Stuff and Things

Do I hate that an author’s transphobia and bigotry has ruined something I once enjoyed? Yes, absolutely. But I still haven’t given that woman money in years because if she uses that money to hurt people, then I am partially responsible for the people she hurts.

I haven’t eaten Chick-fil-A in years and it SUCKS because the chicken is so good! But I refuse to do it because that money hurts people.

It sucks. It does. But if you give a group that hurts people money then you are part of that group that hurts people. Period.

vindesyn:

Author JK Rowling donates 1 million sterling to fight Scottish independence

JK Rowling, Britain's best-selling author and creator of teenage wizard Harry Potter, has donated 1 million pounds ($1.68 million) to the ca

U.S.

JK Rowling calls Scottish nationalists 'Death Eaters' – and donates £1m to union campaign

The author JK Rowling has lent her support to the Better Together campaign, donating £1million to the group campaigning for Scotland to stay

independent

To all that say that acquiring Legacy will not harm people and that poor JKR is just saying thing and it’s her right….. She’s comparing people wanting independance with nazis.

She litterally gives money to fight the independance, to promote the Tories (you know, the ones that are destroying NHS and every workers’ rights in UK), to help TERF that attacks gay and trans rights (and also women rights because they’re that stupid)….In summary, yes, she’s hurting real people.

If you buy anything Potter, she will get money. It’s not that hard to understand.

Oh and make yourself a favor, READ ANOTHER BOOK !

thesoftboiledegg:

What makes JKR’s shitshow even harder to process is that she didn’t just ruin a book series. Harry Potter was an entire subculture. Like Star Wars and Star Trek fans, Harry Potter fans dedicated their lives and careers to the series. I don’t know if I’d call it “underground,” but liking Harry Potter got you beaten up when I was in school, so it was more of a dedicated indie culture than a mass-appeal fanbase.

Harry Potter was so huge that fan works developed their own followings. Potter Puppet Pals racked up hundreds of thousands of followers and was nearly as relevant as the series itself. For fanfiction, Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality got so big that it has a Wikipedia page. The band Harry and the Potters spawned the wizard rock music genre. A Very Potter Musical developed a fanbase and launched Darren Criss’s career.

Harry Potter also has extensive ties to fandom history. Everyone in my generation (millennials) remembers coming home from school to read Harry Potter fanfiction on the Internet. Today, most people just post their stories on Wattpad or Archive of Our Own. But at the time, the fanbase was splintered between fanfiction.net and dozens of individual websites and forums, some made for specific ships. Since they all had individual hosts, a lot of those sites have been lost to time.

And there’s the infamous My Immortal fanfiction, which is an Internet legend with people still searching for the author. Everybody read that one (and laughed at it) in middle school.

Pre-social media, fan sites like The Leaky Cauldron and Mugglenet had massive followings because they were one of few sources for news, theories, essays and fan content. Some of these sites still exist after being around for over a decade and building their own legacy.

Before Deathly Hallows came out, fans were so desperate to know what happened that Mugglenet published a book called What Will Happen in Harry Potter 7: Who Lives, Who Dies, Who Falls in Love and How Will the Adventure Finally End? Yep…Harry Potter was so big that people wrote separate books about what would happen in an upcoming book.

And that’s not mentioning all the book release parties, Harry Potter-themed events, monuments, fan films, restaurants and even a theme park. A lot of fandoms have those, but Harry Potter infiltrated every aspect of popular culture.

Today, there’s a thriving culture of “Harry Potter adults” with themed weddings, baby showers and Etsy stores. Putting your Hogwarts house in your Instagram bio is pretty much a prerequisite for joining the “bookish” community. Warner still produces new content, like the Fantastic Beasts series, although we’ve all seen what a disaster that’s been.

Everyone has at least a few memories associated with Harry Potter even if it’s just watching the movies. I had great memories associated with Harry Potter. But looking back at the subculture, history and thousands of fan works, it doesn’t seem fun anymore. Studying the fandom or being part of it comes with an awkward tension because you don’t want to seem like you’re condoning JKR’s bigotry but can’t divorce her from the series. This subculture was spawned by a woman who turned her legacy of magic and wonder into one of abuse and hatred.

I don’t expect people to write paragraphs about how much they hate JKR every time they post about Harry Potter, but it’s still uncomfortable to see people make new content or wear their Harry Potter Etsy tote bags like nothing happened. Even if they clarify that they don’t support her, it’s just a weird, tense situation for everybody.

