When politics interferes with and ruins a fantasy series... Perhaps it is all just propaganda disguised as fantasy.
Some of us have had enough.
From a cringy looking and unlikely url comes:
Stop! Tweeting!
by Katie Way
The Harry Potter franchise is, potentially, one of the most well-loved of all time. Harry's generational-defining world is so rich with detail that as a child, it was easy to slip into it and imagine that some of the magic rubbed off onto you, that your Hogwarts acceptance letter would come in the mail the second you turned 11.
Fans get Harry Potter tattoos, and even have Harry Potter-themed weddings.
But many of the people who grew up loving Harry Potter are turning away from the Wizarding World, and it's all because of J.K. Rowling and the opinions she's so fond of sharing on Twitter — both about the series she created and beyond.
"It’s sad and kinda flared up as she did create something so special to me and millions of other people," said Marissa, 22, who recently visited Harry Potter World with her family. "But she just can’t be trusted with her own story anymore."
Rowling's latest, and arguably greatest, misstep was when she backed up the casting of Johnny Depp in the sequel to Fantastic Beasts and Where To Find Them in a statement that she posted on her website. Then, she started blocking angry fans.
Her statement said she and the filmmakers were "not only comfortable sticking with our original casting, but genuinely happy to have Johnny playing a major character in the movies," despite allegations of abuse from his ex-wife Amber Heard — and the police photos of her bruised and battered face.
But Rowling's supportive stance on Depp is far from the first time she's angered fans with a controversial decision.
Rowling's insistence on inserting special interest identities into her novels long after they came out, in a way that reads like a kind of Social Justice MadLibs, has drawn tons of criticism from the young people who grew up with the books and movies.
"While the things with Johnny Depp are upsetting, they're also just kinda one instance in a pattern of wild crap she's been up to," said Willow, 23, who told babe that she was so "obsessed" with the Harry Potter books when she was younger, that her mother had to ban her from reading them for a year.
"But the more she gets involved — the more she tries to add to the world — the more I wish she'd kept her mouth closed, because it's clear that she's your typical white feminist."
Ocean Elf: What the heck does skin color have to do with it? She's a feminist. Period...
Katie Way: Because the Harry Potter books were written between 1997 and 2007, trying to shove their narrative into today's political and social climate just rings insincere, like a thinly veiled cash-grab.
Rachelle, 22, whose mother is convinced that she now wears glasses because of how fast she read the Harry Potter books as a kid, said that tendency to assign progressive ideals where they didn't belong was what annoyed her most.
"And I think that bothered me because rather than just… write another book or series that actually had an openly gay character or POC that weren't just sidekicks, she just does this historical revisionism."
That sound you hear? It's my eyes rolling into the back of my skull.
The first most notable instance of this revisionism was when Rowling announced that Hogwarts headmaster Dumbledore was actually gay the whole time.
Drew, 22, who whittled himself a lavender-scented wand that he still owns, was ambivalent about the announcement because according to him, noted that so much of LGBT culture in fiction is based around hidden clues and intertextual work.
He agrees that's valid, but is still disappointed in the final product.
"Literally one sentence would have been SO important to all us gay kids who were drawn to HP because of the whole closet metaphor and the idea that your minority identity can make you powerful," he said. "And it’s not like she would have lost readers if she had made him gayer. The only thing conservatives hate more than gayness is magic."
Ocean Elf: Bull crap.
Katie Way: Harry, 23, was such an avid Harry Potter fan that he got a copy of the seventh Harry Potter book 15 minutes before its actual release because "I annoyed the person working the line so much she just gave it to me so I’d stop."
But he's become disenchanted with the call-and-response between the author and the series's most obsessive devotees, as J.K. Rowling confirms random fan theories via Twitter on a regular basis.
"The fanbase and J.K. really turned me off the series," he said. "Maybe that’s ridiculous. But it feels like at some point it went in my head from fun fantasy to like, crazy wish-fulfillment playground."
Rowling has since "revealed" that Lupin's werewolf condition was a metaphor for HIV, Hermione was not necessarily white, that tuition at Hogwarts would have been free, and that Harry Potter would have eventually come around to her stance against boycotting Israel. Basically, it's pretty clear that she has a political agenda, and she's willing to use the Harry Potter universe to push it.
