Hogwarts Legacy: So You Want to Separate the Art From the Artist

So you placed your order for Hogwarts Legacy or are considering it. You know J.K. Rowling is a horrible person, or so you've heard, but you really want to enjoy your favourite books' latest game. Sure, she's a little odd when it comes to those trans people, but other than that, she's not all bad, right? Let me enjoy the game, you say, that doesn't mean I support her (the obvious falsity of that aside), and really: what's wrong with it in the first place, huh?

Well, hypothetical stranger I just made up, today is your lucky day! Since you asked…

If you are unwilling to hear any arguments, this text is not for you, but if you ask 'what's the big deal anyway', you've come to the right place.

Let's rewind a little. Until recently, J.K. Rowling was mostly a beloved fantasy author. There were always criticisms of her works (and I don't mean the frankly plebeian style), such as the fact that the goblins, hook-nosed, hunched bankers with a love for plotting and betrayal reside in a building with a star of david on the floor, the hasty retcon of a singular Jewish character (with the most cliché name of 'Goldstein'), the subplot about the enslaved servants who love slavery and hate being freed, and so on and so forth, but by and large, most people saw her as the author of their favourite books, and that was it.

Since then, Rowling has come out in support of the current genocidal campaign against trans people, ostensibly out of concern for women's rights, despite the fact that people she has supported call anti-abortion crusaders 'fine people', people on her side sue rape crisis centers, and of course in spite of all known science, in support of disproven junk science, going against all major scientific organisations, and on the same side as anti-vaxxers, far-right extremists, anti-semites, more anti-semites, authors of murderous manifests, and desinformation oligarchs. It is no coincidence that Rowling's public conversion into an avid transphobe corresponds closely with the skyrocketing of anti-trans bills, going from 60 bills in 2020 to 131 in 2021, making 2021 the worst year at the time, and further to a staggering 120 bills in three weeks in early 2023 alone (that would be 2305 bills this entire year, if kept up)!

So far, so awful. But since you're reading this, that is obviously not enough to convince you, so allow me to present further arguments. Let's talk about Hogwarts Legacy.

Let's start with the fact that Warner Brothers knowingly hired a far-right gamergate youtuber as lead developer for the game, shortly after which details of the game were revealed, including the fact that aforementioned antisemitic carricatures would be central to the plot, namely in the form of a sinister plot and uprising which includes kidnapping a child. Let me recap: the greedy, treacherous, hook-nosed bankers who hate regular wizards kidnap a child. If the words 'blood libel' – the belief that Jews steal children, a trope perpetuated in modern-day conspiracy theories about 'grooming' or 'woke indoctrination' – didn't mean anything to you: now they do. That this rebellion is motivated by the centuries-long oppression of the goblins, who are denied civil rights, access to wands, and basically left with no business but to run banks (sound familiar?) and the goblins' desire for liberation, how dare they, is only the cherry on top, as is featuring a Jewish instrument, which just so happens to be dated in-game to the year of a real-life pogrom. Oh, and did you know that Goblins believe workers should own what they produce? That's right, the thinly-veiled jew-stand-ins are Marxists! You might want to look up 'Cultural Bolshevism' (nazis today say 'Cultural Marxism'), and take a long hard look at Deathly Hallows again (the book).

Here is part 2…

Mx Amber Alex (she/it)

2023-02-10 03:16:33

Then there is the fact that the singular trans character in the game, a trans woman, is not only sympathetic to the bad guys, but also has a name crammed with as many masculine implications as possible, including “sir” in the first name, a boys name as a last name, and one that means “little king” to boot.

Yep.

Which, by the way, is not the first time Rowling and her franchise have fucked up with names, naming a black man “Shacklebolt”, giving a Chinese character two Korean names and in general giving every non-British character the most stereotypical name you could think of.

Still want to play?

Go ahead. Enjoy yourself. Indulge. It's your conscience, you have to live with it. Tell me, did you ever take anyone's lunch away in middleschool?

Oh, and that's not to mention the protagonist of one of her crime novels (written under a pen name honouring an infamous conversion therapy torturer) threatens a trans woman with rape, along with deriding feminism and abortion rights, and the follow-up features a not particularly subtle self-insert in the form of a content creator who is murdered for not being woke enough.

Troubled Blood review: J.K. Rowling’s Cormoran Strike novel disappoints

The book sees Rowling at the mercy of all her worst impulses.

^{Constance Grady (Vox)}