HARRY POTTER wank, criticism and memes

HARRY POTTER wank, criticism and memes fuck jkr you can love something despite its flaws

[inthislight-remarkable]

REFUSE to CONFORM to SOCIETAL NORMS, GENDER ROLES, or the HARRY POTTER EPILOGUE

[thisismytrashok]

[burntlikethesun]

if you're just joining us, george takei is having to educate jk rowling on holocaust denial

[teaboot]

She could have easily looked this up before replying, but no, in her mind, trans people- trans women especially- are new, recent, an invention of modern times that are simply whining about failure to receive special, preferential treatments

In this reality, it would be so ludicrous to imply otherwise- that trans people have ALWAYS BEEN HERE, and have faced genuine oppression, not just 'not getting extra priveleges', but real, actual, systemic violence and destruction- is such a ridiculous concept, the possibility that it was true didn't even cross her mind.

Like finding out your "dramatic, lazy" coworker always "faking sick" was just diagnosed with cancer.

She isn't open to receiving new information and growing as a person because she's already decided what she wants to believe. She doesn't WANT to learn otherwise. She just wants to hate trans women

[noxpersona9]

The Biggest Continuity Issues in The Cursed Child - MAJOR SPOILERS BELOW!!!

1. The VoldemortWins AU shouldn’t be possible. Harry couldn’t have died at the Battle of Hogwarts because as long as the magic of Lily’s sacrifice is in Voldemort’s blood, Harry is “tethered to live while he lives”. Therefore, even if Cedric killed Neville, preventing Nagini’s destruction, Harry would have been forced into hiding, as neither he nor Voldemort could have died.

2. Nobody should have been able to see the Potters’ cottage in Godric’s Hollow. There was a Fidelius Charm in place when everyone travelled back in time, and no one was expressly told by Wormtail about the location of the Potters’ cottage. Therefore, it’s not possible that anyone could have been able to see the Potters or their house.

3. Harry’s scar shouldn’t have been able to hurt. The reason Harry’s scar hurt was because of the pseudo-Horcrux inside his forehead trying to return to Voldemort. Once that fragment of his soul was destroyed, Harry scar didn’t hurt and he also lost the ability to speak Parseltonge.

4. Delphi’s very existance is dubious Assuming that Voldemort was even able to… er…  'make the beast with two backs’ with Bellatrix, why would he even want to? He wouldn’t have wanted to create an offspring - it’s such a ‘mortal’ thing to do. And besides, any offspring of two powerful wizards could have posed a formidable threat to him.

[alpacinoss]

things Harry James Potter would never do:

tell his son he wished he wasn’t his child 

insult/threaten Minerva McGonagall and invalidate her abilities and understanding of children because she doesn’t have any of her own

incessantly stalk his child and threaten him, not caring how his child feels about it

be prejudiced against his child for being in Slytherin after telling him he felt the opposite when seeing him off at Platform Nine and Three-Quarters

tell his son he wished he wasn’t his child !!

[kuustuff]

[animentality]

This fucking thread about JK Rowling's shit world building.

[thedreamermusing]

Albania is way too small in the HP world. 

The Bloody Baron tracked down Helena Ravenclaw in an Albanian forest with no problem. 

Voldemort finds Ravenclaw’s diadem in an Albanian forest with no problem.

Peter finds Voldemort in an Albanian forest with no problem.

Bertha Jorkins who’s literally on holiday in Albania somehow is close enough to Peter in the same forest.

Quirrel also ran into Voldemort in an Albanian forest

Like…how is this forest so small that anyone can run into each other?? Also there is more than one forest in Albania. How are they all ending up in the same one? They’re all going to a park and just calling it a forest to look cool. 

[radiofreederry]

Greg Ellis is an MRA who sent revenge porn of his wife to coworkers and is permanently barred from seeing his children

[viciere]

[venticaramelmocha]

Draco Malfoy in the books

If you didn’t read the books you wouldn’t know…

Draco Malfoy personally made the Potter stinks buttons and nobody could fix them to say Harry was cool and shit, if they tried it would only make the insults worse

You wouldn’t know Draco Malfoy was always right behind Hermione in grades

You wouldn’t know Draco was seriously the most animated person at school and acted out everything. 

