Post

actively participating in society does imply the responsibility of at least some baseline level of cultural awareness of major issues facing it, and "J. K. Rowling is a fascist monster fanatically and monomaniacally dedicated to a genocidal effort against trans people" qualifies

Then I grew up and realised the shoddy world building, the kinda messed up messages in a few places, and whilst I’d call myself a Hufflepuff (cos nobody wanted to be a Hufflepuff) and I still engaged with it for family stuff, I was over it. Then JKR came out as a bigot and I was done for good.

In my case, being the stepdad is both good and bad. It's not really my place to break the seal on this conversation with my step-daughter; OTOH, I have to stand by and watch as her Dad takes her to see HP movies. 4/4

I know someone with an eight-year-old trans daughter who had to flee with her family from London to NYC for her wellbeing. So my answer is “now.”

What even is "Harry Potter adult?" Is liking the movies/books enough or do you have to be on the level of active cosplay to be considered one? Disclaimer: I am neither, just curious what is the current level of discourse.

Discworld might be one of the best behaved fandoms out there.

same, read them to my first kid and he liked them but I was relieved when his teenage self naturally glommed onto better fandoms like Dr. Who and Walking Dead. Wholesome! 😆

3 - mrs fake crab became kinda internet mom to a kid, tween at the time, who was a massive HP fan, just as She Who I Ain't Naming was solidifying her heel turn. They live with religious grandparents, and are now 18ish, trying to navigate a queer identity

And then there's this terrifying news:

The first two were good, having that same magic feeling from Chris Columbus that he gave to Home Alone and Young Sherlock Holmes. They made the characters grow up too fast in the third movie, with a new director. It felt like whiplash.

I like it as a middle schooler. I read the first five books, but when the sixth book came out, I was in high school and just lost interest. I think I just outgrew it and moved on. There was no love lost when I found out about JK Rowling being herself.

It was a nice story I had a few quibbles with and the movies were fun. I liked being caught up in the cultural moment. I was not at all surprised when the mask came off. I’ve liked a lot of bad things by bad people though!

My family did a whole thing going out to see the movies every release day. It was a big joint family thing we did together when I was in my teens. We gave it up and ditched any and all copies of the books and DVDs.

The one good thing about those movies is that a large chunk of the cast who played the kids, seem genuinely awesome

The movies are actually pretty good

The movies aren't interesting qua movies, more as "an object lesson on how to run a set with a lot of young actors" and "empirical proof that Columbus and Cuaron know what they're doing as directors" since they fell off hard thereafter.

I enjoyed the books, even if technically too old for their target audience, and thought that the films were generally good. I even went to the Harry Potter world thing near London. And then the author turned out to be a raging bigot and I've made sure never to support anything else she does.

The movies legitimately did remove most of JKR’s nastiest tendencies like always making fun of fat people or the whole HAPPY SLAVES thing. Everything people criticize the most is absent from the films other than the whole “and society didn’t need to change just kill wizard hitler”

They’re fun in a nostalgia kinda way for me, but I wouldn’t say that you’ve missed a whole lot if you’ve never seen them

I had very pleasant memories. Loved the films. Heard rumblings and started to turn off. 2020, my parents buy my wife and me tickets to the broadway show. Enjoyed it. Pandemic hits lockdown around my birthday. We wanted to do a cozy watch. Saw the films. One week later, she posts Never went back

Hot take(?): the movies aren’t very good, but they are significantly better than the books, not to a small degree because some of the most obnoxious stuff got sanded out

I *think* I watched all of them at least once. And like, I *Fan* things. I’ve watched the LOTR movies countless times despite their flaws. And I even liked the main cast of the HP movies very much. Those movies are bad. They aren’t good. I never rewatched any of them.

I read the books 6 and 7 as they came out as I got the train pretty late in the fad. Was fine but was never a big thing like Star Trek or Bleach were to me

Kinda agree here too. I read them all in my 20s when the later books came out (hey they were popular). I thought they were... alright? I didn't understand how people thought they were SO GOOD!!!

