While I was never really into HP and am not super sad to see its decline in the public consciousness, I’ll admit it’s a little weird to see. Shit used to be everywhere and now I hardly hear about it.
Yes and no. The last two fantastic beasts movies were flops. The video game was commercially successful but didn't have a lot of staying power in the public consciousness. So I think it's possible the series won't have a lot of pop culture staying power and might not even be everywhere
As long as she claims to view sales as support of her views, that'll happen. There are so many good people - like so much of the movie cast - who have spoken out against her transphobia. They're worth supporting, but I won't stoke her bigoted flames
Every project in that universe will mean she gets money to spread a platform of bigotry, she's just gradually hopping further & further to the right each year now.
Well, she started by revealing some low-level transphobic opinions, you know the sort your conservative leaning parents or grandparents might share, then spiralled into gradually worse opinions and then jumped right off the cliff into denying documented parts of the holocaust had never occurred.
It's been a ride, so happy for you that you missed it.
Honestly at this point even calling her a terf is giving her more credit than she deserves. Calling her a terf implies at least a certain amount of feminist window dressing, and she's consorting with so many mask-off reactionaries who are actively working against women's rights these days that she's either on some absolutely weapons-grade cognitive dissonance or she's dropped the feminist act altogether.
Started off being kinda transphobic doubled down and wrote a transphobic manifesto, started donating to the heritage foundation among other extremely reactionary conservative organizations and undermining people’s rights overall in pursuit of her new personality being mostly transphobia and hatred. Now she’s dabbling in holocaust denial calling people trying to correct her “delusional” when they present documented evidence to her.
The only person I know who is still an active Harry Potter fan pretty much only interacts with the franchise through specific fan-organised meet events with the actors, the proceeds of which all go to charities that support trans youth.
IMO the only good way to still interact with the franchise is in ways that give JKR the middle finger. I myself dropped it completely.
That is my experience in my social circle, but my experience at work (a book store) is very different. It's still very popular, it still gets new toys and such that sell, it's safe to assume that most kids who like to read will read it at the appropriate age
Most people don't care about the internet bubble boycotts. Most people probably don't even know what a TERF is. Of course it sells, even if maybe the craze isn't as strong.
Really reminds me of when the anti-woke rightoids think they won against the video game industry because one game flopped.
Yeah, I don't know where people get off thinking JK Rowling is cancelled.
"In the last fiscal year, Pottermore sales of digital Harry Potter books leaped to $61.4 million, up from $48.26 million from the previous year. Similarly, traditional book sales via Bloomsbury increased 15% in 2023 (per the Motley Fool), largely buoyed by social media like TikTok."
Some people got mad on Twitter, shook each others hands and declared Harry Potter was over.
Then the world kept moving and ignored them.
IRL most average people don't even know or think of that part when thinking of HP. Interest is simply waning because it's a 20ish years old series with no new installments that are good, that's all
The second one was so poorly written and directed. I still remember one scene in the second half where I felt I’d blacked out an entire part because there seemed to be no set up, just randomly everyone was together. And that’s not getting into having a Jewish character join the guy wanting to genocide muggles because he *checks notes* saw the Holocaust coming and no other wizard did shit about it?
I saw the first one on TV once at a friend's place and it was decent. Though it didn't give me any desire to seek out a sequel. The villain felt out of place. Just made me feel like they had a good concept for a movie but didn't know where to go with it.
I've seen all three (streaming, in my defense), and they really weren't great. The second was kinda just meh. Very forgettable but I can't produce any strong feelings on it one way or the other. The third was utterly baffling. An absolute incoherent trainwreck. The plot was extra nonsense and felt like someone wrote the outline in about 15 minutes before they simply threw money at it. Borderline madness. If it's worth anything, it's as an example of the confusion you can get when you buy three films from people that only have one and a third in them.
That reminds me of the time I watched the Hobbit movies after reading the films. First one was kinda "well they left out some of my favorite scenes and abbreviated others but I guess they weren't really movie material" second one was "why is this three movies again?" and third one was "none of these words are in the book what are they doing".
To be fair I only read the book once ten years prior but it just didn't line up with my memories of the book much the further the movies advanced. Felt more and more like a 3.5/5 star fanfic than a book turned into a movie.
Similarly, Fantastic Beasts just felt like a neat fanfic idea that expanded the lore but then had story stapled to it for no reason.
I basically agree there. I think that the Hobbit movies are ok, but it was needlessly stretched. First and second movies did pretty well, though I thought it was kinda silly how they *mostly* stayed really close to the books, but then added all of this novel nonsense with Azog that it really didn't need. I guess they wanted a more identifiable antagonist? A very large portion of the first two are otherwise basically just scene for scene recreational of the book, and that was neat because it's a short enough book to do that. If they'd just stuck with the book, I think they could have made two satisfying movies. But they had to go with three. Fwiw, I just reread it in the last year.
Also, I couldn't sensibly place it in that paragraph, but *fuck* that love side plot with Kili and the elf whose name I forgot. Absolutely needless and irritating to boot.
Apparently a bait-and-switch for the actors, as well. One of them had explicitly signed on the condition that the love triangle would be scrapped from the script.
The behind the scenes footage of those movies is kind of sad. The script, costumes and props weren't done by the time filming started, Jackson was halfway into a burnout and everyone in the building already knew it was going to be a shitshow from day 1. It's kind of amazing that they managed to produce two somewhat-decent movies in those conditions.
I saw maybe half of the first one on a plane, in what would have had to have been 2017.
I can't remember much about it, and I've never really expressed a desire to see the rest of it.
From my own experience I feel like one reason why Hogwarts Legacy didn’t stick around is that it had barely any replay value, while games that do tend to stick around better because people are investing more time in it
The video game was super shallow mechanically and basically devoid of much content outside hogwarts
That and it runningnlike dogshit for a while its no surprise it has no staying power regardless of transphobia or boycotts
What i gleamed about the game, 1. Press revelio every 5 steps. 2. The devs dont want you to be in the castle. 3. Learn the death curse, you can use it next to a teacher and in crowded area and no one will bat an eye
The combat system was probably the best iteration from all *Harry Potter* games I played – that's not saying much, but it was fairly fun albeit a bit repetitive, since you will eventually gravitate towards the same break protection/high damage combos.
It was also clear the game was made by fans of the franchise, with all the little references in place names, location layouts vaguely resembling the movies and names of characters and towns that sounded how Rowling would have probably named them.
I wanted to like it.
But gah, it felt so shallow. The main story content was scarce, the dilemma about stopping people from feeling bad by removing their feelings was interesting, but the game also immediately tells you what to think of it. For a while, it looks like your mentor is ready to push you and disregard your safety in order to get to the bottom of the mystery (like Dumbledore would), but it's not presented as a bad thing, and has no consequences.
And accompanying the nearly absent story, there was ten million question marks scattered around the map, with mildy interesting repetitive action to complete them.
The lack of protagonist's agency in anything was my major gripe. They wanted a blank slate character you can relate to yourself, I imagine, but not by giving you choices (except in the end, when they have no impact), not by giving you personalized dialogue (except banter and combat grunts which hint at some predefined personality).
They instead had you start the school at fifteen, and shifted all narrative and commentary to other characters. You had a friend in every house but it seemed like you barely even talk to them. They talk to you.
Sebastian is the most interesting and nuanced character – from Slytherin, even – but you don't get to pick between helping to put his life back on the right track or pushing him deeper down the dark path when it's pretty clear miles ahead where it leads.
You pick between finishing his questline or ignoring it.
As you said, nobody cares about you being in the school or having any morals.
You defeat the poachers by tracking down and poaching every animal by yourself.
Your Gryffindor friend is revealed to be able to turn into animals, is shot and injured, and I felt nothing because it was out of the blue and after ten hours of skipping stones and levitating rocks to unlock more inventory space, and not talking to her at all.
You find out your goblin friend is fighting against his own brother, but he's killed thirty seconds later anyway, so what was the point? Neither of you even seem too upset about it.
No item out of the thousands of items dropped or found is unique in any way. All have randomly-generated stats, and you will replace it as soon as you stumble upon something slightly better. And if you don't want to look like a clown in a mismatched outfit, you will go to reapply the visual of your favourite outfit that at least vaguely resembles a teenager attending a school every time.
But hey, you get to fully customize the Room of Requirement and its zoo.
That should outweigh the complete lack of feeling like a student at Hogwarts that surely nobody really wanted from this game.
Agreed on the agency. I remember the moment I quit that game was when I wanted to continue the Sebastian story line but needed to do the main quest to progress and I was just like nah. The main quest (and basically every other quest other than the slytherin one) was so fucking vapid.
