In addition to my loathing of the author, I have to say I am also really bothered how the books normalize slavery, glorify blood purity and elite privilege, treat systemic child abuse as comic relief, use goblins as thinly veiled anti-Semitic caricatures, reduce fat characters to jokes, sideline women or box them into tired tropes, justify authoritarianism with a shrug, romanticize magical servitude, paint non-human creatures as inherently dangerous, and act like destiny is a substitute for character development — all while the wizarding world runs on a caste system and no one ever questions it.
So I will be passing on this series, personally.
this what most of the people are elucidating her meaning of her books, its her subtle way to express her transphobia, anti-semititism, etc.
Ok fair, and kind of obvious now that I think about it. But a lot of people seem to also be arguing that the books can stand alone and be enjoyed separate from the author’s discriminatory beliefs. And if that is the case, then let’s take the books separately, and examine what they really are presenting to the audience that loves them so much. Even forgetting about Rowling, can these people really say they feel it’s totally ok to enjoy a classicist story about discrimination, slavery, and child abuse, etc.? And that they should be allowed to enjoy such a story without anyone casting aspersions against them?
FAMILY guy pretty much foreshadowed her writing, and “coming out as transphobic, but a couple years” they were on to sometime that people were ignorant back then.(there was at least 2 cutscenes about her). 1 where peter was reminiscing about her “know problematic writing of jk rowling”
can these people really say they feel it’s totally ok to enjoy a classicist story about discrimination, slavery, and child abuse, etc.?
Not sure about the book but the movies are quite good and don’t promote directly any of the things you claim
sideline women or box them into tired tropes
Which makes it mind bogglingly insane how many claimed “feminists” support her because of her stance on trans people.
Hermoine and Ron ending up together is shit. He treats her like garbage throughout the series.
Bellatrix is presented as this fucked up “Daddy’s Little Monster” to Voldemorts Joker.
All of the “good” women are passive little teachers and moms.
What happens to Tonks is especially gross as shit. You have a GNC women. Goes by a shorten, masc-ish name. Short hair, colors, dresses ambiguously.
Then she gets married off to the other queer coded character. (Werewolf = HIV, I’m pretty sure she straight up said that at one point.) He calls her her extremely feminine birth name, and iirc the text even mentions that she is vaguely uncomfortable with that? Then gets knocked up and killed off. She gets to die a “proper woman.”
TERFs say “trans men shouldn’t transition! Just be a non confoming woman!” But it’s a fucking front. They are a conservatives in disguise. They don’t want GNC people to exist, just like they don’t want trans people to exist. “Just be non-binary! But also, shave your legs and wear makeup and make sure to present in a feminine way.”
If I was a billionaire feminist who could buy courts, I could think of several better priorities.
If I were a billionaire, the amount of low-to-no cost housing, green energy, and fiber internet I would build would be off the charts. And with Elon Musk money, I’m fairly certain I could ensure that NO ONE in the US would ever have to worry about where their next meal would come from. Certainly not schoolchildren. Also, I would commission a third season of the classic 1999 anime Big O, with the original writers and showrunner.
Unfortunately if you were a billionaire you’d be a selfish sociopath so wouldn’t think of any of these things.
Correct me if I’m wrong - I’m not American, so I wouldn’t see this regularly - but I swear I heard about a lotto jackpot or two that hit the billions of dollars (maybe it was close, if wasn’t that much). So it’s possible (rare as all fuck, but possible on occasion) to get to that - or close to it - without building it on the backs of the working class. If that happened to DominusOfMegadeus then that would be awesome! All for it. It’s unfortunately more likely that you’re crushing people’s spines as you climb the mountain of them to reach that amount though. Blargh…
Lotteries are a tax on poor people.
They are also a “bread and circuses” type thing.
Plus basically all the winners end off worse than before/dead
Projection much?
Huh? My point was that there’s a reason we never get good billionaires.
It was phrased as an accusation
It actually wasn’t.
She did give away a lot of money to charity. About 16% of her wealth when she became a billionaire iirc. Gave to help children in poverty and to fight the disease MS.
I don’t know much about her stance on trans people other than she seems to believe that there is a difference between trans and biological women. Feel free to drop a good link where I can educate myself.
