Unpopular opinion coming, but fuck it. Harry Potter was never great, besides being set in the modern day it’s very generic and the movies were mid. some people will worship whatever JK Rowling breathes on
It’s alright but it’s definitely got more popular than literally all the other coming of age teen fictions through sheer luck. And I read a lot of these as a kid so I know what I’m talking about.
I’ve also heard that she was immensely helped by translation because when her shit was translated she was already starting to get famous, so the publishers contracted their best, and apparently the originals are a lot less “well written” than e.g the french version. I personally never bothered to check because I have more interesting things to read.
Fun fact about this one : when my librarian mom brought the first volume of Harry Potter home, I remember she told me that it must be good because she had never heard of the author (and she was specoalized in kids literature so she knew a thing or two about children and teens book authors) but she knew the translator
I stopped the moment she showed herself to be a terf.
Never looked back.
Me as well, and I stopped watching anything with Dave Chappell too. TERFS can take a flying leap for all I care.
This isn’t a meme
Commtitle is slightly misleading, any microblog screenshots are allowed as per the sidebar.
Fuck stopping. Steal it all. Take it and enjoy it without her getting anything. Reclaim the art. Make it your own. Piss her off with fanfic and fan art based on things stolen from her.
Yes. Can we get a trans Harry fan fic where he defeats an evil trans hater? Make it a kids book to for extra points!
Chuck’s already got ya!
https://www.thriftbooks.com/series/trans-wizard-harriet-porber/200695/
I got the recommendation for Kaleidoscopic Grangers from a similar thread a few months ago and really enjoyed reading it. It’s about a trans and blind HP navigating her adolescense while having the backing of the Granger family and was written explicitely to spite Rowling. And she certainly wont get royalties from you reading that :)
This is how you do it. Hermione Grainger? More like HENRY GRINDER!! And he’s PEGGING HARRY!
Finally, someone else who understands. Reject the canon, embrace the ship
At first I was like “not this shit again, let people enjoy stuff even if you don’t like it’s creator, stop being bitter about some dickhead’s wellbeing”
But then I saw what they’re referring to. Fucking hell.
JK doesn’t get money for all of the items. She sold off rights or partial rights to things like the games and movies and representation in theme parks.
Do you have citations for that? Do you know what she does get money for and how much? From what little I’m capable of googling, she seems to get royalties for just about everything.
That is a very short sighted perspective.
Jk sells for rights for x. buyer uses rights to create products, because buyer thinks it will boost sales. People buy products because of HP and sales are boosted. Buyer is happy.
Time passes.
Bought rights expire, buyer made a lot of money. Buyer wants to buy the rights again.
Alternatively
Buyer 2 sees success, wants a piece of the pie, buys rights from jk.
If you boycott HP, buyer wasted a lot of money and will not pay for an extension of the rights.
Yeah that’s fucking stupid. Most fans of a franchise care about the franchise, and especially with one this old, they treat it as a part of their identity and deeply like it.
Stupid statements like this will only alienate them and make them give Rowling money anyways. Instead, you could easily get some people to avoid paying Rowling for stuff (e.g. buy third-party Merch or second-hand stuff) and reclaim it (e.g. supporting the actors’ views instead).Exactly. Telling someone they’ve done a grave evil for supporting content they enjoy is insane to me. Especially if that content is devoid of the thing they are so angry about. It reads insane and lunatic and doesn’t help progress their cause to level headed human beings.
While I do agree that some go a bit hard on this it is true that buying the movies, the games, or official merch is directly harmful as the money is used to fund anti-trans lobbies. I don’t think it’s reasonable to expect anyone to stop engaging with fanfiction or other things that doesn’t give Rowling cash, but I do understand why me and other trans people are upset when others cling to harry potter. It’s a sore point for us because we know what she stands for and are keenly aware of the bigotry even within the HP book series, not just Rowlings later statements. We are also aware that many simply do not care. Even if you tell them what the money is being used for people often don’t believe us, or choose to prioritize their indulgence into the fandom over preventing harm. Talking about HP does contribute to the popularity of the franchise and can therefore arguably indirectly hurt us. So I do ask that you have some understanding for why people are upset.
You are supporting at the least 1 trans hater. How many other employees of these shows and companies are you damging that are trans allies?
Id imagine more allies than haters but what do i know I am literally just making random assumptions lol
The reason I call it insane is directly visible in this thread with the comment from that guy telling me to die.
And if you want a magical world fix that is from someone that supports trans people, look into the Young Wizard series by Diane Duane.
