Because JK Rowling puts her real world views in her world. As a kid, I stopped reading the books halfway through and just assumed that the House Elves and SPEW storyline would be resolved by the House Elves being freed. By setting up that would be storyline and leaving it at status quo, Rowling is endorsing race based slavery.
There’s a lot of small story elements that can be brushed off if they stood alone, but together add up and reveal Rowling’s conservative word view. Hagrid is naturally violent, the sorting hat, there’s a whole school house for evil kids and not one of them ever breaks expectations… I could go on if I wasn’t on my phone.
My whole reason for dropping the books halfway through was nothing ever changed. It was frustrating.
Ok, and some people are able to put that aside and enjoy them anyway. If those people are pirating the content she gets no money. If those people are able to say “yeah, that part is bad/shit/wrong” then her shit beliefs aren’t being propagated.
The people who care about this sort of stuff are already aware. The people who don’t aren’t going to be reading articles like this anyway.
This discussion is about whether or not there are ethical ways to consume the content, not about the merits of the content itself, which is the rabbit hole you seem to be stuck in.
We know. We aren’t defending it. We’re just saying that it is possible to get the content in ways that don’t enrich the creator’s bank account, and it is possible to consume it without going “Rowling was right”.
So your priorities are a wizard book for children that you like some of, then below that, in second place, the rights and lives of persecuted minorities.
“to the well trained mind, doing mental gymnastics to ignore harm to minorities is the next great adventure” - Professor Domblewomble, probably.
Yes because sometimes entertainment is just there for entertaining me and finding political plotholes in everything is already tiring enough considering my beliefs.
My personal, individual consumption of the media, which does not enrich the author financially or in the spread of the author’s ideals, has literally no effect on the rights and lives of persecuted minorities.
It’s not an either or situation. These two things do not have some direct inverse relation.
Every time you read a problematic passage about the house elves, ICE stomps on the nuts of another non-white person? Brother they’re doing that regardless of what I do.
I whole heartedly disagree with this seemingly recent concept that consumption of a thing somehow magically proliferates the problematic elements of that thing. It only does that if the consumer proliferates the problematic elements. I’m not going to.
Better not pirate the bible, the quaran, any HP Lovecraft, Edgar Allen Poe, Mark Twain (some horrendous takes about jewish people that no one seems to remember he said). Better tell historians that they need to establish careful rules about how many times anyone studies Mein Kampf.
I don’t have the words to engage with this idea in good faith. Yes, horrible people will use this shit to reinforce their horrible ideas. That doesn’t mean that everyone consuming it has a measurable effect on the proliferation of those horrible ideas, and that proliferation of horrible ideas has a direct connection to horrible actions. There are definitie and obvious connections, but every step is a significant level of abstraction from the one before it.
And for the record, I’m not even going to pirate this series. I am simply that opposed to this batshit concept I see paraded around more and more lately.
Even in this fantasy universe, saying Voldemort’s name didn’t actually give him more power.
Unrelated to the actual discussion, but this is shitty and rude. Don’t pretend you want to discuss something and then plug your ears when your conversational partner actually puts effort into a reply. Which is kind of what you’ve been doing the whole time, but you dropped the act here.
I’ve heard all those arguments before, and they have heard all the replies. It’s rude for them to bring them up AGAIN this many years into the discussion and act like they arent just trying to waste my fucking time.
Also I’ve replied to like two comments, stop acting like its some kind of pattern, with your tea leaf reading pseudo adult-in-the-room civility politics. We’re talking transphobes and the people who defend them, so sorry if being cordial isn’t top of my agenda.
Because JK Rowling puts her real world views in her world. As a kid, I stopped reading the books halfway through and just assumed that the House Elves and SPEW storyline would be resolved by the House Elves being freed. By setting up that would be storyline and leaving it at status quo, Rowling is endorsing race based slavery.
There’s a lot of small story elements that can be brushed off if they stood alone, but together add up and reveal Rowling’s conservative word view. Hagrid is naturally violent, the sorting hat, there’s a whole school house for evil kids and not one of them ever breaks expectations… I could go on if I wasn’t on my phone.
My whole reason for dropping the books halfway through was nothing ever changed. It was frustrating.
Ok, and some people are able to put that aside and enjoy them anyway. If those people are pirating the content she gets no money. If those people are able to say “yeah, that part is bad/shit/wrong” then her shit beliefs aren’t being propagated.
The people who care about this sort of stuff are already aware. The people who don’t aren’t going to be reading articles like this anyway.
This discussion is about whether or not there are ethical ways to consume the content, not about the merits of the content itself, which is the rabbit hole you seem to be stuck in.
We know. We aren’t defending it. We’re just saying that it is possible to get the content in ways that don’t enrich the creator’s bank account, and it is possible to consume it without going “Rowling was right”.
nah. There are Harry Potter fans who’s world views are shaped by the franchise. To the extent that they’ll write articles defending the House Elf Slavery. Here’s one example. https://web.archive.org/web/20191002072741/https://www.pottermore.com/features/to-spew-or-not-to-spew-hermione-granger-and-the-pitfalls-of-activism
Those people are already fucked. Me pirating or not pirating has no bearing on their existence and bad takes.
So your priorities are a wizard book for children that you like some of, then below that, in second place, the rights and lives of persecuted minorities.
“to the well trained mind, doing mental gymnastics to ignore harm to minorities is the next great adventure” - Professor Domblewomble, probably.
Yes because sometimes entertainment is just there for entertaining me and finding political plotholes in everything is already tiring enough considering my beliefs.
My personal, individual consumption of the media, which does not enrich the author financially or in the spread of the author’s ideals, has literally no effect on the rights and lives of persecuted minorities.
It’s not an either or situation. These two things do not have some direct inverse relation.
Every time you read a problematic passage about the house elves, ICE stomps on the nuts of another non-white person? Brother they’re doing that regardless of what I do.
I whole heartedly disagree with this seemingly recent concept that consumption of a thing somehow magically proliferates the problematic elements of that thing. It only does that if the consumer proliferates the problematic elements. I’m not going to.
Better not pirate the bible, the quaran, any HP Lovecraft, Edgar Allen Poe, Mark Twain (some horrendous takes about jewish people that no one seems to remember he said). Better tell historians that they need to establish careful rules about how many times anyone studies Mein Kampf.
I don’t have the words to engage with this idea in good faith. Yes, horrible people will use this shit to reinforce their horrible ideas. That doesn’t mean that everyone consuming it has a measurable effect on the proliferation of those horrible ideas, and that proliferation of horrible ideas has a direct connection to horrible actions. There are definitie and obvious connections, but every step is a significant level of abstraction from the one before it.
And for the record, I’m not even going to pirate this series. I am simply that opposed to this batshit concept I see paraded around more and more lately.
Even in this fantasy universe, saying Voldemort’s name didn’t actually give him more power.
Yo dawg I ain’t reading all that but congratulations, or I’m sorry that happened to you or whatever.
Unrelated to the actual discussion, but this is shitty and rude. Don’t pretend you want to discuss something and then plug your ears when your conversational partner actually puts effort into a reply. Which is kind of what you’ve been doing the whole time, but you dropped the act here.
I’ve heard all those arguments before, and they have heard all the replies. It’s rude for them to bring them up AGAIN this many years into the discussion and act like they arent just trying to waste my fucking time.
Also I’ve replied to like two comments, stop acting like its some kind of pattern, with your tea leaf reading pseudo adult-in-the-room civility politics. We’re talking transphobes and the people who defend them, so sorry if being cordial isn’t top of my agenda.