Anyway, reading comments here make it sound like she’s a modern day Hitler that’s never done anything good in her life, and that sounds both unfair and untrue.
I have no idea what book series you read (or if you’ve read it at all) but you are…very off on this take.
Don’t get me wrong, JK Rowling is a total piece of shit, but the books themselves are distinctly anti classism, “blood purity,” slavery, misogyny, and a whole host of other things you listed.
Are they without any flaw? Certainly not. Is it okay if people boycott the media because of Rowling’s ongoing transphobia? Absolutely. But most of what you’ve listed about the book series is blatantly untrue…
I think people like to take all the poorly written parts of HP and conflate them with bigotry. Its possible, but jk Rowling is just a shitty writer who does not plan ahead at all. I still think fans wrote the last three books via posting theories on HP forums.
She had a spreadsheet outlining the plot and character beats for the last books by the time the first film was made.
She’s just not a great writer.
That is called a timeline, which most great authors do. It is character and story path development 101.
I’d have to see the spreadsheet before I’d give her any credit for having one. The story gets w9rse and worse as it goes, I can’t imagine she planned that. The ending is absurd and I haven’t heard anyone defend it successfully.
I will definitely concede that her writing is amateurish and poorly conceived at best, and it’s entirely possible some of these issues are due to that. However since all of it came out of her brain, and these themes are how she thinks about the world, it might be trickier than that to separate the two so neatly.
I agree she is anti classism, and anti “blood purity,” but there is no redemption for the enslaved elves. Hermione written as irritating and the strong women are housewives and spinsters.
She is fine with different people moving to her country as long as they assimilate, so muggleborns and half-bloods can be wizzies too as long as they wear robes and curse in Merlin’s name. She hates multiculturalism, which is why the elves stay enslaved. They’re irreconcilably different. Sort of like transfolk. We’re different, in a way that can’t just be assimilated away.
Or… something like that. Her politics are kind of incoherent.
Her writing shows that her thinking is not logical. She was pro-remain usually means pro multicultural, but not in her case.
I know no details about the abuse she suffered, but she certainly distrusts men. I suspect she views all trans people as men in wigs trying to take advantage of women.
She doesn’t back down (see Stephen Fry “pocketed it” story) so every faux pas gets double downed upon and becomes a belief, no matter how illogical.
But all this comes after the books. I see the pro slavery, anti intellectualism and distinct lack of strong females in the books, but no anti trans or racism. She clumsily including non white characters which seems like they are editor suggested afterthought rather than a negative bias.
Don’t forget the Goblins! Although I don’t know if that was from her or from Universal Studios.
In the book goblins are “A short and stocky humanoid with black eyes, a domed head and long fingers.” but the movies add hooked noses and a Star of David mosaic on the bank floor.
She had a lot of power in the movie (all UK cast, filmed in UK) so she could have vetoed the depiction if she wanted.
Doesn’t HP end up a literal magic cop at the end of the series? The whole caste system is also upheld throughout, at no point is revealing the wizarding world to muggles even considered an option despite the fact that little kids are dying from cancer all over Britain/the world that could be magically healed in an afternoon. The whole SPEW thing is just profoundly racist and always has been. “Cho Chang” – nuff said. The whole point of Hogwarts is that it’s a boarding school, which proudly inherits all its real-world British characteristics which are intrinsically linked to the more problematic parts of the British class system.
Rowling has always been a bigot and I will die on this hill. Any progressive messaging that people read into harry potter is at best performative (for instance yes she explicitly denounces “blood purity” pretty early on, but that’s super performative considering her entire worldbuilding is built on the premise that some people are just inherently magical and others are inherently not invited to the party. “Blood purity contests” are only bad when wizards to it to other wizards.).
I don’t think she’s a good enough writer to have done most of the racist/classist/misogynist messaging intentionally, but nonetheless her reactionary poorly thought-out world view transpires through every bit of her writing.
