Hogwarts Legacy gets great reviews

No. Just no.

You DID mean it to be offensive. This is you. This is your standard MO. I think you just realised that you again went too far. But seriously, you fucked up again.

You are lying about your intent. Your intent was to portray Joanne Rowling as transphobic and you resorted to your own transphobia to do so. There was no 'it wasn't meant to be offensive'. You are apologising because you got caught out again. Just like you tried to fob off the threads where you dismissed violence against women.

Own it. Maybe for once you will actually start to engage properly but stop with the lies.

And JK Rowling's intentions in every detail of the books or her personal politics should be twisted and interpreted in the most uncharitable way possible?

Yes

That's all they've got. So they're going to milk that nonsense good and hard.

I feel like a dissertation needs to be done on the absolute insanity of this.

I think it does actually.

Because you are making all sorts of claims where you think the character should be based on stereotypes.

The very fact you mocked Rebecca Root's voice makes it pretty clear that you are again way off base.

I see we can add this transphobia to 'Marg dismisses violence against women'.

yet you continue to post in a way that attempts to position yourself as having moral superiority. I don't think I have ever seen you engage productively on a thread yet. Why is that?

Thanks for your sensitive words @ShireWifeofNigelFarage
My cousin lived on a different continent, and their branch of the family wasn't close to our branch of the family. No ill feelings, just different families are different. It's not had a large impact on my life, but I can't help but wonder if things had worked out differently for them that they may still be with us.
I'm thankful that their life and problems occured outside of current times. I think what's going on right now is far more damaging to young people who need help. I worry that people who do have issues now are growing up in a time when what appears on the surface to be positive can have a deeply negative impact on their lives. The very last thing they need. I do think that people who promote this stuff believe they are doing what's right to help, and that their intentions are good. Just that they don't have the mental capacity and reasoning to understand why good intentions are not on their own enough and can have negative consequences. I think ego is also a part of it. Just because you feel good about doing something doesn't mean it is having a good effect on others. Especially if you can't be bothered to watch what effect it's having because you are too busy feeling warm and fuzzy inside over how virtuous you are. The road to hell is paved with good intentions.

I never game but I've asked if he can set me up as a character so I can give it a go because it looks absolutely brilliant and I'm a huge HP fan

I bought the deluxe version for my DS ( he asked for it for Christmas so he's had to wait a while) so he could download it onto his PS5 early with the extra bonus things it comes with

It such a brilliant game. I love watching him play it between his A Level homework whilst I'm working on my laptop

The game is vast

We had the JKR trans conversation yesterday and we're both on the same page.

Safe spaces for women and we are therefore in agreement with Scotland placing prisoners in a prison of their birth gender. It is a minefield though as there is so much to pick apart which I'm not going to do.

I honestly wouldn't have noticed the "sir" of sirona without seeing TRAs point it out. Isn't the name from a Goddess of healing?
I also don't think there's anything controversial about the surname Ryan as many women have that surname? It's weird some people are making such a big deal about it. Also the developers said JKR hasn't been involved with the game so no way did she name the character

Sadly @lechiffre55, the few really solid statistics that exist re: transgender people and suicide (separate from suicide ideation) indicate that the risk goes up post medical and surgical transition.
Obviously suicide is a sensitive and complex issue that cannot be reduced to one factor, but transition itself certainly doesn’t resolve those myriad factors.

Words are useless at acknowledging bereavement, everything I could type on a message board just seems inadequate and/or trite

I agree @VitaminX there is no way that this could’ve been approached with accusations of transphobia:

No trans characters? TRANSPHOBIA!

Trans character? TRANSPHOBIA!

Played by a female actor? TRANSPHOBIA!

Played by a transgender actor who looks convincingly female? ‘passing privilege!’ ‘cast by cishets so other cishets aren’t uncomfortable!’ TRANSPHOBIA!

Played by an actor who is visibly transgender? ‘Too masc looking/sounding!’ ‘Why didn’t they magic this person into passing?’ TRANSPHOBIA!

see also: complaints from wokewhitebluehairz about lack of (non player) black characters, when the character creation function allows YOU, the literal star of your own game playing experience, unprecedented options for how the main character looks.

The HP book series is one of the most analysed, dissected and fan-fic'd series out there.

