famous use is also the year major antisemitic pogroms happened in Germany
If ONE of these things were true, but Rowling & the franchise otherwise hadn't made any major missteps, that's when we give the benefit of the doubt. But I'm not willing to give said benefit when considering all the in-game context AND ALSO prior antisemitism in the franchise.
At a certain point, "benefit of the doubt" becomes "any plausible deniability is sufficient to ignore all context to the contrary" & to me, & to many Jewish folks, we are way past that point.
Hogwarts Legacy is not the first time the Harry Potter franchise has been accused of antisemitism. If the franchise & its creators wanted to avoid further accusations, they could've done some basic historical research to make sure these alleged coincidences were not included.
Once you have harmed a marginalized demographic, it's on your as a creator to prevent *further harm*. If you're using an IP that another creator once used to harm others, then I'm sorry, you do have the responsibility to undue that harm where you can in your own work.
EVEN IF these are coincidences, had the development team made a point to avoid antisemitic caricatures & educated themselves on that history, this wouldn't have happened. They chose not to care. And that's not much better, really.
Obviously I don't know what the team at Avalanche thinks or believes & frankly that's not my business. What matters to me is the end product & that end product either is purposefully antisemitic or was made by folks who don't care if they're accidentally antisemitic.
However you twist this, there's a tremendous lack of care going on here, & a choice to perpetuate cruelty that didn't need to happen.
Don't yell at folks in my mentions who genuinely don't understand the layers of context here. This is a great education opportunity. Block the obvious trolls, I sure am, but some folks have only seen a piece of the whole, & education is the best solution to ignorance.
Deleting my last tweet because I saw the point on Mastodon, but I can no longer find the post. I don't want to share what I can't currently verify.
To add, though: - The shofar is located at the Hog's Head (aka pig) Inn - The music of the shofar is prevented because a wedge of gorgonzola was used to stop the music, & while many cheeses are kosher, that one is not Take from that what you will.
/end thread
Thread from moby dickgirl on Twitter:
// CW: antisemitism; discussion of Islamophobia Concerning Gorgonzola (expanding on a comment in Yonah's thread) N.B. Once again, I am speaking as a gentile
It's a really common trope in right-wing propagandistic fiction for the "heroes" to desecrate the graves of religious enemies by putting profane items in them. The example I'm most familiar with is endless post-9/11 masturbation about putting pig products in Muslims' graves
I understand that there's a prohibition, deriving from a law given by Moses at Sinai, on seething a kid in its mother's milk, and that this is generally interpreted pretty broadly as meaning having meat and dairy in the same meal, or otherwise combining them, is unkosher
Some cheeses are kosher. Traditionally, Gorgonzola is not. This is because the production of Gorgonzola requires the use of a complex of enzymes called rennet. Using animal-derived rennet to make cheese is unkosher because of the prohibition mentioned above.
Now, this doesn't always apply to Gorgonzola today; you can get Gorgonzola made with non-animal-derived rennet which I understand may be kosher. However, this was unequivocally not the case in 1612. Gorgonzola made then would have been made with animal-derived rennet.
It's also been noted that the year of that goblin rebellion is 1612, the first year of the antisemitic purge called the Fettmilch Rising in Frankfurt. Both the real Fettmilch Rising and the fictional rebellions may have been based partly on allegations of financial misconduct.
There is, however, a shorter path. A distinctive quality of Gorgonzola — unique to it as far as I can tell — is that it's made with unskimmed milk, that is, milk with the milkfat still in it. The German word for "milkfat" is "Milchfett" — "Fettmilch" with the syllables reversed.
(I've heard that "Fettmilch" is literally a dialect German word for "unskimmed milk," which would make the link even more direct, but I don't have a sufficiently comprehensive German–English dictionary on hand to confirm this. German speakers are welcome to chime in.)
/end thread
Not to mention that the basic plot of the game is suppressing the rebellion of a canonically oppressed race that has always been an antisemitic caricature (hooked nose, beady eyes, hoard money, apparently control the wealth, manipulative, sneaky, greedy). We didn't need to look far to find the antisemitism, and yet here it is, ratcheted up times ten.
184 notes
·
View notes