People dedicated years of their lives to running Harry Potter fan sites, writing fanfiction, cosplaying characters and making fan movies. If I were in that situation, I’d have a mild identity crisis. I’d ask myself “Did I waste all those years? Should I delete my content? Where do I go from here?”

So ultimately, JKR didn’t ruin “just” a book series or even “just” a fandom. She tanked an entire culture, which inspired people to look at Harry Potter more critically. The issues that people brought to the light tainted the series’s legacy even without JKR’s personal issues.

Once, Harry Potter was a series for generations. Now, former fans hope that the series fades into irrelevancy. Unfortunately, JKR didn’t just tarnish her legacy–she took decades of history, millions of fans and a worldwide subculture along with her.

peerieweirdo:

thesoftboiledegg:

What makes JKR’s shitshow even harder to process is that she didn’t just ruin a book series. Harry Potter was an entire subculture. Like Star Wars and Star Trek fans, Harry Potter fans dedicated their lives and careers to the series. I don’t know if I’d call it “underground,” but liking Harry Potter got you beaten up when I was in school, so it was more of a dedicated indie culture than a mass-appeal fanbase.

Harry Potter was so huge that fan works developed their own followings. Potter Puppet Pals racked up hundreds of thousands of followers and was nearly as relevant as the series itself. For fanfiction, Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality got so big that it has a Wikipedia page. The band Harry and the Potters spawned the wizard rock music genre. A Very Potter Musical developed a fanbase and launched Darren Criss’s career.

Harry Potter also has extensive ties to fandom history. Everyone in my generation (millennials) remembers coming home from school to read Harry Potter fanfiction on the Internet. Today, most people just post their stories on Wattpad or Archive of Our Own. But at the time, the fanbase was splintered between fanfiction.net and dozens of individual websites and forums, some made for specific ships. Since they all had individual hosts, a lot of those sites have been lost to time.

And there’s the infamous My Immortal fanfiction, which is an Internet legend with people still searching for the author. Everybody read that one (and laughed at it) in middle school.

Pre-social media, fan sites like The Leaky Cauldron and Mugglenet had massive followings because they were one of few sources for news, theories, essays and fan content. Some of these sites still exist after being around for over a decade and building their own legacy.

Before Deathly Hallows came out, fans were so desperate to know what happened that Mugglenet published a book called What Will Happen in Harry Potter 7: Who Lives, Who Dies, Who Falls in Love and How Will the Adventure Finally End? Yep…Harry Potter was so big that people wrote separate books about what would happen in an upcoming book.

And that’s not mentioning all the book release parties, Harry Potter-themed events, monuments, fan films, restaurants and even a theme park. A lot of fandoms have those, but Harry Potter infiltrated every aspect of popular culture.

Today, there’s a thriving culture of “Harry Potter adults” with themed weddings, baby showers and Etsy stores. Putting your Hogwarts house in your Instagram bio is pretty much a prerequisite for joining the “bookish” community. Warner still produces new content, like the Fantastic Beasts series, although we’ve all seen what a disaster that’s been.

Everyone has at least a few memories associated with Harry Potter even if it’s just watching the movies. I had great memories associated with Harry Potter. But looking back at the subculture, history and thousands of fan works, it doesn’t seem fun anymore. Studying the fandom or being part of it comes with an awkward tension because you don’t want to seem like you’re condoning JKR’s bigotry but can’t divorce her from the series. This subculture was spawned by a woman who turned her legacy of magic and wonder into one of abuse and hatred.

I don’t expect people to write paragraphs about how much they hate JKR every time they post about Harry Potter, but it’s still uncomfortable to see people make new content or wear their Harry Potter Etsy tote bags like nothing happened. Even if they clarify that they don’t support her, it’s just a weird, tense situation for everybody.

People dedicated years of their lives to running Harry Potter fan sites, writing fanfiction, cosplaying characters and making fan movies. If I were in that situation, I’d have a mild identity crisis. I’d ask myself “Did I waste all those years? Should I delete my content? Where do I go from here?”

So ultimately, JKR didn’t ruin “just” a book series or even “just” a fandom. She tanked an entire culture, which inspired people to look at Harry Potter more critically. The issues that people brought to the light tainted the series’s legacy even without JKR’s personal issues.

