I’ve seen people talk about actors and artists that had a terrible time.
My own would be Anne Rice. She wrote Interview with the Vampire after her young daughter died of Leukemia. Then her husband suddenly died of a brain hemorrhage. I suspect her Christian, anti-fanfic phase was a result of mental illness and manipulation from the publishers, although I don’t think she ever apologized.
Doing something bad doesn’t negate all the good that came with it.
For those of us who grew up with her books and don’t identify with our birth gender it does. Harry Potter was an escape for us because we were weird, didn’t fit in and had complicated feelings we didn’t know how to put into words. Now it is so tainted because we know we wouldn’t have been accepted there either. I loved the books and now it just hurts.
As another commentor said, there are trans chars in the new hp game. You can even play as a trans character. You can separate the art and the artist
The game in my opinion is different as yeah it was made for the world she made but it wasn’t made by her. The books are just different, but those are my thoughts on the whole thing.
Because of this whole thread and convo, I went and looked up the HP walking tours in Edinburgh. The Potter Trail is the second result and they put a notice on their website that they stand with trans people.
I think her actions are kind of revealing who in the fandom actually genuinely believes in acceptance and love, and who is just blindly following her because they’ve put her on a pedestal.
Not sure how to end this reply, actually. I want to say something reassuring like “you matter” or “I’m glad you exist” but that’s probably… weird. I wish that no one had to experience the kind of hurt that comes with losing something that comforted them through their worst times.
“Separate the art from the artist”.
Had to learn that lesson as I was a huge Beatles fan, John was my favorite, but hearing how his personal life went and how he treated everyone around him was very disappointing.
Still, Rowling needs to get her privileged head out of her ass, and realize that people are just people.
P.S. I love how they added a trans person in Hogwarts Legacy, as a big Fuck You to her.
If you think they put something like that in the game without her okay, you are deluded. She doesn’t hate trans people as a whole, contrary to what frothing activists believe. She 100% considers them just people.
What she objects to is the erosion of single-sex spaces & services. If those were allowed to persist without being called bigotry, then she & probably many gender critical people wouldn’t have an issue. Don’t be a simpleton; recognize that there are complex perspectives involved and not just “hate”.
Yeah the unfortunate truth is that most people who have the…how shall I phrase it? Gumption? Force of will? Personality size? To become a successful artist and navigate the hurdles that stand in the way of that probably also have some glaring personality flaws in the package as well. Is it even possible gor an individual to achieve success at such a scale that ones work becomes widely known without having some skeletons in your closet? (Or shamelessly on display as in Rowling’s case?)
Problem is that she’s still profiting from Hogwarts Legacy. And any profit she rakes in, she takes as an endorsement of her views on trans people. She said so herself on the hellsite she’s glued to so obsessively (seriously, the woman is a prime example of what happens when people don’t get off Twitter).
Still not what that phrase means
Yet it sort of does, because you start looking back at the characterisations and stereotypes she used in writing the originals and realise that there was bias in her writing from the beginning, that you didn’t notice because you were yet a child and yet unfamiliar with how stereotype can subconsciously affect people’s interactions and have an effect in society.
I never experienced the harry Potter fandom throwing slurs at me. If anything that stuff came from people who probably didn’t read any books. At the end of the day she inspired a whole generation of kids to read. There’s a lot of good that came from that.
And apparently “the kids these days” are terrible readers and do not read as a hobby. Part of it is b/c they never learned how to read but they keep getting moved along to the next grade b/c being held back was deemed too stigmatizing.
People say she inspired a whole generation of kids to read. Honestly, so much of that was marketing spin by her publishing company.
Those books were a publishing fad, but others came before her and after her. Kids were always reading. They just weren’t all reading the same thing.
It’s not that she did one thing, she revealed that her mentality is hateful and close-minded. Hard to get past that.
It’s completely alright to mourn when something good or potentially good goes awry.