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Why do they have to remember 9/11? A baby born the day the towers fell would be almost 25 now.

actively participating in society does imply the responsibility of at least some baseline level of cultural awareness of major issues facing it, and "J. K. Rowling is a fascist monster fanatically and monomaniacally dedicated to a genocidal effort against trans people" qualifies

Then I grew up and realised the shoddy world building, the kinda messed up messages in a few places, and whilst I’d call myself a Hufflepuff (cos nobody wanted to be a Hufflepuff) and I still engaged with it for family stuff, I was over it. Then JKR came out as a bigot and I was done for good.

I emphatically believe a kid should be a kid. Let her enjoy her fandom, etc. OTOH, she's on the cusp of adulthood, and by the time she's an adult, she SHOULD know how awful JK is. Per your point, all adults should. 2/4

What even is "Harry Potter adult?" Is liking the movies/books enough or do you have to be on the level of active cosplay to be considered one? Disclaimer: I am neither, just curious what is the current level of discourse.

Discworld might be one of the best behaved fandoms out there.

same, read them to my first kid and he liked them but I was relieved when his teenage self naturally glommed onto better fandoms like Dr. Who and Walking Dead. Wholesome! 😆

Mine's probably an outlier for a median-age Xer, and definitely more complicated 1 - it's one of the things we bonded best over with our kid, who had special needs that made any success worth celebrating. I'll be goddamned if I'm gonna let that TERF prick interfere with my memories of that.

I’ve never admitted it openly, but I always thought the Harry Potter movies were inexplicably overhyped. The first one was a B- with some fun moments and cool vfx, the rest were shit. Kids doing magic via cgi off the coattails of the pioneering work of Jurassic and Matrix was well timed. That’s it.

I like it as a middle schooler. I read the first five books, but when the sixth book came out, I was in high school and just lost interest. I think I just outgrew it and moved on. There was no love lost when I found out about JK Rowling being herself.

It was a nice story I had a few quibbles with and the movies were fun. I liked being caught up in the cultural moment. I was not at all surprised when the mask came off. I’ve liked a lot of bad things by bad people though!

I never did see the movies though

I read the books 6 and 7 as they came out as I got the train pretty late in the fad. Was fine but was never a big thing like Star Trek or Bleach were to me

I never read them as a kid and on a lark I tried the first few books a few years back and the thing that stands out to me is they have absolutely nothing to say. There is not much going on with them subtextually or thematically. It’s pure empty calories, unlike a lot of kids media.

I would add that I have read some fanfic of various qualities that makes various attempts to reckon with the author

A mild value to them. I actually did like the first half of the deathly hallows film. Other than that, they seemed derivative and then finding out the authors, beliefs, and actions killed it for me. I don’t plan on watching the redo Also, it has sparked interesting conversations with my kids now

The sorting seems to be something that doesn't translate from the UK. Houses in boarding schools are a common feature there and she's playing off of it, not creating something new.

It would if that were actually the case lmao. Some of you have even crazier ideas for the series than the great transphobe herself ever dreamed up

If their creator hadn’t become a threat to the lives and livelihoods of others I’d still be following that stuff without shame. I was too old for them when they came out!

I still have the Hufflepuff Tshirt my wife bought me back in the day, but I only wear it to sleep in. Never in public.

Yeah, exactly. Similarly, I bought a couple of the Lego sets, and I'm not going to fish the pieces out of the bucket of Legos, because it doesn't contribute to the problem if a random minifig has the unique Harry head, and an owl's an owl. Buying *more* of those sets, though, no thanks.

Yes I continue to engage with the universe but I’m not spending MONEY.

Yeah, that's pretty much where I'm at. That stuff and the Gryffindor duffle bag I got years ago.

There's so many similar properties you can get into instead too, how are you not bored with HP by now? Fantastic Beasts was total dogshit, even if you were a huge HP fan, unless you're pro-nazi-rowling you should be sick of it all. Join us in the Witch Hat Atelier fanclub.

It's possible I'm falling prey to special pleading, but I do think there's a pretty big difference between "I still own material purchased before she became loathsome" and "I am actively enriching an obvious bigot" or this whole Dobby's grave BS.

That story is an absolute PR lesson. Do *not* let your exec go on a podcast and make a dumb joke about how planning was done

Shh, if they find out we're still here they might start bullying us again.

Why would we bully them? As far as I know none of their creators went on to wage a very successful hate campaign against a minority population.

It's funny, because Game's Workshop had a problem with Nazi-adjacent types glomming onto the fascist imagery in Warhammer 40K, and have taken great pains to distance & excise those people from the fanbase. There's criticism about how effective it is, but I'll give kudos to them trying

Eh full disclosure, if you gave her the views of K.A Applegate I'd be a shameless Harry Potter adult which makes the betrayal sting even harder I also respect the people who basically tried to expropriate the fandom from her, but once she made transphobia her personality it was over

Same. Though I wanna say I was 19 when the first film was announced. Tried slogging through the first book during a hurry-up-and-wait on set. No dice.

If she hadn’t done that heel turn and was still just supporting children’s charities I might still be in the fandom. I made good friends there! We wrote stories picking apart the flaws in the books! And Bellatrix was an easy closet cosplay for me! But my son (who grew up on the books) is trans. DONE

I know one person who legitimately fits the latter. They love HP and also they lived on an island with very limited electricity or Internet access for like the past 7 years and then had a kid immediately when they came back from there so are still checked out of the world.

HP adults used to be a lot better, tho. Disney adults, in my experience as a tattooer, are self-absorbed apolitical children. Potter adults were easier to deal with in every way. HP tattoos went out of style in my area years ago so I don't know what current HP fans are like

In 2025, when ABC pulled Jimmy Kimmel, Disney adults began canceling subscriptions and a number of them even began canceling vacations. In 2025, when Rowling spewed even more transphobia, Harry Potter adults were still re-sharing the new series trailer and talking about the video game.

The fact that this was the first post I've seen marked with a thread count, and it happened to be ¾ is absolutely hilarious

While some of those unique voices get subsumed into the background of the brand (not every fan know Howard Ashman by name), it also means that it's not tied to single creator, and their politics. Creators of broad political stripes work there, and the outputs aren't dominated by a singular person