You wouldn’t know Draco got deeply offended when people didn’t laugh at his jokes

You wouldn’t know Draco created the Weasley is our King song, tune and all. (Probably in the shower or something because he’s such a weenie) 

You wouldn’t know Draco and Ron got into a fist fight in their first year

You wouldn’t know about the huge knock down drag out between Draco, Harry and the rest of the Slytherin and Gryffindor quidditch team in their fifth year. (Harry  and Draco just fucking tackle each other and start whooping each others asses and it’s amazing.)

You would miss out on basically everything Draco says and does. He’s a walking gold mine and It’s upsetting the movies didn’t devote a few seconds for any of his shit (Azkaban did an okay job) 

You wouldn’t know about the Weasley is our king buttons he made in fifth year either

You wouldn’t know Draco didn’t actually try and fight a Hippogriff he was just petting him and offhandedly said that he was ugly. He didn’t sprint over to him, he actually did all the bowing and what not.

If you didn’t read the books you wouldn’t know that Draco is the most annoyingly smart and artistic little shit you’ve ever heard of. 

[readthebloodybook-deactivated20]

you also wouldn’t know that Harry was the only seeker who could beat him. That he suffered from quite severe depression in book five. Quit Quidditch, stopped seeing his friends. He was depressed to the point of looking physically sick. That when he confronted Dumbledore he said he had to kill Dumbledore because Voldemort had his family. Not because he was concerned for himself. You wouldn’t know that he was the only person able to find a way into Hogwarts passed Dumbledores protection spells.

[dreamydrarry]

you guys also miss out on the fact that Draco brilliantly sneaks some polyjuice potion from a potions lesson so that he can transform Crabbe and Goyle into different girls all the time so that no one suspected they were up to anything while the two of them guarded the area outside of the room of requirement for Draco.

you guys don’t get to see how his “big bad slytherin buddies” actually tried to calm him down on the train when he was obviously anxious about the whole Voldemort thing. he even calmly laid in Pansy’s lap while she played with his hair.

you guys don’t know about Draco going to visit moaning Myrtle in her bathroom and how she admits that he opens up to her and how he’s sensitive and cries pretty often. and the whole fact that they’re friends.

you guys even miss out on the fact that Draco and Harry meet before they introduce themselves in the handshake scene while they’re being fitted for school robes in Diagon Alley, and Draco has a full conversation with Harry without even knowing who he is.

i don’t think you even get a glimpse of the fact that Draco always receives letters and packages of sweets and stuff from home while he’s away at school.

i also can’t stand the fact that they removed THIS SCENE and basically added the total opposite. how are you going to delete the best character development for Draco, and just make him weak? standing next to his fellow classmates and refusing to cross the courtyard when his family calls him, yelling “Potter!” when he realizes that Harry is actually alive and running towards him and throwing him a wand!! it’s the strongest, ballsiest, audience-mind-changingly scene possible, and they just throw it all away.

((sorry i’m just really salty about how he was portrayed in the movies ok))

[snortinglaughter]

I’m internally screaming because this is everything that needs to be known by all of those haven’t read the books and have the bALLS TO SAY THE MOVIES ARE BETTER

[macremme]

These are amazing. And I confess that I haven’t actually finished the books yet. I’m still in Order of the Phoenix. (I don’t want Sirius to die in my head yet) Despite that, Draco is still my favorite character because he has character. Like, he’s one of those characters who you know isn’t black and white. He’s all these amazing and horrible things in one and the movies didn’t justify him. He was made out to be just a horrible human being. Though, I fucking love Felton with all my heart. I just wish they didn’t just show Draco as a coward and horrible person, I wish they showed how smart he was and his other qualities too.

[animentality]

[thesoftboiledegg]

What makes JKR's shitshow even harder to process is that she didn't just ruin a book series. Harry Potter was an entire subculture. Like Star Wars and Star Trek fans, Harry Potter fans dedicated their lives and careers to the series. I don't know if I'd call it "underground," but liking Harry Potter got you beaten up when I was in school, so it was more of a dedicated indie culture than a mass-appeal fanbase.