EDIT: Trying to expand on my own thoughts here. I’ve always despised HP as a franchise so to try to be fair to HP let’s contrast and compare with the piece of shit author who did make a book I like, Ender’s Game. I pirated it a couple years back, and I won’t pretend it’s not obvious at times that he’s a homophobe and a religious nutcase with some obvious cognitive dissonance with some of his (at least at the time) progressive views. I guess the good thing about that particular IP is that there’s no new stuff coming out besides one awful movie, so everyone can agree Orson Scott Card can get fucked and move on with their lives. But it’s important to acknowledge that his religious zealousness did impact his writing and to take a step back even if we decide to still appreciate his work.
The problem is that HP fans are in a much tougher situation because the writing just isn’t good so if you drop the flimsy pretense that 2000s Rowling was a champion of liberal ideals, then you really don’t have much left besides a profoundly flawed worldbuilding with shitty characters who only work to uphold the wizarding status quo. Yeah I’d get pretty mad too if I had spend my teenage years obsessing over that heap of trash.Agree with you. You could take most fantasy stories ever written and apply the same “injustices” wrongly so. I call that reaching.
None of that matters, as it’s a book… The problem is her as a person.
You could apply the same logic to most fantasy and claim they are racist and pro-monarchy. Harry Potter isn’t really as bad as you make it sound.
Never read one completely nor watched a full movie, but it always felt cheap and written from the unenlightened perspective of a simple mind to me.
The fantasy books of my generation, such as The Neverending Story, Momo, The Hobbit, Jim Knopf were a whole different level. Life experience and a touch of wisdom in a great story for children.
But I also think that it might be just my perspective, since my mind has been imprinted like that. I’m not judging anyone for being a Harry Potter fan and try to think of it as different, not worse.
I would imagine reading the books or watching the movies as a child probably endeared them to a lot of people. Don’t underestimate the nostalgia that people have, especially before it was widely known how troublesome the author is.
Piers Anthony was my jam as a kid
JK Rowling sounds like an incredibly talented author. Most people just massage things into place. Reuse tropes. But you’re saying she baked her worldview into practically every sentence?
If I see ugliness in the world, I might express it as I see it. I don’t have to think something is right for me to include it in a story. Do you think I’m special? Am I the only person capable of writing things that I don’t necessarily support? Everyone else is forced to include things they personally would vote for. If you write about slavery, that means you love slavery. Is it weird that I’m capable of being against slavery, yet it’s possible for me to include it in stories? Should I be using this power?
I didn’t realize Rowling was one of the best authors. I thought she just reused things without really thinking. I never knew it was 100% meticulous and so… thought out. I don’t think even Tolkien can be said to inject so much meaning into every single page.
You realize she didn’t write about slaves right? She made the main character a slave owner and had a plot point about how much the slaves love being slaves and dobby is just weird for not wanting to be a slave.
Am I the only person capable of writing things that I don’t necessarily support?
I can’t speak to that. But I can say that I don’t think that sentiment applies to her. And I think there’s a difference between a viewpoint that one can objectively examine from both sides, and a bias, that is so deeply ingrained to one’s psyche that it colors how one perceives the world. And yes, I do think both things exist.
Because they’re supporting the anti-trans hag?
The parents of the child actors should be getting plenty of pushback. Exploiting their kids like this is gross.
It’s like seeing pictures of kids in KKK robes.
Wanting children to get hate for some other woman’s opinions is wild lol
Before I get more down votes. They clearly said. “Should”.
It’s almost like we shouldn’t blame others for another. I dunno. Maybe I’m a trans hater like the trans community wants to paint anyone that enjoys Harry Potter.
Brother, it’s Harry Potter which is not exactly a thing you can’t live without lmfao
You’re making it sound like they’re asking you to give up breathing
I can choose what I can and cannot live without. Without your insane judgment and ideas off a single situation. But alas. Nuance is lost on modern society.
Nuance? Nuance is not to jump to conclusions about the entire trans community and the “insane judgement” of anyone who disagrees with you. You’re making all kinds of assumptions and not demonstrating much ability with nuance so far.
I was told earlier to walk into the sea for my opinion of enjoying Harry Potter. I am not generalizing
Do you… not know what the word generalize means? It’s to take something specific - like, say, the interaction you’re describing - and use it to infer the general characteristics of an entire community. To reduce an entire group of people to your anecdotes of individuals.
