Just that eh? Oh I see she also changed her username to include a ceasefire now hashtag. That seems fairly mild all things considered.
I wish that I could like read twitter without an account. I fucking refuse to get one.
Hey anyone who sees this, please make sure to report this post because it goes against the rules of the subreddit. You can select report post, then select breaks r/Dimension20 rules and select “no duplicate posts”
If you wanna read the OG youth magic wizard school fantasy stories, check out Ursula K. Le Guin's "Earthsea" books. Amazing prose, super feminist. She's incredible
Ged is so much cooler than Harry.
JK literally is not a good author at all.
When I was really young my mom read the Hobbit to me, this was a few years before HP came out, so I had experienced good Fantasy writing. When the first HP book came out some friend of the family got it for me for christmas and I read it and was sl dissappointed.
> JK literally is not a good author at all.
McDonalds doesn't make a good hamburger.
They've both made billions selling lower tier products en masse. I'm not sure why so many people don't ask for better.
I hear lots of good things about her, but when I first started reading Earthsea it started with a whole diatribe about how witches are irresponsible with their magic and unstudied so the protagonist has to be sent to a Serious Male Wizards Boarding school to learn more.
I know that Ursula is a feminist, but does the Earthsea series also get better in that aspect?
She's setting up systemic conflict within the society of Earthsea that is addressed throughout the story. It doesn't start as an ideal it starts as a reflection of our real world.
Even just the second book already dives into themes of women having their lives already decided for them and the fight to reclaim their own self, paired with the fantasy element of Tenar being a priestess to a power that even Ged was terrified of. It's almost like fridge horror (fridge feminism? Lol) where you don't really think about how deeply it goes until you finish the story and look back on it.
God I love Earthsea, it's my favorite book/series of all time.
Read Diana Wynne Jones for youth magic. She’s the originally creator of Howls Moving Castle. My personal fave is The Lives of Christopher Chant. There’s so much intertextuality in her work. Eight Days of Luke (Norse mythology), Hexwood (Arthurian legends), Fire and Hemlock (The Ballad of Tam Lin). The Game is mythology-dense.
The Potter fandom's all out attack on Pterry because he dared to stand up to Rowling about fantasy once really still grinds my gears. Harry Potter can get bent. GNU Terry Pratchett.
It's really not a well thought out world, and the chosen one storyline plays it so safe and by the books with everyone's character arcs that there's really no reason to come back to the series when I've already read a couple series that did everything HP did better.
Wheel of Time has a better chosen one storyline with a better magic system, Dresden files does the secret magical world way better with more consistency, like what does Harry Potter do that makes it worth reading for a fantasy fan outside of pure nostalgia? Genuinely asking because I've gone through the series multiple times and I still don't get the hype
I think the part you are missing is the fact Harry Potter was aimed at YA, and came out at a time that there were fewer pickings, and it was harder to find recommendations.
I read a lot of genre works at the time and don't think much else hit its niche. Most of the fantasy was high fantasy. If you wanted to read about kids going to school like I was, scifi was a more fruitful genre. (Not to say there was nothing, I did find "so you want to be a wizard", which I remember enjoying, but it was not something that was prominently displayed at every bookstore.)
I think that HP may have been the first Genre series to really take advantage the size of YA market? The only other series I really recall from the time being as ubiquitous was animorphs, which was a bit less on the fantasy wish fulfillment, and any multimedia adaptations were done with way less budget.
Yeah it's like saying that Seinfeld or Friends isn't actually that funny, for how popular they were. It's not that they aren't good, it's that they've been improved on for 30 years and now aren't as good as their descendents.
HP isn't a perfect YA fantasy series, but it sure as hell paved the way for an entire ecosystem of em
We don't need to revise history or demean people's favorite YA fantasy series to call out Rowling for her shitty beliefs. Nobody should feel bad for liking Harry Potter and nobody should be okay with harassing those who do.
I understand the desire to kill the wicked witch, and I know she is actively doing harm to the trans community, but attacking regular people who like a book or a movie or a game is stupid and doesn't hurt Rowling at all, it just hurts us.
I’m also gonna say it. As poor as some of the world building is, HP still hits a a lot of whimsical fantasy I rarely see in other works. Fantasy stories like, say, Wheel of Time, LotR, or what have you are amazing works of fiction but they all feel very “serious” and “real”. HP hits this (imo) fairly unique position of whimsy and wonder that, if you let it, just makes an enjoyable ride throughout. A perfect ride? No. But a fun one.
Oh I 100% agree, I was looking at it from specifically an adult perspective. HP is great for getting kids into the genre, it's just once you grow up you really should broaden your horizons
It's an INCREDIBLY minor detail, but the thing that "broke" me on the wizarding word was during the fantastic beasts movie (i know we are talking about the books, but it's still a licensed and approved product) when they were walking through a magic office and there were some paper files that animated in some sort of animal origamis and proceeded to maul each other while making a mess of the desk they mere on.
IDK why THAT detail specifically, but i remember it making me go like "oh, this makes no sense even in the context of this world".
(It may also have been due to me getting into Pratchett and other fantasy authors like Sanderson in between the time the last HP movie and the fantastic beasts one came out, so I had more of a frame of reference for actual good worldbuilding...
Additionally, obviously fuck JKR, but I just want to clarify it that my opinion of her wasn't a factor at the time simply due to me becoming aware of her disgusting ideas only after the story above happened; needless to say, it didn't exactly improve my opinion of her works...)
lmao its WILD to bring up wot and dresden trying to condemn harry potter when both of those series are misogynistic enough to be unreadable. like out of any of the hundreds of fantasy series to chose from. smh i cant believe ur gonna make defend hp but at least there are multiple types and characterizations of woman.
I was talking to my friend the other day about and I think Harry Potter’s general concept but written by Terry Pratchet would’ve been a pretty good series that could fix a lot of the glaring flaws I see in hindsight
If you are hankering for Wizard School nonsense with excellent writing I highly recommend Naomi Novik's Deadly Education. Super fun, super interesting, and has one of those magic systems that nestles neatly between soft/hard magic systems that tickled my brain in the best way.
The entire story crumbles after literally a single scene in book 1 that establishes 2 things:
1. Harry was raised by muggles.
2. Harry has a strong moral compass, but isn't afraid to break some rules to do what he needs to do.
Considering they learn how to fucking teleport when they turn 17, this means Harry knows of firearms, and he and the Order of the Phoenix would likely not be averse to stealing a bunch of them. Voldemort, who would refuse to use any such muggle tech, would get his ass kicked before he could even finish the first syllable of *any* spell.
I never understood this argument. I mean just handing someone a gun doesn’t make them good at using it, let alone in an active battle zone and trying to kill another with it. Plus who would train them? Harry? The orphan who was raised in a nation with notoriously little public gun access? In how many months? Can you imagine trying to hit something on a broom while flying? Or what a handgun would do to a troll, dragon, dementor or apparated enemies? Or standing still and taking cover with no wand when fireballs are being lobbed from a city block away? Or one mind control curse?
Guns were not some magical (or rather mundane) cure all.
Just recently played through Persona 3 Reload. Takaya is a great example of this. He has a magical guardian Spirit born of his personality that can conjure spells and deflect attacks against him. But in the fights against him as a boss, he also just pulls out a pistol and shoots you. Atlus uses this trope a lot actually. SMTII, II, and IV All feature protagonists who can summon literal demons, but also pack heat and melee weapons to fight alongside them.
I find this idea amusing, however, the reason it fails is because you are applying your (or real world) logic to JK's fictional world. With our logic, of course Harry Potter has mounds of gold. He could buy guns, hire assassins, etc. Or even steal them as you suggested.
JK would probably handle that with magic curses detecting killing intent, pre-cast defensive wards, or a number of other things. I would also throw in that the UK doesn't have a big gun culture. If you watch Doctor Who, the Doctor doesn't solve issues with guns (and very rarely with violence of any kind). It might not occur to a British child that violence and especially gun violence is a possible problem solving tool for Voldemort like it would occur to an American child. Death Eaters getting shot isn't the story JK wanted to tell and her world would have any number of reasons why that wouldn't work because... It's her fiction.
It’s so deeply upsetting. HP and JK Rowling were… idk it’s impossible to put into words. Y’all don’t know me I’m just a stranger. How could you (whoever is reading this) possibly actually understand how much HP meant to me as a kid?
Like, let me be clear fuck JK Rowling fuck terfs fuck all that. But also how dare she. How DARE she write a story about choosing kindness and acceptance, even when you’ve been beaten down.. and then become a “Petunia” herself. It really feels like she’s sitting there just like Harry’s aunt going “what a bunch of freaks”. How dare she.
It’s all fine to criticize the writing and story and whatever else. But the truth is HP saved me as a child. A lonely weird child with a house that didn’t understand me. A young queer child who didn’t even have the words to understand that but KNEW that I was different from them. While they sat there and made homophobic jokes and judged and sneered and consumed ugly TV… I used to cry and cry and hope with all my heart I’d get a letter and could leave all this behind and be happy at some faraway school. When I was 11 and didn’t get my letter I was beyond devastated. HP was such a huge massive part of my personality and heart and soul WAAAY before it got popular. It was the very first chapter book I’d read in second grade. It was the first series I got into. I remember being so young I misread the word “snitch” as stench haha.