Harry Potter was so huge that fan works developed their own followings. Potter Puppet Pals racked up hundreds of thousands of followers and was nearly as relevant as the series itself. For fanfiction, Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality got so big that it has a Wikipedia page. The band Harry and the Potters spawned the wizard rock music genre. A Very Potter Musical developed a fanbase and launched Darren Criss's career.

Harry Potter also has extensive ties to fandom history. Everyone in my generation (millennials) remembers coming home from school to read Harry Potter fanfiction on the Internet. Today, most people just post their stories on Wattpad or Archive of Our Own. But at the time, the fanbase was splintered between fanfiction.net and dozens of individual websites and forums, some made for specific ships. Since they all had individual hosts, a lot of those sites have been lost to time.

And there's the infamous My Immortal fanfiction, which is an Internet legend with people still searching for the author. Everybody read that one (and laughed at it) in middle school.

Pre-social media, fan sites like The Leaky Cauldron and Mugglenet had massive followings because they were one of few sources for news, theories, essays and fan content. Some of these sites still exist after being around for over a decade and building their own legacy.

Before Deathly Hallows came out, fans were so desperate to know what happened that Mugglenet published a book called What Will Happen in Harry Potter 7: Who Lives, Who Dies, Who Falls in Love and How Will the Adventure Finally End? Yep...Harry Potter was so big that people wrote separate books about what would happen in an upcoming book.

And that's not mentioning all the book release parties, Harry Potter-themed events, monuments, fan films, restaurants and even a theme park. A lot of fandoms have those, but Harry Potter infiltrated every aspect of popular culture.

Today, there's a thriving culture of "Harry Potter adults" with themed weddings, baby showers and Etsy stores. Putting your Hogwarts house in your Instagram bio is pretty much a prerequisite for joining the "bookish" community. Warner still produces new content, like the Fantastic Beasts series, although we've all seen what a disaster that's been.

Everyone has at least a few memories associated with Harry Potter even if it's just watching the movies. I had great memories associated with Harry Potter. But looking back at the subculture, history and thousands of fan works, it doesn't seem fun anymore. Studying the fandom or being part of it comes with an awkward tension because you don't want to seem like you're condoning JKR's bigotry but can't divorce her from the series. This subculture was spawned by a woman who turned her legacy of magic and wonder into one of abuse and hatred.

I don't expect people to write paragraphs about how much they hate JKR every time they post about Harry Potter, but it's still uncomfortable to see people make new content or wear their Harry Potter Etsy tote bags like nothing happened. Even if they clarify that they don't support her, it's just a weird, tense situation for everybody.

People dedicated years of their lives to running Harry Potter fan sites, writing fanfiction, cosplaying characters and making fan movies. If I were in that situation, I'd have a mild identity crisis. I'd ask myself "Did I waste all those years? Should I delete my content? Where do I go from here?"

So ultimately, JKR didn't ruin "just" a book series or even "just" a fandom. She tanked an entire culture, which inspired people to look at Harry Potter more critically. The issues that people brought to the light tainted the series's legacy even without JKR's personal issues.

Once, Harry Potter was a series for generations. Now, former fans hope that the series fades into irrelevancy. Unfortunately, JKR didn't just tarnish her legacy--she took decades of history, millions of fans and a worldwide subculture along with her.

[peerieweirdo]

it’s crazy having been super-involved in the HP fandom for more than a decade and watching the fallout from this

quidditch (the real sport) has changed its name to quadball

the harry potter alliance (a nonprofit) has rebranded to fandom forward

the sub-subcultures that sprung up within the HP fandom have now distanced themselves from the main fandom and have become independent groups in their own right

HP was so integral to the development of early online fandom (as OP’s mentioned) that now there’s sort of just a weird... hole in the internet

for many HP fans, it took up a lot of their life. three conventions a year, wizard rock shows, HPA fundraising, granger leadership academy, nightly fanfic, podcasts, quidditch games.

when fans (rightfully) shunned JKR and began to leave the fandom, a lot of them (myself included) were left rudderless. how do you reconcile the fact that most of your friends, hobbies, sometimes even jobs, were due to the work of such a hateful person? as OP said, did i waste my life?