Once, Harry Potter was a series for generations. Now, former fans hope that the series fades into irrelevancy. Unfortunately, JKR didn’t just tarnish her legacy–she took decades of history, millions of fans and a worldwide subculture along with her.

it’s crazy having been super-involved in the HP fandom for more than a decade and watching the fallout from this

quidditch (the real sport) has changed its name to quadball

the harry potter alliance (a nonprofit) has rebranded to fandom forward

the sub-subcultures that sprung up within the HP fandom have now distanced themselves from the main fandom and have become independent groups in their own right

HP was so integral to the development of early online fandom (as OP’s mentioned) that now there’s sort of just a weird… hole in the internet

for many HP fans, it took up a lot of their life. three conventions a year, wizard rock shows, HPA fundraising, granger leadership academy, nightly fanfic, podcasts, quidditch games.

when fans (rightfully) shunned JKR and began to leave the fandom, a lot of them (myself included) were left rudderless. how do you reconcile the fact that most of your friends, hobbies, sometimes even jobs, were due to the work of such a hateful person? as OP said, did i waste my life?

i’m obviously not saying that this is the worst part about JKR’s bigotry (the worst part is, of course, the bigotry) or that HP fans are the worst-done-by victims (who are of course trans people)

but it is WILD to see such a juggernaut of internet fandom be virtually scrubbed away

quasi-normalcy:

I’m going to start a conspiracy theory that JK Rowling’s transphobia is an elaborate psyop to get Christians to allow their children to read Harry Potter and thereby expose them to witchcraft, Satanism, and demonic possession.

phoenixyfriend:

fandomsandfeminism:

amaraaaaaaaaaaa:

blueinaseaofred:

blueinaseaofred:

Jesus Christ

ALT

It’s more than 1000 pages long!! Does she not have an editor or does her editor hate her??? Currently has 2.5 stars on Amazon with 4 reviews.

This is so embarrassing.

I saw people talking about this in the morning. I literally spent all day assuming it was the Onion or something similar.

You’re telling me this is *real*? 😬

Reminder: do not hate read things, it only puts money in her pockets. Do not talk about it beyond spreading awareness to avoid it. Keep the money from flowing.

love-lays-bleeding:

imagine posting this thinking you won’t get backlash

professorpumpkin:

Let us take a moment to cherish this word alignment.

im-the-punk-who:

normal-horoscopes:

ankle-beez:

POINT AND LAUGH

LMAO

While yes this is objectively hilarious, it is also a GREAT EXAMPLE of exactly why your trans friends are asking you to boycott all things Harry Potter. The only way to deplatform Rowling is to take away her influence, and that means removing HP from the public lexicon. Corporations take notice of profits more than anything else and if it can become clear that Rowling is no longer profitable because of her hatred of trans people, they will support that. If they don’t think you care, they’ll keep giving her a platform by continuing to fund her art.

This is why it doesn’t matter if it’s ‘official’ or not - if she is being paid directly or not. What matters is that the words even studio and publisher hears is 'we no longer support Rowling because she is transphobic.’

:

okay so ive been avoiding hearing anything about the new harry potter game. im sure a lot of us have. if yall dont know, its a major game and not a shitty mobile game or anything. but i just found out its apparently about fucking suppressing the goblin rebellion. no, not helping them bc hey maybe that would be a good thing. nope! youre tasked with putting the goblins back in their place apparently.

for anyone who doesnt remember, the goblins were the banker characters who worked in gringotts and looked Uncomfortably Like jewish stereotypes. and youre suppose to suppress their rebellion, where theyre rebelling against the fact that like most nonhuman magical creatures, theyre treated like shit by wizards. yep :)

click thru the top tweet to read the whole thread with all the screenshots, it just gets worse and worse but jesus fucking christ, HOW. i know i shouldnt be surprised that this fucking francise of all of them is pulling this shit but how fucking blatant can you be.

if it wasnt enough that youd be lining the terfs pockets buying this shit, is the plot being fucking blatant ass alt right propaganda enough

cheerfulomelette:

renthony:

JKR literally wrote a manifesto against nonbinary people and trans men, and smeared autistic people while she was at it, so can y'all please stop acting like the JKR bullshit is somehow an issue unique to trans women only?

Stop acting like this isn’t a community-wide issue that affects ALL trans people. Especially autistic trans people.

Our trans brothers & nonbinary siblings in the UK deserve better than this. Stop forgetting them. Stop erasing them.

Since some people are unaware of the breadth and depth of JKR’s ableism:

In her award winning(!!!) essay, Rowling explained that she believes autistic trans men and boys (like myself) are not mentally competent to consent to our own medical care.

We’re easily influenced, you see. Gullible. Liable to be led astray by militant trans activists, social media, and the glamour and popularity that comes with being transgender.

