Hogwarts Legacy to be Steam Deck Verified at launch

Quoting: Purple Library Guy

Quoting: jonahhw

Quoting: Guest

Quoting: jonahhwI'm disappointed as always at the number of people who just don't care about how toxic the HP series is and how willing many are to give it extra publicity. Is it really worth indirectly donating to anti-lgbt hate groups just so that you can play a game where you quell a rebellion that seeks freedom for the goblins, one group of intelligent magical creatures whose oppression is consistently celebrated by the books and series as a whole?

uhhh, what?

There's a video that's pretty relevant here (it goes over a lot of the problems with Harry Potter, and there's a good chance that, if you watch it, you'll never be able to think about HP the same way again). However, a few examples of the terrible ways that the HP series treats non-humans follows:

• House elves are said to enjoy being enslaved, and Hermione (the only character to ever question this) is mocked for thinking that enslaving them is bad.

Hang on, hang on!!!! I've read only part of the series, but I've read that bit. She isn't mocked by, as it were, the author's voice. She's mocked by many other characters (much as every sort of halfway serious progressive activist is mocked in real life, anti-slavery ones having certainly been no exception), but she perseveres despite adversity and in the end does manage to free the house elf character, who, after taking some time to assimilate the notion due to a very traditionalist outlook (and, hard to be sure, perhaps censoring himself because he knows it would be unwise not to), comes round to valuing freedom. I believe in later books that I haven't read, a movement has begun to try to free house elves.
So no, what you're saying is totally the opposite of what is going on in the book. It's presenting the difficulty of doing the right thing--but it's definitely presenting it as the right thing.

As to the giants . . . It's pretty clear that there are many ways the existing dispensation in the Potter books is seen as far from perfect and even pretty bad. Just, not as bad as bleedin' Voldemort. I don't think having some group so upset at being discriminated against by the current government that they join the definitive bad guy just to change the situation, can be considered the book saying it's good to discriminate against people. And it's the kind of thing that definitely happens in real life--how many people with real problems and grievances have been taken in by vile charlatans giving them false promises, in just the last few years of world politics?

Rowling has a very bad thing about her politics. Maybe she's got others. But I think it's wrong to go around inventing ones because of course everything else about her has to be bad now.

The author's voice isn't directly a thing in HP, so yeah, Hermione isn't mocked by the author's voice. Instead, the story itself implies that she's wrong. Harry (who acts as an audience insert when it comes to many aspects of the wizarding world) starts out neutral on the issue. However, as the subplot goes on, Harry is convinced that Hermione is wrong and the rest of the wizards (who want to keep house elves in slavery) are right. Furthermore, a lot of the stereotypes that are used to mock feminists are applied to Hermione in this subplot. It's implied by the story that she is acting on behalf of people who don't want her help, she's treated as just an annoyance (rather than someone with good points) by everyone she talks to, and even the name of the organization she starts ("SPEW") is clearly intended to be considered a joke by the reader. Hermione doesn't free any house elves, and Dobby (who was freed by Harry) is treated as an exception to the house elves as a whole for not wanting to be enslaved. Later in the story, Harry comes to own a house elf, whom he does not free. (The story encourages him to be a "nice slave owner" rather than freeing his slave.) There is no movement for the freedom of house elves after the book forgets about SPEW. With all of these claims you're making, I'm not sure we read the same books.

Having people be oppressed so hard they join the bad guy isn't something that makes the books bad on its own. The problem is that the books treat the system (that's so bad it lead oppressed groups to join the bad guy) as if it's mostly fine, just needing a few "good men" in charge to fix everything. Furthermore, the book treats the giants, werewolves, and the like as completely in the wrong for joining voldemort. It doesn't take the time to discuss how the oppression faced by the wizards' government caused them to go down that path, and it doesn't talk about what changes they're going to put in place to make sure that this never happens again. Starting, or even ending, with the world in a terribly oppressive state isn't bad in and of itself, but the problems with the world need to be discussed by the book; the people framed as good by the narrative need to question the system rather than trusting that the old government will make everything better again.

This problem the book has with always looking at things from the system's point of view (not the view of those who are oppressed by the system) makes it extra bad that the player will be tasked with taking down a goblin rebellion. I don't think the game will encourage the player to think about why the goblins are rebelling - it will most likely just tell the player that the goblins are bad and to kill them. This is a big problem, because a lot of times in real life, people who rebel have good reasons for doing so. Consider groups like the Black Panthers, who were told by the white liberals that, instead of rebelling against the system, they should work within the system to get the change they wanted. They have since made up their own version of history, where Black liberation has been "fully achieved" by the efforts of asking nicely. However, the system was never designed to listen to marginalized people, so peaceful protest would never have seen any improvements on its own. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. himself wrote:

QuoteI must confess that over the past few years I have been gravely disappointed with the white moderate. I have almost reached the regrettable conclusion that the Negro’s great stumbling block in his stride toward freedom is not the White Citizen’s Counciler or the Ku Klux Klanner, but the white moderate, who is more devoted to “order” than to justice; who prefers a negative peace which is the absence of tension to a positive peace which is the presence of justice; who constantly says: “I agree with you in the goal you seek, but I cannot agree with your methods of direct action”; who paternalistically believes he can set the timetable for another man’s freedom; who lives by a mythical concept of time and who constantly advises the Negro to wait for a “more convenient season.” Shallow understanding from people of good will is more frustrating than absolute misunderstanding from people of ill will. Lukewarm acceptance is much more bewildering than outright rejection.

JK Rowling's work is dripping with that "negative peace" that MLK describes. The government which will hide the problems with society is seen as better than the activists or revolutionaries who would expose it, and, in the books, the main characters fight only to restore that government, not to fix (or even think about) the very serious problems that it had. Hermione's fight to stop the enslavement of house elves is seen as bad by the books because it calls attention to a problem that would be much more convenient to ignore.

I think it's probably for the best to close this up now. Thanks all.