I understand you think my single comment I mentioned is my only experience with this reaction in your community. But that’s just naive and rude to assume id generalize in that fashion. This is consistent behaviour from the community towards this fandom.
But I’m the one generalizing. Lol.
you were told to go swimming? are you a cat do you hate water or something?
Lol. Insane.
Saying “I can’t live without Harry Potter”, that’s hyperbole. Or if you’re serious, it’s just funny.
The argument is that funding Harry Potter directly funds JJ Rowling - whom then proudly and openly uses her wealth to pay for campaigns to enact anti-trans legislation and pays suppot to regressive anti-LGBTQ groups. Its a boycott.
People are justified in judging those who know this yet continue to support Rowling’s products monetarily or act in them as LGBT hostile.
From all the online back and forth I’ve seen though, few care if you pirate them therefore denying monetary support <- that’s nuance.
Upon re reading it does come off that way but I was using the previous commentarys language towards it not being serious that I couldn’t live without it. Apologies lol
Ah, all good. I didn’t downvote either way, just commented to try to make sense of the discussion. Sarcasm or facetious language is easily lost over text - thanks for clarifying
Ever read the Stormlight Archives? You might enjoy them
I have not. Will check it out though. Ty for insight.
Edit: ah Sanderson. I’m reading Elantris rn!
Maybe I’m a trans hater like the trans community wants to paint anyone that enjoys Harry Potter.
That kind of wild generalization certainly makes you sound like a trans hater.
No one is claiming that everyone who likes Harry Potter hates trans people. But any interaction you have with Harry Potter books, movies, merchandise, etc. makes money for one of the most prominent trans haters in the world and helps her to spread her hateful message. At least pirate her stuff if you care.
If you cared you’d know I am a pirate already by my comments here. But. You. Don’t.
Yes. You are. We are asking you not to engage with a very specific thing, and you are refusing. You are stamping your feet like a toddler that we are asking you not to give money to someone that is using that money to fund anti-trans lobbying.
So yes, you are a “trans hater” and need to do better.
Nonsense. Not agreeing with you does not paint me as a hater. That is extreme cap. Get outta your bubble lol
Also what money. I haven’t given anyone money. I’m a pirate you dunce.
You don’t see how cultural relevance has caused HBO to cut JK Rowling a check in order to make this show, which she then turns around and donates to anti-trans organizations?
Pirate or not, people watching and interacting with this stuff and talking about it with other people keeps it in the public consciousness. As long as it remains part of the zeitgeist then Rowling continues to profit from it.
It’s quite easy to find other, better stories about wizards that don’t directly fund bigotry. I recommend Dresden Files.
Jim Butcher is also… not great
This is news to me, but I hardly know everything there is to know about him.
Any specifics? I would like to know. I recommend his books frequently.
I’m allowed to enjoy what I enjoy without your personal judgment. I assure you I am an ally but you don’t care because I like Harry Potter.
I assure you I am an ally
An ally wouldn’t make generalizations about all trans people like this:
Maybe I’m a trans hater like the trans community wants to paint anyone that enjoys Harry Potter.
Why not when feeling attacked by a community they defend naturally?
you literally came into this thread with an agenda
What? Lol I do not have an agenda. I’m just some dude that wants to enjoy trans people and Harry Potter. (That doesn’t give JK any money).
Feigning ignorance of the meaning of the word “agenda” is not a defense.
You have an agenda. You went in the comments to spread it. And it’s incredibly obvious to anyone who can read.
I personally do not have an agenda I am aware of. It might appear in that fashion but again. I am a single person with my own emotions and my own feelings informed on my experiences. I am not intended to be some one else’s fucking champion. I’m just annoyed at this exact bullshit in our society. We might agree on literally 99.99% of everything else. But you won’t care. Cause I like Harry Potter!
Attempting to both deny your agenda and then asserting it in the same comment. Truly peak.
Does agenda mean opinion? I’m confused here actually
Oh yeah, you’re a trans hater if you’re paying for any HP media. No doubt or questions about it. Straight up scumbag move to be funding that shit.
If you’re paying her, you’re part of the reason she has so much money to give her anti-trans organisations. It’s directly causal and you need to take responsibility for where you’re sending your money. 🙏
What is there to even enjoy? The world building is trash, the characters are shallow, and the setting is mid and bland. You really going to die on this hill?