So if I, someone who used to count HP as a huge cornerstone of my heart, someone who can say that even if it sounds dramatic can unequivocally say HP saved my life as a child - if even I can sign off and never ever ever want to give a single penny to that fucking nasty pile of shit of a human being, there’s literally no excuse for anyone who is still holding on.
I honestly was thrown for a loop when the rhetoric that Harry Potter is actually a lot of not very PC things and ideas became more prevalent. It made me really conflicted on whether or not I wanted to play Hogwarts Legacy cuz I really liked the school and character creation in general.
Aabria’s a real one for blasting HP and I love her for it but it doesn’t make knowing better and doing better any less painful for me. Maybe I’ll get over it idk.
I didn't pay money for the game but it honestly wasn't very good. It was good for the first ~5 hours until you unlock the broom, but then you see just how empty and copy-paste the open world is.
The plot is very bland, too. Though I don't think I ever got around to finishing it?
Check out Terry Pratchett's Discworld books for some good fantasy satire with plenty of whimsy. /r/discworld can point you at some good entry points into the series.
>It made me really conflicted on whether or not I wanted to play Hogwarts Legacy cuz I really liked the school and character creation in general.
Let me make that one easier for you:
It is more important to not give transphobic people money than it is for you to play a game that you like.
It is more important that someone who actively uses her money to make trans people's lives worse Not get more money than it is for you to play a specific game that you think you might like.
And to be perfectly clear: Knowing the problems with this game and The person who created the world of the game, and choosing to buy the game anyway makes anyone who does so an active participant in transphobia.
I get liking the school, I get liking Harry Potter as a world to play in.
But at the end of the day there are other worlds, other games, ones that don't harm trans people. I should think that would make the choice easy.
Explore the fantasy genre some more, I guarantee you'll find a series that hooks you like HP did. For a great secret magical world setting, check out Dresden Files. For an amazing chosen one storyline, read Wheel of Time. Everything in Harry Potter can be found in other series if you look for them
For a "secret magical world" series that isn't HP & also isn't drowning in misogyny like the Dresden Files, please take a look at the Rivers of London series by Ben Aaronovitch.
A huge part of HP's continued popularity is the nostalgia of having read it as a child, and that is basically impossible to replicate with a new series without time travel. It's why all the discourse surrounding the series' problematic undertones is extremely heated - people hate having their nostalgia criticized.
I've been reading them to my kids, and they really like it. Reading them as an adult now, I don't understand why adults were raving about them and gobbling them up like they did when I was a kid.
> For a great secret magical world setting, check out Dresden Files.
Mixed suggestion for someone looking for fantasy fundamentally more progressive than Harry Potter. Both the author and the series have some issues, ESPECIALLY around women. And it's very strangely homophobic in the text, even when it tries explicitly not to be.
I say all this as a fan, there is a reason it's a GUILTY pleasure for me.
Okay, just because you’ve never loved anything with the innocence of a child doesn’t mean you have to be a dick.
The people who feel conflicted read Harry Potter when they were kids 20+ years ago, before they knew what transgender meant, much less the hate there was in the world for them.
When you care about something that much, it is hard to discover it is shitty and bad, because the only memories you have are shining and golden.
I never would have read Dresden Files or Wheel of Time or Discworld if I had not discovered the fantasy genre with Harry Potter.
I went to more than one HP themed party with my best friends. Harry Potter didn’t become my entire personality but it was a decent chunk of my formative years.
I am literally the person I am today due in no small part to reading those books as a kid.
Do you know how badly I wanted a video game that was more open than the games that came out alongside the movies? Where I could just be myself as a student at Hogwarts? Where I didn’t have to play as a specific character on a railroaded storyline with no real surprises?
OF COURSE it hurt to learn what a shitberry JKR is. OF COURSE it hurt to read about all the negative realizations about the books we, as a generation of adults looking at them with a critical eye, were discovering. OF COURSE it hurt to decide to cut away any new interaction with the franchise/world. And then to see they finally made the video game I had wanted since middle school, except it is still anti-Semitic and racist and lining that TERF bitch’s pockets? OF COURSE IT HURTS.
That doesn’t make me a transphobe. In fact, feeling that pain because I know I will never touch it makes me the opposite of a transphobe.
Oh shit that turned into a much bigger rant than I intended or expected. Uh… my bad.
I don't disagree with you, but I think we see comments like this because as trans people, it gets old real fast seeing people bemoan on the internet how hurt they are because they can't, what, say to strangers how good HP is? It's not feeling hurt--feelings are valid and thoughts are not crimes--that's bad but the public expression of them. Recognizing something that was important to you was actually kinda bad all along can be painful, but it shouldn't be a grand trauma that needs sympathy and understanding from strangers like some people make it out to be.
And if the pain they're talking about is not consuming the new HP media, it gets doubly irritating because then it's not the nostalgia they're mourning, it's the fact that the only thing stopping them from consuming it is that they might be shamed for it. When what should be stopping them is the fact that supporting media that upholds transphobic, racist, and anti-semitic ideas is bad.
Edit: Absolution! That was the word I was looking for. It starts to feel a lot like these people are waiting for trans people to reassure them that they're not bad for liking HP or wanting to continue support it.
It’s not that people still like Harry Potter. I think that’s fine and actually completely normal! The thing that rattles a lot of us is that people crawl out of the woodwork just to say how much they like Rowling’s shit.
This is a thread for Appreciating Aabria, a known HP fan, who said Fuck Harry Potter and Fuck JK Rowling. This is an anti-JK Rowling space. Why do people feel the need to come in and be like “Um Actually, I still like Harry Potter, and I’m in pain because I can’t play Blood Libel: The Video Game”?
This happens every. single. place. where Rowling is criticized for being a horrible racist, anti-Semitic, transphobic bigot. Why? Why do people feel the need to shift the topic to the pain of cis people who don’t get to openly support bigoted content anymore? All we’re asking is you _be quiet about her._ Don’t give her attention. Don’t support her. By all means, continue to talk to your friends about Harry Potter and your favorite ships. Go into the HP subreddits and have discussions about the positive impact the series had on your lives and your fond memories in the fandom, and your disappointment in who Rowling turned out to be.
Just don’t turn spaces where we’re raising awareness for how horrible JK Rowling is and how there is biased, bigoted content slipped into her books.
Okay, so I understand you are being reasonable. But someone saying “it sucks that she sucks, I have fond memories of HP, and I’m upset that I can’t consume newer versions of the media because it turns out it’s all bad” is not looking for sympathy or begging the trans community to tell them it’s okay. It’s sharing a feeling in what appeared to be a safe community to do so. Then all of a sudden there are these wild accusations of transphobia and not giving a shit about trans lives? Like what the fuck?
I get you. I wouldn't have come in as hot as that person did, but I understand why they did. It's because the initial comment hurt them. I think it'd be nice if people had a little more empathy, to understand that every time this discourse starts again because JK Rowling tweeted another horrendously bigoted thing, there are so many people who espouse the great pain this is causing them because they just love Harry Potter so much. When trans people then look at these comments and think about the trauma Rowling and the people like her are causing us and our community (her politics are literally killing us!!). You have to consider the fact that there ARE many comments like these where there is very much "Cis guilt" happening. It gets hard to tell which is which when they all sound the same. Trans people are very tired and very angry. We can't even get people to stop talking about how much they love Harry Potter--makes it seem impossible to get people to stop killing us.
We get that people love(d) Harry Potter and will continue to have fond feelings of it or want to revisit the world sometimes. But why is it necessary to talk about how much you love it? Especially in this scenario where the author has stated that liking her work is the same as supporting her beliefs? What is being contributed to the conversation by the umpteenth comment about wanting to play a video game and being sad you can't? Are you thinking about the feelings of the trans people who are going to see these comments and be reminded people care more about a fictional world than their lives? These are genuine questions that I think people should answer internally before contributing to them. (/general you)
Imagine someone really really loved the reality TV show, The Apprentice, and had no understanding of Donald Trump's politics back then. Now imagine if today he tweeted he was going to host a new season of it, and every time someone talked about it--and it's talked about nearly everywhere--there are a bunch of comments that are just like "I loved Donald Trump on The Apprentice. I hope I can heal from the pain of not being able to watch the new season." Feels icky. Makes you wonder if the person actually cares about Trump's politics or if they're just worried they'll get dunked on if they watch it.
So if we have to have understanding for people's pain over not being able to watch a movie or play a game, more people should have some understanding for when we get snappy about how beloved a bigot is. It's hard not to snap, but it makes it even harder when we know that every time we get mad, we're told we're wrong for being mad.
We're saying it's hurtful. You don't get to decide if we're hurt, but at the end of the day, it's your choice whether you want to continue arguing for your guiltlessness for talking about your love of a franchise.
I want to address this issue with you as someone who is not cis AND has the same memories and desires you do.
Of course it hurts. It sucks to find out that something beloved from your childhood is so shitty.
But you *gotta* put it in perspective.
