• neuracnu@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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    6 days ago

    Remember: Even piracy doesn’t offer absolution.

    These properties rely on popular / universal awareness to achieve network effects and cement themselves within modern culture. When this happens, the memes and concepts from the property worm their way into everyday language (“he who cannot be named”, “10 points for Gryffindor”, etc) and help keep everyone else buying.

    The only answer is to treat people talking about Harry Potter as you would someone who keeps talking about the greatness of R Kelly’s music or Bill Cosby’s comedy.

    • CarnivorousCouch@lemmy.world
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      5 days ago

      Thank you! It’s been super disheartening to see people get excited about Harry Potter all over again, just as it was to see friends buy the video game a few years back. Many people who want to ostensibly call themselves allies are more than happy to engage in Nostalgia over Solidarity.

      I read the Harry Potter books as a child. I enjoyed them a normal amount. I think I dressed up as HP for Halloween one year. But then I grew older and I “graduated” to other fantasy, as I would generally expect someone to do.

      Now when I think about Harry Potter, I always think of Ursula K Le Guin’s comments:

      Q: Nicholas Lezard has written ‘Rowling can type, but Le Guin can write.’ What do you make of this comment in the light of the phenomenal success of the Potter books? I’d like to hear your opinion of JK Rowling’s writing style

      UKL: I have no great opinion of it. When so many adult critics were carrying on about the “incredible originality” of the first Harry Potter book, I read it to find out what the fuss was about, and remained somewhat puzzled; it seemed a lively kid’s fantasy crossed with a “school novel”, good fare for its age group, but stylistically ordinary, imaginatively derivative, and ethically rather mean-spirited.

        • bonenode@piefed.social
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          4 days ago

          I’ve been reading across her catalogue, interspersed with books from Isaac Asimov. I like both but the style is so different and Le Guin is just amazing at the cultural world building parts. Her books on the Ekumen and all the challenges at contacting a different culture, aside from language, are a fantastic read.

          I actually got bored at the later Foundation books from Asimov where the main characters are so above everyone else in their abilities, its almost like a teenager wrote it. The first ones are really great though, up to the Gaia revelation.

      • prole@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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        5 days ago

        Yeah but this is 2026. People don’t read books anymore. So all they have is nostalgia for the one series they read as a kid.

      • MediumGray@lemmy.ca
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        5 days ago

        That’s really not what they’re saying at all; I get the feeling that you may be taking this too personaly. It’s a reasonable argument that engaging with the cultural phenomenon, even if not financially supporting it directly, still signals support or at least tolerance of the controversies so closely associated with it these days. You may disagree of course but I think calling it “a demonization of everyone who ever enjoyed the series as a child” is a gross misrepresentation of their position. It is, at most, a condemnation of those who would continue engaging with it since then. (And, ironically, likening them to Dolores Umbridge is engaging in the very type of cultural normalization that they were arguing against. Although if you disagree with them I don’t suppose you’d feel that matters anyway.) Anyhow, that’s enough arguing on someone else’s behalf for me today. I just can’t stand seeing arguments misrepresented like that.

      • ImADifferentBird@piefed.blahaj.zone
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        4 days ago

        What makes you think they’re not holding the author accountable?

        And the fans should be held accountable. Without the money and the cultural clout you give her, she would be nothing. She would be unable to act upon her genocidal fantasies against trans people. You enable her not only with every cent you spend on her franchise, but with every comment like this you post

  • LiveLM@lemmy.zip
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    5 days ago

    JK coulda kept her mouth shut and have remained as a beloved author forever. I’ll never understand what could drive someone to taint their legacy for zero gain.