I find it really hard to understand how NO ONE noticed all this blatant anti- semitism, racism, etc. that's supposedly in the books until fairly recently.

Of course we know the real answer is that the MRAs and their acolytes are just casting around for any reason to spew vitriol at a woman.

But you have to wonder...

Either it was noticed but none of the blue hair brigade actually gave a shit or it wasn't noticed - and if its so blatant then that begs the question why they didn't notice.

None if which paints them in a particularly good light.
But as we know this movement doesn't really hide its racism, homophobia, transphobia and misogyny.

@MargaritaPie
All your accusations against JKR really say far more about you than they do about JKR. I don't think you realise this at all. When you have to twist things to to make them fit the narrative you want to portray the fact that you need to twist them shows that they didn't fit in the first place.
Each time a point you try to make gets skewered you have to fall back on "but what about this other thing over here". Then that gets skewered and you need to reach for another. The whole house of cards has blown over. Maybe it wasn't as solid as you thought in the first place.
JKR is not a bad person and she's not tranphobic. She's standing up for her rights and the rights of other women. She does have a problem with the way some of the more over the top extremist trans activism is affecting women but she does not have a problem with trans people. I know to you that might sound like two things that are exactly the same, but they are not. If you can sit down and think about why from someone else's point of view these two things are not the same I think it will help you a lot. The whole cultural conflict over trans arises out of this one issue, that someone can be both understanding and supportive to trans people but object to what/how trans activism is doing. I myself worry that what is being done to kids now will hurt many ( but not all ) of them when they realise later in life that it hasn't worked out the way they thought. This is not a hatred of those kids, it is concern for their welfare and their futures. A proper debate would allow society to talk about ths openly an honestly, and arrive at the best course of action for all concerned. But it's not up for debate is it? And so the war started. A war the TRAs are losing.
A cousin of mine fully medically transitioned many years ago, before all this current nonsense. The full medical transition and unconditional acceptance by family was not enough to stop them taking their own life a few years down the line. Clearly for my cousin medical transition was not enough to help them deal with their issues. It calls into question was medical transition, or even transition at all, the right way to help them?
I also think you would benefit from stepping back from the internet for a while.

Oh no, I missed this: "I apologies if it came across as offensive as that wasn't the intent." The old sorry, didn't mean to be offensive, it wasn't meant that way.

But the game devs (obviously not JK Rowling) calling the character 'Sirona', despite that being an established feminine name, was definitely a deliberate insult?

And JK Rowling's intentions in every detail of the books or her personal politics should be twisted and interpreted in the most uncharitable way possible?

Sure.

Grim.

It’s this absolute denial that female people are a category that cannot, by definition, contain male people that we terves object to.

If only transactivists (of both sexes, including the ones who identify as ‘cis’) could just be honest with themselves and admit that they don’t believe women should have anything solely for women we’d able to have a proper, grown up debate.

Instead it’s just our weary pragmatism versus their (irony alert!) magical thinking.

Is Marg going to apologise for the transphobic attack on Rebecca Root? I won't hold my breath, but it's a bit rich, isn't it. I hope plenty of people have saved screenshots of that.

To echo a concern that has been raised a few times on here recently, I wonder how it makes Rebecca Root feel to read people online complaining that this character whose looks are based on and who is voiced by Rebecca Root is so ridiculously masculine as to be an offensive mockery of transwomen?

I watched quite a few videos of Rebecca Root last night

Rather you than me. Rebecca "wanting a female only DV refuge is like saying my mum who had a hysterectomy isn't a woman" Root.

The video of the actual studio debate seems to have been memory holed though.

twitter.com/amscanlon/status/970607014287114240?s=20&t=V8WtI2IQsV4D1TQJM-c7ww

Bit sad that some so-called trans allies are so desperate to smear JK as a transphobe that they’ve stooped to denigrating the voice and appearance of an actual trans person

hypocritical and transphobic…..pie would have been all over the report button if someone on here has said it

and i agree with you, I hope Rebecca isn’t taking any of this seriously. If you are reading this Rebbecca (highly unlikely) let me assure you that no one takes pie seriously

The TRAs are so eager to ascribe malice and evil intent where none exists.