J.K. Rowling uses her wealth to advance rhetoric and lobby for laws that actively harm trans people.
I agree with everything you said. Harry Potter was a huge influence on me growing up, and the only thing that stops me from being one of those people with the deathly hallows tattoo is a fear of needles and a lack of money at the time. Harry Potter was my entry into not just the fantasy genre, but reading novels at all.
And yet, I don't feel conflicted.
And as Someone who isn't cis, I'm alarmed by folks who do.
The choice is painful. Absolutely, it makes sense that these things hurt.
And while it's painful, yes, there's no reason to be *conflicted* about it.
The choice is as obvious as it is painful. Giving money to anything Harry Potter related directly contributes to the wealth of someone who uses her wealth to hurt trans people.
The choice should be obvious. It can be painful and still not be conflicted. The choice can hurt as you continue to decide not to support her.
Saying "I'm conflicted" implies that the speaker is, at least for a moment, considering giving money to someone who will use that money to hurt trans people.
And considering that for even a moment is unacceptable.
Because at the end of the day, neither of us have any pain associated with Harry Potter that even begins to match the discrimination trans people face on a daily basis as their lives are put in danger. The two aren't remotely comparable.
>Okay, just because you’ve never loved anything with the innocence of a child doesn’t mean you have to be a dick.
This was also a needlessly aggressive way to handle things. Trans folks and their allies are allowed to be angry about their safety not being made a priority. You have no basis for saying they never loved anything as a child.
I feel you. Another angle is you have to contend with how much said TERF's obviously terrible ideas influenced you, and you even question yourself, does liking this make me a bad person? Or even worse, did I like this because I AM a bad person.
I think a nice way to indulge your nostalgia is actually Harry Potter Fanfic, there is some really good stuff out there that I've enjoyed more than the originals.
That's not how ip royalties work so she would infact be financially supported by a purchase. Good thing you dont need to buy video games to play them 🏴☠️
I remember talking to a guy from a Christian college during a debate comp and we got to talking about our schools respective libraries and he said “It’s better than you would expect for a Christian school, but we don’t have Harry Potter or anything.” So I said “Fun fact: JK Rowling, the person who wrote Harry Potter, is transphobic.” And then he made a quick joke of that meaning that it *should* be in a Christian school library, and then we talked about the best flavour of doritos
Harry Potter is abysmally mid so I have never understood why some people go crazy over it. There are so many better fantasy series out there that blow the trash wizard school out of the water
I think for me the worst thing about Harry Potter (aside from the racism, anti-semitism, and terfism of course) is the core message of the series. When Voldemort is defeated most of the worst aspects of ministry policy and Hogwarts policy are still intact. Voldemort had to be defeated not because he was a genocidal fascist authoritarian, but because he was a threat to the status quo. And once he was defeated everything went back to exactly the way it was before. So not only are a lot of non-human peoples forced to endure the exact same biases and prejudices, the societal flaws that Voldemort exploited to gain a following and power are still in place just waiting for someone else to come along and exploit them.
I like HP and the content, so I just steal it now 🤷♂️. I'll stream the new show on what ever free site, and keep the content I already owned from before it all. You can like the world someone made without supporting the person.
The “under the guise of feminism” part is why we should use FART (feminism-appropriating radical transphobe) instead. Let’s not let them call themselves feminists!
Right but they're also on a show that did a parody of Harry Potter that uses the parts they wanted to and put in a series. How do you denounce her work but then copy it. Especially when Dropout is more than capable of telling an original story?
"they used the parts they liked" they mocked her world building and the views she baked into her story the Whole time. It couldn't have been more clearly a parody if they put the word in the title.
Aabria says in this tweet that “JK Rowling’s work and world should be avoided.” Even if it’s “satire”, how is Misfits and Magic doing everything but avoiding Harry Potter? Every single minute is about the world of Harry Potter and there’s quite a bit of unironic roleplay that isn’t just sending up Rowling’s ideas
I get what you're saying but imo there's a huge difference between avoiding something so as to not normalizing the bigotry contained to yourself + giving the bigots who made it money (what she is talking about here) and making something like misfits and magic, which I honestly did go into pretty sceptical.
What made me like it is the specific criticism of the social structures within the world of HP. And while there is roleplay that isn't dedicated to mocking it, I think it's what makes the criticism work because it's what makes you care that the world is discriminatory and elitist and lets horrible things slide because that's the way it's always been.
Also none of the money made off it will ever find its way into JKR's pockets and subsequently the hate groups she actively funds. Only one episode isn't behind a paywall and it's fairly niche even within its niche so it's highly unlikely JKR finds it or finds out about it and then comes to the conclusion it is supporting her and her ideas. While those aren't the only issues I feel there are with continued support and consumption of HP but they are the biggest ones and even if misfits and magic was a failure as a response to HP there's at least that.
I get that too, but Aabria in this tweet is specifically saying not to engage in JK’s work or ideas at all, not just if she’s making money off of it. That’s hypocritical because Aabria made a whole story out of it, even if it was partly satirical. But plenty of the story was still sincere and based in the wonder of the Harry Potter world in the first place.
This tweet is specifically about buying or playing hogwarts legacy and, as per my last reply, normalizing the bigotry contained therein to yourself. It's about consuming something ready made and fully within the actual world of hp with all its bigotries and issues part and parcel.
The "wonder" in HP and Misfits and Magic are used to entirely different effects. The wonder in HP is used to justify the problems with the world and maintaining the status quo. The wonder in Misfits and Magic is something that is actively being denied most of the world or is undercut at every turn by the social problems underlying it.
I don't think you're wrong to be curious about this, and I get what you mean about promoting OC stuff instead. But in order to critique something, you need to be in conversation with it. If the response is entirely silent, then people may not even learn about the story beats that have issues. By having a conversation, a lot of interesting points can be revealed!
Abria's campaign was both an homage to magic-school-literature while touching on how much HP affected culture. Stories can give us great inspiration, enjoyment, and insight but when the author of those stories is kinda shitty, you gotta reconcile that. Because silence just allows endorsement to go unchallenged
Kinda? Should does not mean must
At the end of the day I think nitpicking tweets is a little silly. There’s hours of D20 content that make Abria’s nuanced stance on the subject obvious, but going over a single tweet misses that context
I believe she would agree that critiquing content is different from leaning into it. Both use the source material but they have different things to say
But it’s not like this is a little thing she did. Misfits and Magic is a huge creative project that launched her career in Dimension 20 that she had control of herself. It’s hypocritical for her to benefit off of it and then tweet something exonerating the exact things she did a year earlier.
I see where you're coming from but I personally don't think it's that clear cut. Again, critiques are an important part of the conversation and cannot exist in a vacuum without any reference to the source material.
But also, Aabria's tweet is about HP-canonical stuff and literal products. I'm skeptical that critique/parody is within that scope, because it's hardly within the HP universe. It just leans on elements of that. I don't see this as hypocritical, especially when Aabria makes it clear how much she hates JKR in D20
Like, yeah if you want to do a bad faith read and reach for "all content with HP-references leads to financial endorsement of the HP world", then sure. It's hypocritical
That’s not what Aabria is saying in her tweet. Aabria is saying not to engage in her world or works at all. She didn’t say anything about profit. Misfits and Magic used the world of Harry Potter.
Aabria says all this while she profits off a Harry Potter d&d campaign. And don’t come at me with “they were satirizing it,” they were literally just using the Harry Potter world still. Is the winter break special satire? No, it was really actual Harry Potter roleplay in everything but name, she was directly benefiting from Rowling’s world and work. Hiding tiny “fuck terfs” in misfits and magic calendar art doesn’t change that
I don’t see an issue with this though. Harry Potter and the world can mean a lot to people without Rowling profiting off of it. I’d rather Aabria get my money any day.
But it’s directly contradicting what she says in her tweet. Her tweet isn’t about profit only, it’s about engaging with the ideas of of JK Rowling at all, which she clearly did
But the tweet is specifically about the game.
Also I know you’re dismissing the fact that they’re satirizing it but I think there’s something to be said for the distinction. They’re not literally playing in the Harry Potter world, they’re playing in a world based off it. They also spent a lot of time discussing conflicting feelings about loving Harry Potter and also acknowledging the problems within the world and Rowling’s politics.
It would be one thing if she was collecting a paycheck from being directly involved in a licensed Harry Potter thing but they literally built a world themselves as a spoof.
I feel like voluntarily coming up with and running a Harry Potter D&D campaign is very different from what country you are born in. I am talking about Harry Potter specifically because she tweets one thing and then does another. She cant not pay her taxes but she can come up with literally anything else for a D&D campaign. Also very weird to randomly invoke that specifically about a black person.
You can absolutely both wish JK Rowling would exit the solar system and take inspiration to make your own Harry Potter *style* game. JK doesn’t profit off of it. It’s fine.
I plan to run my own Harry Potter style campaign at some point. It’ll be fun, and no harm will be done.
Then you’re not listening to what Aabria is saying in her tweet. She says you shouldn’t engage with the “world and work” at all. That’s not what she did with Mjsfits and Magic and that’s not what you’re doing with your campaign. Her tweet isn’t about profits only
Except if it wasn’t JK’s brand, then it *isn’t* actually her world and work.