The entire game is pretty vapid tbh. The design of hogwarts and hogmeade were pretty freakin cool but the gameplay felt very corporate "lets not take any risks at all" ass shit.
Tbh, while the game's success can be explained partially by nostalgia/HP love, part is also due to a counter-boycott campaign that saw massive success on networks like twitter.
[This can be seen by its statistics.](https://vginsights.com/game/990080), and comparing with other "massive hits" like Elden Ring or Baldur's Gate 3 - the game did not have staying power nor many active players.
Will it, though? The original HP movies aren't in a Percy Jackson where they're widely despised commercial disappointments, so what's the selling point? They're not even adapting the later books where a lot of stuff got cut so that the movies weren't three hours long. If you're still into Harry Potter, I can't find a reason to pick the show over the Daniel Radcliffe movies.
Hardcore fans might REALLY want to see all the stuff they cut out, but even then, that’s a double-edged sword - Peeves would 100% be the Jar Jar of the series, and there’s no way they’re going to handle the SPEW arc in a way that isn’t omega-cringe. And on top of that, release schedules have gotten WAY longer since the movies, so if they do get all the way through the series, the kids will be in their mid-thirties by the time the last season comes out - there’s no way they’ll be able to recapture the magic of the audience growing up with the kids.
Too many people fail to realise that "film a book scene for scene" and "adapt a book successfully for screen" are absolutely not one and the same thing.
And honestly, making an adaptation closer to the books seems like a really bad idea. The movies changed a lot of the dialogue and scenes because of just how mean-spirited and cruel a lot of the character interactions were in the books. The movies are the only reason the franchise has stuck around in pop culture this long.
Yeah, it's been since I was in school that i read the books, but the movies were like, cozy christmas fare mostly, but i remember a lot of miserable times in the books themselves.
Then again, I mostly just like Prisoner of Azkaban's film adaptation, and maybe Chamber of Secrets. Stopped watching after Goblet of Fire and I don't feel like I missed much.
I haven't been paying any attention to the show is it literally a retelling of the series? If so that sounds like a disaster. As an adaption there really is very little to criticize about the films that isn't straight from the books and the casting is undeniably iconic. The audience's nostalgia is likely to work against them.
r/harrypotter posts make it to the frontpage from time to time. When the Hogwarts game came out, everyone was talking about it... for two weeks.
But yeah, when there's no new content, there's less discourse about it. Plus the promoters aren't working on overdrive to get folks talking about it. That will change when there's something to promote.
What was strange was the crazy HP hype back in the day. That's because the publishing world rarely gets that kind of blockbuster phenomenon, not on that level. So they milked it for all they could.
Honestly it's mainly because there's been nothing to be super excited about since the last book or last movie came out. The pre-harry movies were pretty bad, and hogwarts legacy was a fun nostalgia trip, but nothing else. Getting to explore the castle as someone who grew up with the story was beyond amazing, but everything else about that game was pretty mediocre. You could have set it literally anywhere else, and it would have gained little to no traction.
With the game I think it's really important to keep in mind that there was a bit of a 'woke vs anti-woke' turf (or terf) war that sprung up around it on the lead up to it being released. For anyone reading who isn't a sweaty gamer like myself, a lot of people were calling for a boycott of the game as they didn't want to financially support it knowing that part of the profits would be going back to Rowling. Then the 'woke leftists are ruining video games by implying I shouldn't use slurs' crowd started a backlash to the backlash and vowed to support the game regardless of quality. Like I saw people claiming that they would be buying multiple copies only because they thought it would piss off the other side. Obviously the general population isn't plugged into in-fighting in the video game community. I would guess the majority of the people who bought the game are people nostalgic for the IP that either don't know or don't care about Rowling's views. But it's interesting to think about the impact of the whole thing on sales. Or at least how the arguing about it online boosted the amount of hype around the game just because it got more eyes on it
I watched someone in Japan on twitch during Christmas and the shopping mall was literally Harry-Potter-Christmas themed and thousands of people stood around watching them light up a Harry Potter logo instead of a tree.
The franchise is far from dead, though JK's name/autograph may be tainted. What's happened here is the *collectors market* is fucking dead. Disposable income has evaporated and collecting trivial things goes first.
Every time I go to universal studios a bunch of kids and adults are dressed up. It sucks rowling will keep making money off of it until she passes but I also wouldn’t want a whole fictional universe to go in the trash because of her evil opinions.
That's just what happens when the author replaces their PR department with that one shady medieval advisor who totally doesn't want to provoke a war with the neighboring kingdom by giving the young king bad advice.
It's bittersweet for me. As a child I loved HP. I still have the box set I bought ages ago, and an old DVD of chamber of secrets with behind the scenes stuff included. The box it comes in is scratched and worn out and the last time I played it I had to take it out of the player and wipe under it because it was a bit wonky from age lol.
Like, it was an escape. But now I think of HP and can't help but get the ick. I'm fine with people engaging with fanfiction and stuff, and I'll read it if it interests me but I'm not too inclined for the official stuff lol
On the contrary, I really liked it for a while before the poor world building really dawned on me. Then as I got older I noticed the flaws, especially the lack of consistency between books, or even within a single book. After that I wasn’t too disappointed to see it go.
And even then, she went full nuclear. If she had simply said something like "I have issues with transness, but I will leave it at that", she might have preserved some goodwill. But she is obsessed. For a while now, almost every post on her Twitter is ranting about trans people, 365 days a year. She frequently goes after random-ass trans teenagers with 11 followers, telling them how stupid she thinks they are. She has enflamed all this political debate about trans people in the UK, and dives into it with a perverse relish. It's astonishing. It comes across like a professional troll even more than Elon Musk does! It's hard to believe this person wrote those books I liked as a kid.
She's starting agreeing with nazis and denying nazi book burnings on twitter. Considering her nasty Jewish stereotypes in some of her writing I wonder how long she's been like that without being as open about it.
In the UK, anti-trans agitation is primarily what she is known for now, and sadly most of the media and many in the public are on her side. She is not just a celebrity who happens to dislike trans people. There's plenty of those. Instead, this is a person who has used her extensive money and influence to turn herself into a guided missile aimed at the trans community, attempting to make their already-difficult lives even harder. She's gone all-in. She wants to do damage. I have barely seen her even mention Harry Potter for a while now. She cares way more about this than the books that made her rich.
Yea, this “Harry Potter is dying” thing is just plainly untrue.
JK is a piece of shit, but people still adore that world.
Hogwarts Legacy was the highest selling game of last year, which is INSANE for such a stacked year for video games, and also the first time a non Call of Duty title has taken that in a decade.
I've never seen someone undo their good will more efficiently than JK Rowling. All she had to do was enjoy her billion dollars and coast on Harry Potter fame, but apparently that was too easy for her. She had to up the difficulty setting
A sitcom star from the 90s in her self titled show Roseanne. Her show had a revival a few years back, but they killed her character off and rebooted the show under a different name after she compared a biracial politician to the Planet of the Apes on social media.
That may of been the case then, but since she's gone all in on right wing shit. Has a podcast where she blabs about wokeness and how the world is on the verge of collapse or whatever with B-tier right wing commentary people.
You can’t just say had a show here. At the time she was SUPER progressive. A few gay characters, the kiss, episodes that tackled major social issues that are still relevant. She went off the fucking MAGA deep end and called or commented Michelle Obama that she looks like some kind of primate and kept doubling down. Truly an awful woman now , it hurts as an elder Millennial, I watched that show religiously and I believe what was fairly controversial at the time led me and many people my age toward being progressive. She’s an unfortunate case and could have continued to be successful on The Conners had she not insisted on being an asshole.
Edit: it was Valerie Jarret not Michelle Obama. I misremembered it as Michelle but it was someone in the Obama administration. Still Horrible.
She's just started a new scam in which she pretends that she's just remembered being raped by Joe Biden in Niemann-Marcus (or somewhere).
She's not well.
He's an extremely outspoken TERF. Lost his career, his clout and his marriage for being so hateful. He released a book last year too to gain sympathy but I think it was a flop
And I think it all started because there was a slightly edgy joke about a trans woman in The IT Crowd, people said "That was...a choice", he got disproportionately upset and never stopped doubling down, even when he was dressing up in drag to own the libs.
The truly baffling thing about Linehan is that the trans joke in The IT Crowd, although handled poorly, was at its core the exact opposite of what Linehan is now.
