One Nice Thing
Nobody in my real life talks about it, nobody in my social media feed talks about it, it's--as it should be--a non-thing. Even among people I knew who used to like Harry Potter--even among people who now have hastily-covered-up Harry Potter tattoos--even from trans friends who once were deeply invested in the franchise.
But then--because I have to check on the worst people in games all the time for legal reasons--I found out there was one.
I wouldn't have thought much of it except--they are all talking about it all the time. Hundreds of them.
Congratulating each other for realizing Harry Potter is bad is now their personality in the same way complaining about official D&D's whole Open Game License fuck-up was their whole personality last week and complaining about me was their whole personality in 2019.
And the same way liking Harry Potter was their personality before that.
Lots of media is made by terrible transphobic people--but they're especially mad about Harry Potter because they fucking loved Harry Potter.
The Soft Smack
Anybody might like any thing for any stupid reason, but before JK Rowling revealed herself to be not just boring but also evil, Harry was frequently recruited by harassers in RPG circles to make a point about how bad it was to like cool, metal things like Warhammer or Jack Vance.
Harry was not like all the terrible nasty media that Old Schoolers liked a lot where push frequently came to shove and shove came to blood and blood came to axes and fire and people sometimes fuck or think, Harry was accessible, Harry was unproblematic, Harry was diverse, Harry wore sweaters, when people died it was emotional and earned because character development, Harry was Young Adult friendly and Dumbledore was gay and the only time anything was sexy it was in fanfic written by tumblr people, and Harry was, above all, soft.
Harry was a symbol for nightmare nerds of all that was wholesome and undifficult.
One RPGnet mod used to tag "10 points to Gryfindor!" when backslapping friends for outstanding feats of online harassment. Former-Pathfinder-employee-turned-professional-Karen Jessica Price once wrote about how since "spirit animal" was so problematic, we should all just say "Patronus" instead.
Which is so cringey that a joke newspaper that probably never heard of her repeated it years later as satire.
1. Good people liked wholesome media where wholesome things happened and that could be shared with the children they would eventually have or already had
2. And this was somehow not facemeltingly reactionary concerned-parent take but in fact a bold and progressive stance in These Troubled Times
The Failed Test
Just as the theory about morally improving games has been tested and disproved so has this one. They were proven wrong. Rowling's trash and so are zillions of her most devoted fans.
It's hard admit the club you were hitting people over the head with for 20 years is made of human shit.
So instead of apologizing to the people they attacked and talking up Adventure Time instead they are rebranding as people so angry about a video-game no well-informed grown-up cares about that they have to tell everyone it exists.
I lay odds this exact thing will happen again with Steven Universe in the next 10 years and, again, no-one will learn a single lesson from it.
The Price of Painkillers
My ex- used to listen to the audiobooks and movies to go to sleep, so I know the story much better than most things I don't like.
Aside from the issue of just how every generation is going to need some relatively long and relatively literary fantasy novel readable by children written in a version of the english language they'll recognize as of their own time, the only distinguishing thing about Harry Potter is its unusually full-throated embrace of the aesthetics of comfort.
Squashy armchairs, butterbeer, kids living in castles, bumbling idiot villains, shapeless outfits, plots so casual characters forget them because they keep going to class, authority figures who are not only good and wise and all-powerful yet non-threatening because old and gay they also respect you personally and say it a lot, domesticated goblins, wands instead of any more interesting or scary weapon, reading presented as the be-all end-all of fighting evil, and all this even as the stakes rise to death and genocide. All in prose so bloodless it made Peter Rabbit look like Les Chants de Maldoror.
It's as if the whole of Lord of the Rings took place in Hobbiton. The British genius for coziness-uber-alles given full vent over stressful social concerns like how to dress for a date or feed yourself--or anyone else.
If you dreamed you'd leave your shitty family and go to school and there discover you're really good at everything that matters with no work and have everyone decide you are an awesome celebrity because of your trauma and then successfully fight for what's right by pointing at people and saying words while wearing glasses, Harry Potter is the power fantasy for you.
It was meant to be, by its author, a monstrous, thoughtless person who thinks she's being socially progressive by avoiding any invitation to engage her victims.
Again: there's nothing wrong with liking that story or any other--but wielding it should have always been suspicious. It's not a coincidence that all the people who did that as adults to other adults later turned out to be yes, actually, really bad at real-word problems and being adults.
It should be no surprise that, like Rowling, these people thought of "This conversation makes me uncomfortable" as a reason to leave it.
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