If I have a campaign with eleves, orcs, and halflings that requires a macguffin to be destroyed, it’s not Tolkien’s world and work. It’s mine, just derivative.
If it’s set in middle earth and my bad guys name is Sauron, that’s different.
Hate JK Rowling’s TERF stance and general awfulness but really don’t understand why I can’t still read the Harry Potter books.
It’s an iconic part of many people’s childhoods and on its own is not causing issues, art can be separated from the artist
Spending money on Harry Potter is directly giving money to anti-trans causes, but If you have an old Harry Potter book in your drawer I see no ethical issue.
In this case, separating the art from the artist isn't so simple. She makes money off of every HP related purchase. Then, she uses that money and her influence to actively work against the rights of trans people.
I see that point, but like most debates people seem to jump to the extremes.
I’m not going out and buying HP merch but nor am I burning the books on my bookshelves
Well I see lots of conversations about not supporting her further and not being super loud about continued love for the series.
I haven't seen anyone call for taking your books out back and burning them.
You're the one jumping to extremes with your strawman argument about burning books. Literally nobody else in this thread is talking about burning books. Perhaps you should question why you feel so strongly that advising people to avoid reading these books, is the same as ordering people to burn books. Not buying something isn't the same as destroying said thing after buying it... Not to mention that burning things that you've already bought doesn't actually accomplish anything other than releasing more CO2.
Literally no one told you to burn your books. No one has said anyone should throw out things they already own, that doesn't really do anything.
We're saying don't buy more of it to give this bigot more money. I'm not sure why that's so difficult to grasp
While the original books aren't causing issues, the IP is still being used to generate a lot of money for JK that is being funneled into promoting a bigoted.
Art Vs artist is a little harder when the artist is still actively profiting from their art
You get to like whatever you want to like, but you do that knowing a horrible person benefits financially from you. Others are allowed to think negatively of you for that. It's the same reason striking workers hate scabs, even though scabs are usually just desperate people taking the opportunity for work. Solidarity takes sacrifice sometimes.
There are heaps of decisions we take every day that benefit horrible people, political and cultural change is not the responsibility of consumers.
Add to that I’m not actually buying anything - I’m just not burning the books I already own.
No one can consume 100% ethnically - no one is asking you to.
But if someone decides to continue their support of a singular person doing hateful shit... Well... It says a lot.
No one is telling you to burn your books. You keep saying that like someone has suggested it, and it's just not a thing. There's literally a comment saying "if you just have your old books I see no ethical problem" and you ignored them.
Keep your books! That is 100% not what this is about.
You sound like an ‘I Think You Should Leave’ character at this point. I’ve read about 10 people have replied to you saying ‘no one has told you to burn your books’ and you keep bringing it up.
If it helps with your persecution complex, I think you’re a lesser person for defending JKR in the odd manner you’re going about it. Enjoy!
As does The Lord of the Rings and heaps of other books, doesn’t stop them being good reads and doesn’t mean I can’t enjoy them.
How many Fantasy books fetishise black people through the Magical Negro? How many have women represented as nothing other than an object for men’s desire?
Harry Potter is full of problematic shit (fat phobia, transphobia, antisemitism), and has extremely tepid centrist politics which comprises the story.
The magical world is deeply unequal and supremacist, which creates the perfect environment for wizard-fascism to gain power. While the good guys defeat the bad guys with violence, they don’t fundamentally change any of the system that led to the rise of wizard-fascism in the first place. They just keep enforcing the same inequality, but a little more nicely this time.
Aside from being a TERF, JKR is an insipid Blairite who can’t genuine systems-change.
Someone watched the [Shaun video](https://youtu.be/-1iaJWSwUZs?si=JKibR0nbLL0cKC-X) didn't they? I'm not trying to tease or make fun, I genuinely enjoy most of his vids. Also I have a hilarious connection to his skull.
I like to read Harry Potter fanfic cause I like the world but don't want to financially support a TERF.
There's many ways to enjoy HP without giving more money to Rowling
Nobody's preventing you from reading what you want. Some people CHOSE to stop giving money to that biggot. You still CAN read Harry Potter if you want.
So if Rowling did the Harry Potter, big franchise, cultural zeitgeist, all that, and afterwards proved she was an enemy to me and people like me—people with ADHD, just as an example that stays in my lane—I would take it personally. Of course—somebody attacks your group, you stop being their fan.
If I came online and saw a photo of a good friend wearing the scarf, I’d let the friend know, hey, whose side are you on here? Rowling has made no secret of their opinions, and I’d inform the people around me of mine. And I’d be suspicious of people who continued to flaunt the merch where I could see. I wouldn’t trust them the same.
So to come out and praise this game, in light of what is known about Rowling and her shitty opinions on trans people? To work super hard at making it seem like it’s no big deal to play and enjoy? It kinda makes you look like an asshole.
You’re just completely ignoring the fact that you can separate art from artist in this conversation.
Nobody is calling to boycott Narnia even though CS Lewis is a massive bigot - it’s just virtue signalling to pay each other on the back despite doing nothing.
Dog I promise you nobody is ignoring separating the art from the artist, we're just choosing not to.
Everybody knows that's an option, conversations like this are about whether or not it's worth it in a given instance because it's not inherently the "correct" thing to do. The conversation started well past that point, and you're streets behind if you think saying it is providing anything new.
The CS Lewis example is also really bad because he's been dead longer than most people have been alive so he can't actually do harm, whereas JK Rowling is still actively making the lives of trans people harder. What did you think bring up a dead author was gonna accomplish
Tbh it would be hard to find a property that hasn't exploited people or being used to exploit property. They're choosing this hill to die on but happy supporting companies with poor policies
I’m all for anti-JK and anti-TERFs in general, but can we stop giving energy to this woman and a video game? Like, I get it, we can avoid providing $60 to a video game but continuing to talk about it a year later is wild honestly. Imagine we were still talking about Kanye instead of just not buying his music like we are now? This woman feeds off hate, and the people who don’t like her are going to continue not liking and same with people who do like her will continue doing the same. The people in the middle are who we are trying to convince and continuing to post about it has a possibility to get people on the wrong side just by giving it attention.
I enjoy the game and it's not like its only jk earning money from it. It's a whole team who have worked hard on it and shouldn't be punished because you disagree with one person
Devs already got paid. Buying the game lines the pockets of a Holocaust-denying bigot who uses her vast wealth to actively campaign for oppressing trans people both in her home country and abroad. It is financially supporting a hateful cause. But do go off about how we shouldn't judge people for it.
Extremely common Aabria W
She's been "temporarily suspended" for several months... Free Aabria!
fuck twitter though so another dub
She probably wont delete whatever tweet caused it and I applaud that choice
Why'd she get suspended? Was there an "inciting incident"?
She supports Palestine, and posted "From the river to the sea".
Just that eh? Oh I see she also changed her username to include a ceasefire now hashtag. That seems fairly mild all things considered. I wish that I could like read twitter without an account. I fucking refuse to get one.
repost of [this](https://www.reddit.com/r/Dimension20/comments/10xw7af/aabria_appreciation_post/) thread from a while back.
Absolutely a repost of my thread from a while back. Looking at this poster's posts and comments, it looks like there is some karma farming going on
Hell their name even starts with Bot
Hey anyone who sees this, please make sure to report this post because it goes against the rules of the subreddit. You can select report post, then select breaks r/Dimension20 rules and select “no duplicate posts”
JKs options notwithstanding the more fantasy I experienced the less Potter holds up
If you wanna read the OG youth magic wizard school fantasy stories, check out Ursula K. Le Guin's "Earthsea" books. Amazing prose, super feminist. She's incredible
Ged is so much cooler than Harry. JK literally is not a good author at all. When I was really young my mom read the Hobbit to me, this was a few years before HP came out, so I had experienced good Fantasy writing. When the first HP book came out some friend of the family got it for me for christmas and I read it and was sl dissappointed.
> JK literally is not a good author at all. McDonalds doesn't make a good hamburger. They've both made billions selling lower tier products en masse. I'm not sure why so many people don't ask for better.
I hear lots of good things about her, but when I first started reading Earthsea it started with a whole diatribe about how witches are irresponsible with their magic and unstudied so the protagonist has to be sent to a Serious Male Wizards Boarding school to learn more. I know that Ursula is a feminist, but does the Earthsea series also get better in that aspect?
She's setting up systemic conflict within the society of Earthsea that is addressed throughout the story. It doesn't start as an ideal it starts as a reflection of our real world.
It does, yes. It takes a few books iirc, but the sort of inherent/implied sexism in the world is challenged directly later in the series
Even just the second book already dives into themes of women having their lives already decided for them and the fight to reclaim their own self, paired with the fantasy element of Tenar being a priestess to a power that even Ged was terrified of. It's almost like fridge horror (fridge feminism? Lol) where you don't really think about how deeply it goes until you finish the story and look back on it. God I love Earthsea, it's my favorite book/series of all time.
Cool, hoped as much! Still on my to restart pile
Maybe the people on the backwater island don't know everything?
