This guy just keeps getting more and more wonderful ❤️
Arent you guys sick of the same 4 franchises? Marvel, Star wars, Lord of the rings, Harry Potter.
It’s a bit unfair to rope LOTR into this, it only has a single spin-off series which is pretty great. Which is pretty great if you’re not a fascist or hardcore nerd of the books. And hardcore nerds only have “fun” criticism discussing how the story spanning 3000 years is being adapted.
Mmmmmm. LOTR has 6 movies running 18hrs theatrical, 22hrs extended cut.
Multiple anime, TV show, comics, graphic novels, books, spin offs and more…over done. Over cooked. Trite.
Star wars has 9 mainline movies spanning 20hrs.
Multiple anime, TV show, comics, graphic novels, books, spin offs and more…Disney is literally wearing this franchise as a skin suit to keep it going.
The Marvel Infinity Saga core movies, 19 hours…etc…blah blah blah…Disney. Morning Erection…something something, cum daddy.
That’s not what the decision said, but JK and their ilk are trying to push it as that.
Their decision is limited to what they believe was meant in the Equality Act 2010. It’s just them indicating what a law meant originally.
A law that was written by people who didn’t know better.
Now we know better, as the science is undeniable, but what we know now doesn’t change what the law meant. That’s why what the UK needs to do now is change the law to properly match science.Rowling and other flavors of transfobes want to muddle the waters and act as if everything was set in stone, but it isn’t.
There have been amendments to the Equality act before, the latest in in 2023 and 2024, they can do more.https://www.legislation.gov.uk/primary+secondary?title=Equality+Act+2010+amendment
Do not play into their game. Instead, push for change.
I’m way ahead of this because I absolutely HATE the originals because of how often they play them on TV. The transphobic writer of the original wanting to do a do-over most likely because the original cast spoke out against her is also real atrocious as well.
The franchise is actually really bad when you think about it. Full of plotholes and really poor writing but the vibe of the original movie (and maybe the sequel) was really spot on for that time period.
The best writers can do is take creative control from her and add things that will show her up, like what they did in the latest videogame, and add transgender characters and actors.
Wait that’s why they’re doing this? What a clown she is.
she wanted to rewrite the characthers, probably to her “terf beliefs” and people already indicated in the past her books were already what she currently believes in, just very subtle.
Oh God… She’s absolutely going to create a monster that pretends to be a human as some kind of lazy “Trans Bad” parable…
This is going to be the fucking Heathers Reboot all over again
No idea if it’s true, but it’s a rumor I’ve heard that sounds plausible enough. Can’t speak for all the cast, but I’m fairly certain the main trio have spoken up against her, though.
she probably want different actors, or rewriting to make it look like they cant question her terf. she will be hardpressed to find someone who is an actor and is a terf like her, those actors have largely been expelled from hollywood, and only making shitty christian or anti-woke movies.
I’m kind of the opinion that Harry Potter should have just ended with the deathly hallows book and 2 movies.
you drag out and milk an IP for too long and you just become star wars. and that isnt a compliment.
But the line must go up!
But making something new comes with the risk of it not working, much easier to just keep milking the same thing infinitely.
It seems like Rowling has been pushing for the series to be made because she doesn’t like the OG movie cast members for calling her out on her bigotry. Anytime Radcliffe or Watson tweet in support of humanity, Rowling gets all twisty-knickered and pouty because people still call them Harry Potter and Hermione.
Well wasn’t going to anyways because Rowling is a horrible person but now I’ll double down in not watching it.
Don’t watch it, twice! Three times even!
Going to pirate it, burn to cds and then recycle them into sex toys for the transgender. That’ll show em!
It’s be interesting how the fascist agitprop will boost this show. We’ve seen many cases of feminist or pro trans themes in shows incurred massive backlash from influencers and their hordes. Part of the “culture war”. I’d expect a lot of hype and praises for the show no matter how good or bad it is.
This sucks. I mean, I read Harry Potter as an adult, and still loved the stories, even if some parts were problematic (Cho Chang? The Irish kid blows stuff up? REALLY?). But I refuse to give that woman any of my money to do more evil with.