Ocean Elf: BINGO!
Katie Way: This flaring sucks.
Ocean Elf: Yep. I was never a fan, only slogging through a few books just to have at least some idea what all the HP buzz was about, but this political crap really turned me off it altogether. I figured the big reveal about Dumbledore's sexuality was probably just the start. No kidding.
Katie Way: Plus, former fans are annoyed at how heavily Rowling has leaned into becoming a #RESISTANCE icon, happy to plaster the Battle of Hogwarts over our current political climate.
Ocean Elf: Oh, of course, she's a big proponent of the "RESIST!" leftist meme.
Katie Way: "She's posturing for social media cred, which is frankly gross considering the fact she's a rich, critically acclaimed writer," Rachelle said. "Like, post your checks and go sis, you don't need to be Twitter famous."
The worst death in Harry Potter?
When J.K. Rowling died as a rolemodel and chose to support an abuser while ignoring every fan who commented on it
— Dinar (@Friggdottir) December 9, 2017
Fans often feel a sense of ownership over the object of their affection, and that's especially true in the case of the Harry Potter universe, which has spawned countless fan theories, DeviantArt posts and frankly, nerdy sexual fantasies.
Ocean Elf: Eww!
Katie Way: What's unusual in the case of Harry Potter is that long after she finished writing the beloved story of a plucky boy wizard fighting evil with his friends and growing up in the process, she's still making edits and using the hold she has over a generation to push her own agenda, and it's turning people away from a magical world they used to love.
Ocean Elf: Exactly!
I'm disappointed, and I was never even a lover of the series. That would've made my disappointment and disgust even worse.
Katie Way: "Honestly I think she best thing she could do would be to just let the universe be," Vatsala, 22, who loved the Harry Potter books so much that she didn't care for the movies, said. "At this point anything she has to add — whether it be an attempt to remedy or not — will just continue to make me less and less excited about Harry Potter."
@k80way
Ocean Elf: Pretty much.
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Article by Rachel Edwards
Edited for language and to make it a bit less dated.
In the first few weeks of the Trump presidency I’ve begun to notice a trend among many of the fans of Harry Potter. A great deal of them compared President Donald Trump to Tom Riddle, Aka Lord Voldemort. Which really only goes to show how little they understand both politics and the Harry Potter mythos. While people criticize Trump for opening his mouth on Twitter, J.K. Rowling herself can’t manage to hold back the bullcrap spewing forth from her tweets either.
So I’m going to proceed to contrast Voldemort with Donald Trump. First off Trump isn’t a fascist or an autocrat. He’s a Populist Nationalist. Voldemort isn’t a fascist or an autocrat so much as he is an anti-segregation racist anarchist. Voldemort doesn't want to rule a country or deal with details like that. He’s not so much concerned with anything other than blood purity and domination. He’s not interested in keeping countries together, maintaining borders or any of that crap. He sees non-magical people as vermin and loathes them because of the insane legislation in the wizarding world.
Throughout all seven books we rarely see Harry, Ron, and Hermione learning about magical law. It just sort of creeps in when they find themselves accidentally or intentionally breaking one of those laws. One of the biggest ones being the International Statute of Secrecy which keeps Magic users from using their magic in front of non-magical folks and creates a kind of self-imposed segregation used to protect both magic and non-magical people. Which doesn't sound like such a big deal until you realize just how few all magical communities there are.
The only all magical town in the United Kingdom is Hogsmeade village. This means that the average magical person lives next door to non-magical people. Wizarding law is more restrictive than any of the laws real humans have on the books. The government is constantly watching you, following your magical activities and otherwise. The magical world is more restrictive and oppressive than our own government in the U.S. with the NSA tracking our online activities. The magical government is an oppressive hell and not even getting a house in the middle of nowhere will help you.
There are also other oppressive rules limiting access to technology created by non-magical people. Which means no cellphones, computers, or high tech of any kind. You’re basically stuck in a perpetually 1950’s oppressive dystopian hellhole where you’re being watched all the time with only a delusion of privacy. Because if it’s not the government, it’s paintings, photographs, ghosts and magical creatures up in your business. The only escape being death.