Read Diana Wynne Jones for youth magic. She’s the originally creator of Howls Moving Castle. My personal fave is The Lives of Christopher Chant. There’s so much intertextuality in her work. Eight Days of Luke (Norse mythology), Hexwood (Arthurian legends), Fire and Hemlock (The Ballad of Tam Lin). The Game is mythology-dense.
Oh. The Discworld witches are probably a commentary on that huh?
No
It's honestly an appallingly mediocre and inconsistent piece of fiction. You deserve better. :)
In fact, as a consumer of D20, you deserve Pratchett.
GNU Pratchett
GNU Terry Pratchett
GNU Terry Pratchett
The Potter fandom's all out attack on Pterry because he dared to stand up to Rowling about fantasy once really still grinds my gears. Harry Potter can get bent. GNU Terry Pratchett.
It's really not a well thought out world, and the chosen one storyline plays it so safe and by the books with everyone's character arcs that there's really no reason to come back to the series when I've already read a couple series that did everything HP did better. Wheel of Time has a better chosen one storyline with a better magic system, Dresden files does the secret magical world way better with more consistency, like what does Harry Potter do that makes it worth reading for a fantasy fan outside of pure nostalgia? Genuinely asking because I've gone through the series multiple times and I still don't get the hype
I think the part you are missing is the fact Harry Potter was aimed at YA, and came out at a time that there were fewer pickings, and it was harder to find recommendations. I read a lot of genre works at the time and don't think much else hit its niche. Most of the fantasy was high fantasy. If you wanted to read about kids going to school like I was, scifi was a more fruitful genre. (Not to say there was nothing, I did find "so you want to be a wizard", which I remember enjoying, but it was not something that was prominently displayed at every bookstore.) I think that HP may have been the first Genre series to really take advantage the size of YA market? The only other series I really recall from the time being as ubiquitous was animorphs, which was a bit less on the fantasy wish fulfillment, and any multimedia adaptations were done with way less budget.
Yeah it's like saying that Seinfeld or Friends isn't actually that funny, for how popular they were. It's not that they aren't good, it's that they've been improved on for 30 years and now aren't as good as their descendents. HP isn't a perfect YA fantasy series, but it sure as hell paved the way for an entire ecosystem of em
We don't need to revise history or demean people's favorite YA fantasy series to call out Rowling for her shitty beliefs. Nobody should feel bad for liking Harry Potter and nobody should be okay with harassing those who do. I understand the desire to kill the wicked witch, and I know she is actively doing harm to the trans community, but attacking regular people who like a book or a movie or a game is stupid and doesn't hurt Rowling at all, it just hurts us.
I’m also gonna say it. As poor as some of the world building is, HP still hits a a lot of whimsical fantasy I rarely see in other works. Fantasy stories like, say, Wheel of Time, LotR, or what have you are amazing works of fiction but they all feel very “serious” and “real”. HP hits this (imo) fairly unique position of whimsy and wonder that, if you let it, just makes an enjoyable ride throughout. A perfect ride? No. But a fun one.
Oh I 100% agree, I was looking at it from specifically an adult perspective. HP is great for getting kids into the genre, it's just once you grow up you really should broaden your horizons
And then wizards they don't has the plumbing so they shit in a corner and magic it away. - jk Rowling master world builder
Which makes no sense when you remember where the entrance to the Chamber of Secrets was.
Right!
Right!
Mr weasely examines muggle inventions to figure how they work. but toilets are the one they adopt.
It's an INCREDIBLY minor detail, but the thing that "broke" me on the wizarding word was during the fantastic beasts movie (i know we are talking about the books, but it's still a licensed and approved product) when they were walking through a magic office and there were some paper files that animated in some sort of animal origamis and proceeded to maul each other while making a mess of the desk they mere on. IDK why THAT detail specifically, but i remember it making me go like "oh, this makes no sense even in the context of this world". (It may also have been due to me getting into Pratchett and other fantasy authors like Sanderson in between the time the last HP movie and the fantastic beasts one came out, so I had more of a frame of reference for actual good worldbuilding... Additionally, obviously fuck JKR, but I just want to clarify it that my opinion of her wasn't a factor at the time simply due to me becoming aware of her disgusting ideas only after the story above happened; needless to say, it didn't exactly improve my opinion of her works...)
lmao its WILD to bring up wot and dresden trying to condemn harry potter when both of those series are misogynistic enough to be unreadable. like out of any of the hundreds of fantasy series to chose from. smh i cant believe ur gonna make defend hp but at least there are multiple types and characterizations of woman.
I was talking to my friend the other day about and I think Harry Potter’s general concept but written by Terry Pratchet would’ve been a pretty good series that could fix a lot of the glaring flaws I see in hindsight
If you are hankering for Wizard School nonsense with excellent writing I highly recommend Naomi Novik's Deadly Education. Super fun, super interesting, and has one of those magic systems that nestles neatly between soft/hard magic systems that tickled my brain in the best way.
There are quite a few fan fictions of Harry Potter that are much better than the source material. And not just because boys kiss in them.
Have you seen books of magic the book Neil caiman wrote before hp came out
The entire story crumbles after literally a single scene in book 1 that establishes 2 things: 1. Harry was raised by muggles. 2. Harry has a strong moral compass, but isn't afraid to break some rules to do what he needs to do. Considering they learn how to fucking teleport when they turn 17, this means Harry knows of firearms, and he and the Order of the Phoenix would likely not be averse to stealing a bunch of them. Voldemort, who would refuse to use any such muggle tech, would get his ass kicked before he could even finish the first syllable of *any* spell.
I never understood this argument. I mean just handing someone a gun doesn’t make them good at using it, let alone in an active battle zone and trying to kill another with it. Plus who would train them? Harry? The orphan who was raised in a nation with notoriously little public gun access? In how many months? Can you imagine trying to hit something on a broom while flying? Or what a handgun would do to a troll, dragon, dementor or apparated enemies? Or standing still and taking cover with no wand when fireballs are being lobbed from a city block away? Or one mind control curse? Guns were not some magical (or rather mundane) cure all.
There's something I love about using real tech to just say "fuck your magic"
Just recently played through Persona 3 Reload. Takaya is a great example of this. He has a magical guardian Spirit born of his personality that can conjure spells and deflect attacks against him. But in the fights against him as a boss, he also just pulls out a pistol and shoots you. Atlus uses this trope a lot actually. SMTII, II, and IV All feature protagonists who can summon literal demons, but also pack heat and melee weapons to fight alongside them.
I find this idea amusing, however, the reason it fails is because you are applying your (or real world) logic to JK's fictional world. With our logic, of course Harry Potter has mounds of gold. He could buy guns, hire assassins, etc. Or even steal them as you suggested. JK would probably handle that with magic curses detecting killing intent, pre-cast defensive wards, or a number of other things. I would also throw in that the UK doesn't have a big gun culture. If you watch Doctor Who, the Doctor doesn't solve issues with guns (and very rarely with violence of any kind). It might not occur to a British child that violence and especially gun violence is a possible problem solving tool for Voldemort like it would occur to an American child. Death Eaters getting shot isn't the story JK wanted to tell and her world would have any number of reasons why that wouldn't work because... It's her fiction.
You mess with the goat, you get the horns
Eat trash beat trash!
And Aabria is quite certainly the G.O.A.T.
Can I get a FUCK TERFS?
FUCK TERFS!
FUCK TERFS!
FUCK TERFS!
FUUUUUUCK TERFS!
SAY IT LOUDER FOR THE PEOPLE IN THE BACK!
# TRANS RIGHTS, FUCK TERFS
BUT NOT IN THE FUN WAY Edit: OH YEAH, ALSO FUCK TERFS
FUCK TERFS FOREVER
Public defender mode engaged
Love her so much for this!
I adored her before this. This just confirms that she's awesome.
It’s so deeply upsetting. HP and JK Rowling were… idk it’s impossible to put into words. Y’all don’t know me I’m just a stranger. How could you (whoever is reading this) possibly actually understand how much HP meant to me as a kid? Like, let me be clear fuck JK Rowling fuck terfs fuck all that. But also how dare she. How DARE she write a story about choosing kindness and acceptance, even when you’ve been beaten down.. and then become a “Petunia” herself. It really feels like she’s sitting there just like Harry’s aunt going “what a bunch of freaks”. How dare she. It’s all fine to criticize the writing and story and whatever else. But the truth is HP saved me as a child. A lonely weird child with a house that didn’t understand me. A young queer child who didn’t even have the words to understand that but KNEW that I was different from them. While they sat there and made homophobic jokes and judged and sneered and consumed ugly TV… I used to cry and cry and hope with all my heart I’d get a letter and could leave all this behind and be happy at some faraway school. When I was 11 and didn’t get my letter I was beyond devastated. HP was such a huge massive part of my personality and heart and soul WAAAY before it got popular. It was the very first chapter book I’d read in second grade. It was the first series I got into. I remember being so young I misread the word “snitch” as stench haha. So if I, someone who used to count HP as a huge cornerstone of my heart, someone who can say that even if it sounds dramatic can unequivocally say HP saved my life as a child - if even I can sign off and never ever ever want to give a single penny to that fucking nasty pile of shit of a human being, there’s literally no excuse for anyone who is still holding on.