Harry Potter is one of the few IP’s that I 100% pirate guilt-free. In many cases, I use piracy to “try out” things before I buy them. For instance, I have the *arr stack running on my Jellyfin server, but most of the media on it is from my old DVD/Blu-ray collection. I have a few pirated games, but end up buying most of them if I enjoy them.
But not with Harry Potter. That shit gets pirated and stays pirated. I have the e-books and movies torrented, and will never spend a dime on them. I’ll never buy anything with a Hogwarts house on it. I’ll never stream any of the movies on Max. As far as capitalism is concerned, I have a full Harry Potter blackout.
Might be better to just let it go entirely.
OK let me defend Cho Chang specifically. Qiū Cháng is a perfectly valid chinese name. It is pronounced “Cho Chang.” Cho would not be standard (pinyin), but Chinese people historically have not always use Pinyin to transliterate their names. (And I assume a wizard might not use muggle pinyin.)
don’t forget the white washing of lavender brown
What was wrong with cho chang?
it just follows a trend of jkr using really shitty stereotypical names and sometimes just using down right offensive names. the only Asian character is cho chang, the only black character is literally named kingsley shacklebolt, etc. in Hogwarts legacy they named the first trans women in the series sirona ryan.
TBH the magic system seems low-effort too. You need a wand and pseudo-Latin, but neither are strictly necessary?
no complex spell casting with rare ingredients, like some other shows that uses magic, kinda like SCARLETS witches no-words spellcasting , yea because its low effort cuts corners.
Jfc those are all so fucking racist holy shit
Dafuq
My brain right now.
The Indian chicks being fucking patels.
it sounds like CHING CHONG, just reworded to make it sound like its not offensive. theres also the issue her labeling goblins as bankers, aka greedy jews, by nature and lore goblins are greedy.
I can get Irish people blowing things up as problematic, but surely cho Chang and the goblins are people just trying to make problems out of nothing?
Where do you get Jews from?
I think we can all agree that a stereotype is that bankers are greedy
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IMO she’s already rich, and more of your money goes to an evil multi-billion dollar corporation than to her. If you enjoy the world fuck it, enjoy the shows, have, books, etc… There is no ethical consumption under capitalism and we’re in dark times. You need to covet the things that bring you joy.
Side note: She plagiarized most of the first book from Anthony Horowitz’s “Groomsham Grange”. I understand there’s a lot of books about magical schools but seriously if you read them back to back it’s clear. This isn’t important to the conversation other than to supply another reason to hate the bitch.
Edit: you can’t boycott someone who’s already rich off selling the IP. Be mad as you want, people aren’t enabling her by purchasing content made by freaking Warner Brothers. She already got her bag.
No ethical consumption means: it’s hard to arrange for there to be clear alignment in people to boycott a particular entity, meaning many things that ought to go boycotted don’t. Therefore, when such a heinous person as Rowling or Musk arises that we can cohesively land a boycott, we ought to take advantage of it.
You can’t boycott Rowlings at this point though, she’s made her fortune off the IP already. You’re essentially virtue signaling.
Musk on the other hand has most his wealth tied to the stock of his company. They aren’t remotely similar.
Does anyone want anything to do with this?
I am no literature snob but I thought the first few books were good at the time for YA fiction. I still have the full set on my shelves and would be overjoyed if my kids read any novels, even imperfect ones.
People have nit picked JKs works to death and yes, there are problems. Half the stuff I was reading and watching as a kid was far, far worse. Like I was reading stuff that on reflection was clearly written by very far right authors, pedos etc as well as stuff that went way in other directions. I get why people boycott shit like that but I think its probably good to be exposed to some other points of view, even ones you vehemently reject.
People should be supporting new authors and new stories and stop throwing money at tired old corporate franchises. And that goes for the lazy Disney shit as well and all the Hollywood remakes. Unfortunately we have all been squeezed economically so there is fuck all money left to buy media and we are being squeezed for attention so nobody is taking time to read novels or listen to albums. The culture wars are certainly very significant (as a straight white male I know I have blind spots here), particularly for minorities with a lot at stake. But I feel the real enemy is the death of individual economic freedom and free time. Do we really need another big streaming series that brings nothing new to our lives and exists only to enhance shareholder value?