Now imagine that suddenly this crazy powerful Russian guy called Grindelwald shows up and he’s like “No, Flare that noise! I do what I want!” So for years this terrorist gets captured and escapes multiple times until his ultra powerful gay friend stops him. The whole international statute of secrecy is so restrictive that it prevented magical people from stopping a dangerous murderous terrorist for years. Tom Riddle sees this crap growing up and he’s like “Well flare I can do that too. This segregation crap is stupid. Also I hate non-magical folks. Fflay those guys. They are the reason I have to hide!”
Now I’ve puzzled and puzzled over what kept Voldemort in power. Cause he’s basically a stupid racist inbred long-winded senior citizen with a snake fetish. All it took was a couple hundred inexperienced teenagers to take out him and his army. So I couldn’t help but wonder what kept people from taking him out. But now I know what it is. It was bureaucracy and red tape keeping the magical nations of the world from descending on this fartface and nuking him from orbit. The very thing that is supposed to protect people from Voldemort keeps them at his mercy.
Donald Trump isn’t Voldemort. He sees that the United States has a lot of stupid bureaucracy and unneeded rules that keep the American people in danger. He sees that we have people in our midst that seek to hurt us and our way of life, and because of all the red tape and public perception we can’t go in and take out the Grindelwalds and the Voldemorts of the world. We can’t go in and mess those people up because people are like, “Hey the reason muslim extremists are like this is because we’re not nice enough to them! If we’re just nice to them they won’t want to start up a caliphate.”
If anything Donald trump is like the Minister of Magic or the President of MACUSA. Sure he’s a narcissist and rarely says the right thing, but unlike the stupid politicians in Harry Potter, when he sees that there is a threat to this country, he wants to remove or minimize the threat. He doesn’t say, “Hey let’s be nice to them.” He’d be the kind of Minister of Magic that sees Voldemort and says “He’s killing muggles, witches, and wizards. Lets go mess up that scumbag!”
The so called “Muslim ban” that Trump had imposed, was a 90 day hold giving authorities time to create preventative measures against the kinds of guerrilla tactics that terrorists use. People try to think of war against extremists in terms of regular warfare where you have one army against another, but terrorists use guerrilla tactics to make up for their small numbers. It’s easy to fight your enemy when you know where your enemy is. But if they travel among you there’s no way of knowing friend from foe.
In Harry Potter it’d be like sorting through Slytherin house to find Death Eaters. Keep in mind not all Slytherins are Death Eaters or even pureblood. Peter Pettigrew was a Gryffindor. Professor Quirrell who kept Voldemort on the back of his head was a Hufflepuff. But if you know that a group of people has a high statistical likelihood of being in with highly dangerous terrorists, you’re gonna look through that group for the small number of bad eggs. You’d be an idiot not to, and sure the media will put out some crap about you being bigoted against purebloods, but you’re still going to do it.
Everyone wants to call Donald Trump a Nazi but Trump isn’t a National Socialist like Hitler. They want to call him a fascist but he’s not being more authoritarian than any president the US has had. He’s not even racist. He’s just enforcing pre-existing laws, closing our border like other countries do, and reforming immigration. Believe me, when he inevitably does something I think will cripple this country beyond repair, I will speak out, but so far he’s just being a politician.
Trump is like the exact opposite of Voldemort. Trump wants to enforce the law. Voldemort isn’t about instituting a form of government at all. He’s just about dismantling the government and instituting an imposed domination over non-magical people. He’s more like a National Anarchist in that he thinks that the best way to keep racial purity is to dismantle the government and become a stateless system. He’s not interested in money or finery so I’m thinking he’s not really a capitalist either, making him closer to a National Anarchist.
Ocean Elf: Well, when you got magic, who needs money?
Rachel Edwards: But again that kind of plays into Rowling’s failures as a writer. Voldemort is a contradiction being simultaneously about ultimate freedom from the rule of the wizarding government and also domination. Even Hitler was concerned with ruling his empire while Voldemort would rather dismantle the government bit by bit from behind the scenes until nothing but dominance remains. Dolores Umbridge from the books is more of an authoritarian than Voldemort and yet we often think of Voldemort being worse than Umbridge.
