I’ve never watched or read any of the Harry Potter stuff. So I feel pretty good right now.
Why do we even need a remake of the old movies? The movies are still holding up very well in this day and age. Why couldn’t they focus on some other story? Expand the universe a little. Hogwarts is not the only magic school that exists…
I don’t get this whole drama with Harry Potter. When I was younger, I was a big fan of Ender’s Game. A few years later it came out that the author of the Ender books was a huge bigot and was using his money to promote right-wing causes. I dropped the books, didn’t buy anything else from the author, and every other fan of the series that I talked to did the same. There wasn’t really any debate about it. When the movie came out, none of the fans of the books showed up and so it flopped.
With Harry Potter, though, it’s been years since we found out what kind of person J. K. Rowling is and people are still whinging about it. Why is this still even a debate (outside of right-wing transphobic circles, of course)? Find some other books to be a fan of.
Being a right wing bigot it cool now. There’s literally nothing you can do today to get actually cancelled.
Well… there is one way…
Aye, matey. There be a way, for those who are so inclined.
No. There isn’t.
Actual consumption.
With like a fork.
There are starving children that could be eating the show.
If your rlly into the harry potter movies just pirate them. They are like fine…
just like with star trek and Paramount, you cant be ethical and support ellison, just because star trek is on it too and its a"progressive show", and besides the 3 nutrek shows now cancelled seems to lean more of authortarian nature instead of a progressive one like old trek.
JK coulda kept her mouth shut and have remained as a beloved author forever. I’ll never understand what could drive someone to taint their legacy for zero gain.
It seems becoming filthy rich causes your brain to turn into a hateful goo. There is really no exception to this, just varying degrees of billionaires being more or less good at hiding how they have become insane hateful creatures.
The clues to who she is were there all along in her writing. She couldn’t keep quiet, because she believes what she’s doing is right. Because she’s conservative.
The only major black character in the series is called “Shacklebolt”. The only Asian, “Cho Chang”. Zero LGBTQ representation in the books. Harry had the world at his feet and decided to join the police. The whole struggle of the saga is for a return to the status quo, rather than a better world. General lack of female agency, and women just being hysterical and needing to be slapped out of it. Goblins as an antisemitic trope. I could go on.
I put it to you that it was inevitable that, one way or another, her rancorous bile would have spilled out into the public debate as soon as she got famous.She also describes women that she wants the reader to hate as having masculine features. “Mannish hands,” a square jawline and thick neck on a teenage girl, there’s plenty in the first book alone.
Wasn’t there one Irish guy, and he had an experiment blow up in his face?
Never gave a shit about the series but remember hearing about token characters having a dose of racism to them.
Not just that, he was also obsessed with turning drinks into alcohol. As a 15 year old kid. I’m pretty sure he also tried to blow up multiple things as well, I don’t think it was a one time thing.
We Irish weren’t really bothered tbh.
The only major black character in the series is
*was ;-)
Every billionaire pulls up the ladder behind them in their own special and unique way.
Hubris, mostly. The success of her brainchild went to her head and this made her open her large trap for the whole world to hear.
Personally I’m on team black mold
But yeah I’ve had same thoughts. Seems like such a weird hill to die on even when you do have those beliefs.
What if I pirate it, talk to no one about it (not by choice but still) and then destroy all memories of it through aggressive drug use?
Why not just skip to the drug use phase?
Don’t go for the aggressively drug use, every 1.5 months go for an LSD or MDMA trip (3 months between each). Don’t heavily mix with alcohol (I like to have a beer mit trip but that’s all). Look up for different kind of electronic music parties, you’re going to find one that match your vibe.
You just want to do drugs
Skip the extra steps and go straight to the drug use, that’s what id do.
Remember: Even piracy doesn’t offer absolution.
These properties rely on popular / universal awareness to achieve network effects and cement themselves within modern culture. When this happens, the memes and concepts from the property worm their way into everyday language (“he who cannot be named”, “10 points for Gryffindor”, etc) and help keep everyone else buying.
The only answer is to treat people talking about Harry Potter as you would someone who keeps talking about the greatness of R Kelly’s music or Bill Cosby’s comedy.
Thank you! It’s been super disheartening to see people get excited about Harry Potter all over again, just as it was to see friends buy the video game a few years back. Many people who want to ostensibly call themselves allies are more than happy to engage in Nostalgia over Solidarity.
I read the Harry Potter books as a child. I enjoyed them a normal amount. I think I dressed up as HP for Halloween one year. But then I grew older and I “graduated” to other fantasy, as I would generally expect someone to do.
Now when I think about Harry Potter, I always think of Ursula K Le Guin’s comments:
Q: Nicholas Lezard has written ‘Rowling can type, but Le Guin can write.’ What do you make of this comment in the light of the phenomenal success of the Potter books? I’d like to hear your opinion of JK Rowling’s writing style
UKL: I have no great opinion of it. When so many adult critics were carrying on about the “incredible originality” of the first Harry Potter book, I read it to find out what the fuss was about, and remained somewhat puzzled; it seemed a lively kid’s fantasy crossed with a “school novel”, good fare for its age group, but stylistically ordinary, imaginatively derivative, and ethically rather mean-spirited.