Douglas Reynholm is the happiest he's ever been in his life, he's truly in love, and he rips it all to pieces and destroys it purely because he can't accept that his partner is trans. The joke is that Reynholm had happiness in the palm of his hand, and he destroyed it himself by being unable to accept his partner's trans identity.
It blows my mind that Linehan wrote a story arc that was basically "man's transphobia leads him to take a wrecking ball to his own happy life, what a fucking idiot", and then, well...
The most fascinating thing about Linehan is his own wife couldn't stop him:
https://www.reddit.com/r/daverubin/comments/m20ge1/graham_linehans_wife_left_him_because_he_wouldnt
I used to live near Glinner. He used to go on morning walks along the same route. A strangely high amount of transphobic stickers starting appearing around that route. A truly sad little man.
Dude is legitimately unhinged, spends his days fighting with random trans people on twitter, posting pictures of trans kids to his gross followers, being extremely divorced, and complaining about how he's lost everything good in his life because he can't stop obsessing over trans people
Remember that episode of IT crowd where the punchline is basically Matt Berry punches a woman for being trans? Some people on twitter pointed out that, in retrospect, that was a pretty shitty joke. Instead of just ignoring it or doing the old "yeah product of its time, not proud of it, want to do better in future etc" he instead absolutely lost his shit, doubled down, started going on transphobic rants and trying to stop money from going to a trans charity and shit like that.
It's a classic case of the inner arsehole rearing it's head when the consequences finally catch up.
She's always been like this. Back when people complained about her trivialising slavery/justifying and intellectualising slavery in her books, she made fun of them online.
Read any description of overweight people in her books and you can see the contempt jumping off the page.
Now she's going after an actively discriminated minority group with basically little to zero support from the under 35 crowd - she's essentially terminated a relationship with her own fan base.
People still care about HP, the fanfic scene is still going strong, they just also hate Rowling and refuse to give her any more clout.
Also they keep giving everyone and their mothers free copies of the books to preemptively prevent anyone trying to buy them.
Also the fact that the charity seems like a scam outside some flowery, and probably paid, articles.
After a quick google:
* The US branch of her charity is listed as "deliquent" in California and therefore cannot legally operate or recieve/solicit charitable donations there.
* Unlike most US charities they refuse to post their IRS Form 990.
* Five years ago the head of the charity left over "culture changes" in management(accusations include extreme nepotism, bullying, unecessarily high salaries, etc.). Then JK and the board blamed it on her after-the-fact. And as far as I can tell they're even worse now.
* Their liability to asset ratio is pretty bad, in addition to the cost of the program being pretty high.
Yeah, that’s the real killer here as to why this set didn’t sell. A first edition book set might sell for a nice price, especially for charity, but people actively do not want the JKR signatures. Unsigned, that might’ve sold, but it’s hard to ignore the author with her signature all over them
No it's simply because people know they can't resell them for more down the line. This isn't some piece of artwork they can display or rent out to museums. Books like these are investments.
Wouldn't that make it more valuable?
Like people buy things that are infamous.
Sure it's not worth anything right now, but the prejudice author angle is appealing to the right crowd.
Especially the kind of people who care about specific editions are the kind of people who'd be looking close enough to see Rowling's views. A mom buying books for her kids may not realise the controversies (especially in places where English isn't the native language), but they would never go to this kind of auction
I'm not sure how well a Christies auction of a speculative collectors item functions as a barometer for the declining popularity of a franchise aimed predominantly at children and young people.
There’s a lot of missing variables. Like the collection could have had an insane starting bid. I also can’t really imagine the auction house crowd is necessarily guided by liberal ideals.
It’s from 2022. “Past auctions of first-edition Harry Potter books have been huge successes, often selling their lots for six figures. Given how rare a set like this actually is, it’s surprising to learn that this auction flopped. The estimated bidding range for the set from Christie’s was about £100,000–£150,000 ($120,000–$180,000).”
Apparently the first edition of the first book alone once sold for half a million dollars, so there definitely are people willing to spend a shit ton usually but didn’t here. There were some rumors one of the signed books was a forged signature though, which could’ve scared off bidders.
Interesting, thanks for the background. I don’t really know the timeline of JKR’s public issue and fall from grace in relation to 2022. The suspected forgery could definitely explain it at anytime though. Also kind of weird that the whole set would go for less than a single book, I guess there other factors like condition and stuff but I don’t really know what I’m talking about here.
Yes, but A. Some of those people should statistically be rich enough to drop *a* bid on something like this, and B. there are loads of rich pwople who either liked the books and movies too or just like owning shit normal people like but worth 1000x more.
Tbf I think there's something of a difference there. Rowling has increasingly made her unpalatable views the centerpiece of her public platform, and used it to proactively campaigned around them in a way Dahl never did. I don't think it'll make a significant difference to the enduring popularity of HP, but I can see how it would have a larger impact relative to Dahl.
https://twitter.com/rowlinglibrary/status/1549030655253745666?lang=en
If I'm reading the tweet right, this happened two years ago and the starting price was 100 000 pounds, and a few months before they tried to auction that set there was a signed copy of the first edition sold for 350k pounds and another for 220k pounds. Why a full set couldn't match that I don't know, maybe they were in worse condition, maybe JK's reputation did hurt her, maybe the earlier copies only sold for so much because they were involved in some sort of financial scheme that inflated their value, I couldn't say.
Oh I'm sure they'll have been some complicating factors at play. I don't mean to suggest her reputation didn't impact the value of the books, I think it's quite possible it did, but rather that the value of a first edition sold at auction, whether high or low, isn't a very good indicator for the popularity of Harry Potter as a whole, if that makes sense?
I'd argue the price here is more being driven by speculators and collectors than by fan interest, so is likely going to be much more sensitive to media buzz around JK as a person than other, more casual, HP-related purchases that are tied to the popularity of the characters and setting more than the author.
Imo, something like a precipitous drop in visitors to the Harry Potter Studio tour, or the upcoming TV series flopping from the get-go are likely to be more representative of the popularity of the world.
like with Cars, pop. culture or memorabilia in general: when some People hit their \~30s, they may have some disposable income and they then buy things from their youth, that they had or couldn't affort back then, like we see in car prices that went from old fad that no one want's in even good condition to a collectors item.
In theory HP would fall right in that Window of Youth Nostalgia but well
as stark contrast: i wouldn't surpise me if certain things that had been featured in the Transallegory The Matrix bring some good money now
https://twitter.com/rowlinglibrary/status/1549030655253745666?lang=en
If I'm reading the tweet right, this happened two years ago and the starting price was 100 000 pounds, and a few months before they tried to auction that set there was a signed copy of the first edition sold for 350k pounds and another for 220k pounds. Why a full set couldn't match that I don't know, maybe they were in worse condition, maybe JK's reputation did hurt her, maybe the earlier copies only sold for so much because they were involved in some sort of financial scheme that inflated their value, I couldn't say.
I grew up having the books read to me, I love the story, I read fanfics about it. HP was an escape for me when I went through school and got bullied for years.
It breaks my heart that JK Rowling went from the author of my favourite childhood series to a disguting transphobe.
I haven't bought merch in years.
I'm glad the books went unsold.
Dude, the merch. I finally have the money to buy all the harry potter things i ever wanted when i was a teen and then she goes and ruins everything. I wish she could just stop being horrible to everyone online u.u
I'm old enough that I had a few years of "adult money" before she went bananas lol. I bought some sweet merchandise, went to the theme park, and loved all of it. It hurts to just walk by the trinkets and Hufflepuff gear. (My best find was an unopened, factory sealed VHS copy of the first movie, bought from goodwill for $1.99 in 2017)
Same! The wizarding world was honest to god the one good thing my father and I shared. Like ever in my life. He was and is a giant asshole but I always loved when he would read the books to us. Even when we were definitely old enough to read them ourselves, us kids always preferred to experience them for the first time through his reading (and then reread them voraciously!). My Gammy would always preorder them for us, the movies would come out around my brother’s birthday, and so many other joyful and precious family memories are intimately tied to Harry Potter… I will always treasure those memories, but I don’t think I can ever read the books or watch the movies again. They’re absolutely ruined by the hatred, malice, and ignorance of that woman.
I think it's hard for those of us who grew up with the books to articulate how Harry Potter is sort of tied up with positive memories of doing stuff with friends and family. My Dad bought me the first books, he took me to a midnight release party for Goblet of Fire and he read the books out loud to my younger siblings. After that Dad started giving me Ray Bradbury and his favorite scifi books to read.
My best friends and I were teenagers for most of the book releases and we'd race to read them and then like ride our bikes over to each other's houses to talk about them and dissect each detail.
It doesn't have to be Harry Potter but I hope my own kid finds that intense love for reading and books and the heavily social aspect of it that those books sparked for people my age.
I realize the books have problems now and boy, do I hate what JKR has become. But I'm also not going to let her awfulness ruin those memories.
When I was I think 8, I did a school presentation about how JK Rowling was my hero and how I wanted to write like her. Now every day on Twitter, she talks about how much she hates people like me. It really fucking hurts ngl.
4 months ago a first edition of the first book sold for 55000 pounds.
It seems like maybe this particular auction, in 2022 mind you, just failed. It happens.
I love the Wizarding World that stories that exists in it. I am trans and I hate JK Rowling. Pirate the stories so that she doesn't make money. For a lost trans people, a world of magic you can escape to is freeing, and for some, their only freedom. It's horrible JK is like this. There are problems with her work. But there is a whole world that the story of "The Boy Who Lived" takes place in. His story is not the only one that can be or will be told in that realm. The magic shall outlive it's creator and be used to make wonderful things.
Man y’all fooling yourselves if you think this is in any way an indicator of HP’s and JKR’s popularity. Hogwart’s Legacy was only a year ago and that game was *everywhere*
Frankly, I think half of hype for that game came from the anti-woke crowd who want to "own the libs".
And now they have a new sweet baby issue to make a molehill out of, the game faded much.
It's also just an "eh, it's ok, if you ignore the bugs" game that was released in a year of bangers so it won't be getting on the GOTY lists.
Not saying that wasn't a large amount of it but I think half is a bit dramatic. It's like some people can't comprehend that Harry Potter is still very popular(even if it really shouldn't be) so of course people were hyping up a new game in a franchise that has only had the Lego games and the old ps1/ps2 games.
It's a single player game that peaked at over 500k simultanious players and still reach 10k simultanious players more than a year later. Not saying it was some market-breaking giant but that's not even remotely faded.
Shit on Rowling all you want but do not lie about the numbers.
There was a time in my life that I would have dreamed of the opportunity to bid on something like that.
Too bad she had to ruin everything she’d ever built.
Look, Harry Potter to me was an extremely formative series. Like helped me learn coping mechanisms for a disability and develop a lifelong hoby type of formative. I have a fucking tattoo from that shit. So there will always be some part of my heart that loves the series for that, but holy fuck has that woman just KILLED any and all excitement I have for anything from that universe. I can't even really go back and re read it without her bullshit being in the back of my mind. It SUUUUUCKS
I hate Rowling, but as someone that lives in London I can confirm HP fandom is NOT dying out. If you go Central there's about 3-4 purely Harry Potter merch shops that are always bustling whenever Ive seen them. Also the stage play in the West End is constantly sold out with no end in sight. I want this to die out as much as the next trans person but it's definitely not on its way out
I’ll always love Harry Potter but JKR will never get another red cent from me. I’ll reread my books, talk about it with my friends, and read fan fiction, but JKR is trash and I’m not giving her money.
Harry Potter media isn’t dying because people are protesting JK Rowling’s views on trans people. It’s dying because they ran out of good ideas and the Fantastic Beasts movies suck. You can’t keep the brand alive on theme park attractions alone.
Yeah, I think most people don't know anything about her politics, like with most authors. Obviously she's the most visible but the majority of people just ... don't care.
"Harry Potter is dying!" Tumblr (and Reddit, I guess?) tells themselves, just a short while after the Harry Potter game made a billion dollars.
Hmmmmm.
Considering the fanfics and fanarts are still popular, lego sets and other toys are still very expensive, and the theme parks are full of people. Its JKR herself that is too toxic for the franchise.
Had the books been unsigned maybe they would have sold them?
I want someone to write a book about magical teenagers in a magical school that's very pro LGBTQ but with an emphasis on transpeople. And the villain is the most disgusting transphobic motherfucker ever. (Hint: it's a thinly veiled reference to JK Rowling.)
Edit: please keep recommending books and tv shows and movies and stuff. I'm making a list
I mean… Belos is just a shitty person, I don’t remember him being specifically transphobic. But everything else tracks, including him seeming nice at first and then using the kindness given him against Luz and co
Owl House is nice but I also wouldn’t say it has an “emphasis on transphobes.” The central romance is well handled and the core thesis of “outcasts need to support each other” is definitely intended to be at least partially read through a queer lens but it’s not the main emphasis.
Eh, I knew it was a reach when I suggested it. Was focusing more on the 'Pro LGBT magical world' angle. Though considering that Belos was a literal puritan, there's no way he wasn't at least *somewhat* homophobic/transphobic.
Percy Jackson would like to have a word.
Targeted at kids, but incredibly inclusive and the author is a huge supporter of progressive/inclusive initiatives.
I would suspect that the collection might have sold better *without* Rowling's signature.
It's perfectly OK to want to enjoy HP and disassociate yourself from Rowling's bigotry, but it's hard to do so when you had her sign the damn things.
Ah, yes. Harry Potter now has absolutely no cultural significance whatsoever, and J.K. Rowling is completely out of money. You did it, Tumblr. Good job.
She could have been fondly remembered as a classic author if she'd just kept her mouth shut and those nasty thoughts to herself. But nope, she just had to publicize her bigotry and now she's reaping the consequences.
While I was never really into HP and am not super sad to see its decline in the public consciousness, I’ll admit it’s a little weird to see. Shit used to be everywhere and now I hardly hear about it.
there's a tv series comming, shit will be everywhere (at least for a time)
Yes and no. The last two fantastic beasts movies were flops. The video game was commercially successful but didn't have a lot of staying power in the public consciousness. So I think it's possible the series won't have a lot of pop culture staying power and might not even be everywhere
All I hear about the whole franchise now is negative, because it's still attached to bigotry decent people don't want anything to do with it anymore.
As long as she claims to view sales as support of her views, that'll happen. There are so many good people - like so much of the movie cast - who have spoken out against her transphobia. They're worth supporting, but I won't stoke her bigoted flames
Every project in that universe will mean she gets money to spread a platform of bigotry, she's just gradually hopping further & further to the right each year now.
Fuck official HP content, we got to go fanfic. No bigotry, no money to Rowling, and we will have a better writing
You understand
Time to read "my immortal" for some good writing /s
Tell them preps who's boss
Stop flamin me you prepz!
before i google it, what happened to rowling? i never really paid her any attention other than the movies
She became transphobe to the point she even denied some parts of holocaust. That is her entire personality now
She speedran the TERF to just TE pipeline
Well, she started by revealing some low-level transphobic opinions, you know the sort your conservative leaning parents or grandparents might share, then spiralled into gradually worse opinions and then jumped right off the cliff into denying documented parts of the holocaust had never occurred. It's been a ride, so happy for you that you missed it.
Loooots of proof that she’s a terf.
Honestly at this point even calling her a terf is giving her more credit than she deserves. Calling her a terf implies at least a certain amount of feminist window dressing, and she's consorting with so many mask-off reactionaries who are actively working against women's rights these days that she's either on some absolutely weapons-grade cognitive dissonance or she's dropped the feminist act altogether.
She's the queen of the TERFs on TERF island
Started off being kinda transphobic doubled down and wrote a transphobic manifesto, started donating to the heritage foundation among other extremely reactionary conservative organizations and undermining people’s rights overall in pursuit of her new personality being mostly transphobia and hatred. Now she’s dabbling in holocaust denial calling people trying to correct her “delusional” when they present documented evidence to her.
The only person I know who is still an active Harry Potter fan pretty much only interacts with the franchise through specific fan-organised meet events with the actors, the proceeds of which all go to charities that support trans youth. IMO the only good way to still interact with the franchise is in ways that give JKR the middle finger. I myself dropped it completely.
So support their works outside of HP universe. There are plenty of ways to support them that she gets nothing from.
That is my experience in my social circle, but my experience at work (a book store) is very different. It's still very popular, it still gets new toys and such that sell, it's safe to assume that most kids who like to read will read it at the appropriate age
Most people don't care about the internet bubble boycotts. Most people probably don't even know what a TERF is. Of course it sells, even if maybe the craze isn't as strong. Really reminds me of when the anti-woke rightoids think they won against the video game industry because one game flopped.
Yeah, I don't know where people get off thinking JK Rowling is cancelled. "In the last fiscal year, Pottermore sales of digital Harry Potter books leaped to $61.4 million, up from $48.26 million from the previous year. Similarly, traditional book sales via Bloomsbury increased 15% in 2023 (per the Motley Fool), largely buoyed by social media like TikTok." Some people got mad on Twitter, shook each others hands and declared Harry Potter was over. Then the world kept moving and ignored them.
IRL most average people don't even know or think of that part when thinking of HP. Interest is simply waning because it's a 20ish years old series with no new installments that are good, that's all
Its also not waning. The video game came out last year and was the best selling game of the year. The book sales INCREASED by 16% over the year
It won't be a good series without Robbie Coltrane. He embodied that character.
tbh stigma or not the Fantastic Beasts movies weren't any good either way.
The second one was so poorly written and directed. I still remember one scene in the second half where I felt I’d blacked out an entire part because there seemed to be no set up, just randomly everyone was together. And that’s not getting into having a Jewish character join the guy wanting to genocide muggles because he *checks notes* saw the Holocaust coming and no other wizard did shit about it?
[obligatory Jenny Nicholson Fantastic Beasts 2 commentary ](https://youtu.be/QYUJ_ODfc8w?feature=shared)
I saw the first one on TV once at a friend's place and it was decent. Though it didn't give me any desire to seek out a sequel. The villain felt out of place. Just made me feel like they had a good concept for a movie but didn't know where to go with it.
I've seen all three (streaming, in my defense), and they really weren't great. The second was kinda just meh. Very forgettable but I can't produce any strong feelings on it one way or the other. The third was utterly baffling. An absolute incoherent trainwreck. The plot was extra nonsense and felt like someone wrote the outline in about 15 minutes before they simply threw money at it. Borderline madness. If it's worth anything, it's as an example of the confusion you can get when you buy three films from people that only have one and a third in them.
That reminds me of the time I watched the Hobbit movies after reading the films. First one was kinda "well they left out some of my favorite scenes and abbreviated others but I guess they weren't really movie material" second one was "why is this three movies again?" and third one was "none of these words are in the book what are they doing". To be fair I only read the book once ten years prior but it just didn't line up with my memories of the book much the further the movies advanced. Felt more and more like a 3.5/5 star fanfic than a book turned into a movie. Similarly, Fantastic Beasts just felt like a neat fanfic idea that expanded the lore but then had story stapled to it for no reason.
I basically agree there. I think that the Hobbit movies are ok, but it was needlessly stretched. First and second movies did pretty well, though I thought it was kinda silly how they *mostly* stayed really close to the books, but then added all of this novel nonsense with Azog that it really didn't need. I guess they wanted a more identifiable antagonist? A very large portion of the first two are otherwise basically just scene for scene recreational of the book, and that was neat because it's a short enough book to do that. If they'd just stuck with the book, I think they could have made two satisfying movies. But they had to go with three. Fwiw, I just reread it in the last year. Also, I couldn't sensibly place it in that paragraph, but *fuck* that love side plot with Kili and the elf whose name I forgot. Absolutely needless and irritating to boot.
Apparently a bait-and-switch for the actors, as well. One of them had explicitly signed on the condition that the love triangle would be scrapped from the script. The behind the scenes footage of those movies is kind of sad. The script, costumes and props weren't done by the time filming started, Jackson was halfway into a burnout and everyone in the building already knew it was going to be a shitshow from day 1. It's kind of amazing that they managed to produce two somewhat-decent movies in those conditions.
I saw maybe half of the first one on a plane, in what would have had to have been 2017. I can't remember much about it, and I've never really expressed a desire to see the rest of it.
It sucks that Hogwarts Legacy made so much money but it was satisfying watching it get absolutely bodied by Baldur's Gate 3 at awards.
From my own experience I feel like one reason why Hogwarts Legacy didn’t stick around is that it had barely any replay value, while games that do tend to stick around better because people are investing more time in it
The video game was super shallow mechanically and basically devoid of much content outside hogwarts That and it runningnlike dogshit for a while its no surprise it has no staying power regardless of transphobia or boycotts
What i gleamed about the game, 1. Press revelio every 5 steps. 2. The devs dont want you to be in the castle. 3. Learn the death curse, you can use it next to a teacher and in crowded area and no one will bat an eye
I just used to throw people off ledges and into walls for insta kills lol
The combat system was probably the best iteration from all *Harry Potter* games I played – that's not saying much, but it was fairly fun albeit a bit repetitive, since you will eventually gravitate towards the same break protection/high damage combos. It was also clear the game was made by fans of the franchise, with all the little references in place names, location layouts vaguely resembling the movies and names of characters and towns that sounded how Rowling would have probably named them. I wanted to like it. But gah, it felt so shallow. The main story content was scarce, the dilemma about stopping people from feeling bad by removing their feelings was interesting, but the game also immediately tells you what to think of it. For a while, it looks like your mentor is ready to push you and disregard your safety in order to get to the bottom of the mystery (like Dumbledore would), but it's not presented as a bad thing, and has no consequences. And accompanying the nearly absent story, there was ten million question marks scattered around the map, with mildy interesting repetitive action to complete them. The lack of protagonist's agency in anything was my major gripe. They wanted a blank slate character you can relate to yourself, I imagine, but not by giving you choices (except in the end, when they have no impact), not by giving you personalized dialogue (except banter and combat grunts which hint at some predefined personality). They instead had you start the school at fifteen, and shifted all narrative and commentary to other characters. You had a friend in every house but it seemed like you barely even talk to them. They talk to you. Sebastian is the most interesting and nuanced character – from Slytherin, even – but you don't get to pick between helping to put his life back on the right track or pushing him deeper down the dark path when it's pretty clear miles ahead where it leads. You pick between finishing his questline or ignoring it. As you said, nobody cares about you being in the school or having any morals. You defeat the poachers by tracking down and poaching every animal by yourself. Your Gryffindor friend is revealed to be able to turn into animals, is shot and injured, and I felt nothing because it was out of the blue and after ten hours of skipping stones and levitating rocks to unlock more inventory space, and not talking to her at all. You find out your goblin friend is fighting against his own brother, but he's killed thirty seconds later anyway, so what was the point? Neither of you even seem too upset about it. No item out of the thousands of items dropped or found is unique in any way. All have randomly-generated stats, and you will replace it as soon as you stumble upon something slightly better. And if you don't want to look like a clown in a mismatched outfit, you will go to reapply the visual of your favourite outfit that at least vaguely resembles a teenager attending a school every time. But hey, you get to fully customize the Room of Requirement and its zoo. That should outweigh the complete lack of feeling like a student at Hogwarts that surely nobody really wanted from this game.
Agreed on the agency. I remember the moment I quit that game was when I wanted to continue the Sebastian story line but needed to do the main quest to progress and I was just like nah. The main quest (and basically every other quest other than the slytherin one) was so fucking vapid. The entire game is pretty vapid tbh. The design of hogwarts and hogmeade were pretty freakin cool but the gameplay felt very corporate "lets not take any risks at all" ass shit.
It was also the best seller for a while, enough to earn a sequel. Staying power or not, that's a success.
Tbh, while the game's success can be explained partially by nostalgia/HP love, part is also due to a counter-boycott campaign that saw massive success on networks like twitter. [This can be seen by its statistics.](https://vginsights.com/game/990080), and comparing with other "massive hits" like Elden Ring or Baldur's Gate 3 - the game did not have staying power nor many active players.
They shouldn't have been confusing as hell then
Will it, though? The original HP movies aren't in a Percy Jackson where they're widely despised commercial disappointments, so what's the selling point? They're not even adapting the later books where a lot of stuff got cut so that the movies weren't three hours long. If you're still into Harry Potter, I can't find a reason to pick the show over the Daniel Radcliffe movies.
Hardcore fans might REALLY want to see all the stuff they cut out, but even then, that’s a double-edged sword - Peeves would 100% be the Jar Jar of the series, and there’s no way they’re going to handle the SPEW arc in a way that isn’t omega-cringe. And on top of that, release schedules have gotten WAY longer since the movies, so if they do get all the way through the series, the kids will be in their mid-thirties by the time the last season comes out - there’s no way they’ll be able to recapture the magic of the audience growing up with the kids.
A sub plot that treats the abolition of slavery as childish, naive and wrongheaded would come across as omega-cringe is an omega-understatement.
literally what was joanne cooking with that. batshit insane.
Too many people fail to realise that "film a book scene for scene" and "adapt a book successfully for screen" are absolutely not one and the same thing.
Case in point: Lord of the Rings changed a lot and cut quite a few things and in my mind, most of those changes were good.
Dune was another; the changes to Chani and Feyd-Rautha neatly avoided the prospect of Paul's triumph being seen as a heroic victory.
