But then she came out as a trans-exclusionary radical feminist (terf) and things only got worse from there. So when Hogwarts Legacy was announced, it was instantly a controversial topic. Some people did reasonable things and others...well...they went far beyond the limits of sanity.
Myself, I don't believe in giving Terfing any money. Plus I don't have the hand control necessary to play the game. So I watched a playthrough of it.
While growing up I was forgotten by my mom and ex-step dad. This sadly isn't uncommon with people who are disabled and so don't act normally. So her showing me Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets was a big deal. She would show most books to my siblings and it was like they would all have this book club I tended not to be a part of.
It didn't take long for me to fall in love with the series. It was fun to go away to Hogwarts for hours or days at a time. Each book had a new mystery for me to fail to solve.
For one of my birthdays I got Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban from my dad. I would later realize he was emotionally abusive. Actually I can't remember if I realized how horrible he was at the time. But, in any case, the series helped us connect to one another.
When my ex-step-dad's sister found a kitten on the street, we adopted him. My half-sister named him Crookshanks and he got the nickname Crooky. The name comes from the cat Hermione Granger got in the series. Though unlike his namesake, Crooky was not as smart.
The movies were good adaptations of the books, though they changed enough that they're not perfect. But I still eagerly awaited each movie's release. I remember going to at least one midnight screening. Those were really fun as fans got dressed up. Some wore a simple shirt of a quidditch team while others coordinated their outfits to be a group of characters.
There were online quizzes that told you which Hogwarts House you were in. I took multiple quizzes to get an accurate assessment of which House I truly belonged in. At first I wanted to be in Gryffindor but I eventually opened my mind to the possibility that that wasn't the House for me. After I took more than enough quizzes, I decided to declare myself a proud Hufflepuff.
Hufflepuffs above all are loyal and hard working. Someone said I was brave and so should be in Gryffindor, but I disagreed. While I value bravery, to me loyalty stands above everything. It gives a purpose to being brave. If you don't have those you care for, you don't risk anything.
Harry Potter isn't the best written series, but it provides a good time. It also allowed me to connect with my family when normally I'd just be some forgotten shadow to my parents. It even helped me connect with my dad who I hadn't yet realized was emotionally abusive.
 |
| Made By Me |
When I was young the LGBTQ+ Community wasn't something I knew much about. Nobody around me talked about it. When I told mom I was attracted to a picture of a woman she said it wasn't a sexual thing. So be grateful about how easy it is for people these days to discover themselves.
Though even at a young age I knew I wasn't straight. Since I was attracted to men and women, I felt bisexual. But it wasn't until my freshman year of college that I accepted myself as bisexual and grew comfortable about that aspect of myself. Though I didn't come out to many people and still don't. At least offline.
And a little PSA: Don't assume a person coming out to you is attracted to you. Why? Why is that an assumption?
Since I was sheltered from the LGBTQ+ Community growing up, I referred to cisgender as being 'normal'. I also only understood the basics of transsexuality and nothing about non-binary. Well that's not entirely true. On a site someone talked to me about being the third gender. But they never explained what they meant by that.
Now I always felt something was off as sometimes my body didn't feel comfortable. It didn't really feel like mine. Sometimes I thought I was a man for brief moments in time. But since I didn't realize about the possibility of being non-binary, I thought I was 'normal' until my mid-twenties.
I remember first learning of the term genderfluid. I remember how freeing it was to learn that I wasn't a mistake in the vast universe, there were more like me. I can't truly describe how great that moment felt. You're lucky if you never had to go through decades of your life until you realized you weren't alone the entire time.
A few years after coming out as genderfluid, I realized the term that better described me was agender.
Most of the people I know offline think I am cisgendered and straight. This is due to wanting to keep myself safe. Where I live if people know you aren't straight...yeah...
Back when I was innocent in my early teens, I read books by Orson Scott Card. I started with his Ender's Game series and branched off from there. I had no idea what the author was like and assumed he was an okay guy. But when I looked him up...yeah, not an okay guy.
Ever since learning the truth about Card, I never trusted any celebrity to be a good person. I assumed everyone had skeletons in their closet. Maybe not everyone was like Card, but I was prepared for that possibility.
So while I read the Harry Potter books, I never thought that J.K. Rowling was any kind of saint. I knew that she was just human and far from perfect. But even though she had to have skeletons in her closet, I thought she was an overall good person.
The first thing she said that made me roll my eyes was saying Albus Dumbledore was gay. There was nothing showing that the character was gay in the text. Unless you read certain parts as him being gay. But that's headcanon, not canon. So by declaring him gay after the final book was released, it allowed her to get praise without taking any risk.
Overall, though, it was just a stupid thing for a person to say in order to get praised. Every person has some really stupid takes at times. That just had to be one of hers.
The stupid "facts" J.K.Rowling made up post-Harry Potter kept coming. It was like she couldn't be quiet about her series. Now if the pieces of trivia made sense and were interesting, that would be one thing. But she was saying things like before indoor plumbing was a thing at Hogwarts, wizards would freely poop in the hallways and then magically get rid of their excrement. But at least these "facts" were merely stupid and not harmful.
But what she said didn't stay in the realm of stupid and not harmful. Instead things she said became worse. So much worse that they strayed far from being harmless.
If Rowling had kept to harmless but stupid, things would have remained fine. But her harmless but stupid statements turned to hateful and dangerous. With such a large platform, her transphobia could more easily spread like a cancer. It turns out she's a terf. Basically what that means is she doesn't believe transwomen are actually women. She even believes that the existence of transwomen is an attack on ciswomen.
