#moira squier

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I'm glad my Moira Squier/Hogwarts Legacy post is still doing the rounds, because that is incredibly rare for me in my entire fourteen-odd years on tumblr, but I have…some kind of emotions I don't understand about it. Like, legit cannot put my finger on it. There's something like sadness or disappointment or maybe even a little resentment, but maybe it's more bittersweet? It just makes me think of the period last year when my main social media experience was being incredibly fucking patient with total fucking assholes.

The most recent messages in my inbox are still about it. I haven't deleted them because it feels weirdly grounding—proof that I'm not just making it up, these aren't just screenshots, people actually said these things to me over a fucking video game. (Screenshots & transcripts under the cut. TW for antisemitism, libel, death wishes, transphobia, pedophilia mention.) For a while, looking at far-right forums even became a coping mechanism; again, it was proof that I wasn't making it up. The antisemites were actively gloating about it. They were excited. They were talking about how cool it was to see their beliefs represented in mainstream media, which—incidentally—is something they also said about The Dark Crystal.

Anyway, I'm gonna end this here before I go into a tangent about that. But yeah. I'm glad people are still reading my post.

Image description: two asks in my tumblr inbox, both from anonymous posters.

First ask: "Jews hate brown people, jews hate Arabic people, jews hate minorities, why shouldn't I stand against your racist kind?!?!?"

Second ask: "Oh, a game makes you violent because you'r living such a privileged life what you don't have real life problems at all, what a pathetic waste of air are you! And that crossdressing pedophiles you try to protect needs to be murdered with all your left cult. You'r are fascists and a what even worse a pedo fascists. But finally more people see what a violent, narcissistic, manipulative crybullies all of you actually are. Next we need to send all the privileged fucks like you into s North Korea! They'll teach you what actual problems are!"

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Genuinely don't understand people who think the game is 'nuanced' or 'morally grey'. There's nothing nuanced or morally grey about antisemitic tropes, allusions to actual conflict that caused the deaths of Jewish people and a Shofar blatantly showing up in-game referred to as a 'goblin artifact'. I hate that it's somehow become a divisive issue and normalized ignorance towards genuinely harmful rhetoric. Thank you for talking about this!

You're very welcome.

As a side note, I don't actually think the 1612 goblin rebellion was a reference to the pogroms, although it would've been nice if someone had caught that. The 1612 rebellion wasn't an invention of the game developers; it was first mentioned in Prisoner of Azkaban back in 1999, and I genuinely don't think JK Rowling knew enough about Jewish history for that to even be an instance of cryptomnesia, let alone an intentional nod. Throughout the books, whenever a random number was needed, JKR tended to gravitate towards six, seven and twelve; this pattern was so pronounced that there were fan theories about its significance. The date of this rebellion (which was canonically just one of many) fits that pattern.

If I'm right about it being a coincidence, it still belongs on the long list of instances where sensitivity readers could have helped.

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You do know that there's no proofs that Rowling intentionally put antisemitic caricatures in her game and that she never EVER shown or implied any dislike of Jews herself and even publicly voiced her support for Jews who were victims of antisemitism? (https://www.timesofisrael.com/jk-rowling-tells-victims-of-anti-semitism-you-arent-alone/amp/).

She even went as far to compare the mudbloods to Jews and the discrimination they faced to Nazi ideology. So if there's only parallel to draw with jews is with the mudbloods. So check your sources next time and don't spread misinformation (especially with how gullible Tumblr's users, being pretty young)

No shit, Sherlock. JKR didn't write the game. I keep saying that.

Seeing yourself as an ally to any minority, Jews included, doesn't magically cure any ignorance or implicit prejudice you might hold. If you do something harmful to that group, saying you support them doesn't undo the harm—especially if you don't recognise what you've done.

Non-Jews can write stories inspired by our trauma, but they don't have a great track record with it. JKR is a pertinent example of that poor track record: she wrote books based on a rudimentary grasp of our history while never acknowledging our existence in the text. (Clarifying after the fact that we did exist in her world doesn't change the fact that she never mentioned us in her actual stories.) She also based a character on herself and made that character a member of the group supposedly analogous to Jews, which is a weird choice for a Christian; then she had that character behave in hypocritical ways towards members of a different group that actually has much more in common with Jews.*

It's interesting that you're referring to the marginalised group in-universe by a word that is so offensive to them in-universe that there's only a single instance of a single person reclaiming it. I'm not going to police the use of fictional slurs, but this seems like an odd choice on your part, especially since the slur in question refers to the people intended as a metaphor for Jews.

I've been reading Harry Potter since 1999 and analysing it online (in great detail) since 2001. I've read extensive popular and academic literature about antisemitism and folklore and modern media and how all these things intersect. I've been following news about this game in particular for the past year, reading interviews with the developers, watching promotional material, looking into the developers' other work, checking out players' reviews, reading walkthroughs, and watching literally hours of footage from the game to make absolutely certain that I'm not spreading misinformation about it. How many more sources should I be checking?

I've never once said, or even implied, that every fictional species discriminated against in-universe is based on Jews.

So, to recap: I have been extremely clear that my posts about Hogwarts Legacy are not about JK Rowling. I have consistently corrected misinformation from people who agree with me and denounced the use of unverified information to criticise the game. I have gone above and beyond to ensure that I know what the fuck I'm talking about. How about you?

*Hermione explicitly says that goblins don't need allies in Goblet of Fire, and never mentions goblin rights again until a goblin calls out her complacency to her face, at which point she claims to have always supported them and then plays the "I'm oppressed too!" card on him. Once he's out of earshot she conspires to deceive him into betraying his people, with the intention of double-crossing him immediately afterwards.

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Thank you for actually taking the time to connect the dots as to why JKR's goblins are antisemitic

There's just been too many times when I've seen people draw racial parallels to fictional groups that I know for a fact aren't there cause I know the works very very well, which made it so in this case I was like "You know, I'm not really gonna make up my mind one way or another, but just working with money doesn't immediately equal Jewish"

And no one really bothered to go further than to say it was antisemitic with no additional backing, and a mentality that if you don't see it that must mean you're antisemitic too

So I really appreciate you providing that smoking gun of multiple concrete connections, cause when you stack that many things that 100% are accurate to how she portrays them, that gives me a view of the situation where yeah, I can't really come to any other conclusion

So yeah... just really appreciate you arguing the case for things rather than just stating them, cause I tend to be skeptical when I'm just told something, but when the reasons why it's true are laid out for me I generally come around pretty quick

You're welcome.

I would like to point out that I'm not the first person to explain it, but I realise I may be the first person you've encountered who explained it. The reason I've gone to such lengths to do that is precisely because I saw so few people doing it.