i’m obviously not saying that this is the worst part about JKR’s bigotry (the worst part is, of course, the bigotry) or that HP fans are the worst-done-by victims (who are of course trans people)

but it is WILD to see such a juggernaut of internet fandom be virtually scrubbed away

[nimium-amatrix-ingenii-sui]

(Tags by @mainecoon76​) Really important additions IMO. “Well I always knew it was trash” or “Read literally any other book” are comments that pop up whenever the discussion comes around, and they’re not just useless, they entirely miss what the discussion is about. It’s about a massive cultural phenomenon that has been brought down by its living creator’s hatred and bigotry. It doesn’t matter whether the original content was ever any good. There are plenty of fandoms built on mediocre-at-best content and it absolutely doesn’t matter as long as it brings people joy. The issue here is that the entire material is now so poisoned that it has become hard to interact with it while it’s simultaneously hard to avoid. All the while remembering the joy that once was there and that has now been poisoned. Most Harry Potter fans have read plenty of other books. Many are active in other fandoms as well. “Read another book” is completely beside the point.

[fierceawakening]

This is exactly why I feel so uncomfortable with the "read another book" people. I'm not even big into HP, but like... if this happened with any one of my current blorbos, ESPECIALLY the ones that have been there for me on and off over decades, I'd be super upset.

Because it's not about how amazing a particular work is or isn't. There are classic stories, yes, that most humans agree are good even after a long time, but there are also stories that are just good enough everybody knows them, whether or not this will be the case a generation later. And it's not wrong or bad to like those!

Fandom is, most often, about the person seeking a fandom looking for a lens to understand themself and their experiences better. To impose a pattern on them that helps the chaos of life make more sense. I have a modified body, but I'm not (to use an example that's not HP, so people who hate HP won't accuse me of lacking imagination or something) ACTUALLY an evil cyborg that oozes goo and possibly won't die.

But the evil cyborgs who ooze goo and don't die are helpful, because there are parts of my experience that their story captures and describes, so I'm invested. More than anyone would "need to" be, really, because of the specific things about me that make it personal.

Which is what bothers me about the way so many of us treated Potter fans. Dump it, get rid of it, lose it, find something else. Turn on a dime, no matter what this meant to you and no matter what it does or doesn't have to do with how you feel about trans people OR WHETHER YOU YOURSELF ARE TRANS. No matter what it got you through or showed you that you could face, because for all the faults you fear will overwhelm you, at least somewhere inside you have a Gryffindor's courage or a Slytherin's cunning or a Ravenclaw's wit or a Hufflepuff's steadfastness.

I still maintain that shunning was unreasonable, and still deeply wish we all had chosen "She Who Shall Not Be Named is dead to us, long live Hogwarts" instead of... acting like a cult on a purity purging kick.

[dragonesseclectic]

So choose it! I refuse to stop reading and enjoying HP fanfiction just because JKR is a horrid TERF who is pathetically trying to convince herself that fans of HP must still love her if they love HP fandom. She's just using an invidious variation on "the lurkers support me in emails", and some terminally online folks are buying into it. No, just because JKR claims that liking Harry Potter is supporting her views doesn't make it so--she's what we might call an unreliable narrator. No one is forced to choose between supporting trans rights and enjoying Harry Potter; it's a false dilemma imposed by a bigoted liar. Harry Potter belongs to the fans--you can already see the change-over. "Epilogue, what epilogue?" and "Cursed Child doesn't exist" are major themes on AO3. It's like when Highlander fandom collectively decided there was only one movie and a decent TV series based on it. Fandom, not JKR, has decided what they'll accept as canon or not.

[fierceawakening]

"She's just using an invidious variation on "the lurkers support me in emails", and some terminally online folks are buying into it."

Yup.

[kyraneko]

Funny how we've gone from "you fanficcers are stealing from the author with your noncommercial fandom activity" to "you fanficcers are supporting the author with your noncommercial fandom activity" the instant that became the more useful opportunity to shame us for what we like and how we like it.

It's been years now since she produced any Harry Potter stories, let alone the good ones that we grew this massive garden of fanculture from, and everything that's taken it from being a random, satisfying kids' book series to the cultural phenomenon that it is, we've provided. We've provided the love, we've provided the attention, and, yes, we've provided the fanworks, the meta, the memes, the art, the headcanons, the reshaped and complexified understanding that is what Harry Potter is now as opposed to what it was when we first turned the last page of Deathly Hallows or the first page of Sorcerer's Stone.