JK Rowling, outspoken feminist and champion for the rights of women, wants to deny medical autonomy to “girls” because she thinks we’re overly-emotional, frivolous, and susceptible to peer pressure.

She has spoken directly about her belief that autistic “girls”, especially, should not be allowed to transition because we’re intellectually incapable of forming, recognising, and articulating our own identities, and especially vulnerable to “social contagion”.

But, of course, the law doesn’t (shouldn’t) discriminate, and if autistic teens and/or adults can’t legally consent to treatment of gender dysphoria, we can’t legally consent to the treatment of anything. We won’t be able to access any treatment or medication without approval from a responsible adult.

The ability of trans kids to consent to their own medical care has already been the subject of a court case (Bell vs Tavistock). It was overturned on appeal, but one of the potential consequences of that specific case was that cis teens could have lost access to hormonal contraception without parental consent.

If Rowling gets what she’s said she wants, the knock-on effect may well be that autistic people in the UK lose the ability to live independently.

This is one of the things she’s putting her social and financial clout into. Her ongoing activism is a danger to the lives and wellbeing of all trans people and all autistic people in the UK and abroad.

friendlyneighborhoodwizard:

beemovieerotica:

friendlyneighborhoodwizard:

I said it in the tags of a post but honestly, I feel like I need to make my own post because while we’re doing the whole “stop supporting jkr!” thing I need everyone to remember that not only is she blatantly transphobic (and specifically transmisogynistic), but that she and her books are incredibly racist and antisemitic.

Appropriating Indigenous American cultures for her American wizard school. Making all of the bankers in her books hook-nosed goblins. Naming the ONLY East Asian character in the books “Cho Chang” and putting her in the “smart people house”. The way that she treats the Patil Twins, the only two other Asians, and the only South Asians in the series. The way that she treats ALL her characters of color. JKR’s racism has always been there. People just seem to gloss over it for some reason and to be honest, I’m getting really frustrated and tired of constantly adding that racism is a problem in the notes of these posts. And this is literally just based on Harry Potter! The rest of her stuff surely has even more problems!

I don’t want to downplay her transphobia. That’s a huge issue that, I, especially as a trans person, cannot emphasize enough! But as a person of color, I feel like I need to remind y'all that it’s just the tip of the iceberg.

I think OP of this post I rbed about JKR’s racism specifically against Indigenous Americans put it perfectly. This has made it painfully obvious that people are white before they are queer.

It’s not that hard just to acknowledge her racism alongside her transphobia. If you’re making a post about her remember that she’s shitty in so many other ways, and she’s always been shitty.

I know this is long but I’m rambling, so…

tl;dr JKR is racist as well as transphobic. Just acknowledge that in your pleas for people to stop supporting her. Please. It’s literally so easy. anyways jkr’s a piece of shit and I hope she burns in hell!!

- sincerely, a trans poc who’s tired of this shit

I did a deep dive into her non-white wizarding schools for a presentation I did and oh boy

-the japanese school is in iwo jima (wow), they have color-coded robes like karate belts, the name of the school is grammatically incorrect with her “canon” pronunciation butchering the words

-the african school is in Uganda but it’s named after the capital of Burkina Faso and on her maps it’s located in the Congo and when you’re invited to the school, you get a rock sent to you

-african wizards dont have wands they just point at things and all of them can naturally turn into animals (YIKES)

-the brazilian school is hidden in the amazon rainforest and disguised as “a ruined stone temple” despite the fact that no masonry historically occurred in the rainforest, making a stone temple an absolutely obtrusive and terrible disguise

jk rowling is literally so fucking dumb and racist she can’t be bothered with anything that doesn’t have to do with white people

Holy shit I didn’t even know about any of this. That is absurdly racist.

sule-skerry:

sapphicazzie:

daniel radcliffe calling out j.k. rowling on her bullshit is big dick energy

One thing I have not seen mentioned in light of this statement, perhaps because it’s just well known or perhaps because it’s been forgotten, is that Radcliffe has dealt with this before. About 10 years ago his friendship with a trans musician named Our Lady J became known to the tabloids. They immediately published sensational articles calling her a transvestite and a drag queen (she was not), and speculating about the nature of their relationship. He responded to insinuating questions by simply being aggressively positive about what a great musician and good friend she was. They did at least one interview together for a queer magazine. This at a time when trans people were even more marginalized than now, and when he as an actor was finishing Harry Potter and under a lot of pressure to ~manage his image~ as he transitioned to an adult career.

TL;DR - Radcliffe has a record of not just saying nice things, but supporting trans people in his life.

raevenlywrites: