"The Real Hogwarts Legacy" Transcript

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(This transcript was created from the original script uploaded as closed captioning. Differences where James skipped overdiverged from the script are highlighted.)

[James pours some alcohol into a glass with a large ice cube, then takes a sip.]

For anyone who has followed my channel for any amount of time, and certainly anyone who follows me on Twitter or watches my live streams, it won’t come as any shock that Harry Potter was a formative piece of media for me. And I also might be one of the cisgender men who is most enraged by Harry Potter’s author, JK Rowling, and her… presumably… recent fall into Trans Exclusionary Radical Feminism.

She has spent the last several years honing her cruceatus curse onto the trans community around the globe. But especially trans women in the UK. She doesn’t often speak of trans men but don’t worry, when she does, her talking points are just as backward as when she talks about trans women.

The situation has grown ever more fraught since her first ‘middle-aged moment’ tweets in June of 2020. Now this is the point in the video when someone will jump down to the comments with the: “Tell me what she said that’s transphobic. Tell me what she’s done. None of you people can seem to tell me.”

[Above is increasingly distorted and red.]

I’ve seen so many comments like this that it's literally become a joke. But luckily people actually HAVE cataloged what she’s done. And I could leave links in the description to articles that line these out, but we all know theythese people won’t read them, so forgive me for using Abby Gardner’s breakdown from glamour.com as my jumping off point here.

But first, I want to say that this video is brought to you by my patrons. YouTube has been in a mood lately and isn’t even notifying subscribers who click the bell when a new video comes out, so the views and Adsense for this channel have sucked lately. So its^{[sic: it's]} really thanks to our patrons that we can keep this channel going. Without them we would have had to stop a long time ago. So if you like the videos we make, and have the means, even a dollar or two a month, I would be so grateful if you signed up for our Patreon, linked in the description. Patrons gain access to videos early, plus behind the scenes clips, a weekly podcast, movie watch a long parties, not-so-youtube-safe versions of videos, and a lot more. So if you’re able to support the channel this way, I couldn’t thank you enough. And if you’re not able to, which is very understandable in this economy, likes, comments and shares go a long long way.

[TV static transition.]

Now back to Joanne.

[Typewriter effect title card]: "INSTANCE No. 1"

On June 6 of the cursed year of 2020, Joanne tweeted out an article from devex.com calling for a more equal world post covid 19. Specifically for people who menstruate. She took issue with the term “People who menstruate”, tweeting:

[When James reads out Joanne's tweets, it's with an artificially modified high-pitched voice.]

'People who menstruate.'
I'm sure there used to be a word for those people.
Someone help me out.
Wumben?
Wimpund?
Woomud?'

This is just one of the many instances of Joanne erasing trans men and non-binary people from her gilded little world.

[Typewriter effect title card]: "INSTANCE No. 2"

Notwithstanding the massive backlash she received after the original tweet, when she could have thought about what she said and fixed this whole issue before it took over so much of our lives, she went on to elaborate on her beliefs in a longer piece.

[The same voice reads out the following, quote scrolling on screen]:

"If sex isn’t real, there’s no same-sex attraction.

If sex isn’t real, the lived reality of women globally is erased.

I know and love trans people, but erasing the concept of sex removes the ability of many to meaningfully discuss their lives.

It isn’t hate to speak the truth.

The idea that women like me, who’ve been empathetic to trans people for decades, feeling kinship because they’re vulnerable in the same way as women—i.e., to male violence—‘hate’ trans people because they think sex is real and has lived consequences—is a nonsense."

[Rolling eyes.] First of all, this is tangential to a kind of academic gaslighting. She’s trying to convince you that two things are self-evident that aren’t necessarily related. In the fight for trans rights — nobody is really trying to argue that sex doesn’t exist in order to justify the existence of GENDER. She’s trying to gaslight gay men and women into being on her side with the ‘there’s no same sex attraction’ bit. Guess what, Joanne, you can be gay and still be attracted to trans or non-binary people. I know, we must all be drinking crazy juice. But as a very much confirmed gay man if someone told me I couldn’t be attracted to Laith Ashley because he’s trans, I’d tell them to sod off.

Second of all! “Empathetic to trans people… because they’re vulnerable in the same way as women.” Trans women are women, Joanne. They don’t share a few things in common with women. They don’t just... happen to look like women. They are women.

But She continued:

“I respect every trans person’s right to live any way that feels authentic and comfortable to them.

I’d march with you if you were discriminated against on the basis of being trans."

[James interrupts the quote scrolling]:
Put your marching shoes on, Joanne! In fact, they should be pretty well worn through at this point.

"At the same time, my life has been shaped by being female.

I do not believe it’s hateful to say so.”

Trans women’s lives have also been shaped by being women. Ask any trans woman how much she’s gone through to be accepted as a woman by even a fraction of the population. If that process doesn’t shape the way a person exists, I don’t know what does.

[Typewriter effect title card]: "INSTANCE No. 3"

On June 10, 2020 Joanne published an essay length blog on her website called “TERF Wars”. Now I’m not going to break down that tirade because I enjoy having a... modicum of sanity left, But in the piece she defended her defense of Maya Forstater, who Joanne said “lost her job for what were deemed ‘transphobic’ tweets.” This is actually incorrect.

Forstater’s contract was up for renewal at the time and it was simply not renewed. This happens all the time. Whenever you sign an employment contract for a set number of days, usually amounting to about one or two years, your employer can choose not to renew that contract for any reason they see fit, or for no reason at all.

But instead of taking the work experience and finding another job, Forstater went on a crusade that she has since turned into an enterprise, in lieu of actually advancing her original career. Turns out it pays to be bigoted…

To this very day she goes around blaming every bad thing in the world on trans people. If you’ve got the stomach for it, go look at her Twitter account. It’s bonkers.

So after TERF WARS came out is when many public figures and celebrities, including the younger cast members of Harry Potter, came out firmly against Joanne’s seemingly sudden lurch into exclusionary politics. Daniel Radcliffe and Emma Watson were the loudest voices among them. And this is when the Joanne simps started up the online chants of [distorted] “You wouldn’t have anything without her!” Essentially saying they never would have become famous actors were it not for her choosing them. Not taking into account that thousands of child actors were run through casting directors before their faces ever appeared in front of Joanne. Nevermind that the Harry Potter movies may never have become the success that they did without the charismatic young actors at the center of them. Them daring to disagree with her at all was tantamount to kicking her in the mud, spitting on her, and then running her over with a high speed broomstick.

Also last year Tom Felton, who played Draco Malfoy in the movies, published his autobiography, in which he said Joanne... “wasn’t part of the filmmaking process as much as some people might think.” So let’s not give her too much credit for the movies, most of which are nonsensical if you haven't read the books anyway.

(It was probably after this that Joanne actually head-cannoned an adult Draco Malfoy into going around Diagon Alley Shops and vandalizing them with messages of supporting trans rights. She literally did that. Look it up. She did that. She did.)

[Typewriter effect title card]: "INSTANCE No. 4"

Another voice that got pulled into the cacophony was Stephen King, who retweeted a tweet from Rowling’s twitter stating that sometimes men try to silence women with violence. Which Is a pretty true and broadly known fact. King has written several booksnovels about women who are abused, either physically or psychologically, by the men in their lives. Rowling tweeted out a glowing message about King thanking him for agreeing with her.

When a fan asked King what he thought about trans rights, and he replied by saying, “Trans women are women,” Rowling deleted the tweet in which she praised him. King later told an interviewer that Joanne actually blocked him after that. Because she’s as petty as an eighth grader.

[Typewriter effect title card]: "INSTANCE No. 5"

July 5, 2020. Rowling goes on another tweet tirade. Pulling a tactic from the Fox News playbook:

“Many health professionals are concerned that young people struggling with their mental health are being shunted towards hormones and surgery when this may not be in their best interests.

Many, myself included, believe we are watching a new kind of conversion therapy for young gay people, who are being set on a lifelong path of medicalisation that may result in the loss of their fertility and/or full sexual function.”

[Note: "Many" seems to be bolded above, but it's not addressed.]

Now, I know a fair number of trans people, both men and women, and they all have different transition journeys. But one thing they all seem to have in common is that getting the hormones and gender affirming care they need... can be like climbing mount Everest in heels with a blindfold on. Certainly not the first thing thea doctor offers for, like, anything, let alone gender dysphoria.

She continued by saying:

"As I've said many times, transition may be the answer for some.

For others, it won't.

Witness the accounts of detransitioners.

'The system sees surgery as the easy fix to girls who do not conform.'"

Acting like there’s an epidemic of de-transitioning going on is dumb. People do de-transition, its^{[sic: it's]} true. Sometimes it’s only for medical reasons, sometimes its^{[sic: it's]} social pressure, and sometimes they really do come to the conclusion that this isn’t who they are.

But the amount of people who detransition, for any reason, is a fraction of a fraction of a fraction of the women who choose to have their breast implants removed, or the people who decide to have weight loss surgeries reversed. Context is important.

And then thenshe called into question the use of hormones in general.

"The long-term health risks of cross-sex hormones have been now been tracked over a lengthy period.

These side-effects are often minimised or denied by trans activists....

None of that may trouble you or disturb your belief in your own righteousness.

But if so, I can’t pretend I care much about your bad opinion of me."

[Typewriter effect title card]: "INSTANCE No. 6"

And then Her re-tweet of this gem.

[Reading voice even higher pitched now]

"Hormone prescriptions are the new antidepressants.

Yes they are sometimes necessary and lifesaving, but they should be a last resort - not the first option.

Pure laziness for those who would rather medicate than put in the time and effort to heal people’s minds."

[Stressed exhale.] First of all, antidepressants should never be a last resort. If someone is horribly depressed Its^{[sic: it's]} safer to medicate them while going through therapy then having them spend months in therapy just to never be able to medicate them because they take their own lives... I had a good friend in high school who was in that situation and, sadly, he’s not here anymore. So watch what you say about therapy and medication.

Second, the quote “Pure laziness for those who would rather medicate than put in the time and effort to heal people's minds" really does come across as saying unless there’s no way to convince you that you’re not trans, then we’ll let you have hormones. Which sounds an AWFUL LOT like conversion therapy to me. Which, sadly, doesn’t shock me anymore since the pseudonym Joanne uses to write her over-written detective novels is the same name of the man who created conversion therapy.

She says it’s a coincidence. But was she really dumb enough to choose a fake author name without googling it first? Well, maybe, but I’ll actually give her some credit here and say she IS smart enough to do that. She just chose the name on purpose.

[Typewriter effect title card]: "INSTANCE No. 7"

Speaking of that psydonum^{[sic: pseudonym]}. On September 14, 2020, when early reviews of her latest bloated, obviously editor-free detective novel started making the rounds, another round of controversy was triggered. The plot of the novel centers on a detective who is tasked with finding a cis male serial killer who dresses as a woman in order to stalk and kill cis women.

Now of course, trans women are not just men in dresses. But she seems to think they are, so it's quite clear that she was using the doorstop sized tome to demonize trans women as being dangerous to cis women. It’s easy enough to extrapolate that is her saying that trans women are dangerous to cis women IN GENERAL, instead of just the special and rare instances of serial killers.

[Typewriter effect title card]: "INSTANCE No. 8"

And then In August of last year she started promoting her newest transphobia-laced detective novel under the name of the man who created conversion therapy, The Ink Black Heart. In it, A YouTube-based cartoonist is doxxed, threatened, and ultimately stabbed to death in a cemetery. The cartoonist's work is accused of being racist, ableist, and drumroll please… [Drum roll sound effect] transphobic.

In the opinion of one reviewer, the book “takes aim” at “social justice warriors.” But Rowling swore up and down that the book was not based on the threats that she had received on Twitter, such as being doxxed.

If you don’t know what doxxing is, it is “The action or process of searching for and publishing private or identifying information about a particular individual on the internet, typically with malicious intent.” [Quote shown on screen next to James's head.]

But It's hard to publish identifying information about a woman who has been in the public eye for the last twenty years and lives in a Scottish castle, the address of which was listed LONG before this due to its status as a heritage site.

So that’s the timeline of events that lead to many people, myself included, believing that Joanne Rowling, author of the globally bestselling children’s fantasy book series about a boy wizard who was raised in a closet and grew up to become a cop… that states that enslaved house elves actually like being enslaved, and that everyone who wants to change the status quo is a villain… is actually a bit of a regressive transphobe. Now what about the damn video game?

Full disclosure, a marketing firm working withfor Avalanche Studios, the company behind the video game Hogwarts Legacy, sent me a review copy of the game. Which I did attempt to play. But maybe it needed a day one patch or something because the review copy’s controls were so wonky, and the voice over so disjointed from the mouth movement that I couldn’t play the thing for more than maybe 90 minutes before giving upthen I just gave up and started playing The Last of Us remake instead.

So this is not a review of the game. Which, considering they didn’t send the game out to actual review sites who they thought wouldn’t be kind, I’m kind of shocked as hell that they sent it to me. I can’t even get my favorite queer authors to send me early reader copies of their books, but likely the biggest game of the year gets sent to me? After publishing two videos and countless live streams in which I rail against Joanne and her broken ideology? I feel like there’s a queer person working at that marketing firm who wasis just trying to sabotage it. If so, good for you! I hope you’re watching.

But anyway.

For months and months before this game came out… years, really. TheThis thing was announced forever ago… people have been trying to build a boycott of the game. The main reason being its connection with Rowling. At least That’s the one all the news sites have been running with. “The crazy LGBTQLMNOP’s are boycotting the wizard game for children!” And if you’re watching the right channel, they might even include a little tag about grooming, because why the hell not?

But the queer community isn’t the only one raising the warning flag when it comes to Joanne’s work. There are plenty of people taking off the rose tinted glasses we’ve been wearing since discovering the series and finding things that are all sorts of troubling. There aren't many characters of color in the novels, and the ones that are there are frequently pushed to the background and given names that are outrageously stereotypical. For instance, Cho Chang is a character whose primary attributes are that she’s good at school, and she’s Asian. That’s basically it.

But it’s not just characters of color. Look at Seamus Finnigan, whose^{[sic: who's]} portrayed as dumb and constantly blowing things up. Because, you know, he’s Irish.

And in case you were unaware some Irish people would like all of Ireland to be a unified nation and not under the thumb of England. See, beginning in 1970, the Irish Republican Army,, or IRA, fighting for independence, carried out assassinations, and ambushes in a campaign they called the “Long War.” Oh and Bombings. They carried out bombings as well. You know, blowing stuff up.

And her peculiar ideas on gender are made clearly evident by the fact that magic stairs prohibit guys from getting to the girls' dorm but do not prevent girls from entering into the boys' dorm. And It's common practice to equate physical attractiveness with goodness, while the ugliness of villainous characters is repeatedly emphasized. Whether it be the over blown ugliness of the death eaters, or Harry’s abusive aunt and uncle respectively looking like a horse and being morbidly obese.

And then… there’s the Goblin bankers. The movies created a much sharper image of the Goblins than the books did, one that many people identified with stereotypical Jewish characteristicscaricatures. Physically the goblins are shown as having huge hooked noses, and they control all the money in the wizarding world. Rowling has not acknowledged or apologized for the purportedly inadvertent link despite the fact that it has been brought up countless times by many different people.

I’m… disinclined to say that this is errant anti semitism on her part, and more… [half-hearted shrug] negligence? The thing is that these are almost a direct depiction of goblins as they exist in European folklore, either in appearance or behavior. Poet Christina Rosetti wrote the poem: Goblin Market, where goblins are depicted as skeezy merchants, or perhaps are an allegory for opium pushers. In the books, their appearance is less important than the attitude aboutaround them, naturally.

And as being tight for cash — at one point in her life — I can understand that J.K. Rowling maymight not want to depict bankers in a positive light. The movies, however, had no excuse to depict them the way they did. And the goblins in the parks have even LESS of an excuse.

Now the reason why I say Rowling is guilty of negligence is because Goblins, as a mythological creature themselves, have roots in antisemitism. Some stories tie the origin of goblins to Judaism. For instance, Cornish myths suggest that Knockers (the Cornish form of goblins) came from the spirits of Jews who worked in the Cornish mines during the Middle ages. But Because the notion that goblins being based on the souls of Jews did not make sense in modern society, many of these tales about goblins did not survive the transition into modern society. Yet that's not the whole story of where the goblin came from.

Rabbi Jo David said:

[A photo of Rabbi Dr. Jo David is shown next to the quote scrolling on screen.]

"That whole concept of the Jew as misshapen and ugly, actually comes from early Christian writings…

The way the church looked at the Jews, the more that they [the Jews] continued to reject Catholicism, and then later Protestantism, the more ugly they became.

The more that the church preached about their ugliness and their corruption and the corruption of their soul."

As an additional piece of historical context, throughout the Middle Ages Jews were given the job of working as bankers, tax collectors, and in general dealing with money because this was considered to be a job below that of Crusaders and landowners. And not jobs that were Christ-like. And of course the NzsNazis used goblin-like images to portray Jews in all of their propaganda.

So goblins are very deeply anchored in their own history, and for many reasons, including antisemitism, they frequently become associated with Judaism; nonetheless, the question comes back to purpose. Did the author who came up with the original story, J.K. Rowling, intend for the goblins to have qualities that are often associated with Jews? Again, she hasn’t acknowledged the issue so we don't know.

This leads to the problem with Hogwarts Legacy, in which one of the primary villains, the goblin Ranrok, is leading a Goblin rebellion against the Wizarding World and collaborates with some dark wizards to reach his goal.

In the marketing, he was featured most prominently with a line about kidnapping the 15-year-old player character. And so Ranrok has been labeled as a very evident example of antisemitism. Because one of the biggest antisemitic tropes used to villainize Jews is Blood Libel, or the accusation that Jews kidnapped and murdered non-Jews in the past in order to use their blood in Jewish rituals. This one common sentiment has been a main driving factor throughout the middle ages and modern times to target and incite violence against the Jewish people.

Of this, Rabbi Kalev said:

[A photo of Rabbi Josh Kalev is shown next to the quote scrolling on screen.]

"Antisemitism is at an all-time high right now.

And the fact of the matter is, over time, the goblin has turned into a caricature of the Jew, in so many anti-semitic pieces of literature.

It sounds to me like, this video game, didn’t think too deeply about the effects and the connections that could be made between the Jew and the goblin.

But the fact that these goblins, the goblins of Harry Potter, have been ostracized and are leading a rebellion, and are in charge of the bank.

So I think there needs to be a sensitivity when we create a video game or a movie to think about, how did these characters connect to various antisemitic tropes?"

The game even has a Goblin Rebellion that takes place in the year 1612, and it turns out that there was a real-life massacre that occurred against Jewish people during the 1612 Feltmilth uprising. This massacre was one of many pogroms, or strategically conducted attacks, that were carried out in predominantly Jewish neighborhoods over the course of history. The date seems to be too specific not to be a reference to the hate crimes committed against Jews in the real world.

Hogwarts Legacy has, of course, sold a gazillion copies already, and will likely end up, by direct royalties, or further licensing agreements, making JK Rowling richer than she already is. She even brags about getting royalty checks on Twitter now. Because, again, she’s as petty as an eighth grader.

I say ‘8th grader’ figuratively. I’m sure many ankle-biters have more emotional maturity than this woman is displaying. Seeing how most of her tweeting and award-winning, grammatically unstructured unconstructed essay-ing is equivalent to ’I’m rubber and you’re glue.’

But even with the success of the game making her richer… does that even matter? Should we even care?

Now what I mean by that is… Rowling already has more money than god. She certainly has the martyrdom complex to go with it…

Because of the way investments work, she’d have to make a full time job of spending money to spend it fast enough to actually make a dent in her bank account. As long as she doesn’t go buying up any social media platforms, her personal equity will grow — even without any deliberate efforts to help it along. Barring the complete dissolution of society and abandonment of all major currencies, she’s (likely) going to be richer than everyone watching this video combined… forever. For any exceptions to that statement, the link to my Patreon can be found below.

There is no changing that. Boycotting a game or a movie or eventual TV show will never hurt her bank balance. Not in any significant way. And certainly not in a way that matters to her. Even though Fantastic Beasts BOMBED, she’s almost entirely unbothered. The failure of the movies has not seemed to affect or soften her stance on social issues. Even if she financed an entire harry potter movie HERSELF, whether it succeeds or not, won’t change her spending (or hoarding) of power. Money seems to matter LESS to her than this platform does.

Media boycotts never work. I’ve seen boycotts against Brokeback Mountain because it was gay, Star Wars because it had a black male lead and a female co-lead (This is when we thought john boyega^{[sic: John Boyega]} would actually be a Jedi). People boycotted Captain Marvel because… powerful women, and Beauty and the Beast for having two gays spin in a circle for a few frames. But all of those movies made a fortune. People have boycotted video games for being racist, and sexist, and homophobic, you name it. But the games still go on to make a ton of money for the studios.

There is no guarantee that a problem created by capitalism can be solved… with more capitalism. And choosing to withhold your financial support for various services or goods for whatever reason is still… capitalism. Boycotts are risky. Very risky. A boycott would hurt an independant caffe. It would not — and has not — and will not — hurt Starbucks. For all the people you may get invested into your boycott, a corporation has the capital to launch a larger propaganda campaign to peel ENOUGH people away from the boycott to dismiss the loss of a handful of customers. But especially because corporations aim to reach as wide an audience as possible, a handful of boycotters won’t make athe difference. As it stopped neither The Force Awakens nor Captain Marvel from being mega hits.

In fact, especially in the latter case, it can be argued that boycotts can risk the opposite effect happening. Why did Captain Marvel make so MUCH more money than say Wonder Woman, when there was nobody particularly boycotting DC’s effort? Boycotts call to attention that somebody wants this thing to fail. Which then pushes a lot of people who were on the fence about something, to support it out of spite. Not to mention the free publicity that comes from news coverage.

And then, not only does the thing you wanted to fail do terribly well, but the creators get to feel confident in their invulnerability.

Just as Captain Marvel memes made a point of drinking ‘male tears’, those of us who supported the movie’s success established the language that is now used against us. They are now drinking ‘leftist tears.’

[Camera slowly starts going dutch angle as he talks next.]

Yes, it really is THAT kind of playground politics. We really are just a bunch of 8th-graders, after all. They’re humiliated when we drink their tears, so they try extra hard to humiliate us by drinking our tears. Which means we try even harder to humiliate them, which means they try even harder to humiliate us back. It just goes around in circles. It ends up being that the point of it isn’t to actually… do anything — it just becomes about OWNING the other group.

Which is how you end up with a bunch of people who drop a cool $500 on buying multiple copies of Hogwarts Legacy JUST to “own the libs,” and not because they actually care about Harry Potter or know anything to do with the debate. It just becomes this peevish complex to ‘win.’

And this is a prize worth nothing anyway. These little ‘victories’ mean nothing and signify nothing — because the Billion Dollars Captain Marvel made certainly didn’t indicate any good omens about the conditions of women's rights in America, now did it? These culture wars using capitalism as a proxy don’t — actually — mean the things we want them to mean. Because support of Hogwarts Legacy itself was a bit of a proxy. Before people even knew about the problematic plot which amounts to heroically shutting down a revolution in Scotland — people were taking sides on a picket line over Rowlings’ then-recent descent into TERFism.

But what would have happened if the boycott had worked? Would the world have turned around and said: “well I guess trans people DO deserve rights?” People likely would have stickstuck their heels even deeper into the mud.

JK Rowling broadens her scope of attack to blame Trans People or the whole LGBTQ community for targeting her video game for children. And then the news runs with ‘think of the poor developers’, regardless of how many of them got laid off the minute the game hit shelves. British Media especially would run story after story. Rowling would book interview after interview. Something… something… taking away freedom… something, something.

She doesn’t want the money. She doesn’t need it. She wants trans people groveling for her and her supporters. She wants to see trans influencers announce their ‘breaks’ from twitter because her cult of simps have made their online lives a living hell. For all Joanne has complained about death threats, she never seemed to feel inclined to take a break from her social mediaTwitter, and yet she has this delight of sending out follower hits on trans advocates and random internet personalities.

I’m no psychologist, but this does not seem like the mental profile of someone who will rationally adjust their thinking because the public spoke to her via the free market. The problem with the boycott is that it was framed by many as a direct message to Rowling. This resulted in a large number of people who either rationalized their pre-emptive support for the game cynically — by reasoning that it wouldn’t actually affect Rowling so it wouldn’t matter. Or people who felt that they could ‘offset’ their support for the game by donating to a “trans charity.” This isn’t the carbon footprint of morality. You don’t get to net zero out by donating money to relief against the thing you are giving money to that hurts the people you’re donating money to protect.

The result of this boycott should have been to indicate a gesture of Trans solidarity. Not just SUPPORT, not throwing $60 at trans life line to make up for the $60 you spent at GameStop— solidarity. Because, let’s face it, the world doesn’t happen on Twitter and most people still don’t even really know that JK Rowling is a bigot, because their frame of reference is what the BBC says about her. So pledging NOT to buy the game would have been to a gesture to trans people to show who they can orand cannot trust.

There are hundreds of video games that come out every month — most of which are better than this one. You could demonstrate that respecting trans identities is more important than playing a video game. Instead, the drive for instant gratification to give your support a cheat day left... many trans people feeling voiceless and questioning their allies. If ever there was an ‘ask’ from trans people — for you to do something about how YOU live, rather than how you treat others… this was it.

And in reality — THIS is what a successful boycott would have accomplished. It wouldn’t have bankrupted Rowling, it wouldn't have killed the Harry Potter brand, but it would have shown trans folks that the people in their lives care more about them than a [silenced] fucking video game.

And by all means, Hogwarts Legacy demonstrated that this was the ‘last straw’ for more than a few fairweather friends who decided that being an ally was just too much work. And quite frankly, it’s better to know who they are now. And that is where we should have expectations for what athis boycott — or any boycott — shouldcould accomplish. A judge of character, and often a very public one. But expecting this to do anything meaningful about de-platforming a bigot was unrealistic.

So what do we do about HER, then?

We can do what we can to stop bigoted platforms from growing, but what do we do about this one particular lady? There is an option left, but it takes a lot more work than just tweeting about a video game, accidentally helping it to trend on Twitter. A lot more work. She needs to be made irrelevant.

Now, she’ll always have clout as the creator of Harry Potter. There is no taking that away from her. But why does Harry Potter have to be something that can keep her relevant in a socio-political light Forever? Why can’t it just be another book series on the shelf? Or another bunch of movies people watch once andin a while? Of course the best way to do this would be to lift up another author, preferably an out and proud queer author or at least a vocal ally, who is writing foundational literature for children and young adults.

Foundational literature is a collection of books and stories that we read, or we are told as we grow up. (I already made a video about this, but as Rowling’s been slipping deeper into alt-right rhetoric, I’ve adjusted my take a bit.)

These are the stories that help you develop your sense of self, of right and wrong — these bits of media are part of the experiences which shape your fundamentally guiding values. This is why Children’s literature is so important, and why people fuss over Rhol^{[sic: Roald]} Dahl and Rojard Kipping^{[sic: Rudyard Kipling]}. For instance, the guy who coined the term: “white man’s burden” is probably not someone you should let into your kid’s' heads.

These creators are literally there to help you instill morals into children's heads and futures. Typically, this type of literature is open minded, and welcoming to people who aren’t just like you. Harry Potter seemed to have that aspect, since mudbloods were heavily discriminated against, and even murdered, by the fascists of Rowling’s world. But even though they were a minority among wizards, good pure blood wizards still accepted them. And so we as children read that as it being important to accept people no matter their background. As long as they’re good people. We missed the stuff about Seamus and Cho Chang and The Goblins and such because we were kids.

But unlike a lot of foundational literature, which is usually focused on child readers, the Harry Potter books ostensibly grew up with us. The characters aged and developed, the themes became darker, and so… many of us never grew out of the books during publication. They followed us into adulthood. I personally had the perfect timing because the final book was released less than a month after I graduated from high school. So I was the perfect age to grow up with the books. Which is why I clung onto Hogwarts for deal life as a safe place for me for so long. So that’s the kind of foundational literature that we need to promote and get into the hands of as many young readers as humanly possible.

But it can’t be super disparate. Every kid can’t have their own series because then the societal connection doesn’t develop. They all need to go towith the same book. Just like with Harry Potter. You know it's interesting how my generation grew up with Harry Potter and then came of age with The Hunger Games and now we’re a bunch of open minded, pretty accepting weirdos who want to eat the rich.

Anyway, can we do that? [Takes sip of the drink poured at the start of the video.] Can we force a single series of books to become a global sensation like that? Is there one already out there with one or two books, or has it yet to be written?

And don’t tell me Animorphs or Percy Jackson. They’ve finished their run six times over by now so there’swe're not waiting two or three years to find out what happens next. This needs to be new. Something everyone can gather around and wait for midnight book launches. It needs to be like an HBO show only... for kids.