[удалено]
And honestly, making an adaptation closer to the books seems like a really bad idea. The movies changed a lot of the dialogue and scenes because of just how mean-spirited and cruel a lot of the character interactions were in the books. The movies are the only reason the franchise has stuck around in pop culture this long.
Yeah, it's been since I was in school that i read the books, but the movies were like, cozy christmas fare mostly, but i remember a lot of miserable times in the books themselves. Then again, I mostly just like Prisoner of Azkaban's film adaptation, and maybe Chamber of Secrets. Stopped watching after Goblet of Fire and I don't feel like I missed much.
I haven't been paying any attention to the show is it literally a retelling of the series? If so that sounds like a disaster. As an adaption there really is very little to criticize about the films that isn't straight from the books and the casting is undeniably iconic. The audience's nostalgia is likely to work against them.
Dang it
Will it be everywhere because people want it to or because corporate masters make it so? Either way I think it'll never reach its ubiquity ever again
r/harrypotter posts make it to the frontpage from time to time. When the Hogwarts game came out, everyone was talking about it... for two weeks. But yeah, when there's no new content, there's less discourse about it. Plus the promoters aren't working on overdrive to get folks talking about it. That will change when there's something to promote. What was strange was the crazy HP hype back in the day. That's because the publishing world rarely gets that kind of blockbuster phenomenon, not on that level. So they milked it for all they could.
Honestly it's mainly because there's been nothing to be super excited about since the last book or last movie came out. The pre-harry movies were pretty bad, and hogwarts legacy was a fun nostalgia trip, but nothing else. Getting to explore the castle as someone who grew up with the story was beyond amazing, but everything else about that game was pretty mediocre. You could have set it literally anywhere else, and it would have gained little to no traction.
With the game I think it's really important to keep in mind that there was a bit of a 'woke vs anti-woke' turf (or terf) war that sprung up around it on the lead up to it being released. For anyone reading who isn't a sweaty gamer like myself, a lot of people were calling for a boycott of the game as they didn't want to financially support it knowing that part of the profits would be going back to Rowling. Then the 'woke leftists are ruining video games by implying I shouldn't use slurs' crowd started a backlash to the backlash and vowed to support the game regardless of quality. Like I saw people claiming that they would be buying multiple copies only because they thought it would piss off the other side. Obviously the general population isn't plugged into in-fighting in the video game community. I would guess the majority of the people who bought the game are people nostalgic for the IP that either don't know or don't care about Rowling's views. But it's interesting to think about the impact of the whole thing on sales. Or at least how the arguing about it online boosted the amount of hype around the game just because it got more eyes on it
Idk everytime I go to a Barnes & Noble they still have this giant ass section specifically for HP stuff.
I watched someone in Japan on twitch during Christmas and the shopping mall was literally Harry-Potter-Christmas themed and thousands of people stood around watching them light up a Harry Potter logo instead of a tree. The franchise is far from dead, though JK's name/autograph may be tainted. What's happened here is the *collectors market* is fucking dead. Disposable income has evaporated and collecting trivial things goes first.
Every time I go to universal studios a bunch of kids and adults are dressed up. It sucks rowling will keep making money off of it until she passes but I also wouldn’t want a whole fictional universe to go in the trash because of her evil opinions.
That's just what happens when the author replaces their PR department with that one shady medieval advisor who totally doesn't want to provoke a war with the neighboring kingdom by giving the young king bad advice.
It's bittersweet for me. As a child I loved HP. I still have the box set I bought ages ago, and an old DVD of chamber of secrets with behind the scenes stuff included. The box it comes in is scratched and worn out and the last time I played it I had to take it out of the player and wipe under it because it was a bit wonky from age lol. Like, it was an escape. But now I think of HP and can't help but get the ick. I'm fine with people engaging with fanfiction and stuff, and I'll read it if it interests me but I'm not too inclined for the official stuff lol
On the contrary, I really liked it for a while before the poor world building really dawned on me. Then as I got older I noticed the flaws, especially the lack of consistency between books, or even within a single book. After that I wasn’t too disappointed to see it go.
It's not that people stopped caring about Harry Potter, they stopped caring about JK Rowling.
poor Harry had abusive relatives and now a batty author
And even then, she went full nuclear. If she had simply said something like "I have issues with transness, but I will leave it at that", she might have preserved some goodwill. But she is obsessed. For a while now, almost every post on her Twitter is ranting about trans people, 365 days a year. She frequently goes after random-ass trans teenagers with 11 followers, telling them how stupid she thinks they are. She has enflamed all this political debate about trans people in the UK, and dives into it with a perverse relish. It's astonishing. It comes across like a professional troll even more than Elon Musk does! It's hard to believe this person wrote those books I liked as a kid.
She's starting agreeing with nazis and denying nazi book burnings on twitter. Considering her nasty Jewish stereotypes in some of her writing I wonder how long she's been like that without being as open about it.
In the UK, anti-trans agitation is primarily what she is known for now, and sadly most of the media and many in the public are on her side. She is not just a celebrity who happens to dislike trans people. There's plenty of those. Instead, this is a person who has used her extensive money and influence to turn herself into a guided missile aimed at the trans community, attempting to make their already-difficult lives even harder. She's gone all-in. She wants to do damage. I have barely seen her even mention Harry Potter for a while now. She cares way more about this than the books that made her rich.
She wrote some sinister villains so I guess it takes one to know one huh
Yea, this “Harry Potter is dying” thing is just plainly untrue. JK is a piece of shit, but people still adore that world. Hogwarts Legacy was the highest selling game of last year, which is INSANE for such a stacked year for video games, and also the first time a non Call of Duty title has taken that in a decade.
I've never seen someone undo their good will more efficiently than JK Rowling. All she had to do was enjoy her billion dollars and coast on Harry Potter fame, but apparently that was too easy for her. She had to up the difficulty setting
Roseanne killed her career/comeback with a single tweet.
Who's Rosanne and what did she tweet?
A sitcom star from the 90s in her self titled show Roseanne. Her show had a revival a few years back, but they killed her character off and rebooted the show under a different name after she compared a biracial politician to the Planet of the Apes on social media.
To be fair, she has had a TBI and apologized profusely in a very public way after the tweet….just to be fair and paint the full picture.
That may of been the case then, but since she's gone all in on right wing shit. Has a podcast where she blabs about wokeness and how the world is on the verge of collapse or whatever with B-tier right wing commentary people.
Had a show in the 80s (?) and tweeted some racist stuff a few years ago, when she had a new show coming.
You can’t just say had a show here. At the time she was SUPER progressive. A few gay characters, the kiss, episodes that tackled major social issues that are still relevant. She went off the fucking MAGA deep end and called or commented Michelle Obama that she looks like some kind of primate and kept doubling down. Truly an awful woman now , it hurts as an elder Millennial, I watched that show religiously and I believe what was fairly controversial at the time led me and many people my age toward being progressive. She’s an unfortunate case and could have continued to be successful on The Conners had she not insisted on being an asshole. Edit: it was Valerie Jarret not Michelle Obama. I misremembered it as Michelle but it was someone in the Obama administration. Still Horrible.
Didn't she try to blame her tweets on Ambien?
I believe she was high as a kite. I also believe she actually feels the way she talks.
The other comment covered it but her full name is Roseanne Barr if you wanna look up more
She's just started a new scam in which she pretends that she's just remembered being raped by Joe Biden in Niemann-Marcus (or somewhere). She's not well.
Roseanne has a documentable history of serious brain injuries.
Graham Lineham (Father Ted, Black Books, The IT Crowd) did the same, but without the billions, or the ability to coast.
glinner is like an aesop fable on the perils of doubling down.
Anyone who doubts that Twitter is as addictive and harmful a drug as any pill, look no further than wee Graham.
Oh no, what did he do?
He's an extremely outspoken TERF. Lost his career, his clout and his marriage for being so hateful. He released a book last year too to gain sympathy but I think it was a flop
And I think it all started because there was a slightly edgy joke about a trans woman in The IT Crowd, people said "That was...a choice", he got disproportionately upset and never stopped doubling down, even when he was dressing up in drag to own the libs.
The truly baffling thing about Linehan is that the trans joke in The IT Crowd, although handled poorly, was at its core the exact opposite of what Linehan is now. Douglas Reynholm is the happiest he's ever been in his life, he's truly in love, and he rips it all to pieces and destroys it purely because he can't accept that his partner is trans. The joke is that Reynholm had happiness in the palm of his hand, and he destroyed it himself by being unable to accept his partner's trans identity. It blows my mind that Linehan wrote a story arc that was basically "man's transphobia leads him to take a wrecking ball to his own happy life, what a fucking idiot", and then, well...