Not to ruin something you like, but you might enjoy reading the Worst Witch series, which Joanne copied for her early books.
I am an old man so I don’t read much kid’s/YA fiction and I wasn’t ever a huge HP fan. I tried to watch a tv adaption of WW with my daughter and we didn’t get past the first episode for some reason. We do like a lot of other witchy fiction though. I am hoping the Witchhat Atelier anime is high quality and doesn’t have creepy fan service. That had a really interesting magic system.
JKs works are full of tropes as is most fiction and it clearly isn’t great literature but I am not persuaded by accusations of plagiarism. Every Tarantino movie rips off other movies. The Dollars trilogy was clearly a retelling of Kurosawa samurai movies.
I don’t want to praise JK given her open hostility to the community here but the cross over appeal of her works was a cultural phenomenal at the time. I understand why many people are motivated to rip her work and legacy to shreds. She has very much earned peoples disrespect. As someone who is not targeted by her hateful views I feel detached enough to reject JK as a person without completely dismissing her works and cultural impact. Yeah, that’s some privilege at work but we are who we are. I am never going to have the same awareness or sensitivity about lack of representation, stereotypes etc in her writing.
There’s a huge difference between “homage” and “copying.” For example, Rowling references many legendary myths, like the Nicholas Flamel and the Philosopher’s Stone. That’s a reference, and while it’s not original, it’s not so much stealing as using the existing tapestry.
The problem is not that she used existing concepts and tropes, but that she only used existing concepts and tropes. There literally isn’t a single original concept in any of the books, and the source material is usually (but not always) better. It’s like somebody made artwork out of clip art and photographs of famous paintings. And that’s fine, but it’s not creative or even well-crafted.
The dialogue is distractingly bad, the fantasy elements are disjointed and inconsistent, the mysteries are either obviously telegraphed or non-sequitur deus ex magicka that erase all tension or intrigue.
Is an Oreo cookie a good cookie? It’s very popular, and many people love them. It’s a knock off of Hydrox, of course, but that’s not why it’s not a good cookie. The cream filling is waxy and cloying, the cookies are cocoa-adjacent and stale, and they are mass produced by a company that is deforesting the planet and relying on child slaves. But they taste good dunked in milk. I like them. And that’s OK. Not everything has to be the best possible version of what it could, or shoul, be.
But if the inventor of the Oreo was running around going “I’m the best baker in the world because I came up with the Oreo, and also disabled people should be euthanized,” we can say that this hypothetical person sucks at both being a person and at baking cookies. The former is obviously worse than the latter, but then you have defenders saying “yes, OK, this person may not be a good person, but what they created is great.” No. What they created is popular but that doesn’t make it good.
I tried to read Twilight on a dare once. I dare anyone to suggest JK’s writing is worse than Stephenie Meyer. A lot of popular fantasy and YA isn’t much better than fan fiction. Hunger Games feels even more derivative in many ways but I don’t know if that hurts it.
I agree HP isn’t great art. I read the books once when they came out and that was enough for me. It was a genuine cultural phenomenon though. In the late 90s. early 2000s, before iPhone, Facebook, Youtube it was just some pop culture that filled in the many hours of analog leisure time. It brought joy to a lot of people and relieved some boredom for others. The series had good and bad. The good was the accessibility and interest it generated in reading for a relatively wide audience. Given JK’s current reputation as a person I think it is too easy to dwell on the bad and completely ignore the rest. It is reasonable to cease supporting the HP franchise though. Whatever its merits it had run its course a long time ago.
Some people really like Twilight – maybe you are not the target demographic.
I really liked the first 4 Harry Potter books as a kid. I don’t really agree with the criticism above. I thought it was cool to read about this little boy like me discovering magic and exploring a cool castle and fighting dark wizards.
There is a lot of criticism I agree with – like isn’t it weird that Harry’s magic society is a capitalist paradise where he buys wands and his poor best friend spends their lottery windfall on a vacation so they must not be that poor, and anyway how can you have poverty in a post-scarcity magical society?