She supplied it, but we transformed it. We reflected it. We remade it.

Her contribution, though not precisely irrelevant, is long ago and far away, and we have paid her for that already.

She was the seed.

We are the forest.

Fuck her, Harry Potter is ours.

[justaleafinthewind]

This is so important. I’m a trans person who loved Harry Potter even before I realized I was trans, and I refuse to let JKR force me discontinue my involvement with the fandom.

It wasn’t until after all this shit began to hit the fan that I made an ao3 account and started writing HP fanfic in earnest, though I was hesitant to do so because of JKR’s bullshit. But it feels so much better to me to contribute to this fandom as an act of reclamation, filling it with all the trans and queer rep that I want and deserve because I am not about to let this terf asshole ruin these characters and stories that were such an integral part of my childhood. 

I almost think of it as my own personal fuck you to her, because she’s trying so desperately to wrench this joy from my trans grasp and I am never going to let her.

[battlecrazed-axe-mage]

If you give this woman money, it will go to transphobic causes. If you give this woman a platform, she will use it to boost transphobic causes. This isn't a "well nobody's perfect" or "well x other creator also did something bad once" situation, this is an inordinate amount of influence for a creator to have, and supporting her by word or wallet actively hurts trans people.

[battlecrazed-axe-mage]

EXACTLY it's fucking disgusting

[minniethemoocherda]

Seriously though it would have been so easy to have canon gay characters in the Harry Potter series. All this stuff that JK Rowling said about not having enough time or would distract from the original trio is nonsense. Case in point:

Seamus gave a great roar of delight then ran to give Dean a lung crushing hug before pulling him down into a desperate kiss that was hungrily returned. Harry supposed ‘best friends’ was no longer an accurate description of the pair. 

or:

There were duels all over the stairs and in the Hall, Death Eaters everywhere Harry looked. He saw Alicia and Katie share a passionate kiss before they raced down the corridor to join the battle.

or maybe:

“Did I know in my heart of hearts what Gellert Grindelwald was? I think I did, but I closed my eyes. I chose to be blinded by my love for him. A choice that has haunted me ever since” 

or perhaps:

As Harry entered the great hall he walked past Lavender and Parvati who were sitting opposite the latter’s twin with their bodies pressed close together while their hands held the others in a death like grip that showed no signs of ever being let go.

or even:

“Albus Severus” Harry said quietly, so that nobody but Ginny could hear him, who tactfully turned to talk to Oliver and Marcus as they waved off their own three boys. 

See all I had to do was just add in a sentence or not even that and suddenly ….. wow a gay character. That wasn’t too hard now was it JK. 

[confused-robot-cat]

The absolute minimum she could have done was to leave out Scorpius’ apparent crush on Rose and drop the creepy Albus/Delphini stuff. 

[avantegarda]

All right kids it's time for "two opinions I don't think are contradictory" time

JK Rowling has said a lot of dumbass stuff and it's completely valid to dislike her and criticize some parts of the Harry Potter universe

Those books meant a lot to me and plenty of other people as kids and I still think they have a lot of redeeming qualities and generally entertaining bits, though of course I don't expect everyone to like them

There you go. That's what's up.

[avantegarda]

Also, @ people jumping on the bandwagon like "oh I never liked that horrible problematic series, I can't believe you enjoyed it when you were little, you bigot!": chill. I promise it's not a competition to see who was the wokest nine year old.

[ms-demeanor]

Hey I’ve got two more:

A lot of people had their first introduction to literature as an allegory for war in reading Harry Potter and the series does a reasonable job of presenting broad concepts like fascism and the banality of evil to a young audience.

The relatively uncomplicated characters and situations in a series of  children’s novels are not an effective model for adults to interpret the the real world and “republicans are like death eaters” is the kind of oversimplification of the real world that makes it impossible to discuss political opposition with any degree of nuance.

[genjjishimada]

do you ever just stare into space and really miss harry potter

[roseline-in-mountains]

Also this,