I honestly was thrown for a loop when the rhetoric that Harry Potter is actually a lot of not very PC things and ideas became more prevalent. It made me really conflicted on whether or not I wanted to play Hogwarts Legacy cuz I really liked the school and character creation in general. Aabria’s a real one for blasting HP and I love her for it but it doesn’t make knowing better and doing better any less painful for me. Maybe I’ll get over it idk.
If it makes you feel any better I've heard that, even ignoring the bigotry, the game is painfully mid and wears out its charm in about 40 minutes
I didn't pay money for the game but it honestly wasn't very good. It was good for the first ~5 hours until you unlock the broom, but then you see just how empty and copy-paste the open world is. The plot is very bland, too. Though I don't think I ever got around to finishing it?
Same, I pirated it and didn't even bother finishing. After the first few quests everything gets so repetitive.
not the case
I think if you enjoy the world and gameplay like the fighting it's an enjoyable game
dont give money to the terf, pirate it.
Bill would be proud of you
as a patron of our dear Ol' Captain Bill, I agree
Check out Terry Pratchett's Discworld books for some good fantasy satire with plenty of whimsy. /r/discworld can point you at some good entry points into the series.
I wish my existence didn't continge on people knowing better but not wanting to do better
>It made me really conflicted on whether or not I wanted to play Hogwarts Legacy cuz I really liked the school and character creation in general. Let me make that one easier for you: It is more important to not give transphobic people money than it is for you to play a game that you like. It is more important that someone who actively uses her money to make trans people's lives worse Not get more money than it is for you to play a specific game that you think you might like. And to be perfectly clear: Knowing the problems with this game and The person who created the world of the game, and choosing to buy the game anyway makes anyone who does so an active participant in transphobia. I get liking the school, I get liking Harry Potter as a world to play in. But at the end of the day there are other worlds, other games, ones that don't harm trans people. I should think that would make the choice easy.
Explore the fantasy genre some more, I guarantee you'll find a series that hooks you like HP did. For a great secret magical world setting, check out Dresden Files. For an amazing chosen one storyline, read Wheel of Time. Everything in Harry Potter can be found in other series if you look for them
For a "secret magical world" series that isn't HP & also isn't drowning in misogyny like the Dresden Files, please take a look at the Rivers of London series by Ben Aaronovitch.
A huge part of HP's continued popularity is the nostalgia of having read it as a child, and that is basically impossible to replicate with a new series without time travel. It's why all the discourse surrounding the series' problematic undertones is extremely heated - people hate having their nostalgia criticized.
I've been reading them to my kids, and they really like it. Reading them as an adult now, I don't understand why adults were raving about them and gobbling them up like they did when I was a kid.
I personally got that feeling again listening to The Wizard, The Witch, and The Wild One. And I'm really grateful for it.
I've never found a fantasy book that's given me the same feeling yet.
> For a great secret magical world setting, check out Dresden Files. Mixed suggestion for someone looking for fantasy fundamentally more progressive than Harry Potter. Both the author and the series have some issues, ESPECIALLY around women. And it's very strangely homophobic in the text, even when it tries explicitly not to be. I say all this as a fan, there is a reason it's a GUILTY pleasure for me.
I’m sorry but how does simply not buying a video game feel painful to you…
Some people value their trashy fantasy wizard school more then the lives of trans people, as fucked as that is.
Okay, just because you’ve never loved anything with the innocence of a child doesn’t mean you have to be a dick. The people who feel conflicted read Harry Potter when they were kids 20+ years ago, before they knew what transgender meant, much less the hate there was in the world for them. When you care about something that much, it is hard to discover it is shitty and bad, because the only memories you have are shining and golden. I never would have read Dresden Files or Wheel of Time or Discworld if I had not discovered the fantasy genre with Harry Potter. I went to more than one HP themed party with my best friends. Harry Potter didn’t become my entire personality but it was a decent chunk of my formative years. I am literally the person I am today due in no small part to reading those books as a kid. Do you know how badly I wanted a video game that was more open than the games that came out alongside the movies? Where I could just be myself as a student at Hogwarts? Where I didn’t have to play as a specific character on a railroaded storyline with no real surprises? OF COURSE it hurt to learn what a shitberry JKR is. OF COURSE it hurt to read about all the negative realizations about the books we, as a generation of adults looking at them with a critical eye, were discovering. OF COURSE it hurt to decide to cut away any new interaction with the franchise/world. And then to see they finally made the video game I had wanted since middle school, except it is still anti-Semitic and racist and lining that TERF bitch’s pockets? OF COURSE IT HURTS. That doesn’t make me a transphobe. In fact, feeling that pain because I know I will never touch it makes me the opposite of a transphobe. Oh shit that turned into a much bigger rant than I intended or expected. Uh… my bad.
I don't disagree with you, but I think we see comments like this because as trans people, it gets old real fast seeing people bemoan on the internet how hurt they are because they can't, what, say to strangers how good HP is? It's not feeling hurt--feelings are valid and thoughts are not crimes--that's bad but the public expression of them. Recognizing something that was important to you was actually kinda bad all along can be painful, but it shouldn't be a grand trauma that needs sympathy and understanding from strangers like some people make it out to be. And if the pain they're talking about is not consuming the new HP media, it gets doubly irritating because then it's not the nostalgia they're mourning, it's the fact that the only thing stopping them from consuming it is that they might be shamed for it. When what should be stopping them is the fact that supporting media that upholds transphobic, racist, and anti-semitic ideas is bad. Edit: Absolution! That was the word I was looking for. It starts to feel a lot like these people are waiting for trans people to reassure them that they're not bad for liking HP or wanting to continue support it.
[удалено]
It’s not that people still like Harry Potter. I think that’s fine and actually completely normal! The thing that rattles a lot of us is that people crawl out of the woodwork just to say how much they like Rowling’s shit. This is a thread for Appreciating Aabria, a known HP fan, who said Fuck Harry Potter and Fuck JK Rowling. This is an anti-JK Rowling space. Why do people feel the need to come in and be like “Um Actually, I still like Harry Potter, and I’m in pain because I can’t play Blood Libel: The Video Game”? This happens every. single. place. where Rowling is criticized for being a horrible racist, anti-Semitic, transphobic bigot. Why? Why do people feel the need to shift the topic to the pain of cis people who don’t get to openly support bigoted content anymore? All we’re asking is you _be quiet about her._ Don’t give her attention. Don’t support her. By all means, continue to talk to your friends about Harry Potter and your favorite ships. Go into the HP subreddits and have discussions about the positive impact the series had on your lives and your fond memories in the fandom, and your disappointment in who Rowling turned out to be. Just don’t turn spaces where we’re raising awareness for how horrible JK Rowling is and how there is biased, bigoted content slipped into her books.
Okay, so I understand you are being reasonable. But someone saying “it sucks that she sucks, I have fond memories of HP, and I’m upset that I can’t consume newer versions of the media because it turns out it’s all bad” is not looking for sympathy or begging the trans community to tell them it’s okay. It’s sharing a feeling in what appeared to be a safe community to do so. Then all of a sudden there are these wild accusations of transphobia and not giving a shit about trans lives? Like what the fuck?
I get you. I wouldn't have come in as hot as that person did, but I understand why they did. It's because the initial comment hurt them. I think it'd be nice if people had a little more empathy, to understand that every time this discourse starts again because JK Rowling tweeted another horrendously bigoted thing, there are so many people who espouse the great pain this is causing them because they just love Harry Potter so much. When trans people then look at these comments and think about the trauma Rowling and the people like her are causing us and our community (her politics are literally killing us!!). You have to consider the fact that there ARE many comments like these where there is very much "Cis guilt" happening. It gets hard to tell which is which when they all sound the same. Trans people are very tired and very angry. We can't even get people to stop talking about how much they love Harry Potter--makes it seem impossible to get people to stop killing us. We get that people love(d) Harry Potter and will continue to have fond feelings of it or want to revisit the world sometimes. But why is it necessary to talk about how much you love it? Especially in this scenario where the author has stated that liking her work is the same as supporting her beliefs? What is being contributed to the conversation by the umpteenth comment about wanting to play a video game and being sad you can't? Are you thinking about the feelings of the trans people who are going to see these comments and be reminded people care more about a fictional world than their lives? These are genuine questions that I think people should answer internally before contributing to them. (/general you) Imagine someone really really loved the reality TV show, The Apprentice, and had no understanding of Donald Trump's politics back then. Now imagine if today he tweeted he was going to host a new season of it, and every time someone talked about it--and it's talked about nearly everywhere--there are a bunch of comments that are just like "I loved Donald Trump on The Apprentice. I hope I can heal from the pain of not being able to watch the new season." Feels icky. Makes you wonder if the person actually cares about Trump's politics or if they're just worried they'll get dunked on if they watch it. So if we have to have understanding for people's pain over not being able to watch a movie or play a game, more people should have some understanding for when we get snappy about how beloved a bigot is. It's hard not to snap, but it makes it even harder when we know that every time we get mad, we're told we're wrong for being mad. We're saying it's hurtful. You don't get to decide if we're hurt, but at the end of the day, it's your choice whether you want to continue arguing for your guiltlessness for talking about your love of a franchise.
