Harry Potter Stop Challenge.... 2!!!!!!!

Due to the recent announcement of the Hogwarts Legacy sequel and becoming personally unsatisfied with my last piece on this, I’ve perhaps regrettably returned to this topic. I don’t necessarily disagree with what I wrote last time, but the situation has changed and developed so I find it simply isn’t up to date or my own standards of quality anymore. So let’s return to this this shitpost/article fusion tone and get right to it.

Lately I’ve been pretty frustrated with the way people talk about Harry Potter. I’m far past the point where I care if the books were good, or if the game was good, or if the movies were good, or if the new TV adaptation is going to be good. At the end of the day, I’m not going to change anyone’s minds on whether or not they’re going to consume J.K. Rowling’s fantasy slopfest, despite the fact that the United Kingdom recently passed an extremely transphobic bill setting both trans and women’s rights back by decades. A bill which she both funded and openly celebrated of course. We’re talking about the woman who literally made her pen name the name of the person who invented conversion therapy because if she isn’t a raging bigot for even two seconds she will explode and shit bricks apparently.

So yeah, I’m about fed up with Harry Potter fans who endlessly posture about not being transphobic when they are literally monetarily supporting the dark high priestess of terfdom and are often the same people who will start entire harassment campaigns against random online trans women because they watched a movie with a sex scene in it and liked it. If you are still out here enjoying Harry Potter, you’re either sticking your head so deep into the sand that you’ve penetrated the earth’s crust or you’re just straight up transphobic. I’m sorry if you feel bad about being called transphobic, but it’s a lot better than watching governments take your rights away and worrying that you or your friends could literally be killed due to rising hate crimes, so tough it out. I don’t want to read another think piece from a cis person saying they got Hogwarts Legacy but that it’s okay because they also donated to a trans charity. Like yeah go ahead fund the reason transgender suicide rates are so high and then try to donate away the problem you participated in. It is not hard to choose not to buy a game. There are literally so many games. And at this rate the next Hogwarts Legacy will probably cost like $99.99 and have a character named a slur in the code, so frankly you would be doing yourself a favor if you don’t get it. But if you couldn’t be talked out of getting Hogwarts Legacy, you’re probably going to get Hogwarts Legacy 2, because you are a bootlicker to a brand before you are a person.

There’s also the fact that talking about Harry Potter, even negatively, has become an industry on it’s own. Even I’m out here doing it, so to say that criticizing Harry Potter or J.K. Rowling is inherently bad would be really stupid. But there’s a lot of money in talking in circles about if the franchise was good or not, when at this point that literally doesn’t matter. Council of Geeks was a lot more eloquent in her video about this (linked at the bottom), but if the author is literally funneling her profits into hate groups and then brags about it on social media, that’s the easiest example of monetary support leading to real harm. However, for some reason, people can’t seem to wrap their heads around it. J.K. Rowling has said that all Harry Potter fans agree with her transphobic views, and while that isn’t literally true, I still see that statement as an intimidation tactic on her end, monetarily she is far from wrong. If you buy any Harry Potter shit, you are admitting to yourself that you care more about sating your own nostalgia than trans people, Jewish people, people of color, and anyone under the LGBT umbrella, even if you yourself are included in these groups. Harry Potter being high art would not change the facts about J.K. Rowling herself. Shit people can make great art. Neil Gaiman is a prime example of that. While I personally still think Harry Potter is mid as fuck, there are plenty of people who find it to be compelling and dropped it after J.K. Rowling bravely came out of the closet as an uber S-tier competitively viable bigot. Unfortunately and evidently, not enough people did.

I used to spend a lot of energy getting people to stop supporting Harry Potter, but it’s become clear to me over the last few years that doing so is about as hopeless as Biden’s attempt to run for a second term. Because at the end of the day, these people just don’t care. It’s not worth expending energy on people who decide that a minor inconvenience for the benefit of a marginalized group is too much to ask. The people who actually give a shit have already listened, and trust me, there’s plenty of them, and the people still clinging to these books aren’t going to. So what’s the point of writing all this out anyway, if I’m not trying to change anyone’s minds? Partly I just want to get this off my chest and not have it stuck in my head, festering and sowing seeds of resentment that will keep me up at night. But mostly I just know a lot of trans people like myself who have to deal with constant advertising for Harry Potter, friends and family who refuse to give it up, just having to live in the shadow of one of the most popular media franchises in the world while knowing the person who created it wants you dead. It’s hard enough to deal with the increase of systematic transphobia, and on top of that we have to listen to the most annoying people on earth bending over backwards to justify their apathy. Sometimes you just have to commiserate for a bit, I guess. This all sucks, but please remember that we aren’t alone.

Anyway, I hope my next piece will be less of a downer. I’m just trying to grill (talk about anime and video games) for god’s sake. But all this had formed into a mental block that made it hard for me to write about media at all because I just kept going back to it. Hopefully, writing this will expel that mental demon, provide a bit of amusement or comfort to the people who read it, and maybe help someone sort through their own thoughts on the subject.

Council of Geeks Video I mentioned: