Priory Of The Orange Tree

" ... In all that time, she had never said anything to nettle her. Now she was like a viper, unable to keep her tongue in her mouth. Something made her want to rile the Queen of Inys."

There needs to be a word for this dammit. 

And I have a suggestion:

1:14a🍒

Myth: This game involves crushing a slave rebellion. 

Fact: The goblins are not slaves, and the rebellion never happens. There is a minority faction of goblins with dreams of a violent revolution that will not only free them from wizards but subjugate all wizards to them, and of course put the individual goblins in the movement at the top of goblin society as well. They kill multiple goblins for not agreeing with them. They are not a social justice movement. They are a totalitarian minority group trying to overthrow one oppressive regime in order to create another. The vast majority of goblins do not support Ranrok’s rebellion or want him in charge; not because they are okay with being oppressed by wizards, but because they realize that Ranrok isn’t going to be any better and may even be worse, since he’s a lot more violent toward dissenters. The only people who would interpret Ranrok’s rebellion as a social justice movement are the braindread boycotters who think that telling Jews to kill ourselves and sending graphic rape threats to trans men are social justice acts.

Myth: You commit genocide against the goblins.

Fact: No, you do not. You kill goblins under the exact same circumstances you kill wizards: they are part of an evil group that has inserted itself into your affairs and decided of its own accord that they wanted to hurt you. You were just trying to get to school when Ranrok first attacked you. At no point does anyone in this game have the goal of wiping out goblins, and there are numerous goblins that you help throughout the game. Additionally, most protagonists are pro-goblin rights. There is only one companion who is anti-goblin, and you defend goblins to him (the game does not even give you a choice; you defend the goblins) and he is completely invalidated by the narrative. 

Myth: The goblins kidnap wizard children and steal their blood.

Fact: The only wizard “child” that Ranrok is after is the protagonist of the game. I’m pretty sure he needs that teenager alive, not for their blood but for their sight, because they can see ancient magic that most other wizards can’t, and Ranrok needs someone who can do that in order to find the ancient artifact he’s seeking. I feel like I’d remember a scene where he stole my blood, and I don’t. I can’t even imagine what his motivation for doing that would be, since at no point in the game was my blood needed to unlock or control anything; just my sight. (Even Salazar Slytherin didn’t put a blood-key lock on the door that he explicitly only wanted his own descendants to be able to get through.) 

Myth: The only Jews in this game are goblins.

Fact: This game doubled the number of Jews in the Harry Potter series with recognizable faces. That’s not saying much, but still. Abraham Ronen and Ruth Singer are both extremely Jewish-coded names, and they’re names that will actually register as Jewish-coded for a lot of gentiles. Personally, I find Officer Singer absolutely useless, but not in any way that I don’t expect from an adult cop in a narrative with a teenage protagonist. If she were good at her job, what would we do? Abraham Ronen is extremely likable and a wonderful teacher, and I am very pleased to be able to say that Hogwarts has Jewish professors. 

Myth: One of the lead devs was a Nazi.

Fact: Troy Leavitt, who left the project two years ago, was a head designer whose duties mostly included animating NPCs and designing the castle. He had a youtube account which expressed pretty mainstream Republican views and some gamergate sympathies. I disagree with him about a lot, but I’ve seen no evidence so far that he’s a Nazi or that he has any ill intentions toward Jews. If someone can show me evidence to the contrary, I will amend my views accordingly. 

Myth: The shofar is a collectable item in the game and they call it annoying.

Fact: 

This is the horn in the game: 

These are shofars: 

I don’t think there’s a strong resemblance, personally. I don’t even think the horn in the game is ram’s horn. Granted, not all shofars are or have to be ram’s horn, but I think it’s hard to make the argument that that is “clearly a shofar” when it’s not shaped like shofar and probably isn’t made out of the same material. Bone horns were used around the world, on every continent, for centuries. Not all bone horns are Jewish. 

Also, the average gentile does not know what a shofar is. I’m telling you, I have asked multiple different gentiles of various educational backgrounds, and not a single one knew what a shofar was or connected the image from the game to Jews at all. Using shofars to signify that Jews are evil and bad when the average gentile cannot identify them or connect them to Jews is some pretty inept propaganda writing. 

Myth: 1612 is a reference to a Jewish rebellion that ended with a pogrom in 1614.

Fact: First of all, it’s weird to use the date 1612 to signify a pogrom that took place in 1614. Second of all, the date 1612 is from a list of goblin rebellions that was included in the original series. I’m pretty sure JK Rowling was not slipping secret messages to kill Jews into her books and then going on twitter and denouncing antisemitism in UK politics. JK Rowling has gone out of her way to be an ally to Jews on multiple occasions. Not a perfect one; I stand by my criticisms of antisemitism in the Fantastic Beasts series. But in the absence of literally any other evidence that she secretly wants Jews dead, I think–and I know this is an extremely unpopular thing to say right now–I think JK Rowling deserves the benefit of the doubt about this. Especially since there is so much doubt. If 1612 is an obvious message to kill Jews, why was no one talking about it when it first appeared in the original Harry Potter series? 

Myth: The boycotters are just politely stating their opinion.

The Raven and the Reindeer by  T. Kingfisher

The Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet by  Becky Chambers

Ombria in Shadow by  Patricia A. McKillip

We can acknowledge the J.K. Rowling wrote the Harry Potter books but we also have to have a conversation admitting the flaws and harmful ideologies the books hold. Simply the best way to show your appreciation for a work is to criticize the work, and acknowledge the flaws. At the end of the day the art still can have flaws, so speaking about this in the Hp books some things that can be found as flaws are:

Plump Molly Weasley, Round-faced Neville Longbottom and five-times as wide as a normal man Hagrid would disagree.

The goblins at Gringotts, describing them in ways that were used to stereotype Jewish people during the Holocaust, such as “long hooked noises” that appeared on nazi propaganda. As well as describing them as smart, and greedy with their riches, furthering another stereotype held.

If you come to the conclusion that Goblins are Jewish people because they have long hooked noses (which goblins usually are always shown having across media?) and run a bank then that says a lot more about you than the author.

The pro slavery narrative? That house elves are just so ‘thankful’ to be enslaved and that they think it’s their only life obligations. Seems really weird that they would sympathize with their oppressor and want to be enslaved.

House Elves have been born and raised in slavery for centuries (at least), which has led to them being sort of content with their existence, and wizards have never bothered to try to change that since it benefits them. Hermione changes Ron’s mind on the subject and clearly is interested in trying to change peoples opinions on it. There’s nothing pro-slavery about it - Rowling expects us to sympathise with the House Elves. She wouldn’t have a character like Hermione, who represents someone trying to change this mindset, remotely interested if that were the case.

Professor Quirell’s turban “hiding evil”, this is self explanatory but disrespects those who wear a turbans or any sort of headscarf covering for religious faith, making them out to be evil.

Again, if someone comes to this conclusion then it says a lot more about them than it does about Rowling. I thought it was pretty self-explanatory that it was necessary to hide Voldemort on the back of his head.

Little to no representation for poc(let alone no good representation)

An odd thing to begrudge Rowling for given where she grew up and the sorts of people she would have interacted with. Half the UK had little to no representation too.

The stereotyping of Indian character, Padma and Parvati Patil deserved so much better. As well as their names are some of the most stereotypical names to give a character of Indian descent.

How exactly were they stereotyped? Also how are those names stereotypical - wouldn’t that just mean common names?

Having 2 of the very FEW black characters(referencing Dean and Blaise) not having a father figure, this perpetuates a negative stereotype of black fathers being absent in their families life

Dean’s father was murdered by Death Eaters by trying to protect his wife and son.

Going further on the Jewish stereotypes of being very greedy and selfish we are introduced to “Anthony Goldstein” whom we know is Jewish solely from his name.

We know he’s Jewish because Rowling confirmed he was Jewish when asked if there were any Jewish wizards.

Cho Chang, we are going to give a Chinese character a Korean name?? Let alone cho chang, that is one of the most stereotypical names I’ve ever heard.

Doesn’t Rowling name all her characters after something to do with their character?

Dolores Umbridge = sadness and anger/taking offense

Gilderoy Lockheart = golden king who locks away the truth

Remus Lupin = one of 2 founding leaders of Rome raised by wolves and “of the wolf”

Xenophilius Lovegood = lover of foreign things and a true heart (Luna also of a true heart)

Bellatrix Lestrange = warlike woman of the dark arts

Voldemort = flight of death

Sirius = the dog star

Minerva = warrior goddess

Malfoy = bad faith

Peeves = a thing which annoys

“ chóuchàng” (惆悵)“ meaning “Melancholy” “Forlorn” and “Despair”

It might be poorly executed but there was no ill-intent there.

Promoting harmful stereotypes but what about how Seamus’ only character trait is liking rum and blowing stuff up. This isn’t a little harmful of an Irish stereotype to push?

The blowing stuff up was an invention of the movies and rum isn’t stereotypical of Ireland. Incredibly reductive view of Seamus’ character.

We had a black wizard with the last name “Shakelbolt”, am I the only one that finds that wrong??

Shacklebolt* and I always took it as his role as an Auror locking up Death Eaters and then Kingsley for his position.

Transcoding Rita Skeeter.

