There comes a time when you have to decide what matters more: your integrity, or some silly book series you enjoyed as a kid. And quite frankly it should be a no-brainer. Anyone who picks the book has just shown you their true colours.
I agree. People thought I was being a hard ass about Hogwarts Legacy, but I wasn't. I can't stop someone from continuing to engage with things that make Rowling stronger but I can sure as hell understand that to them my safety is not a priority.
What gets me the most are the people who are vaguely aware that Rowling is trash but pretend that doesn't matter so they can have the thing they like. It's a level of cowardice I simply cannot respect. Like let's pretend that Tolkien was trash (Sorry professor!). Tolkien's been dead for decades. It doesn't matter how odious he might have been in his personal life because his personal life is in the past tense. Rowling is alive. Rowling is rich, and Rowling is using her money and fame to nudge humanity towards another Dark Age.
People like that always start out sounding perfectly rational, reasonable and concerned. That's how they sucker you in, just as with any cult.
Or they just like ask you to pay them $18,000 to be flown out to a secretive compound where sweaty men will yell at you as you crawl through mud. Grifts are fascinating sometimes.
But yes. It always starts reasonable - how do we recover Germany's economic position in the wake of a devastating war that we lost? How do we recover our national pride since this treaty basically doesn't let us have a military? And then two years later its all "Obviously all this is the fault of homosexuals and jews and has nothing to do with mistakes made by previous generations of leadership."
I am comparing Rowling to Hitler to highlight that the tactics really are the same. I am not meaning to imply the personages are the same because they aren't.
Date rape drugs (why was Lavender Brown or whoever it was never punished for slipping a mickey to another kid??)
Not just this, but Fred & George (Who we're supposed to like and be rooting for) sell date rape drugs when they open a shop (Which only women are interested in for some reason) in one of the later books and no one says anything. Voldemort's mother also used said drugs on her husband and iirc the book doesn't really go into that and treats it as tragic when the guy runs for it the one time he is not constantly being dosed.
So this is a consistent pattern in Rowling's books. Sexual aggression is okay (in general) but especially when (cis) women do it.
heroes who stoop to torture and mind control which goes unpunished
I can see this in a more adult story. Protagonist uses torture and mind control to win, no one punishes them for it, but because they're basically a good person it haunts them for the rest of their life. Kinda like what Suzanne Collins did. Arguably The Hunger Games is about PTSD. Anyway that's not what Rowling did. Harry uses these things that are forbidden for good reasons and then is just basically fine. Which is both morally bad and bad storytelling.
Re: 😢
I agree. People thought I was being a hard ass about Hogwarts Legacy, but I wasn't. I can't stop someone from continuing to engage with things that make Rowling stronger but I can sure as hell understand that to them my safety is not a priority.
What gets me the most are the people who are vaguely aware that Rowling is trash but pretend that doesn't matter so they can have the thing they like. It's a level of cowardice I simply cannot respect. Like let's pretend that Tolkien was trash (Sorry professor!). Tolkien's been dead for decades. It doesn't matter how odious he might have been in his personal life because his personal life is in the past tense. Rowling is alive. Rowling is rich, and Rowling is using her money and fame to nudge humanity towards another Dark Age.
Or they just like ask you to pay them $18,000 to be flown out to a secretive compound where sweaty men will yell at you as you crawl through mud. Grifts are fascinating sometimes.
But yes. It always starts reasonable - how do we recover Germany's economic position in the wake of a devastating war that we lost? How do we recover our national pride since this treaty basically doesn't let us have a military? And then two years later its all "Obviously all this is the fault of homosexuals and jews and has nothing to do with mistakes made by previous generations of leadership."
I am comparing Rowling to Hitler to highlight that the tactics really are the same. I am not meaning to imply the personages are the same because they aren't.
Not just this, but Fred & George (Who we're supposed to like and be rooting for) sell date rape drugs when they open a shop (Which only women are interested in for some reason) in one of the later books and no one says anything. Voldemort's mother also used said drugs on her husband and iirc the book doesn't really go into that and treats it as tragic when the guy runs for it the one time he is not constantly being dosed.
So this is a consistent pattern in Rowling's books. Sexual aggression is okay (in general) but especially when (cis) women do it.
I can see this in a more adult story. Protagonist uses torture and mind control to win, no one punishes them for it, but because they're basically a good person it haunts them for the rest of their life. Kinda like what Suzanne Collins did. Arguably The Hunger Games is about PTSD. Anyway that's not what Rowling did. Harry uses these things that are forbidden for good reasons and then is just basically fine. Which is both morally bad and bad storytelling.