For sure, Rowling is technically competent at writing prose and constructing a narrative and characters with a trait or two but idk, there’s something about how little the books have to actually say about the hidebound, hierarchical society with lots of clear problems. There’s a vacuousness to it.

I do think there's interesting stuff to discuss about the franchise, but I'm not at a shortage of interesting stuff to discuss so I'm just not that inclined to hold on to it despite her

A mild value to them. I actually did like the first half of the deathly hallows film. Other than that, they seemed derivative and then finding out the authors, beliefs, and actions killed it for me. I don’t plan on watching the redo Also, it has sparked interesting conversations with my kids now

I'm just saying that that isn't authorial intent. For me the sorting was kind of confusing so I looked into how UK schools worked and I read it into that context. In general it's used like an astrological sign or Meyers Brigs, not as a judgement.

There’s a lot of truth to that. Ultimately HP worked because the Harry/Rom/Hermione interactions worked. She let them make mistakes and then learn from them and they felt like people, not tropes. That’s a strength that will cover a lot of plot and world building weaknesses.

Sounds like something someone sorted into "house evil" would say.

If their creator hadn’t become a threat to the lives and livelihoods of others I’d still be following that stuff without shame. I was too old for them when they came out!

I still have the Hufflepuff Tshirt my wife bought me back in the day, but I only wear it to sleep in. Never in public.

LEGO needs to stop making HP sets. I just don't get it. I mean, I get it, but I don't get it.

Yes I continue to engage with the universe but I’m not spending MONEY.

Yeah, that's pretty much where I'm at. That stuff and the Gryffindor duffle bag I got years ago.

There's so many similar properties you can get into instead too, how are you not bored with HP by now? Fantastic Beasts was total dogshit, even if you were a huge HP fan, unless you're pro-nazi-rowling you should be sick of it all. Join us in the Witch Hat Atelier fanclub.

Prior to her making anti trans bigotry her entire identity, I'd had OSC as my example "I'm willing to buy his stuff from used book stores only so he can't financially benefit". But in most ways she's worse as she's actively campaigning to harm people rather than just being casually loathsome.

Excellent garden mulch though, if you’re so inclined

Right like, I'm not saying don't keep the books or what you already own! But these people are literally changing real life infrastructure for a fictional character's CGI burial.

That story is an absolute PR lesson. Do *not* let your exec go on a podcast and make a dumb joke about how planning was done

Shh, if they find out we're still here they might start bullying us again.

As I am often saying, rainbow capitalism isn’t *good* in and of itself but it is a barometer for where our acceptance is. If it is seen as profitable to cater to us, even if the way it happens is cringe, that means that the winds are blowing in the right direction.

Im used to being bullied more out of nerdiness than political reasons.

It's funny, because Game's Workshop had a problem with Nazi-adjacent types glomming onto the fascist imagery in Warhammer 40K, and have taken great pains to distance & excise those people from the fanbase. There's criticism about how effective it is, but I'll give kudos to them trying

Eh full disclosure, if you gave her the views of K.A Applegate I'd be a shameless Harry Potter adult which makes the betrayal sting even harder I also respect the people who basically tried to expropriate the fandom from her, but once she made transphobia her personality it was over

Same. Though I wanna say I was 19 when the first film was announced. Tried slogging through the first book during a hurry-up-and-wait on set. No dice.

If she hadn’t done that heel turn and was still just supporting children’s charities I might still be in the fandom. I made good friends there! We wrote stories picking apart the flaws in the books! And Bellatrix was an easy closet cosplay for me! But my son (who grew up on the books) is trans. DONE

I know one person who legitimately fits the latter. They love HP and also they lived on an island with very limited electricity or Internet access for like the past 7 years and then had a kid immediately when they came back from there so are still checked out of the world.