Once that floodgate was opened, odd parts of the Harry Potter series became a lot clearer. Such as the fact that Rowling bragged about her knowledge of language and how carefully she named things, yet Cho Chang was the name of an Asian character. The name doesn't make sense unless you're a racist naming an Asian character.
Ever since Rowling showed her true colors, I've decided not to buy anything that gives money to her. I know doing so won't make a big impact. But it is what I have chosen to do.
When Hogwarts Legacy's release date neared, I figured it would be yet another Harry Potter thing I wouldn't be interested in. Though I was aware most people would pay attention to it.
Besides the Fantastic Beasts movies being connected to Rowling, they didn't really catch my interest. So it was more than easy to avoid them. Well...besides watching reviews on them. The only Fantastic Beasts movie I saw was the first one due to my emotionally abusive dad wanting to see it.
Since the prequel movies got some outrage, I thought I knew what to expect with the upcoming video game. My plan was to watch reviews of Hogwarts Legacy from people after the game had been out for awhile. I didn't think people would react as strongly as they eventually did.
In the beginning, before everyone lost their minds, I agreed with the side saying if you don't boycott the game you should pirate it. This would allow people to enjoy the game without financially supporting Rowling.
I also didn't mind people buying the game at full price. This due to the fact that the money Rowling earned from the game wouldn't mean much to her. There are so many other avenues for her to continue gaining wealth.
It's also idiotic to think that playing the game will stop you from being an ally. If you're an ally before playing the game, you'll still be an ally afterwards.
So now comes to talking about when the debate around Hogwarts Legacy became pure insanity.
Since those in the 'boycott Hogwarts Legacy' camp were allies of the LGBTQ+ community, conservatives decided the game was a worthy political battleground. And so some people began to buy the game merely to 'own the libs'.
Now this line of thinking made things go from insane to no brain cells. Some said that to own the libs they would be buying multiple copies of the game. Did that mean two? Three? Four? I saw someone proclaiming, as if they were chosen by God himself, that they were buying eight copies of Hogwarts Legacy.
Now people buying the game annoyed those boycotting, but it wasn't making a statement. Did they really think Rowling would care if they each bought five thousand copies of the game? Did they think people would be shaken to their core?
Buying multiple copies of the game didn't make them own the libs, it just caused them to waste a lot of money.
But while buying at least one copy of the game didn't own the libs. It did something much more powerful: it showed how transphobic some people were.
I think spoiling things, especially for no reason, is a bad thing. If I'm talking to a person and they don't want to know something, I won't say spoilers. I remember when Star Wars: The Force Awakens came out I was watching some video game stream. The stream was so memorable because a person kept spoiling Han Solo's death.
The sane side of the boycotters started to quickly fade to the background. That side was quickly overshadowed by the people claiming having any fond memories of the Harry Potter franchise meant you were a horrible person. These people started sharing a major death and a major revelation in Hogwarts Legacy.
These were hard to avoid as a common template for the spoiler was hiding it in posts that looked innocent enough. So it would seem like a sensible post when all of a sudden it would turn into spoilers for the game.
What was the point of doing this? What was this group trying to prove?
Well...in their minds spoiling the game was a mean of fighting terfs, antisemites, and anyone that played Hogwarts Legacy. Yes, anyone that played the game no matter their beliefs or values.
The only way I'd agree with spoiling important moments of the game is if the spoilers proved a point. Such as how the game promotes transphobia or hatred against Jews. Now there were two spoilers like that (a character's name and an item) but they weren't focused on to the same extent.
No one hid those spoilers in an innocent post to trick people into reading them. The character death and plot point were being spoiled just because.
And what happened to those who complained about the character death and plot point being spoiled? Well the people spoiling the game used the complaints as proof that they were right. That it was you, and not them, who were in the wrong.
Hogwarts Legacy takes inspiration from the original Harry Potter books. The game does this so fans won't get angry at the game for being inaccurate. What this also means is that J.K. Rowling had to be consulted.
Rowling is a horrible person that has the platform to easily spread her views. She can have people defend her because they have good memories about a children's book series. It is important to fight against her, and people like her, so minorities can live in a safer world. I would love for one day to be unafraid to be openly bisexual and agender to everyone.
The thing about fighting a war against Rowling, though, is to know which battles are actually worth pursuing. If you fight against everything, eventually you'll wear yourself out and be useful to no one. You'll also end up convincing those initially on your side that you don't actually care about transphobia or antisemitism.
So is Hogwarts Legacy actually important in the grand scheme of things?
No, it isn't. At its core it isn't trying to teach someone to be a terf or hate Jewish people. It's a game that wants to immerse players in the world of Harry Potter. This is vastly different than a book like Atlas Shrugged whose whole purpose is to make you believe in objectivism.
Rowling wasn't heavily involved with Hogwarts Legacy. This is much different than her being an extremely large part of the Fantastic Beast movies. It's also highly unlikely that she will make a large profit from sales of the game.
The choice to buy or not buy the game won't affect the world to any great degree. But what it will affect is you. So if the idea of playing the game makes you feel sick, don't play the game. If nostalgia from your childhood gets you, play the game.
At the end of the day Hogwarts Legacy isn't that important. It is a game with lots of faults whose only reason to be noticed is its connection to the Harry Potter Universe. Yet this average game garnered a lot of attention because many saw it as a battleground for things the game doesn't weigh in on.
Remember you can submit ideas for future posts by commenting on this post. I also talk about other fandoms, so don't feel that you have to only submit ideas for Harry Potter posts.
You can also submit guest posts HERE.
No comments:
Post a Comment