    • crapwittyname@feddit.uk
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      5 days ago

      The clues to who she is were there all along in her writing. She couldn’t keep quiet, because she believes what she’s doing is right. Because she’s conservative.
      The only major black character in the series is called “Shacklebolt”. The only Asian, “Cho Chang”. Zero LGBTQ representation in the books. Harry had the world at his feet and decided to join the police. The whole struggle of the saga is for a return to the status quo, rather than a better world. General lack of female agency, and women just being hysterical and needing to be slapped out of it. Goblins as an antisemitic trope. I could go on.
      I put it to you that it was inevitable that, one way or another, her rancorous bile would have spilled out into the public debate as soon as she got famous.

      • cheat700000007@lemmy.world
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        5 days ago

        Wasn’t there one Irish guy, and he had an experiment blow up in his face?

        Never gave a shit about the series but remember hearing about token characters having a dose of racism to them.

        • EldritchFemininity@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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          5 days ago

          Not just that, he was also obsessed with turning drinks into alcohol. As a 15 year old kid. I’m pretty sure he also tried to blow up multiple things as well, I don’t think it was a one time thing.

            • EldritchFemininity@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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              20 hours ago

              Maybe not, but it’s definitely a symptom of a larger problem. Taken on its own, having the stereotypical Irish IRA member/drunk kid is a gag, but when you look at that plus the black kid named after slavery, the Asian girl named two single syllable last names (practically named Ching Chong), and a number of other semi-racist stereotypes in the books, it points towards somebody who is uncreative enough to avoid basing her characters on generic stereotypes or doesn’t do any research before writing a character at best, and somebody who actually views those people that way at worst - a racist.

                • EldritchFemininity@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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                  17 hours ago

                  Less overthinking it and more that people have seen her political opinions in the past decade or so, and looked back at the books to realize “Oh, in hindsight there’s so much of her politics in these books.”

                  There’s so much stuff in there, naming a Korean girl two Chinese last names is just scratching the surface.

        • Jayjader@jlai.lu
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          3 days ago

          What’s weird about that character is that the explosions and turning water into wine were (as far as I can recall) movie additions. In the books he was just another classmate.

      • ShaggySnacks@lemmy.myserv.one
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        5 days ago

        JK Rowling was always a liberal centrist. From an old 4Chan post:

        It very neatly describes the way liberals see the world and political struggle.

        Lots of people complain about the anti-climactic ending, but really I don’t think it could any other way. I’d like to imagine that there’s some alternate universe where Rowling actually believed in something and Harry was actually built up as the anti-Voldemort he was only hinted as being in the beginning of the books. Where he’s opposes all the many injustices of the wizarding world and determines to change their frequently backwards, insular, contradictory society for the better, and forms his own faction antithetical to the Death Eaters and when he finally has his showdown with Voldy. Harry surpasses by adopting new methods, breaking the rules and embracing change and the progression of history. While Voldemort clings to an idyllic imaging of the past and the greatest extent of his dreams is to become the self-appointed god of a eternally stagnant Neverland. Harry has embraced the possibility of a shining future and so can overcome the self-imposed limits Voldemort could never cross, and Voldemort is ultimately defeated by this.

        But that would require a Harry that believed in something, and since Rowling is a liberal centrist Blairite that doesn’t really believe in anything, Harry can’t believe in anything. Harry lives in a world drought with conflict and injustice, a stratified class society, slavery of sentient magical creatures, the absurd charade the wizarding world puts upto enforce their own self-segregation, a corrupted and bureaucracy-choked government, rampant racism, so on and so forth But Harry is little more than a passive observer for most of it, only the racism really bothers him (and then, really only racism against half-bloods). In fact, when Hermione stands up against the slavery of elves, she’s treated as some kind of ridiculous Soapbox Sadie. For opposing chattel slavery. In the end. the biggest force for change is Voldemort and Harry and friends only ever fight for the preservation and reproduction of the status quo. The very height of Harry’s dreams is to join the aurors. a sort of wizard FBI and the ultimate defenders of the wizarding status quo. Voldemort and the Death Eaters are the big instigators of change and Harry never quite gets to Vold/s level. Harry doesn’t even beat Voldemort, Voldemort accidentally kills himself because he violated some obscure technicality that causes one of his spells to bounce back at him.

        And this is really the struggle of liberals, they live in a world fraught with conflict, but aren’t particularly bothered by any of it except those bit that threaten multicultural pluralism. They see change, and the force behind that change, as a wholly negative phenomenon. Even then, they can only act within the legal and ideological framework of their society. So. for instance, instead of organizing insurrectionary and disruptive activity against Trump and the far-right, all they can do is bang their drum about what a racist bigot he is and hope they can catch him violating some technicality that will allow them to have him impeached or at least destroy his political clout. It won’t work, it will never work, but that’s the limit of liberalism just as it was the limit of Harry Potter.

        My initial theory is that JK Rowling saw trans women as a threat to her status quo. At the end of the day, that’s all Centrist Liberals care about. Social progress can’t affect their status quo. It’s why Centrist Liberals will always back fascism. Fascism is designed to protect the status quo. The problem is that Centrist Liberals don’t understand that fascism requires an out group to work and those Centrist Liberals will be the out group at one point.

      • EldritchFemininity@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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        5 days ago

        She also describes women that she wants the reader to hate as having masculine features. “Mannish hands,” a square jawline and thick neck on a teenage girl, there’s plenty in the first book alone.

      • korazail@lemmy.myserv.one
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        5 days ago

        I want to caution about reading -isms into authors works. People often don’t really know their own stereotyping unless it’s pointed out (you, dear reader, probably have some problematic world views that no one has noticed or mentioned…). The fallout afterwards is where the problems exist, when someone doubles down on their viewpoints after being informed of them.

        Rowling has clearly done that and is dismissed because of it. I will avoid things that give her a platform, and the original art itself is tainted due to her continued stances; but, back to the general case, just because art might be racist or antisemitic, etc., at the time of creation, if the artist can be convinced that their views are wrong, we should celebrate that – just with footnotes and context.

        • crapwittyname@feddit.uk
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          5 days ago

          I think everyone -including public figures- should be allowed to learn from their mistakes and grow. I think social media can interfere with that and make people refuse to admit error and double down for fear of being cancelled. Ideally this should change.
          But, the case of Jo Rowling in particular is egregious. Not only does she refuse to engage with the possibility of being wrong, her bigotry extends beyond words, into concrete, hateful actions where she is fuelling the fire of transphobia worldwide with her influence, both parasocial and financial. That results in misery and suffering for millions. Fuck Jo Rowling.
          This condemnation of her doesn’t extend to everyone. And if she one day sees the light and walks everything back, then she should get a chance to redeem herself, too.

          • korazail@lemmy.myserv.one
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            5 days ago

            I was certainly not defending her. She is, as you say, egregious in part because when she was called out she refused to reflect. I was more talking in the general sense. The world sucks right now, but we are quick to attack people on their views without granting them opportunity to change.

            I call this out because of the trend of ‘leopards-eating-faces’ kind of jokes. When the leopards eat your face, you might notice they were not friendly to begin with and the rest of civilization can welcome you back instead of mocking you; or they can mock you and you will feel isolated and defensive and the other bigots will welcome and validate you instead.

            • crapwittyname@feddit.uk
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              5 days ago

              I think you’ve got s point there. Making fun of people in that way is surely going to entrench their views.

    • ragebutt@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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      5 days ago

      She became a billionaire and has almost certainly curtailed her social network to sycophants that not only agree with everything she says, they also boost her ego. That plus not wanting to lose the attention of the world will have her respond to whatever provokes the attention of the masses.

      I’m not up 100% on how this all started because I genuinely don’t give a shit about Harry Potter but I would not be surprised if she made a controversial statement as a person with a huge platform, got a bunch of flak, and then once the dust settled realized how much “engagement” (read: attention) she got from it and subsequently doubled down over and over.

      A great deal of human behavior is attention maintained. We have this ignorance though that “bad” attention is not desirable. Research continually shows that attention maintained behavior is perpetually reinforced by attention, not attention of a certain quality. Eg if your child exhibits an attention maintained behavior and you say “stop doing that or you’re grounded” the likelihood is that the behavior is still reinforced (and will subsequently be more likely) because attention was still achieved. The attention may have higher reinforcement potency if it is “positive” but that doesn’t mean “negative” attention doesn’t have a potentially powerful impact.

      This is why the current social landscape of 3rd place community centers being social media, which almost exclusively give algorithmic favor to content that shows high “engagement” (read: annoying bullshit that many simple can’t resist interacting with) is probably one of the most toxic developments in the modern history of humanity. It encourages ugly behavior and reinforces disgusting belief systems. It is also why the age old advice of “don’t feed the trolls” is sage wisdom

    • SpiceDealer@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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      5 days ago

      Hubris, mostly. The success of her brainchild went to her head and this made her open her large trap for the whole world to hear.

    • Rothe@piefed.social
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      5 days ago

      It seems becoming filthy rich causes your brain to turn into a hateful goo. There is really no exception to this, just varying degrees of billionaires being more or less good at hiding how they have become insane hateful creatures.

    • Baggie@lemmy.zip
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      5 days ago

      Personally I’m on team black mold

      But yeah I’ve had same thoughts. Seems like such a weird hill to die on even when you do have those beliefs.

    • bonenode@piefed.social
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      4 days ago

      It’s because she sees nothing wrong with who she is. In fact she thinks she is “more right” (haha, get it?) than everyone else.

  • ThePyroPython@lemmy.world
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    4 days ago

    All of you, do yourselves a favour and read the Rivers of London series to get your fix of British Wizards:

    1. Actually competent world building
    2. They’ve got a lot of humour
    3. They’re not written by a bigot

    Or give the audiobooks a listen as they’re read by Kobna Holdbrook-Smith who’s voice is like butter.

    • mojofrododojo@lemmy.world
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      4 days ago

      so you pirate it - but why? why would you want to consume something you know was made by someone who is awful?

        • mojofrododojo@lemmy.world
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          4 days ago

          it’s hard. I love the Sandman. I won’t watch it going forward, knowing Gaiman’s violence. I have the entire collected series, doubt ever read 'em again.

          this is life: we change our plans when faced with reality, every day. you can choose to ignore the bigotry, but I choose to find new things to consume.

        • ozymandias@sh.itjust.works
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          4 days ago

          The gringotts are straight up an antisemitic caricature. There’s plenty of biggotry hidden in there.
          And it’s not “touched” by someone awful, it’s main creator is someone awful… Huge difference.
          If the owner of a restaurant is a Nazi that’s a lot different than it having a Nazi bus boy.
          You know who directly profits every time you spend any money on it? A biggot.
          That’s the parent, not the child.
          If you support the franchise in any way at all, you’re feeding the biggot’s empire.
          That’s why we boycott things entirely.
          If you pirated it, seeded zero bytes, watched it in a vacuum and never spoke of it again, then maybe you’d be morally neutral, but you’re not.
          It’s like being vegetarian but wearing used leather shoes… You’re still acting hypocritically

              • mojofrododojo@lemmy.world
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                3 days ago

                something that’s occurring to me this morning:

                it’s not enough that the potter fans want to have their fun; it’s not enough that they’re willing to ignore the hateful baggage and fund hate against their communities - I suspect there’s another aspect.

                They’re upset we won’t shut up and come along. They genuinely resent that people have a line, have found a limit to what they’ll accept, because apparently they don’t have that line, that limit of what’s OK, and they resent people reminding them that they really should.