I don’t think for a second that the developers put Sirona in the game for tokenism, nor do I think the character’s look, voice or name were intended as a slight on trans people in general. I know someone who worked on the game and he was very pro trans and was eager to talk about the fact the game was trans inclusive (the player character can be trans if the player wishes, for example).

The developers are not stupid people. They know Harry Potter is hugely popular around the world and across many demographics. People have been waiting years for a chance to play a game where you can be a Hogwarts student and experience the wizarding world. This is why the game, despite being set hundreds of years ago in Scotland, is very diverse. It’s not tokenism, it’s an attempt to make fans from across the world feel included. This includes trans people, and they made sure their representation was realistic by casting a trans actor to provide the voice and likeness.

But it seems the devs would have been damned anyway. If they hadn’t included any visibly trans characters, they’d have been accused of transphobia. If they’d cast a biologically female actor in the part of Sirona, they’d have been accused of transphobia. They used a trans actor… and they’re accused of transphobia.

I am curious as to what kind of trans representation is actually acceptable to the vocal TRAs that inhabit Reddit and Twitter. I seem to recall a bunch of ragey opinions about the trans character in Cyberpunk 2077 as well (again, played by a trans actor).

From the very start the developers and WB stated that JKR wasn't involved with the game.

Much publicity was generated over an apparent trans inclusive character creator and how the developers were rebelling against JKR. Further publicity was generated over another rebellion with the inclusion of a new trans character, showing how woke the developers were.

Now TRAs have spent ages trying to work out how to claim that this character is transphobic and so can blame JKR (who was not involved) for it.

Yep, it’s just an excuse for women-bashing.

Pie demonstrated that perfectly last night.

Just goes to probmve that a lot of the so-called TRAs don't actually give a shit about trans people, it's just a means to an end to display their misogyny.

I watched quite a few videos of Rebecca Root last night and I don’t know how game development works but however they do it, they did a great job of capturing Root’s mannerisms and facial expressions.

Bit sad that some so-called trans allies are so desperate to smear JK as a transphobe that they’ve stooped to denigrating the voice and appearance of an actual trans person.

Hope Rebecca is managing to ignore all the insults aimed at Sirona.

It’s amazing isn’t it that so many “super fans” of the novels completely failed to pick up on one of the central themes of the books i.e don’t be a big fucking racist.

Bit lazily copying this from a post I made in a thread we had [shortly] before the game was released:

The most common criticism of Cho Chang’s name is “might as well have called her a racist phrase not used in the UK”. It’s probably not a great name, really - but wizarding families apparently make some, er, interesting choices name-wise (Ronald Bilious Weasley, anyone?). It’s also possible she is of mixed heritage, hence the either Japanese or Korean first name (in the former it means butterfly, in the latter beautiful). Or she was named after someone. Or her parents were anticipating a move & wanted her to have a name that didn’t risk any confusion. But a back story to explain what I can understand might look like “it’s all Asian, good enough” would help.

To be quite clear, I’m sure JKR didn’t think, when choosing Cho’s name “Chinese, Japanese, Korean - all basically the same thing, what does it matter?” (or something along those lines). If, now, she were to produce her original notes for the character & show they provide a detailed backstory people would still reject them as:
• forged
• inadequate
• too late
• any combination of the above, with or without random completely personal grievance to top it off.

As @HorribleNecktie says, people were racist to Katie Leung because the weird interpretation in their heads wasn’t followed. Racist people were racists; just as they were when Cursed Child made the casting decision that Hermione would be played by a black woman. In that case, of course, JKR saying she hadn’t written Hermione was white wasn’t her best move because of course 2 seconds later people were providing examples from the series of white!Hermione 🤦‍♀️

I was getting annoyed with the eight o'clock news on radio four,but the last bit of actually stating JKR states she's pro trans rights but just believes in women's spaces felt more balanced than in the past in BBC: especially in the light of Scottish developments,felt slightly hopeful that it's giving people the chance to think and see the obvious problems,and to let them know it's ok to enforce them l.

I know a number of gamers who are pretty oblivious to what's been going on (probably because they are male)

Thanks to the all the "JKR is transphobe and if you play this game you are transphobe" they've become aware. Some have even gone off and read JKR's essay. The general reaction has been "huh?" and dismissal of people who they now view as slightly unhinged.