ashandflower

[ashandflower]

confessions of a pissed-off wannabe marauder

I once was a Harry Potter fan.

I was given the first book as a gift from a relative and refused to read it for a while. Then I read it and fell in love with it. I was maybe seven or eight at the time. I refused to read the next books for a while but eventually got around to the Chamber of Secrets, then Prisoner of Azkaban, and so forth.

I remember the deep and abiding HATRED little ten-year-old me felt for Umbridge. I remember feeling like I’d been punched in the stomach upon Sirius’s death. By the time I got to Deathly Hallows I was just sort of numb. Although I did feel excess shock upon Fred Weasley’s death.

I never much liked arguments. Or romance. Half-Blood Prince and Goblet of Fire were a bit of a drag that way. I don’t really give a fuck about who snogged who, you know? I just want my magic and friendship and mystery. And it was amazing when that came.

Then the transphobia came.

For a while I was still a Harry Potter fan. Desperately clinging onto a fading specter of escapism I no longer had, and I knew it. I refused to accept it though. Crying over why did JK have to do this, why won’t she apologize, why why why. Then everyone else starts pointing out things wrong with the series and I start shutting down.

Eventually I left the Harry Potter fandom. For my own good. The reassurances that ‘the books are yours now’ didn’t help. I tried to replace it with The Owl House, but it didn’t work for… convoluted reasons. I don’t feel comfortable explaining the whole story here.

I somewhat enjoy HP fanfiction now, because really the entire fandom hates JK at this point and if another fan is writing the characters I have the comfort of knowing they aren’t the same as canon. I don’t have to live with the worry that  they carry the same prejudices as that bitch and goodness knows what else besides.

I have three very close friends in a group with me. Sometimes I mentally aliken us to the Marauders, it’s fun. But then I look at us and I feel guilty. We all grew up with Harry Potter and I may enjoy fanfiction, but my friends and to an extent me are people JKR actively hates and looks to destroy. And yes, before you ask, two of us are trans.

Oscar. Half-asian and brown. Funniest kid I’ve ever known, absolutely full of life, can perfectly contrast between serious and funny. Get yourself a friend like Oscar. But even so, he is half-asian, and I can’t help but feel JKR would dismiss him or use him to pat herself on the back. Harry Potter is undeniably a very white story, and also he’s a trans ally. Unforgivable I know.

Aaron. A trans boy who came out last year. Has the most sanity out of all of us. If there was ever a voice of reason he is it. Acts the least crazy, is the least crazy. But in JKR’s eyes, he is crazy. A ‘poor lost lesbian being groomed into being a boy’. How cute, she’s pretending she cares about lesbians. But she remains insistent that trans boys- that Aaron – are being exposed to ‘conversion therapy’. She pities Aaron for problems he does not have. She views Aaron as a ‘problem’. She likes to think she’s ‘saving Alice’ instead of destroying Aaron. (Alice is not Aaron’s actual deadname. But I do not think I have the right to reveal it in a public place.)

Ashley. Oh GOD Ashley. Loud, popular, liked by pretty much everyone, absolute best friends with Aaron. JKR hates her guts. In her eyes she is not Ashley but a ‘penised individual’. ‘A fox pretending to be a hen to get into the henhouse’. She sees her and girls like her as dangerous. She actively wants her GONE. I feel like she’d kill her if she could. She is nothing short of a threat to the existence of Ashley and girls like her.

And me. Since I’ve revealed everyone else’s real names I may as well reveal mine.

Rose. I prefer Rose Helen because Helen is my middle name and I think Rose Helen sounds cooler. I try to find somewhere to escape, I hang with my friends, sometimes we do stuff together. I think of myself as perfectly normal (Thank you very much. Haha.). I do lean into the oracle-card herbal-charm parts of witchcraft and enjoy it. I also happen to be a trans ally and someone hurt over JKR’s comments, or at least I have hurt feelings.

She’s also rather misogynistic, I’ve noticed. The treatment of Lavender and Parvati, calling Fleur a cow and mocking her accent in the text when she did NOTHING wrong, and there’s the fact that she praised Matt Walsh for ‘What is a Woman?’. I’ll say it now. If you ally with Matt Walsh, take the word ‘feminist’ out of any part of your identity.

Someone once asked her what she did knowing she’d lost so many fans over her transphobia. She replied ‘I dry my tears with my checks’ or something along those lines. Seeing that, I think, was the moment that really solidified it for me.

JKR doesn’t care about me. Who knows if she ever cared? I’m a pound note in her eyes. A piece of insignificant, lost money. And who cares about losing a pound when you’re a millionaire? An awful, dangerous, bigoted millionaire.

My friends she hates. Me she hates. And who knows if she cared before? She’s nothing but a transphobic, sexist prick who doesn’t know how minorities work.

I’m into the fanfiction Marauders. But I look at us – a collection of people JKR actively hates – and I can’t help but wonder if I’m hurting my friends too.

Imagining us as creations of a bigot. A bigot who wants us gone.

Fuck Joanne.

#harry potter #marauders #this sucks #fuck jkr