But on the other hand it was so relatable to see Harry go on shopping trips because that’s what I was doing in the 90s/2000s, and having feelings about how the rich kid’s dad always paid for him to have cool toys like a nimbus 2001…
twilight target demographic were young female teens,
I love Pedro Pascal.
So many queers grew up on Harry Potter. If you still cherish the series from before the author apparently had a stroke, and can’t give it up, you can at least do society a favour by sailing the high seas (pirate it).
You don’t need to tell me twice. I only have nostalgia for the original Harry Potter movies and games because it has a lot of super popular British actors, and I was about 6-years-old when they came out.
I have no nostalgia for the books, and I have no interest in watching the same story again but HBO-ified.
Sometimes I wonder did they make Snape casting on purpose just to cause hatred? Unless Harry Potter and his friends are also non-white or they change the story from the books heavily this is gonna be a wild ride to watch in this America where racists rule the roost.
Remember family guys skits of jk Rowling, they kinda predicted her current behavior, one of them was Peter "reminiscing "now problematic jk Rowling writing, and the other
https://www.tiktok.com/@stewiesdomain/video/7195031901214723330
Probably this right here is the second one?
https://www.offtiktok.com/post/1758 non tiktok link
And that is why (along with being an amazing actor) that he is the favorite
Pascal has been a vocal ally of the transgender community, frequently using his platform to advocate for trans rights. At the UK premiere of “Thunderbolts,” he wore a shirt reading “Protect the Dolls,” a term of endearment for transgenderism.
I wonder if the author of the article realizes “transgenderism” is a right-wing, anti-trans term?
EDIT: ah, it looks like the author of that blog is probably anti-trans and holds other right-wing views: https://old.reddit.com/r/blankies/comments/rcczql/can_someone_give_me_context_for_the_film_blog/
Good spot! Trans+ would have been better
Considering dolls is a term applied only to trans women, he should have just said “a term of endearment for trans women”. The only reason he didn’t is because he’s anti-trans, and maybe he doesn’t even understand that “dolls” is a term specific to trans women, or that trans men even exist, a lot of anti-trans bigots are obsessed with trans women and think the only trans people are trans women; there are estimated to be equal numbers of trans men as trans women, they just don’t get the same attention.
The bathroom debate shows this mindset, anti-trans activist want trans women to use men’s restrooms, but they aren’t thinking about the fact that those same laws and policies force trans men women’s restrooms, leading to this kind of situation:
So the anti-trans movement claims they are keeping men out of women’s restrooms, while doing exactly the opposite.
I think the anti-trans movement wants to claim that the entire idea of trans people is ideologically driven, but they have it in reverse - the gender binary and anti-trans movement is ideologically driven, while the position that trans people exists and should have gender-affirming care is based on actual empirical evidence. The science shows reality is much more complicated than the gender binary, and that being trans is biologically determined, genetically inherited, and part of natural human variation throughout our history as a species.
So it seems acknowledging the reality and gender of trans people is not so much ideologically driven as much as it is more aligned with reality than the status quo of assigning gender according to a model of binary sex based an a quick inspection of genitals at birth, which we know is ideologically driven. The only reason to reject the undisputed science is for religious and political reasons, there is no actual debate or ambiguity about the science. Every single major medical and scientific association endorses gender affirming care for minors and adults, there is a firm consensus on this. These organizations are typically conservative, not “woke”, and they only support those treatments because they are the only known effective treatments of gender dysphoria.
The anti-trans movement has more in common with young earth creationism, the anti-vaxx movement, and other anti-science movements, which are often politically motivated and intersect with conservative forms of Christianity. These are truly ideologically based movements, and they support views of reality based not on what is empirically demonstrated but rather based on a dogmatic interpretation of religious texts.
For example, Matt Walsh’s anti-trans film What is a Woman was compared to antivax films like VAXXED or the anti-evolution film Expelled!.
anti-trans activist want trans women to use men’s restrooms, but they aren’t thinking about the fact that those same laws and policies force trans men women’s restrooms, leading to this kind of situation
Oh, that’s the point.
See, it’s about men protecting women from bad things. Not about women feeling uncomfortable.