It doesn’t have to SELL like Harry Potter, and it can even be something like a TV show, if any network would let a show go past three or four seasons these days. The important part is that the youthful characters need to grow up with their audience. Stranger Things kind of fits the bill, to be honest, but I think it starts off too dark to get pre-teens on board. Or at least for their parents to let them watch it. But that just shows that it's possible. Replace Harry Potter’s social importance with something else.

But the other way to make her more or less irrelevant to the wider discussion is something we have no control over. But profit-driven movie executives do. In 1998 Warner Bros purchased the film rights to the Harry Potter books, and today they even share ownership of the “JK Rowling’s Wizarding World” as a whole brand. If you’ve been following the entertainment industry news the last few years, you’ll know Warner Bros has been past^{[sic: passed]} around like a party bottoms in Hollywood. First Time Warner owned them, then AT&T owned them, Now Discovery owns them, and according to people in the know, Discovery plans on selling Warner Bros to Universal Pictures in 2024. Which is why Warner Bros has been such a mess lately. They haven't had a solid leadership for over a decade.

So in 2024 when Universal buys Warner Bros, they’re also buying their stake in The Wizarding World. They’ve seen what’s happened to ticket sales for Wizarding World movies since Joanne went full TERF, so it's easy to see that her connection with the franchise is an Albatross around its neck. So they could offer to buy the franchise from her wholesale.

Now the evaluated worth of the Harry Potter brand is about 26 billion dollars. That includes potential income from the brand in the future though, assuming Rowling’s presence won’t hurt the brand. Remember, Avalanche went out of their way to say that she had nothing to do with Hogwarts Legacy, which has been how many people defended their purchase of the game. The last release she was directly attached to was the The Secrets of Dumbledore movie, which bombed so badly that it convinced Warner Bros to kill the franchise right there and then, even though they’d signed a dealdeals with actors for seven movies. That’s just how much money they lost on thatthe thing.

I think Universal plans on buying out the brand. They will be buying Warner’s stake in it, so there’s already a discount. Universal also stands to lose a lot of money if Rowling goes too far off the deep end for mainstream audiences to come up with excuses anymore. So buying her out would be a smart move. And they wouldn’tabsolutely would not even be paying the full price because a lot of the worth of the franchise is tied up in publishing deals, toy deals, apparel, Universal’s own Wizarding World park. And so as long as they continue the ongoing contracts, they wouldn’t need to buy them out, so they’d get it for much much less than 26 billion.

Jesus. 26 billion dollars is like… a theoretical number for me and someone has it on their bank balance. [Takes sip.] Eat the rich, kids.

So There are two ways of take social power from her. We’ll never take her money away. She’ll never be not rich, but if we can make it that her opinions don’t really matter anymore. If she’s just some rich person living in a castle of all things, who the hell cares what she thinks?

TERFS will, of course, and they’ll still flock to her like some cult leader, but if she no longer owns Harry Potter, or Harry Potter is no longer is relevant because another formative piece of literature has superseded it, then mainstream people will kind of forget that she exists. They have short memories, those people who live lives and do things other than live on Twitter.

Now we can’t influence Universal buying the franchise. But we CAN do option #1. We CAN push another piece of media to the prominence required to overtake Harry Potter. It can be a movie series, or a tv series, but its^{[sic: it's]} best if its^{[sic: it's]} a book series. They tend to have more longevity. And People connect more with books because they can imagine the world in their own head instead of just seeing what a director, cinematographer, and set designer wants them to see.

We can reduce her influence on the world. Where once she spoke out loudly in favor of social justice, she now works with people fighting hard to condemn some of the most endangered people among us. People who might be risking their lives just by leaving their house, she and her friends target them. She has become the exact kind of villainous bully we spent our childhoods reading her heroes triumph over.

She was to be remembered as the woman who made a generation of kids want to read. Who told movie goers and readers around the world that accepting people for being different amounts to being a good person. She created a world in which everyone felt safe. No matter your race, or skin color, or religious belief, or your gender, or who you loved. She had created a legacy of not just tolerance, but acceptance.

But now she’s tarnished it in the minds of millions. And as long as she controls it, Hogwarts won’t feel safe for those people anymore. And she did that. With her ignorance, intolerance, and belligerent rhetoric, she’s has made Hogwarts unsafe.

And now that’s the real Hogwarts Legacy.