                • ozymandias@sh.itjust.works
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                  3 days ago

                  I haven’t ingested most of it, but before I knew what jkr was, I listened to some of it as a book on tape, and tried to watch the first movie…
                  And it’s fucking horrible. I really don’t get why anyone over 12 enjoys it…
                  Like, she can’t even come up with good words.

                  I could kinda understand enjoying an artist’s work and separating the art from the artist, if they were just biggoted but kept it most in their private life, but she an extremely vocal, extremely active biggot… It’s the only cause she seems to care about. Not worried about hunger or poverty, disease or war, she’s happy to scrooge around with her billion dollars… But she’s obsessed with hurting trans people.
                  Watching her shit funds that.
                  If it was a couple bad instances and she apologized for losing her temper, I wouldn’t exactly forgive her, but I’d understand people watching her garbage. Artists tend to have emotional problems and do things that aren’t really in their character…
                  But this is deeply in her core. She has defined herself as a champion of biggotry for years.

            • ozymandias@sh.itjust.works
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              3 days ago

              Me:

              If you pirated it, seeded zero bytes, watched it in a vacuum…

              You:.

              We were discussing pirating it … Stay on track.

              You’re such a narcissist you have to pretend like people who disagree with you don’t understand you? I codemn your actions. Not just disagree with them.
              I also think you’re horrible at debate.
              “I’ll just pretend like you didn’t understand me, ignore what you said mostly, and then just repeat my same toothless argument”.

              Go back to reddit

      • laranis@lemmy.zip
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        4 days ago

        Two thoughts. The first and most egregious one is, “Because it is entertaining and I enjoy it.”

        Probably the more palatable reason, however, is to be able to engage in discourse regarding the content of the media in relation to its creator(s).

  • Chloé 🥕@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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    5 days ago

    it’s literally just the same story again too, for the 3rd time

    if you’re willing to throw trans people under the bus to watch a remake, you’re genuinely fucking pathetic at this point, like do something else with your life jfc

  • DaTingGoBrrr@lemmy.ml
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    5 days ago

    Why do we even need a remake of the old movies? The movies are still holding up very well in this day and age. Why couldn’t they focus on some other story? Expand the universe a little. Hogwarts is not the only magic school that exists…

    • ratsnake@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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      5 days ago

      They tried expanding the world, it sucked and nobody liked it (also, the worldbuilding is so weak that it falls apart if you consider wider society outside of Hogwarts for five minutes, because the series started as books for grade schoolers)

      • zalgotext@sh.itjust.works
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        5 days ago

        The world building is weak because Rowling is a bad fantasy writer, not because it was written for grade schoolers. There are tons of series aimed at grade schoolers with incredible world building - Redwall, Warrior Cats, Earthsea, just to name a few, all have way better world building than Harry Potter.

        • ratsnake@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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          Eh, I think it’s a bit of both? The first books just generally where fairly whimsy and light-hearted and you don’t really need your demographics and societal structures to make sense when you are writing a whimsical, light-hearted story for kids.

          The later books become darker and more serious so the artifacts of those earlier worldbuilding decisions become more and more obvious over time.

        • absentbird@lemmy.world
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          Earthsea has some of the best world building of all time, but I’m not sure I’d say it was written for grade schoolers.

          • zalgotext@sh.itjust.works
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            I feel like Earthsea is appropriate for middle-school-aged kids (so like 11-14ish), right? Maybe our definitions of “grade schoolers” is different, but I was trying to give examples for a wide range of ages

            • absentbird@lemmy.world
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              Actually that’s totally fair. There’s just some heady concepts in there, it certainly makes HP look much more childish and goofy.

    • FlyingCircus@lemmy.world
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      5 days ago

      Because JK Rowling is pissed that the original cast doesn’t support her becoming a raging transphobe/capitalist goon.

      • zebidiah@lemmy.ca
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        5 days ago

        but that excuse doesnt hold water either, why spend money on a remake when you can make money on a quick and easy and CHEAP remaster/re-release without any effort or inevitable backlash around casting choices

        • Couldbealeotard@lemmy.world
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          5 days ago

          Remasters rarely make money.