She as an author is also on Blue Sky and is one of the most positive, friendly, upbeat, likable people I’ve met there.
Thank you for the recommendation
Ooo now I wanna read the Feline Wizard trilogy again.
STOP fucking talking about it
Proceeds to post it everywhere
I sorta get this, but sorta don’t. Do you have any idea how many celebrities are abhorrent people? Movie execs? Team owners? Record company execs? Game studio execs?
I’m guessing that MOST of what we enjoy involves someone or something that’s morally wrong. Hell, most of us can live the most responsible life possible, but we’re still participating in a capitalist system. Capitalism is responsible for all kinds of horrible things, like starvation and homelessness.
Why deny myself something fun when Evil Megacorp or Reprehensible Rich Person won’t notice or care, and the boycotts seem so randomly applied?
Because she actively funnels money to hate groups using money she receives from this intellectual property, and boasts about doing so.
Oh, I know why Rowling is on the shit list. She belongs there. I was just wondering about everything else I mentioned. I don’t expect an answer from anyone, either. It’s an impossible question. Just thinking out loud.
Your premise seems to have little regard for scale. Yes people are shitty but how they allocate the resources given to them matters.
Your argument here is nebulous fictional supposed evil people are probably doing bad things which allows you the comfort of not figuring out who is doing little harm vs a lot of harm because under your framework it doesn’t matter. As long as any actors real or imaginary in the system are bad you are absolved from participating in trying to alter market forces in your own small way.
To others on here there’s a difference between someone who did a shitty thing or has a shitty belief and one whom is tied into a direct political action block they are funding off of the proceeds they get from licencing their intellectual property to video-games and HBO series they are producing right now. This isn’t really about reading the books you already own or the DVDs you already have. It’s about killing the public interest that is keeping the author relevant and making her megaphone louder and the lawyers she funds to fight Supreme Court cases to disenfranchise trans people richer.
Scale is the main consideration.
Interesting food for thought. Thank you for taking the time to write it out.
Mid ass books anyway. It was literally so easy to not engage with them and I fucking loved them as a kid.
Frfr… people who can’t move on from HP are so fucking pathetic because they’re climbing over each other to tell you how they’re obsessed with some totally mid books written for a primary school reading level. It’d be weird even if the author weren’t an insane fascist.
says to stop reading the books and watching the movies with the reasoning of giving a bad actor more money but… I already own them all from before it was known she was an asshat. I’m pretty sure she doesn’t get money when I pop the DVDs in my player or decide to re-read the books on my shelf.
That it doesn’t disgust you to consume the media of an open fascist using her money to attempt a genocide is highly suspect
lol
To me this reads like one of those bad jokes on the expense of trans people in 90’s media. Like how Ace Ventura has sex with a trans woman, then only after he learns it, he starts gagging and washing his teeth religiously and like pumping his face with a plumber; it’s hypocritical. You already enjoyed it, now you’ve learned something about it, it’s suddenly shit and retroactively changes your previous enjoyment to disgust?
Perhaps you never liked HP, but practically the entire world did, before we knew how JKR will turn out. I’m not gonna give her a cent and previously used money for any HP related things like… 20 years ago, but I’m also not going to pretend they weren’t meaningful to me or that her politics will retroactively change those feelings.
I don’t think it’s terribly suspect. What are you even suspicious of? People experience disgust in different ways. I can watch Kevin Spacey and not be disgusted, even if he’s a piece of shit. And I like Tarantino movies too, even though he’s also, ah, suspect.
As far as I’m concerned, the old J.K. Rowling was murdered and replaced by a bodysnatcher who gets the royalties from her work. Engaging with the fandom and paying for new HP stuff is bad, but otherwise let’s not police people who just want to enjoy their childhood favourite thing.
This may be hard to understand, but many people are totally capable of separating the art from the artist.
It is hard to understand, actually. I don’t understand how you consume something that’s been over for 20 years, that was intended for children, and contains veiled racism and fascist undertones that go right over the head of average people, and still sit here in 2025 going, “I regularly pop Hairy Plopper into my Dee Vee Dee player” like
I guess it doesn’t matter, though, because now the next time you plop that thing in you’re going to think of these posts.
contains veiled racism and fascist undertones that go right over the head of average people
You got any examples of it promoting these ideas and not not being a negative critique of them? All the examples of bigotry and authoritarianism in the books and films are rightfully portrayed negatively; not something to celebrate.