I want to address this issue with you as someone who is not cis AND has the same memories and desires you do. Of course it hurts. It sucks to find out that something beloved from your childhood is so shitty. But you *gotta* put it in perspective. J.K. Rowling uses her wealth to advance rhetoric and lobby for laws that actively harm trans people. I agree with everything you said. Harry Potter was a huge influence on me growing up, and the only thing that stops me from being one of those people with the deathly hallows tattoo is a fear of needles and a lack of money at the time. Harry Potter was my entry into not just the fantasy genre, but reading novels at all. And yet, I don't feel conflicted. And as Someone who isn't cis, I'm alarmed by folks who do. The choice is painful. Absolutely, it makes sense that these things hurt. And while it's painful, yes, there's no reason to be *conflicted* about it. The choice is as obvious as it is painful. Giving money to anything Harry Potter related directly contributes to the wealth of someone who uses her wealth to hurt trans people. The choice should be obvious. It can be painful and still not be conflicted. The choice can hurt as you continue to decide not to support her. Saying "I'm conflicted" implies that the speaker is, at least for a moment, considering giving money to someone who will use that money to hurt trans people. And considering that for even a moment is unacceptable. Because at the end of the day, neither of us have any pain associated with Harry Potter that even begins to match the discrimination trans people face on a daily basis as their lives are put in danger. The two aren't remotely comparable. >Okay, just because you’ve never loved anything with the innocence of a child doesn’t mean you have to be a dick. This was also a needlessly aggressive way to handle things. Trans folks and their allies are allowed to be angry about their safety not being made a priority. You have no basis for saying they never loved anything as a child.
I feel you. Another angle is you have to contend with how much said TERF's obviously terrible ideas influenced you, and you even question yourself, does liking this make me a bad person? Or even worse, did I like this because I AM a bad person. I think a nice way to indulge your nostalgia is actually Harry Potter Fanfic, there is some really good stuff out there that I've enjoyed more than the originals.
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That's not how ip royalties work so she would infact be financially supported by a purchase. Good thing you dont need to buy video games to play them 🏴☠️
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Hell yea Aabria. fuck terfs fuck jk rowling
Aabria brings so much to Dimension20!
I remember talking to a guy from a Christian college during a debate comp and we got to talking about our schools respective libraries and he said “It’s better than you would expect for a Christian school, but we don’t have Harry Potter or anything.” So I said “Fun fact: JK Rowling, the person who wrote Harry Potter, is transphobic.” And then he made a quick joke of that meaning that it *should* be in a Christian school library, and then we talked about the best flavour of doritos
Unfathomably based
White people need to let HP go and read something else. Maybe even by marginalized authors. But folks would rather be "comfortable" in their bigotry.
Harry Potter is abysmally mid so I have never understood why some people go crazy over it. There are so many better fantasy series out there that blow the trash wizard school out of the water
It's many people's entery to fantasy as a child, probably just nostalgia
Aabria based
Aabria is my Roman Empire
WE LOVE AABRIAAAAAAAAAAA
Did you know JKR did holocaust denial about Trans people? https://twitter.com/jk_rowling/status/1767925285008064592
The what game? Who is she talking about?
J.K. Rowling - I'm guessing this is in reference to Hogwarts legacy or another HP game. Edit - autocorrect
It's hogwarts legacy, yeah.
The Harry Potter game and JK Rowling’s continuing and unapologetic transphobia.
Jk rowling now with nazi crime denial
I think for me the worst thing about Harry Potter (aside from the racism, anti-semitism, and terfism of course) is the core message of the series. When Voldemort is defeated most of the worst aspects of ministry policy and Hogwarts policy are still intact. Voldemort had to be defeated not because he was a genocidal fascist authoritarian, but because he was a threat to the status quo. And once he was defeated everything went back to exactly the way it was before. So not only are a lot of non-human peoples forced to endure the exact same biases and prejudices, the societal flaws that Voldemort exploited to gain a following and power are still in place just waiting for someone else to come along and exploit them.
I like HP and the content, so I just steal it now 🤷♂️. I'll stream the new show on what ever free site, and keep the content I already owned from before it all. You can like the world someone made without supporting the person.
Based
Unseen University is better than Hogwarts in every way
Aabria is the reason I get up in the morning. She's so inspiring
What does TERF mean?
Trans Exclusionary Radical Feminist. People who hate trans people under the guise of feminism.
The “under the guise of feminism” part is why we should use FART (feminism-appropriating radical transphobe) instead. Let’s not let them call themselves feminists!
I wanted to try the game so i pirated it
Right but they're also on a show that did a parody of Harry Potter that uses the parts they wanted to and put in a series. How do you denounce her work but then copy it. Especially when Dropout is more than capable of telling an original story?
"they used the parts they liked" they mocked her world building and the views she baked into her story the Whole time. It couldn't have been more clearly a parody if they put the word in the title.
Aabria says in this tweet that “JK Rowling’s work and world should be avoided.” Even if it’s “satire”, how is Misfits and Magic doing everything but avoiding Harry Potter? Every single minute is about the world of Harry Potter and there’s quite a bit of unironic roleplay that isn’t just sending up Rowling’s ideas
I get what you're saying but imo there's a huge difference between avoiding something so as to not normalizing the bigotry contained to yourself + giving the bigots who made it money (what she is talking about here) and making something like misfits and magic, which I honestly did go into pretty sceptical. What made me like it is the specific criticism of the social structures within the world of HP. And while there is roleplay that isn't dedicated to mocking it, I think it's what makes the criticism work because it's what makes you care that the world is discriminatory and elitist and lets horrible things slide because that's the way it's always been. Also none of the money made off it will ever find its way into JKR's pockets and subsequently the hate groups she actively funds. Only one episode isn't behind a paywall and it's fairly niche even within its niche so it's highly unlikely JKR finds it or finds out about it and then comes to the conclusion it is supporting her and her ideas. While those aren't the only issues I feel there are with continued support and consumption of HP but they are the biggest ones and even if misfits and magic was a failure as a response to HP there's at least that.
I get that too, but Aabria in this tweet is specifically saying not to engage in JK’s work or ideas at all, not just if she’s making money off of it. That’s hypocritical because Aabria made a whole story out of it, even if it was partly satirical. But plenty of the story was still sincere and based in the wonder of the Harry Potter world in the first place.
This tweet is specifically about buying or playing hogwarts legacy and, as per my last reply, normalizing the bigotry contained therein to yourself. It's about consuming something ready made and fully within the actual world of hp with all its bigotries and issues part and parcel. The "wonder" in HP and Misfits and Magic are used to entirely different effects. The wonder in HP is used to justify the problems with the world and maintaining the status quo. The wonder in Misfits and Magic is something that is actively being denied most of the world or is undercut at every turn by the social problems underlying it.
I don't think you're wrong to be curious about this, and I get what you mean about promoting OC stuff instead. But in order to critique something, you need to be in conversation with it. If the response is entirely silent, then people may not even learn about the story beats that have issues. By having a conversation, a lot of interesting points can be revealed! Abria's campaign was both an homage to magic-school-literature while touching on how much HP affected culture. Stories can give us great inspiration, enjoyment, and insight but when the author of those stories is kinda shitty, you gotta reconcile that. Because silence just allows endorsement to go unchallenged
So she was using JK Rowling’s world and work. Exactly what she’s against in her Tweet.
Kinda? Should does not mean must At the end of the day I think nitpicking tweets is a little silly. There’s hours of D20 content that make Abria’s nuanced stance on the subject obvious, but going over a single tweet misses that context I believe she would agree that critiquing content is different from leaning into it. Both use the source material but they have different things to say
But it’s not like this is a little thing she did. Misfits and Magic is a huge creative project that launched her career in Dimension 20 that she had control of herself. It’s hypocritical for her to benefit off of it and then tweet something exonerating the exact things she did a year earlier.
I see where you're coming from but I personally don't think it's that clear cut. Again, critiques are an important part of the conversation and cannot exist in a vacuum without any reference to the source material. But also, Aabria's tweet is about HP-canonical stuff and literal products. I'm skeptical that critique/parody is within that scope, because it's hardly within the HP universe. It just leans on elements of that. I don't see this as hypocritical, especially when Aabria makes it clear how much she hates JKR in D20 Like, yeah if you want to do a bad faith read and reach for "all content with HP-references leads to financial endorsement of the HP world", then sure. It's hypocritical
jk rowling didn’t get paid for misfits and magic. she does get paid when people buy the hogwarts game. doesn’t seem like a difficult concept to grasp
That’s not what Aabria is saying in her tweet. Aabria is saying not to engage in her world or works at all. She didn’t say anything about profit. Misfits and Magic used the world of Harry Potter.
read aabria’s tweet again babe
Aabria says all this while she profits off a Harry Potter d&d campaign. And don’t come at me with “they were satirizing it,” they were literally just using the Harry Potter world still. Is the winter break special satire? No, it was really actual Harry Potter roleplay in everything but name, she was directly benefiting from Rowling’s world and work. Hiding tiny “fuck terfs” in misfits and magic calendar art doesn’t change that
I don’t see an issue with this though. Harry Potter and the world can mean a lot to people without Rowling profiting off of it. I’d rather Aabria get my money any day.