          The Blu-ray remaster of Star Trek (can’t remember which series) lost money.

          No one would buy a re-release of a decade old Harry Potter film.

          • egg82@lemmy.world
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            5 days ago

            Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone was 2001, 25 years ago. Deathly Hallows was 2011, 15 years ago.

  • Laser@feddit.org
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    6 days ago

    I’d pirate it but I find the story just not interesting or worth my time.

    I read Philosopher’s Stone about 25 years ago as a teenager and wasn’t impressed. Didn’t read any other because that one already felt like wasted time. Went to a movie in 2007 (no clue which one that was) and again forgettable. Not bad, in fact I still remember Die Hard 4 that I also watched back then because it was so bad. That HP movie? No idea about plot or anything. Another one? Thanks, I’m good.

    Even if Rowling wasn’t a disgusting person, I feel like what I’ve seen of her work is just not great. It’s not terrible, but I don’t care for it at all.

    But also, she can get fucked.

    comic making fun of her dumb tweets

    • Hoimo@ani.social
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      5 days ago

      2007 was Order of the Phoenix, which is the most boring and also does not make any sense at all out of context. Strangely enough, that movie was also my first experience with Harry Potter, because a friend invited me to go see it. I did read the books later, which were decent enough, but like all global phenomena, it’s not really about being the best of the best, but being in the right place at the right time.

      The fandom was fun though, the discussions on Tumblr, the theories, the fanfics, the comic cons. I never see a wizard robe these days, even though it’s such an easy costume. I think Joanne killed the fandom.

  • Grimy@lemmy.world
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    5 days ago

    What if I pirate it, talk to no one about it (not by choice but still) and then destroy all memories of it through aggressive drug use?

  • supersquirrel@sopuli.xyz
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    6 days ago

    The only ethical consumption of the original Harry Potter Movies is to watch it with the gleefully unauthorized Wizard People Dear Reader soundtrack/overdub.

    Anyway, we were at a bar and were getting a good laugh at a guy who was playing pool all by himself while wearing a hoody over his hat, sunglasses under that and headphones on the outside of all of it. So we started riffing on “What could he possibly be listening to?”. Someone who I don’t think was me said that he was listening to a book on tape of Harry Potter. And out came the Wizard People narrator. I joked that night that I was going to rush home and record an entire misinformed book on tape of The Sorcerer’s Stone, because I had not and have not ever read any Harry Potter books. Once I started making notes for it I realized that an audio track alone could get boring, so I decided to sync it with the movie. Then I took a week or two and made the damn thing. I love it.

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wizard_People,_Dear_Reader

    https://archive.org/details/wizard-people/

  • robocall@lemmy.world
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    5 days ago

    I’ve never watched or read any of the Harry Potter stuff. So I feel pretty good right now.

    • SparroHawc@lemmy.zip
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      5 days ago

      Don’t do it. Don’t watch it. Don’t hate watch it. Stop talking about it. Let it die. Let it fall out of the public eye. Make Rowling become irrelevant. Let some other world become your fandom instead of HP. The longer people pay attention to it, the longer Rowling continues to punish trans kids.

  • Zebrafive@lemmy.myserv.one
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    5 days ago

    I’ve always found Harry Potter universe to be quite campy. But I also never got into Lord of the Rings and thought Game of Thrones was awful so my opinion on television media may not be average or popular.

    • chonglibloodsport@lemmy.world
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      5 days ago

      Lord of the Rings is second to none. The amount of development that went into it is staggering. It’s as grand and epic as any of the ancient works of mythology, and that’s what it was intended to be.

      • Zebrafive@lemmy.myserv.one
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        5 days ago

        Yeah I get it and I dont deny that. Having never read the books though, I find the movies to be somewhat difficult to follow and with the exception (probably) of the first movie, I simply dont find them memorable or ranked high in my own mind as something I want to re watch.