The goblins are Jewish caricatures first and foremost, and most obviously. I thought we as a society knew that most portrayals of goblins have always been antisemitic, but that’s aside from every other character in HP being some kind of stereotype metaphor. There’s a reason that became a meme, and is still a meme. i.e., stuff like, “JK has announced that her newest character, John Gayman, is a gay man!” for a rough example.
I don’t particularly agree with every single thing listed here, but these are some more examples to mull over: https://www.reddit.com/r/EnoughJKRowling/comments/kaxw28/i_made_a_list_of_examples_of_racism_prejudice_and/
Yeahh, people talk about the goblins being anti-semitic but honestly they don’t seem any more anti-semitic to me than typical goblins. Like, yeah, goblins in fantasy are all vaguely anti-semitic, sure. Wato from star wars is way more anti-semitic.
What gets me is Seamus Finnigan. That guy’s a walking stereotype.
oh my god. get off your high horse.
they read a fucking book in their own Library
the books dont even feature any of those views
touch grass
You are the one who seems complely out of touch with reality here. So you should go touch some grass, or whatever pathetic way that inane saying goes. You are the one on your high horse, making poor excuses for poor reasons.
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Doing jumping jacks to continue consuming a children’s wizard story from a billionaire who’s paying to insight a genocide is really not something an adult with an adult brain should be doing, but you do you
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Holy shit, did you just say it’s unattainable to stop watching fucking Hairy Pothead? lol
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Bro, this whole entire thread is about pointing out all the flaws in JK’s writing, and how her bigotries have always been embedded in her stories, outside of the fact that she’s incredibly transphobic, and currently funding a hate campaign, and you’re calling not consuming this specific media an “unattainable moral standing.”
No, I don’t think I need to work on reading comprehension. I think sea lions and goal poster movers need to get banned and removed from the fediverse completely, like the parasite that you are.
But I’m a Huffledore and that’s my whole personality!! 😭
Huffle deez nuts, lmao
I’ll slytherin to your ravenclaw
You don’t need to stop doing any of this.
Just pirate all of it.
That’s what I did.
Even better: pirate it, and whatever it would have cost, donate that amount to an LGBTQ+ charity.
Aye. I still have all my first edition books from when I was in 6th grade on and I sure ain’t giving those up, but all the movies live on my server that were obtained from the high seas. I never bought their merch anyway, I’d rather have my band merch.
Just pirate all of it.
how can you enjoy it though? like, don’t you get disgusted knowing you’re consuming the product of a transphobe? fuckin gross
The old conundrum of separating the art from the artist. Personally, I think as long as you aren’t giving them any money, have at it.
a painting by a very famous Austrian
a very famous Austrian
schwarzenegger is a famous austrian. your painter there was an infamous shitbag. know the difference!
Either way, you’d be lying if u said his artwork his shit.
the producer was a shitbag. that’s THE WHOLE FUCKING POINT OF THIS ARGUMENT. wake up and get better standards.
It’s bad
Kartoffel, kartoffel.
Kartoffel, kartoffel.
he wasn’t german. and it’s a specious comparison, when one comes from a maggoty hate infested shithole, the other from any normal farm.
What do you think a potato is called in Austria?
Cute, you don’t even know what the fuck you’re talking about.
It’s shit, from a shit vendor. GET BETTER STANDARDS
Sounds like he had a very promising future in the arts!
No, frankly viewing anything I try to do for leisure through that lens sounds exhausting and depressing. Just do what you can to avoid financially supporting it, stealing it is fine.
I don’t even particularly like Harry Potter either
I would agree, but the wizard game where the good guys put down a slave uprising isnt just antisemitic and transphobic, even worse, its mid.
That’s what I told a friend who asked if she should read enders game. Get it from the library or steal it. Orson Scott Card doesn’t deserve your money because he’s a shitty person.
That’s still boosting the cultural impact of her work. In some cases piracy increases total sales.
It’s basically impossible to be perfect, pirating the work stops the money from going to jk Rowling which therefore stops it from going to anti trans groups.
Shopping at Home Depot hurts trans people Using Amazon hurts trans people Shopping at basically any big box store hurts trans people
They are a heavily oppressed group and you aren’t able to live your life perfectly so don’t sweat pirating a game
It’s impossible to be perfect so you won’t even try?
Sure, a lot of other things indirectly harm queers, but it’s pretty fucking clear that support for HP, which includes maintaining it’s cultural relevance, is directly increasing the influence, wealth, and power of a single person who’s utilizing a lot of their time and energy on specifically trans hate.