It’s the same as the justification for Christian rejection of empathy (as opposed to more reserved compassion): the undertone is “women are more vulnerable to ‘falling for’ the empathee’s sin.”
Womens’ perspectives may be where the thoughts stop, but that is no accident.
I think the anti-trans activists coming up with the policies are aware of trans men and have crafted this policy to stoke moral panic and to keep trans people out of public life. I guess in my mind, the naive anti-trans person who doesn’t know about trans men were more like the average person duped by anti-trans propaganda.
The actual people running the movement know a trans man realistically won’t be comfortable going to the women’s restroom, so their intention isn’t really to force them in there either - it’s to increase risks for trans people so they either face violence in the wrong bathroom or face criminality, maybe with a long term goal of using the prisons to forcefully detransition trans people.
That some trans people are going ahead and complying with the bathroom law is maybe an unintended side effect, but it still achieves the effect of increasing risks for trans people - trans women are at much greater risk of violence in a men’s restroom or in a men’s prison than in a women’s restroom or a women’s prison, and thus achieving the genocidal goal of eradicating trans people.
See, it’s about men protecting women from bad things. Not about women feeling uncomfortable.
Womens’ perspectives may be where the thoughts stop, but that is no accident.
I completely agree, women’s safety was never the actual priority - nor does it accord with reality, the empirical evidence shows that trans inclusive policies do not increase crime and the idea that trans people pose any real threat are not based in reality.
Women never mattered here, and even the anti-trans “gender-critical” movement that claims feminist roots have distanced themselves from feminism, with increasing focus on targeting trans women and prioritizing anti-trans policies even when it contradicts feminist goals or beliefs.
I think the anti-trans activists coming up with the policies are aware of trans men and have crafted this policy to stoke moral panic and to keep trans people out of public life.
I think it really depends. There are some leaders/influencers who know exactly what they’re doing, and are using this moral panic as a engagement tool. Maybe some do have the idea of forcefully detransitioning the incarcerated, with a kind of Mike Pence attitude to it (who is much more supportive of conversion therapy than most people are aware of).
But (speaking as someone with some very evangelical southern US family), I think some supporters really are thinking of this from the “protect vunerable women” perspective. This thread weaves through everything, their whole ideology and perception of people… Women are supposed to need and accept men’s protection and direction. So of course these scary “biological men” should be removed from their bathrooms, while being with “biological women” still fits that idealistic fantasy until they actually look at a picture like this. But that will never often happen because staying intellectually sheltered is part of the culture. Women are conditioned to not bluntly point out stuff like this.
Yes, I was trying to differentiate the kinds of anti-trans people, the clergy from the flock so to speak. The politicians like Mike Pence and activists like Matt Walsh are more likely to be strategic and knowledgeable about the issues.
The lay people who are influenced by those activist leaders are more likely to be ignorant and have different perspectives.
Whether leaders or lay people, I don’t take them seriously when they say they are trying to “protect vulnerable women” any more than I think conservatives actually care about small government or states rights, everything is just rationalization and rhetoric to justify a less pleasant and less defensible position (like taking food stamps away from the poor, or eradicating trans people).
I’d like to take a moment to acknowledge #occupotty
there are estimated to be equal numbers of trans men as trans women, they just don’t get the same attention.
And this is a stunning example of the power of male privilege.
Erasure is not a privilege
and the fact that transphobia is mostly motivated by misogyny (see Julia Serano’s concept of “transmisogyny” outlined in Whipping Girl).
Even transphobia against trans men is misogynistic, e.g. when trans men are treated as just vulnerable / hapless women or girls that need to protecting from “trans grooming”, which is patronizing and conventionally sexist, or when
content warning
corrective rape is used on trans men to re-assert their assigned gender, e.g. Sam Nordquist and Brandon Teena.
The violence trans men face is ultimately connected to violence against women, even if it is being applied to men to deny them their gender.
Wow. People really sicken me.
yeah, tough to stomach some aspects of humanity - but it’s worth keeping it mind it’s only a small minority of people, I try not to generalize the exceptional violence of the worst of us onto the rest of humanity.
I hear you, and I do try to practice that. I find so many to be disappointing, though. It definitely helps to remember that I can’t control others, just my own actions/reactions.