        • chonglibloodsport@lemmy.world
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          5 days ago

          I highly recommend the books, if you can find time to read. I know a lot of people have trouble settling down to read these days (myself included). I wish I read more!

          • Zebrafive@lemmy.myserv.one
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            5 days ago

            Time to read yes

            For me its the attention amd focused I’ve got time, just not tje attention and motivation (I fantasize but procrastinate)

            I have been the 3rd or 4th dune book for about a year now (I have been on the last 50 pages or so for probably 6 montjs)

            I have resd the first half or so of Don Quixote about 3 times

            I habe now started to read Herodotus Histories for the 2nd time (didn’t finish last time stopped around half way thru Book 2)

            And I made the (fortuitous?) mistake of starting Hitch hikers Guide to the galaxy twice now and I did really enjoy it right off the bat, so that one might rise to the top of the list lol

            I have also begun reading Amadis of Gaul due to interest in Medeival Chicalry novels and I’ve yet to finish King Arthur (Mark Twain) whereat I only have maybe 100pgs left. (Not a good book, TBH but it gives some background to Quixote as does Amadis of Gaul

            LOTR is definitely also in this ridiculous list of want to reads. As is

            Divine Comedy Aeneid Decameron Pilgrims Progress Infinite Jest Grapes of Wrath Something by Ishiguro Metamorphosis etc etc etc

            I should make a post about this so.I can properly.vent instead of ‘hijacking comments’

            • HarkMahlberg@kbin.earth
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              5 days ago

              Divine Comedy

              Get yourself a quality translation, mine was kinda ass, don’t remember whose it was though.

        • Einskjaldi@lemmy.world
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          5 days ago

          The story in the movie was good but lacked the ethereal fae quality and a lot of the quiet beauty in the book.

  • dermanus@lemmy.ca
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    5 days ago

    I’m so over HP. It was a popular book decades ago. I’m 41 (5 years older than the first HP actor) and I remember the “controversy” over the fourth book being so much longer than the others. I’ve read many other books since then that were better.

    If you want grown up magic school stories check out The Magicians. One of the rare cases where the show is better than the books.

    • HarkMahlberg@kbin.earth
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      5 days ago

      If you’re looking for an adult novel about English magicians (and you looove lore dumping), read Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell you’re gonna thank me on that one.

    • CaptSneeze@lemmy.world
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      5 days ago

      I’m a massive fan of the audiobook versions of the Magicians series, which I consider to be among the best narration performances from the hundreds of audiobooks I’ve listened to. I gave up on the tv series halfway through episode 1. Should I give it another shot?

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        5 days ago

        It’s different, it’s more of an ensemble show whereas the books are more Quentins story. It got a bit silly towards the end but it was still a fun watch. I suggested it to my BF (huge Buffy fan, mild HP fan) he binged the whole thing in a week.

        Sometimes you bounce off shows the first time. It isn’t a faithful retelling of the books but it’s got most of the major notes.

      • dermanus@lemmy.ca
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        Yep. Three books by Lev Grossman. They focus more on Quentin, the show features the other characters more.

      • Bubbaonthebeach@lemmy.ca
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        5 days ago

        No this series deserves to be boycotted simply because he refuses to finish it. Authors should never ever start a series that requires an ending if they haven’t already sketched out that ending.

        • underisk@lemmy.ml
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          5 days ago

          I mean, in this case there’s quite a few reasons to avoid it. The charity scam for one, and the second book being almost total dog shit that basically rehashes the first book.

          spoiler

          Hope you like cringey self insert fantasy erotica where a virgin fucks a fae sex goddess so well he fully comprehends her entire existence then metaphysically dominates her.

          If you want good fantasy read the First Law series or hell even The Wandering Inn. I don’t even like Sanderson but whatever he’s shoveling out has got to be better than Kingkiller.