Ursula K Le Guin is a great author! And as far as I understand, a pretty good person, too.
Yeah but this is 2026. People don’t read books anymore. So all they have is nostalgia for the one series they read as a kid.
it’s literally just the same story again too, for the 3rd time
if you’re willing to throw trans people under the bus to watch a remake, you’re genuinely fucking pathetic at this point, like do something else with your life jfc
I prefer Michael Rosen’s poetry. Seriously!
I’d pirate it but I find the story just not interesting or worth my time.
I read Philosopher’s Stone about 25 years ago as a teenager and wasn’t impressed. Didn’t read any other because that one already felt like wasted time. Went to a movie in 2007 (no clue which one that was) and again forgettable. Not bad, in fact I still remember Die Hard 4 that I also watched back then because it was so bad. That HP movie? No idea about plot or anything. Another one? Thanks, I’m good.
Even if Rowling wasn’t a disgusting person, I feel like what I’ve seen of her work is just not great. It’s not terrible, but I don’t care for it at all.
But also, she can get fucked.
Behold! I give you: woman.
Technically, chickens are hatched, not born. So not “born with egg-producing equipment”.
A featherless biped with egg laying equipment then
Just pluck her
And broad flat nails.
2007 was Order of the Phoenix, which is the most boring and also does not make any sense at all out of context. Strangely enough, that movie was also my first experience with Harry Potter, because a friend invited me to go see it. I did read the books later, which were decent enough, but like all global phenomena, it’s not really about being the best of the best, but being in the right place at the right time.
The fandom was fun though, the discussions on Tumblr, the theories, the fanfics, the comic cons. I never see a wizard robe these days, even though it’s such an easy costume. I think Joanne killed the fandom.
The only ethical consumption of the original Harry Potter Movies is to watch it with the gleefully unauthorized Wizard People Dear Reader soundtrack/overdub.
Anyway, we were at a bar and were getting a good laugh at a guy who was playing pool all by himself while wearing a hoody over his hat, sunglasses under that and headphones on the outside of all of it. So we started riffing on “What could he possibly be listening to?”. Someone who I don’t think was me said that he was listening to a book on tape of Harry Potter. And out came the Wizard People narrator. I joked that night that I was going to rush home and record an entire misinformed book on tape of The Sorcerer’s Stone, because I had not and have not ever read any Harry Potter books. Once I started making notes for it I realized that an audio track alone could get boring, so I decided to sync it with the movie. Then I took a week or two and made the damn thing. I love it.
Wait a minute, I always fucking hated Harry Potter!
<insert relevant screenshot from Boondocks here>
I’ve always found Harry Potter universe to be quite campy. But I also never got into Lord of the Rings and thought Game of Thrones was awful so my opinion on television media may not be average or popular.
Lord of the Rings is second to none. The amount of development that went into it is staggering. It’s as grand and epic as any of the ancient works of mythology, and that’s what it was intended to be.
Meh. It’s a bit slow.
Yeah I get it and I dont deny that. Having never read the books though, I find the movies to be somewhat difficult to follow and with the exception (probably) of the first movie, I simply dont find them memorable or ranked high in my own mind as something I want to re watch.
The story in the movie was good but lacked the ethereal fae quality and a lot of the quiet beauty in the book.
I highly recommend the books, if you can find time to read. I know a lot of people have trouble settling down to read these days (myself included). I wish I read more!
Time to read yes
For me its the attention amd focused I’ve got time, just not tje attention and motivation (I fantasize but procrastinate)
I have been the 3rd or 4th dune book for about a year now (I have been on the last 50 pages or so for probably 6 montjs)
I have resd the first half or so of Don Quixote about 3 times
I habe now started to read Herodotus Histories for the 2nd time (didn’t finish last time stopped around half way thru Book 2)
And I made the (fortuitous?) mistake of starting Hitch hikers Guide to the galaxy twice now and I did really enjoy it right off the bat, so that one might rise to the top of the list lol
I have also begun reading Amadis of Gaul due to interest in Medeival Chicalry novels and I’ve yet to finish King Arthur (Mark Twain) whereat I only have maybe 100pgs left. (Not a good book, TBH but it gives some background to Quixote as does Amadis of Gaul
LOTR is definitely also in this ridiculous list of want to reads. As is
Divine Comedy Aeneid Decameron Pilgrims Progress Infinite Jest Grapes of Wrath Something by Ishiguro Metamorphosis etc etc etc
I should make a post about this so.I can properly.vent instead of ‘hijacking comments’
Divine Comedy
Get yourself a quality translation, mine was kinda ass, don’t remember whose it was though.