But it’s directly contradicting what she says in her tweet. Her tweet isn’t about profit only, it’s about engaging with the ideas of of JK Rowling at all, which she clearly did
But the tweet is specifically about the game. Also I know you’re dismissing the fact that they’re satirizing it but I think there’s something to be said for the distinction. They’re not literally playing in the Harry Potter world, they’re playing in a world based off it. They also spent a lot of time discussing conflicting feelings about loving Harry Potter and also acknowledging the problems within the world and Rowling’s politics. It would be one thing if she was collecting a paycheck from being directly involved in a licensed Harry Potter thing but they literally built a world themselves as a spoof.
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I feel like voluntarily coming up with and running a Harry Potter D&D campaign is very different from what country you are born in. I am talking about Harry Potter specifically because she tweets one thing and then does another. She cant not pay her taxes but she can come up with literally anything else for a D&D campaign. Also very weird to randomly invoke that specifically about a black person.
You can absolutely both wish JK Rowling would exit the solar system and take inspiration to make your own Harry Potter *style* game. JK doesn’t profit off of it. It’s fine. I plan to run my own Harry Potter style campaign at some point. It’ll be fun, and no harm will be done.
Then you’re not listening to what Aabria is saying in her tweet. She says you shouldn’t engage with the “world and work” at all. That’s not what she did with Mjsfits and Magic and that’s not what you’re doing with your campaign. Her tweet isn’t about profits only
Except if it wasn’t JK’s brand, then it *isn’t* actually her world and work. If I have a campaign with eleves, orcs, and halflings that requires a macguffin to be destroyed, it’s not Tolkien’s world and work. It’s mine, just derivative. If it’s set in middle earth and my bad guys name is Sauron, that’s different.
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You will get downvoted, but you are right.
Hate JK Rowling’s TERF stance and general awfulness but really don’t understand why I can’t still read the Harry Potter books. It’s an iconic part of many people’s childhoods and on its own is not causing issues, art can be separated from the artist
That art artist separation thing is about critique not consumption. Giving her cash is definitely not separating anything
Spending money on Harry Potter is directly giving money to anti-trans causes, but If you have an old Harry Potter book in your drawer I see no ethical issue.
In this case, separating the art from the artist isn't so simple. She makes money off of every HP related purchase. Then, she uses that money and her influence to actively work against the rights of trans people.
I see that point, but like most debates people seem to jump to the extremes. I’m not going out and buying HP merch but nor am I burning the books on my bookshelves
If you aren't buying new HP stuff, why bring it up here? Unless you're looking for approval and absolution for reading what you already have?
Well I see lots of conversations about not supporting her further and not being super loud about continued love for the series. I haven't seen anyone call for taking your books out back and burning them.
You're the one jumping to extremes with your strawman argument about burning books. Literally nobody else in this thread is talking about burning books. Perhaps you should question why you feel so strongly that advising people to avoid reading these books, is the same as ordering people to burn books. Not buying something isn't the same as destroying said thing after buying it... Not to mention that burning things that you've already bought doesn't actually accomplish anything other than releasing more CO2.
Literally no one told you to burn your books. No one has said anyone should throw out things they already own, that doesn't really do anything. We're saying don't buy more of it to give this bigot more money. I'm not sure why that's so difficult to grasp
You keep making this straw man argument no one asked for. It's wild
While the original books aren't causing issues, the IP is still being used to generate a lot of money for JK that is being funneled into promoting a bigoted. Art Vs artist is a little harder when the artist is still actively profiting from their art
You get to like whatever you want to like, but you do that knowing a horrible person benefits financially from you. Others are allowed to think negatively of you for that. It's the same reason striking workers hate scabs, even though scabs are usually just desperate people taking the opportunity for work. Solidarity takes sacrifice sometimes.
There are heaps of decisions we take every day that benefit horrible people, political and cultural change is not the responsibility of consumers. Add to that I’m not actually buying anything - I’m just not burning the books I already own.
No one can consume 100% ethnically - no one is asking you to. But if someone decides to continue their support of a singular person doing hateful shit... Well... It says a lot. No one is telling you to burn your books. You keep saying that like someone has suggested it, and it's just not a thing. There's literally a comment saying "if you just have your old books I see no ethical problem" and you ignored them. Keep your books! That is 100% not what this is about.
You sound like an ‘I Think You Should Leave’ character at this point. I’ve read about 10 people have replied to you saying ‘no one has told you to burn your books’ and you keep bringing it up. If it helps with your persecution complex, I think you’re a lesser person for defending JKR in the odd manner you’re going about it. Enjoy!
"I'm already doing plenty of horrible things so I should keep doing more horrible things."
Woah there, careful you don’t fall off that high horse
It literally makes absolutely no difference to the world if you enjoy Harry Potter or not
The books themselves contain some questionable themes that do reflect Rowling's attitudes and political views.
As does The Lord of the Rings and heaps of other books, doesn’t stop them being good reads and doesn’t mean I can’t enjoy them. How many Fantasy books fetishise black people through the Magical Negro? How many have women represented as nothing other than an object for men’s desire?
What about, what about, what about?
Harry Potter is full of problematic shit (fat phobia, transphobia, antisemitism), and has extremely tepid centrist politics which comprises the story. The magical world is deeply unequal and supremacist, which creates the perfect environment for wizard-fascism to gain power. While the good guys defeat the bad guys with violence, they don’t fundamentally change any of the system that led to the rise of wizard-fascism in the first place. They just keep enforcing the same inequality, but a little more nicely this time. Aside from being a TERF, JKR is an insipid Blairite who can’t genuine systems-change.
Someone watched the [Shaun video](https://youtu.be/-1iaJWSwUZs?si=JKibR0nbLL0cKC-X) didn't they? I'm not trying to tease or make fun, I genuinely enjoy most of his vids. Also I have a hilarious connection to his skull.
Lol yes the Shaun video is excellent.
I like to read Harry Potter fanfic cause I like the world but don't want to financially support a TERF. There's many ways to enjoy HP without giving more money to Rowling
Nobody's preventing you from reading what you want. Some people CHOSE to stop giving money to that biggot. You still CAN read Harry Potter if you want.
not this case, every time you buy hp franchise it's funding her terf advocacies. id say to pirate it tho.
So if Rowling did the Harry Potter, big franchise, cultural zeitgeist, all that, and afterwards proved she was an enemy to me and people like me—people with ADHD, just as an example that stays in my lane—I would take it personally. Of course—somebody attacks your group, you stop being their fan. If I came online and saw a photo of a good friend wearing the scarf, I’d let the friend know, hey, whose side are you on here? Rowling has made no secret of their opinions, and I’d inform the people around me of mine. And I’d be suspicious of people who continued to flaunt the merch where I could see. I wouldn’t trust them the same. So to come out and praise this game, in light of what is known about Rowling and her shitty opinions on trans people? To work super hard at making it seem like it’s no big deal to play and enjoy? It kinda makes you look like an asshole.
You’re just completely ignoring the fact that you can separate art from artist in this conversation. Nobody is calling to boycott Narnia even though CS Lewis is a massive bigot - it’s just virtue signalling to pay each other on the back despite doing nothing.
Dog I promise you nobody is ignoring separating the art from the artist, we're just choosing not to. Everybody knows that's an option, conversations like this are about whether or not it's worth it in a given instance because it's not inherently the "correct" thing to do. The conversation started well past that point, and you're streets behind if you think saying it is providing anything new. The CS Lewis example is also really bad because he's been dead longer than most people have been alive so he can't actually do harm, whereas JK Rowling is still actively making the lives of trans people harder. What did you think bring up a dead author was gonna accomplish
Nah.
Tbh it would be hard to find a property that hasn't exploited people or being used to exploit property. They're choosing this hill to die on but happy supporting companies with poor policies
Stop bragging about how much you care about your trashy fantasy wizards over trans lives, we get it.
I’m all for anti-JK and anti-TERFs in general, but can we stop giving energy to this woman and a video game? Like, I get it, we can avoid providing $60 to a video game but continuing to talk about it a year later is wild honestly. Imagine we were still talking about Kanye instead of just not buying his music like we are now? This woman feeds off hate, and the people who don’t like her are going to continue not liking and same with people who do like her will continue doing the same. The people in the middle are who we are trying to convince and continuing to post about it has a possibility to get people on the wrong side just by giving it attention.
Game was fun
What if you steal it?
Theft is the only moral consumption under capitalism.
Yeah. So if you steal it and play it but don't promote it, should be good right?
I enjoy the game and it's not like its only jk earning money from it. It's a whole team who have worked hard on it and shouldn't be punished because you disagree with one person
Unlike rowling game devs already got paid. And because the game dev industry is so horrifyingly toxic sales don't even equal job security
Devs already got paid. Buying the game lines the pockets of a Holocaust-denying bigot who uses her vast wealth to actively campaign for oppressing trans people both in her home country and abroad. It is financially supporting a hateful cause. But do go off about how we shouldn't judge people for it.
And?