The funny thing in all this is that buried in the works of Rowling is the real enemy in all this. Which is the media. When things were going bad, and the government was failing to fight Voldemort, the Daily Prophet kept putting out propaganda. When the government was overtaken by Voldemort’s followers, the media again put out propaganda. The mainstream media has become overrun with junk journalists like Rita Skeeter in the books. They are stretching the truth, and manipulating people on an emotional level until they become hysterical or filled with a false sense of safety. If there is a real evil in the world right now, it’s the people emotionally manipulating others through exaggeration and outright lies.
Ocean Elf: That's what I keep trying to tell those who are cheering the Trump-bashing mainstream media. But they just don't see it. They don't even see that the media is liberalism trying to get us to do away with our own society. All they see is "Trump is evil!" It doesn't even matter to them that it isn't Trump they should be worried about. It's the left VS western values and traditions.
Rachel Edwards: To sum it up. Rowling is a hack with a rudimentary understanding of politics. She calls herself liberal and yet her idea of an ideal fantasy world is probably one of the most oppressive governments in fiction outside of dystopian literature. It’s a world full of racism, slavery, segregation, hardcore authoritarianism, and is perpetually trapped in the era that people claim American Republicans all want to go back to.
Ocean Elf: Exactly, which is the biggest hate-mongering lie out there right now. It is actually the liberals who want to bring that world back. They actually got some college dorms segregated into black only and white only. Disgusting!
I would consider the wizarding world and its other segment, the muggle world, a dystopia since the Dursleys are the biggest representation of non-magic humans in the series.
Rachel Edwards: Yet she has a problem with Donald Trump who is probably the most liberal Republican to become president ever. Compared to the politicians of the wizarding world he doesn’t even come close to their level of authoritarianism. The wizarding world is hardcore anti-science, anti-technology, super bureaucratic, and hardcore authoritarian. Without a witness to his use of defensive magic, Harry Potter would’ve faced criminal charges in book 5. He’d have been expelled from Hogwarts, and maybe had his wand taken away like Hagrid. That’s how oppressive and broken the system is. Wizarding law almost stopped Harry Potter from taking out Voldemort because of stupid bureaucratic bullcrap.
Rowling has called Trump an Autocrat but if she was going for an Autocracy with Voldemort, then she did a pretty crappy job of writing it. Because as I’ve said Voldemort doesn’t conquer like someone who wants to be an emperor. He doesn’t conquer like someone who wants to be a dictator. He’s an anarchist. He doesn’t really have a plan for what he wants to do. He just wants to dismantle the government from the shadows so he can do whatever he wants. You have to actually rule to be an Autocrat.
Voldemort was so easily beaten because he did the background pulling the strings from the shadows thing. He exploited the already oppressive government in the wizarding world. The only thing he did differently was be really bigoted against muggle borns, and non-magical folk. Voldemort could not have risen to power without the help of the oppressive system that was already in place. The moment he came out in the open with his Death Eaters at the Battle of Hogwarts, he got smacked down.
In the real world, political correctness, virtue signalling, and media propaganda are the things that help home grown and external terrorists to thrive. They exploit the pseudo-kindness of the left who cry foul when Donald Trump cleans house and tries to protect America from the guerrilla tactics of terrorists. You see unlike Voldemort there are terrorists out there who do want to rule. There are people who do want to dismantle the government so they can set up a theocratic ultra-reactionary government structure.
What people like Rowling don’t understand about U.S. politics is that the left in this country has become more authoritarian and the right in this country has become a lot more libertarian. Trump isn’t banning muslims from the United States. He’s not banning Mexicans either. What he is doing is putting US. citizens first. He is favoring people who came to the US legally. He is favoring the people that took the time and energy to apply for citizenship. He is favoring law-abiding citizens and that is what a government should do. He is rewarding people for being good citizens and working in their favor.
Even Minerva McGonagall enforced Hogwarts rules, but during the battle of Hogwarts she did worse than Trump. She didn’t sort through all the Slytherins individually and let them fight with everyone else. She sent all of them to the dungeons for the duration of the battle. She didn’t vet anybody or think, “Hey maybe some of the Hufflepuffs are a bit shifty.” She sent all of the Slytherins to the damn dungeon and didn’t take any chances.