As well as after coding Rita Skeeter as a trans woman, Rita also uses her status as an illegal animagus to spy on children in gof. Pushing that narrative that trans people are using their identity to be able to have access to children and those of the opposite gender, a harmful stereotype cis people have towards trans people. (It’s not explicitly stated that Rita is trans but I read her as trans as well as she is described with masculine features and coded that way by Jkr)

Or it was a caricature of journalists who are willing to invade every part of a persons life to get the next scoop. Transgenderism wasn’t really a thing back when Rowling wrote the books either. Trans people abusing the respect given to their identities wouldn’t exactly be inaccurate though.

Fleur losing every event. Arguably you can say ‘oh someone has to loose’ but if when the only woman competing who the goblet chose her as one of the most capable wizards at her school to compete, why is she not on the same level as the men. Why isn’t she a more capable wizard? There were tens of other wizards from her school that possible could have been picked but she was the best. And she lost? Almost as if jkr deeply rooted misogyny never planned on giving fleur a decent chance.

A reach if there ever was one. There are plenty of strong female characters within the series. Fleur losing really isn’t… misogynistic whatsoever.

Hermione’s inner misogyny(I love Hermione but she was written with inner misogyny especially since jkr has it). Such as her down playing Dolores assault, her hatred towards lavender(it wasn’t just jealousy), bullying/calling fleur rude names(especially since fleur is very feminine and a veela), ect trust me there’s more

Hermione disliked those characters for reasons that had no attachment whatsoever with their womanhood. Fleur was also introduced as a bit of snob so… what?

Demeaning or villainizing femine interest or things stereotypically femine that can perpetuate misogyny. Like the balant disliking of Padma and Lavender for gossiping, or taking interest in fashion(notable stereotypically feminine interests).

Yet another reach.

Trigger warning: SA/R@PE. Although it is not clearly stated when umbridge is taken away by the centaurs but it alludes to her being r@ped by the centaurs. In alot of Greek myths along with stories centaurs have been known to r@pe helpless women. Even if it is not clearly written, most people know of these stories about centaurs can connect two together. Going back to the point of Hermione misogyny after Umbridge’s attack she mocks her, victim shaming her. It’s gross and disgusting.

Yeah, this rears its ugly head all the time and it’s so disgusting that peoples first thoughts would be drawn to this. Greek myths are full of abhorrent stuff but that rarely ever extends to anything that draws influence from them. Please have some common sense given who the book audience is aimed at. Rowling isn’t the sort of person that would punish her female characters like that. That’s more George R.R. Martin’s style.

Queer coding Nymphadora Tonks, then putting her in a heterosexual relationship with Remus only for the sake of invalidating Wolfstar

Lol.

Ableism : I’m sure many disabled people can explain this way better so please feel free to add on to this but jkr when discussing Frank and Alice Longbottom’s condition referred to it as in the books as ‘a fate worse than death’. It’s obvious that it pushed harmful narrative especially towards those with disabilities or similar situations.

They were tortured to the point of insanity. This isn’t even an issue of disability… that is a fate worse than death?

There is only so much more so as I reread the books I’ll continue to add onto this list.

 It’s also probably a name or word in many other languages since it’s -only one syllable- You really come off as racist yourself, honestly. 

Everything you’ve said about racial stereotypes reveals how YOU see things. 

For example, you thinking “Cho Chang” sounds stereotypical. It’s because YOU grew up in a culture where people say shit like ‘ching chang chong’ to make fun of Chinese people. But that’s YOUR baggage. YOU think it sounds like a joke. YOU think it sounds ‘weird’ or ‘funny.’ 

A quick google search finds that over 2 million people in China have the last name Chang. Would you seriously have the audacity to walk up to a Chinese person and tell them how cliche their name is??

It’s on you to see a goblin and think of a Jewish person, to see an Irish guy drinking rum and think ‘oh God, that’s so Irish.’ (I don’t even think rum is their stereotype? Rum is from the Caribbean.)  

Honestly I think you just lapped up a bunch of things you saw on tumblr dot com and compiled them into one big mess of a post and haven’t put much thought into any of it beyond how woke you were gonna sound. And that’s giving you the benefit of the doubt. 

Like Rita Skeeter being coded as ANYTHING, let alone being trans? You haven’t even listed what traits would be a part of that code, so again, it seems like some lunatic just made that up and you copied them. She’s just paparazzi. 

Edit: Also you seriously think Rowling, a domestic abuse survivor, would write GANG RAPE? In a children’s book, no less? And write the victim of the rape as a villain and the rapists as good guys and sympathetic characters? A centaur becomes the astronomy professor, and if I’m not mistaken talks to Harry about the hardships of the way humans treat and think about centaurs.