Not hard to drop a shitty YA series, accept that it was in the past and there was no harm in enjoying it, but that continued support is pretty directly harmful.
I don’t get everyone and their eternal “but it was my childhood” crap. I look back on the content I enjoyed in the worst parts of my life fondly, but I’ve moved on to enjoying other things? I don’t need to keep a series from 20 years ago as a current force in the cultural zeitgeist.
(In relation to the current media landscape as a whole) Why people just consume the same content, the same characters, or the same IP repeatedly, as they continue existing in a more and more profit-driven way is beyond me.
That and if you’re not already avoiding big box stores as much as probable, that’s kinda on you. People have to eat, and often, work has to be done, and those monopolies often give you literally no other practical choice. HP is just a single series among hundreds and thousands of YA magical boy series.
I will argue there is something very different between Rowling and Bezos.
Both are rich beyond measure and can fund lobbying efforts indefinitely. But Rowling has something that Bezos doesn’t have, cultural capital. When she says something, people listen, from journalists to citizens to lawmakers, and not just because she’s rich.
Truth is social capital matters. A lot. Which is good because it’s the only thing we, the people, can hope to have that most billionaires don’t. But a corollary of this statement is that giving social capital to Rowling is, in fact, worse than giving actual capital to Bezos, all else being equal.
Now I can’t tell you how to live your life and we all have our vices. Just giving food for thought.
This ain’t about giving capital to Rowling this is about how even pirating Rowlings work is considered bad
But who out there is actually changing their mind over anything Rowling has said?
Right wing people ignore her because her works (especially her newer works) have a bunch of token diversity characters and left wing people ignore her because of her anti trans agenda
Yeah but it’s not like this is the best literature has to offer, nobody would really lose anything by just not reading a very mid saga.
The movies are good, but the story is also the weakest link. You could swap the story and maintain everything else and it’d probably be just as good if not better.
It’s something people like… and for many people it’s a comfort movie/book
Like there are just so many worse things in the world that worrying about the cultural impact of pirating a movie/book/game is such a waste of time.
Asking people to stop giving her money is 1 thing but you are accomplishing nothing except making people feel like they are completely powerless if you tell them to not even talk about HP
Idk, sounds like they should develop as people then
Oh yes pray tell, who are the under developed people according to you?
What should we do with them?
Let’s go full steam ahead, do they have rights?
Some of the most ludicrous people I used to know are… very queer and proud, self describe as ‘leftists’, and are also mega Potterheads, all at the same time.
Everytime I’d mention that Rowling is a POS, I would literally be shushed, and mean mugged.
Ironically (or perhaps not?) one of these people would later be fired from their job for racial insensitivity.
???
Cognitive dissonance is really something else.
Have you considered Redwall. BJ is dead so he can’t be pressured by the Anglican Church. I’m not excusing RJ, but the Anglican church is pretty fucking brutal in the UK anytime they get remotely threatened.
Also Redwall is fire as fuck.
Personally, I read the entire Redwall series as a kid.
Well, maybe not all of it, I think some books in the series were still being written at the time … not 100% sure.
I found them much more compelling than Harry Potter.
I also read everything Animorphs, most of them as they came out.
… I also read all of LotR, other than the Silmarillion, before I got out of high school, as well as most of the Tom Clancy books, Jurassic Park / Lost World Andromeda Strain, 1984, Brave New World, Farenheit 451…
Man, I even read most of the Boxcar Children before I got out of elementary school.
I read a lot as a kid.
So much so that when I was in 2nd grade, I would routinely finish school work so quickly, that I would be matched up with 4th and 5th graders who were behind their grade in reading ability, and go out into the hallway and help them read aloud books, help them with pronounciation, explain word meanings they didn’t know.
…
But the group of people I am describing?
Best I remember, they only read Harry Potter… and I do remember having to explain to them that the LotR movies (the first 3) diverge from the plot of the books in several key points… Saruman’s plot arc and everything directly connected to him diverge significantly… perhaps most notably by totally removing the Shire being ‘scoured’ near the end of the story.
These people did not believe me when I told them this, which lead me to conclude they either didn’t actually read LotR, or at best, skim-read it or didn’t remember it well at all.
So weird considering they are literally novels for children lol…
These are the kind of people who are in their 30s and still make instagram posts, and frequently say in real life, ‘I’m done adulting today.’
Oh right, even crazier, one of them was also a nurse and a covid skeptic… again all at the same time.
Nurse and covid skeptic is unfortunately common.