I guess what I’m saying is that when people get famous they become arrogant. They start to think that they are knowledgeable about things other than what they are good at. What Rowling is good at is writing stories in her sandbox universe with so many plot-holes that it could be a hunk of swiss cheese. She’s good at writing herself into a corner, then using deus ex machina to save her under developed mary sue characters that suffer under the weight of their tremendous plot armor.
Rowling has described bullies as people who hate something in someone else that they see in themselves. I think what she really hates in Donald Trump is the sheer arrogance and thinks she is above all that because of how “liberal and progressive” she thinks she is. But her tweets are dripping with arrogance and self-importance. Writing Hermione Granger was no accident. Hermione is J.K. Rowling’s mary sue. A self-important arrogant insufferable dork who hates other self-important arrogant insufferable dorks.
Rowling’s tweets about Trump might as well be a deflated wandless shouting match between Hermione Granger and Draco Malfoy, where Malfoy for once is being the better man. While Hermione in her typical pettiness is being a complete wench and doesn’t have her friends, deus ex machina, or plot armor to save her. Her inner ugliness is just there for all the world to see with no justification. If anyone wants to see what Hermione Granger would have grown up to be without deus ex machina, take a look at Rowling. Because she’s rich, famous, successful, but also a lonely, bitter, arrogant, spiteful bully like Voldemort.
Ocean Elf: And she does her bullying via propaganda disguised as fantasy stories, followed up by uber leftist opinion tweets.
Rachel Edwards: She like much of Hollywood is angry that Trump is a rich, offensive, provocateur, that says stupid things. But at the same time they’re being like everything they claim to hate. They can not reconcile the fact that what they hate in Trump is what they hate in themselves. It doesn't matter how much money they give to charity or how “progressive” their values are. They still deep down are self-hating pieces of crap hating on Trump for doing the exact same things that they are doing.
Ocean Elf: Yes, and they wouldn't hate him if he was a democrat instead of a republican. They are just using Trump's stupidity as a smokescreen, trying desperately not to let us see their own. Even if Trump wasn't such a doofus, they would hate him, because he is not leftist.
Rachel Edwards: J.K. Rowling is using her fame and political opinions to try and alleviate herself from the sense of survival guilt she feels after going from being a single mom on welfare to a millionaire in a relatively short amount of time. Deep down she feels undeserving of the fame, the money, and everything she has, but has no problem trying to use it as a weapon the moment she’s a little bit upset.
Ocean Elf: I wouldn't go that far. Her past has no relevance here as far as I'm concerned, but I definitely think she sees her fame as a golden opportunity to really let loose with her politics. Since, for years, she and Harry Potter could apparently do no wrong, she sees herself as untouchable and can really let the world know how she feels, and expect us all to just fall in line and still think she must be absolutely right. After all, she wrote the greatest piece of literature, ever! *Snicker*
Rachel Edwards: She’s given one million dollars to the British labor party in donations and still the conservative party recently took over in Britain, and Brexit happened. Admittedly I don’t know as much about British politics and I don’t pretend to, but when you’re that far left and you see the conservative party take over, that’s got to place a metaphorical stick firmly up your butt. Her power’s been reduced to that of a tiny yipping dog on a chain barking at the mailman on the other side of an iron fence. Dripping with irrelevance she yaps to her followers dangling powerlessly on the end of her choke collar. Out of sight. Out of mind. With only the echoes of a faint bark heard occasionally in the distance. Ocean Elf: Lol! Oh, if only. Unfortunately, there are still a swarm of yapping dogs, they are known as the mainstream media.
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Voldy is not anti-segregationalist. He just isn't that advanced, or at all humanitarian/egalitarian at all. He is power-hungry, sadistic, selfish, greedy, hedonistic, narcissistic. He's the kind to use anyone, and twist any political agenda to his own advantage. Since he'd rather dominate everyone and give himself all the power and perks that go with it, I would also classify him as a communist/fascist. He's an anarchist to a certain degree, but once in power, he would do all he could to stamp out all resistance, including that coming from anarchists.
I've always thought that wizarding world was awfully repressive and full of bigotry too.
There has never been much of anything about that series I liked. And it just never ends. *Cough* "Fantastic Beasts" *Cough*
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