Read another book, I’m begging you.
In your opinion.
Learn to let people enjoy what they enjoy and stop hating people’s personal opinions when they don’t align?
The books are a bit shit tho
Re read my comment. IDC about your opinion. I’m taking about mine?
No, I hate that you’re giving money to a transphobe that wants me dead. You are responsible for what your money does.
I just look down on you for having shit tastes.
These are totally different positions.
Read another book.
As I’ve stated. I don’t spend money on her. So learn to read before judging. Lol
I also hate that you’re defending people who give money to the transphobe. Whether you give her your money or not doesn’t change the fact that you’re going to bat for people who do give her their money.
If all of her fans only pirated I wouldn’t mind.
Blanket hate is sad.
Whether or not you should consume HP Lovecraft media despite the fact he was a racist is entirely up to you because he is long dead. He doesn’t make any money. He isn’t even racist any more. Because he’s dead.
I always say “If you’re going to be a shitshow of a human being but a talented artist, the least you can do is also be dead.”
See also: Phil Spector, Pablo Picasso.
HP Lovecraft was more a clinical xenophobe and expressed that in his writings. He was afraid of different races, but he was also deadly afraid of scientific advancement and even the color indigo. He also didn’t fund terrible politicians or get into feuds on twitter. You also don’t see terrible people on twitter using his writings to justify their beliefs.
JK Rowling is actively funding and bragging about making other people’s lives worse.
Yeah, I actually think Lovecraft was doing what was probably the healthiest thing available to him at the time with all his fucked up phobias by turning them into inspiration for spooky stories. He was creative and articulate enough that he could have been writing political screeds and trying to get others on board with driving out all the immigrants, but instead he wrote about crab monsters from space. Far from the worst possible outcome considering a lot of the other possibilities from the time.
HP Lovecraft is a national treasure.
His detractors are potatoes.
His writing can be good and he personally can be a piece of shit. One has nothing to do with the other. His detractors as it were virtually all hate that he was a racist POS.
Your opinion is shallow, conformist fluff.
There’s also something to say about someone that was a racist in his mind, but made some effort to move in a better direction and/or live in isolation, versus someone that’s actively moving toward ruining other people lives with the benefits they reap.
There is a novel called “The Art of Monsters” that came out in the wake of Harvey Weinstein (not that he’s an artist). It’s a good read.
I’m sure some is profiting from his estate, no?
Well his estate is pretty loose about enforcing copyright and don’t take in much per product. That’s why you see so much merch. Secondly they are not some racist dipshit.
Plus, it was a shared mythos. He created the main core of it, but others contributed as well. So, figuring out copyrights would be difficult, since some stories reference other stories. Remember, they thought they were just writing some horror stories, but that they would never be something anyone other than other horror story enthusiasts would see.
IP was not a thing yet, and they were just writing for fun. A modern version would be the shared SCP universe.
Their right to anything is as fictional as any of his works
https://lovecraft.fandom.com/wiki/Copyright_status_of_works_by_H._P._Lovecraft
Is his estate run by raging racists?
No
His works are public domain. People are profiting who did their own work compiling or creating derivative works
Hello, username cousin
If only everybody would conform to the consensus morality. We’d be living in caves, eating garbage and telling really stupid stories but at least we’d all be non-shitshow human beings.
It’s always moraly right to pirate any harry potter media.
Not this show. Don’t pirate it, don’t discuss it on social media, don’t make memes about it. Let it die because of cultural insignificance.
Sadly, Disney keeps it alive with their theme park homage. Fans be craza. No stopping the Potter cult.
More morally right to never indulge in any Harry Potter media at all. Don’t reinforce the hype by watching that crap, even if by piracy.
I don’t pirate things I boycott. Professionals have standards.
The online portion of the community that is complaining about all this may be valid, but it’s still a small portion of the actual public. Regardless of all the negative press, if this show is good, it’s going to be a commercial hit.
I’m probably gonna watch it because it’s interesting to see what they made of it, I’m gonna pirate it and seed it far and wide tho lol
I guruan-fucking-tee there’s going to be a new character who’s basically just a transgender boogeyman
Fuck the whole HP franchise.