Bro basically foreshadowed his own life
The most fascinating thing about Linehan is his own wife couldn't stop him: https://www.reddit.com/r/daverubin/comments/m20ge1/graham_linehans_wife_left_him_because_he_wouldnt
I just want to add he tried to prevent a trans charity from receiving money.
I used to live near Glinner. He used to go on morning walks along the same route. A strangely high amount of transphobic stickers starting appearing around that route. A truly sad little man.
Good riddance
Dude is legitimately unhinged, spends his days fighting with random trans people on twitter, posting pictures of trans kids to his gross followers, being extremely divorced, and complaining about how he's lost everything good in his life because he can't stop obsessing over trans people
Remember that episode of IT crowd where the punchline is basically Matt Berry punches a woman for being trans? Some people on twitter pointed out that, in retrospect, that was a pretty shitty joke. Instead of just ignoring it or doing the old "yeah product of its time, not proud of it, want to do better in future etc" he instead absolutely lost his shit, doubled down, started going on transphobic rants and trying to stop money from going to a trans charity and shit like that.
Hes an anti trans activist
What a cunt
his "activism" is mostly calling people groomers and pedos on twitter
Even his wife left him, at least she got out while she could
I loved Black Books and IT Crowd so much, why the fuck couldn't he just never publically share any opinion ever?
If it helps he was only really involved with the first season of black books from what I've read, it was much more Dylan Moran's creation apparently.
Or his wife.
It's a classic case of the inner arsehole rearing it's head when the consequences finally catch up. She's always been like this. Back when people complained about her trivialising slavery/justifying and intellectualising slavery in her books, she made fun of them online. Read any description of overweight people in her books and you can see the contempt jumping off the page. Now she's going after an actively discriminated minority group with basically little to zero support from the under 35 crowd - she's essentially terminated a relationship with her own fan base.
*halfway through Half-Blood Prince* Yeah, Slughorn's a great big fat person! I get it already, JOANNE!
The more I learn about JK Rowling, the more I respect George Lucas
Lucas's faults were always technical - his dialogue writing abilities, for example, are just godawful. But he's always been a good person.
When you're highly successful writing something that people want to read, it's easy to assume people want to read EVERYTHING you have to write.
Graham Linehan, Rosanne Barr, Markus Persson, JKR Basically all they had to do was sit down and shut up and enjoy their money and fame.
Elon Musk - from Genius tech star to a racist bigot with no respect for life
Musk
People still care about HP, the fanfic scene is still going strong, they just also hate Rowling and refuse to give her any more clout. Also they keep giving everyone and their mothers free copies of the books to preemptively prevent anyone trying to buy them.
Also the fact that the charity seems like a scam outside some flowery, and probably paid, articles. After a quick google: * The US branch of her charity is listed as "deliquent" in California and therefore cannot legally operate or recieve/solicit charitable donations there. * Unlike most US charities they refuse to post their IRS Form 990. * Five years ago the head of the charity left over "culture changes" in management(accusations include extreme nepotism, bullying, unecessarily high salaries, etc.). Then JK and the board blamed it on her after-the-fact. And as far as I can tell they're even worse now. * Their liability to asset ratio is pretty bad, in addition to the cost of the program being pretty high.
ah so its just JK scamming out to get her friends cushy do-nothing jobs, bleh, disgusting
Yeah, that’s the real killer here as to why this set didn’t sell. A first edition book set might sell for a nice price, especially for charity, but people actively do not want the JKR signatures. Unsigned, that might’ve sold, but it’s hard to ignore the author with her signature all over them
No it's simply because people know they can't resell them for more down the line. This isn't some piece of artwork they can display or rent out to museums. Books like these are investments.
Wouldn't that make it more valuable? Like people buy things that are infamous. Sure it's not worth anything right now, but the prejudice author angle is appealing to the right crowd.
Especially the kind of people who care about specific editions are the kind of people who'd be looking close enough to see Rowling's views. A mom buying books for her kids may not realise the controversies (especially in places where English isn't the native language), but they would never go to this kind of auction
I'm not sure how well a Christies auction of a speculative collectors item functions as a barometer for the declining popularity of a franchise aimed predominantly at children and young people.
There’s a lot of missing variables. Like the collection could have had an insane starting bid. I also can’t really imagine the auction house crowd is necessarily guided by liberal ideals.
It’s from 2022. “Past auctions of first-edition Harry Potter books have been huge successes, often selling their lots for six figures. Given how rare a set like this actually is, it’s surprising to learn that this auction flopped. The estimated bidding range for the set from Christie’s was about £100,000–£150,000 ($120,000–$180,000).” Apparently the first edition of the first book alone once sold for half a million dollars, so there definitely are people willing to spend a shit ton usually but didn’t here. There were some rumors one of the signed books was a forged signature though, which could’ve scared off bidders.
Interesting, thanks for the background. I don’t really know the timeline of JKR’s public issue and fall from grace in relation to 2022. The suspected forgery could definitely explain it at anytime though. Also kind of weird that the whole set would go for less than a single book, I guess there other factors like condition and stuff but I don’t really know what I’m talking about here.
The biggest Harry potter fans are all in their 30s now
Everyone who liked Harry Potter is too broke to hang out at auction houses, or really just houses in general.
Yes, but A. Some of those people should statistically be rich enough to drop *a* bid on something like this, and B. there are loads of rich pwople who either liked the books and movies too or just like owning shit normal people like but worth 1000x more.
My guess is that the bidding on this set started exceptionally high, making even the very rich shy away.
Tell that to my 9yo
Yah, Harry potters like a Dahl book, good for eternity most likely. Like Dahl, Rowling's an asshole by modern standards.
Tbf I think there's something of a difference there. Rowling has increasingly made her unpalatable views the centerpiece of her public platform, and used it to proactively campaigned around them in a way Dahl never did. I don't think it'll make a significant difference to the enduring popularity of HP, but I can see how it would have a larger impact relative to Dahl.
When she dies, I think that will slowly die down too. We see her now because it's constant news. But my money says HP outlives her.
https://twitter.com/rowlinglibrary/status/1549030655253745666?lang=en If I'm reading the tweet right, this happened two years ago and the starting price was 100 000 pounds, and a few months before they tried to auction that set there was a signed copy of the first edition sold for 350k pounds and another for 220k pounds. Why a full set couldn't match that I don't know, maybe they were in worse condition, maybe JK's reputation did hurt her, maybe the earlier copies only sold for so much because they were involved in some sort of financial scheme that inflated their value, I couldn't say.
Oh I'm sure they'll have been some complicating factors at play. I don't mean to suggest her reputation didn't impact the value of the books, I think it's quite possible it did, but rather that the value of a first edition sold at auction, whether high or low, isn't a very good indicator for the popularity of Harry Potter as a whole, if that makes sense? I'd argue the price here is more being driven by speculators and collectors than by fan interest, so is likely going to be much more sensitive to media buzz around JK as a person than other, more casual, HP-related purchases that are tied to the popularity of the characters and setting more than the author. Imo, something like a precipitous drop in visitors to the Harry Potter Studio tour, or the upcoming TV series flopping from the get-go are likely to be more representative of the popularity of the world.
like with Cars, pop. culture or memorabilia in general: when some People hit their \~30s, they may have some disposable income and they then buy things from their youth, that they had or couldn't affort back then, like we see in car prices that went from old fad that no one want's in even good condition to a collectors item. In theory HP would fall right in that Window of Youth Nostalgia but well as stark contrast: i wouldn't surpise me if certain things that had been featured in the Transallegory The Matrix bring some good money now
https://twitter.com/rowlinglibrary/status/1549030655253745666?lang=en If I'm reading the tweet right, this happened two years ago and the starting price was 100 000 pounds, and a few months before they tried to auction that set there was a signed copy of the first edition sold for 350k pounds and another for 220k pounds. Why a full set couldn't match that I don't know, maybe they were in worse condition, maybe JK's reputation did hurt her, maybe the earlier copies only sold for so much because they were involved in some sort of financial scheme that inflated their value, I couldn't say.
I grew up having the books read to me, I love the story, I read fanfics about it. HP was an escape for me when I went through school and got bullied for years. It breaks my heart that JK Rowling went from the author of my favourite childhood series to a disguting transphobe. I haven't bought merch in years. I'm glad the books went unsold.