It was always shitty writing and the plot was garbage. The whole story was a thinly veiled glorification of British exceptionalism.
The only saving grace of that stinking turd of a franchise is that, in the '90s, it seemed like a good way to get kids to read.
The kind of hilarious part is there was right wing pushback in the southern US when they came out because it was “teaching kids witchcraft.” Which is so fucking funny to me now. It’s just so plainly obvious that they were literally judging a book by it’s cover. I read the first two books as a young adult because of the right wing pushback and even the 2nd book was an absolute slog. To my dismay I didn’t learn any witchcraft along the way either.
On the other hand, my youngest brother absolutely loved those books. I remember sneaking him one of the new ones when we were staying with our Southern Baptist grandparents for the summer. They absolutely were his first books that he really read independently. He was quite bitter when JKR decided to be all anti-trans and shitty. If you even bring it up now it sends him into a tirade about how shitty she is.
Thank you for speaking some sense. I never had any interest in anything HP ever since the beginning, long before JK revealed herself to be a piece of shit.
My cousin dragged me to one of the films once (IDK which one but it was the one where the Gollum ripoff dies). It was so boring that I fell asleep in the theater. Never understood why people find this garbage entertaining.
What? You mean a celebrity doesn’t really give a fuck about people and just wants to make money? But they were so silly and sweet in their interviews!
Unless this hurts their bottom line, I doubt they’ll move. Her behavior is not new and they auditioned and signed the contract anyway, the same way people still buy their house themed merch and take trips to Potter land or whatever the fuck it’s called. That woman’s growing wealth is a sign of just how little people are willing to give up.
a sign of just how little people are willing to give up.
Also telling a lot about how much many people care about transphobia. Or trans rights at all
Never give these people an inch, or they’ll take a mile.
When you say “these people”, who exactly are you referring to?
i heard rowling was trying to retcon the characther to curate thier her subtle transphobia needs because the og cast members do not like rowling.
Mainstream social media is hell to begin with, that’s why I’m here
the death eaters have already infiltrated…
If we didn’t read books when we didn’t personally agree with the artist’s views then we wouldn’t be reading many books at all
HP is a glorious series and no matter how evil this woman is this is going to remain true
The problem is the money JK Rowling is making on book sales and licensing fees is being sent anti-LGBTQ organizations. There’s little issue with the material itself, the controversy is where the revenues from it are going. It’s her money, she can spend it how she wants, but some people would rather not that she get any more of it.
Be sure to pirate everything so that JK doesn’t get more money to fuel her hate-filled foundation
I pirate anything that isn’t Canadian lol
It’s different when it’s fascist talking points or lies advocating intolerance or hate speech. That’s not an acceptable “personal opinion” in a tolerant society. Especially if it’s an active and current threat to democracy and financed by vast profits.
It’s different when it’s fascist talking points or lies advocating intolerance or hate speech.
You’re describing Harry Potter.
Harry should have cast the spell “Antifascio furiosa!”
Eh I’m pretty well versed in this as a metalhead haha. So many of my musical inspirations turned out to be horrible people. I learned guitar partially thanks to Dagon from Inquisition and I can’t just unlearn that because he’s a piece of shit for one of many examples
Yeah some artist are horrible or broken or sick in the head and did horrible things.
But that’s completely different to someone who gained a huge checkbook to sponsor lawsuits, lobbyists and social media campaigns to sponsor the socio-economic conditions to proliferate issues like that and agitate not just for violence but against fundamental values like equality, freedom, justice.
Rowlings is an enemy to all people who want to live in a peaceful and tolerant society. They might just be stupid or ignorant but their immense economic power makes them dangerous and they need to be put down - ideally with laws against hate speech or at the very least in polite society. It’s not a tolerable “difference in personal opinion”.
Kristi Noem needs to take Rowling out to the gravel pit. And then someone else needs to see to Kristi Noem.
Jared Leto turned out to be a seriously deranged cultist, but in 1997 he was in a personal favorite film of mine called Switchback, and I don’t feel compelled to not like the movie anymore. Maybe I’m just a big ol hypocrite.