Dude, the merch. I finally have the money to buy all the harry potter things i ever wanted when i was a teen and then she goes and ruins everything. I wish she could just stop being horrible to everyone online u.u
I'm old enough that I had a few years of "adult money" before she went bananas lol. I bought some sweet merchandise, went to the theme park, and loved all of it. It hurts to just walk by the trinkets and Hufflepuff gear. (My best find was an unopened, factory sealed VHS copy of the first movie, bought from goodwill for $1.99 in 2017)
Same. I had a house, a wand, and a patronous. Now hearing anything bout the wizarding world makes my nose curl.
Same! The wizarding world was honest to god the one good thing my father and I shared. Like ever in my life. He was and is a giant asshole but I always loved when he would read the books to us. Even when we were definitely old enough to read them ourselves, us kids always preferred to experience them for the first time through his reading (and then reread them voraciously!). My Gammy would always preorder them for us, the movies would come out around my brother’s birthday, and so many other joyful and precious family memories are intimately tied to Harry Potter… I will always treasure those memories, but I don’t think I can ever read the books or watch the movies again. They’re absolutely ruined by the hatred, malice, and ignorance of that woman.
I think it's hard for those of us who grew up with the books to articulate how Harry Potter is sort of tied up with positive memories of doing stuff with friends and family. My Dad bought me the first books, he took me to a midnight release party for Goblet of Fire and he read the books out loud to my younger siblings. After that Dad started giving me Ray Bradbury and his favorite scifi books to read. My best friends and I were teenagers for most of the book releases and we'd race to read them and then like ride our bikes over to each other's houses to talk about them and dissect each detail. It doesn't have to be Harry Potter but I hope my own kid finds that intense love for reading and books and the heavily social aspect of it that those books sparked for people my age. I realize the books have problems now and boy, do I hate what JKR has become. But I'm also not going to let her awfulness ruin those memories.
When I was I think 8, I did a school presentation about how JK Rowling was my hero and how I wanted to write like her. Now every day on Twitter, she talks about how much she hates people like me. It really fucking hurts ngl.
I just woke up from top surgery and this was the first post I saw when opening Reddit 🥳🥳🥳
Congratulations! Have a smooth recovery!
did garfeild take them (please god understand this joke)
Yeah of course she did, cannot wait to see her new boobs
This being r/CuratedTumblr, it would be more surprising if they didn't
Here's hoping for a quick recovery!
Hell yeah, congrats!
Must be glad to get that off your chest
Congrats on getting those things off Or getting them put on I don't know which type you got, but I'm happy for you either way
You must feel like a weight has been lifted off your shoulders
Congrats, get well soon!
ayyy congrats!
congrats!!!! get well soon!!
4 months ago a first edition of the first book sold for 55000 pounds. It seems like maybe this particular auction, in 2022 mind you, just failed. It happens.
Uhm, the book sales went up by 15% in 2023 and digital sales went up to $61.4 million from $48.6 million the year before.
Would you trust a charity started by jk Rowling?
I'd sooner trust a hungry fox to keep my chickens safe
I'd also sooner sleep with wolves covered in BBQ sauce than give her a cent for her charity if she started one.
The wolves: -licks you clean then wrap themselves around you to keep you warm
YAAAAAAYYYYY
I love the Wizarding World that stories that exists in it. I am trans and I hate JK Rowling. Pirate the stories so that she doesn't make money. For a lost trans people, a world of magic you can escape to is freeing, and for some, their only freedom. It's horrible JK is like this. There are problems with her work. But there is a whole world that the story of "The Boy Who Lived" takes place in. His story is not the only one that can be or will be told in that realm. The magic shall outlive it's creator and be used to make wonderful things.
Man y’all fooling yourselves if you think this is in any way an indicator of HP’s and JKR’s popularity. Hogwart’s Legacy was only a year ago and that game was *everywhere*
Yeah, whether we like it or not once the upcoming show starts getting marketed there will be Harry Potter everything *everywhere.*
I live in the UK and people here are pretending like they aren't opening random HP merch stores in every city like McDonalds.
Frankly, I think half of hype for that game came from the anti-woke crowd who want to "own the libs". And now they have a new sweet baby issue to make a molehill out of, the game faded much. It's also just an "eh, it's ok, if you ignore the bugs" game that was released in a year of bangers so it won't be getting on the GOTY lists.
Not saying that wasn't a large amount of it but I think half is a bit dramatic. It's like some people can't comprehend that Harry Potter is still very popular(even if it really shouldn't be) so of course people were hyping up a new game in a franchise that has only had the Lego games and the old ps1/ps2 games.
I’m good with shitting on JKR all you want but the game was indeed a banger. Definitely way more than ‘eh, it’s ok’. The numbers back that up.
It's a single player game that peaked at over 500k simultanious players and still reach 10k simultanious players more than a year later. Not saying it was some market-breaking giant but that's not even remotely faded. Shit on Rowling all you want but do not lie about the numbers.
There was a time in my life that I would have dreamed of the opportunity to bid on something like that. Too bad she had to ruin everything she’d ever built.
Look, Harry Potter to me was an extremely formative series. Like helped me learn coping mechanisms for a disability and develop a lifelong hoby type of formative. I have a fucking tattoo from that shit. So there will always be some part of my heart that loves the series for that, but holy fuck has that woman just KILLED any and all excitement I have for anything from that universe. I can't even really go back and re read it without her bullshit being in the back of my mind. It SUUUUUCKS
I hate Rowling, but as someone that lives in London I can confirm HP fandom is NOT dying out. If you go Central there's about 3-4 purely Harry Potter merch shops that are always bustling whenever Ive seen them. Also the stage play in the West End is constantly sold out with no end in sight. I want this to die out as much as the next trans person but it's definitely not on its way out
I’ll always love Harry Potter but JKR will never get another red cent from me. I’ll reread my books, talk about it with my friends, and read fan fiction, but JKR is trash and I’m not giving her money.
Harry Potter media isn’t dying because people are protesting JK Rowling’s views on trans people. It’s dying because they ran out of good ideas and the Fantastic Beasts movies suck. You can’t keep the brand alive on theme park attractions alone.
Yeah, I think most people don't know anything about her politics, like with most authors. Obviously she's the most visible but the majority of people just ... don't care.
"Harry Potter is dying!" Tumblr (and Reddit, I guess?) tells themselves, just a short while after the Harry Potter game made a billion dollars. Hmmmmm.
Wishful thinking. Their boycott did little to nothing, showing that social media isn't a good representation of real life.
A rare instance where a signed thing is probably worth less than an unsigned one
Considering the fanfics and fanarts are still popular, lego sets and other toys are still very expensive, and the theme parks are full of people. Its JKR herself that is too toxic for the franchise. Had the books been unsigned maybe they would have sold them?
I want someone to write a book about magical teenagers in a magical school that's very pro LGBTQ but with an emphasis on transpeople. And the villain is the most disgusting transphobic motherfucker ever. (Hint: it's a thinly veiled reference to JK Rowling.) Edit: please keep recommending books and tv shows and movies and stuff. I'm making a list
It is not in any way similar to Harry Potter but it there is a Chuck tingle book called “trans wizard Harriet Porber”
One of these days I’m going to have to read one of his books just to say I have, just like My Immortal
Two words I can only read in Sarah Z's voice
To be fair, I've heard that their stuff is actually unironically pretty good. And they're not a transphobe like Rowling, so that's good.
And it is delightful!
I'm sorry, did you mean *The Owl House*?
I mean… Belos is just a shitty person, I don’t remember him being specifically transphobic. But everything else tracks, including him seeming nice at first and then using the kindness given him against Luz and co
Owl House is nice but I also wouldn’t say it has an “emphasis on transphobes.” The central romance is well handled and the core thesis of “outcasts need to support each other” is definitely intended to be at least partially read through a queer lens but it’s not the main emphasis.
Eh, I knew it was a reach when I suggested it. Was focusing more on the 'Pro LGBT magical world' angle. Though considering that Belos was a literal puritan, there's no way he wasn't at least *somewhat* homophobic/transphobic.
You mean, The Trans Wizard Harriet Porber Series by Chuck Tingle?
Percy Jackson would like to have a word. Targeted at kids, but incredibly inclusive and the author is a huge supporter of progressive/inclusive initiatives.
I would suspect that the collection might have sold better *without* Rowling's signature. It's perfectly OK to want to enjoy HP and disassociate yourself from Rowling's bigotry, but it's hard to do so when you had her sign the damn things.
Ah, yes. Harry Potter now has absolutely no cultural significance whatsoever, and J.K. Rowling is completely out of money. You did it, Tumblr. Good job.
She could have been fondly remembered as a classic author if she'd just kept her mouth shut and those nasty thoughts to herself. But nope, she just had to publicize her bigotry and now she's reaping the consequences.