So you probably read the title and can guess what I’m talking about. The one and only witch of twitter, the author of Harry Potter, J.K. Rowling. Now I’ve been a fan of this franchise for years and seeing Rowling getting canceled over the dumb s*** she said on Twitter it was interesting to say the least. Since her antics were put on display for the world to see, many fans like myself have tried to distance Rowling from her works within the world of Harry Potter. Unfortunately, as you may be able to guess, it can be a bit difficult to do so. From here on I will be doing my best to display different ways in which the fandom and fandom adjacent entities have moved Rowling away from the IP.
Let’s start strong with Hogwarts Legacy, as the game devs did something rather interesting. So in the process of the game’s creation, many of the people providing their voice for characters had to deal with the unfortunate circumstances of Rowling’s initial cancellation online. I would like to mention that many of the voice talents signed contracts to act in the game well before Rowling said what she did on Twitter. So knowing this, many HP fans that did end up playing the game noticed a particular Easter egg where a witch that vaguely resembles a certain author getting burned at the stake. Shoutout to the game devs for that one, I would pour one out for you but I’m not in the UK where I could order a drink to do so, but I’m doing it in spirit at least!
Next on the docket, we have a particular subsection of the HP fanbase—The Marauders fans. You know, those particular fans that have focused on a small very particular set of characters that have little to no actual appearances in HP media. What we do know of these characters is so limited that anything people make regarding this set of characters is fanfic by default. I love the way that fans have taken this into their own hands, but due to how little there is and the fact that Rowling will probably never expand on them further makes this interesting. These fans at this point own some of the characters that have no information about them and have essentially taken these characters away from their source material.
Lastly, I want to look at the group of fans that I associate with the most, this group being the ones who just shake their heads in agreement that Daniel Radcliffe owns Harry Potter at this point. While yes, Rowling is the writer of the books, but is she really? Are we in denial? Yes, yes we are. But in all seriousness, we are simply trying to enjoy the franchise while ignoring J.K. Rowling. I personally stick with the movies, as I own no physical copies of the books, but I did have a chance to read them in high school as my school’s library had them. Their only caveat was they had them in Spanish, so if I wanted to read them I would read them in what is my second language at a far slower speed. I only found out we had these books halfway through the year. I would have had no time in between other work to read these books unfortunately. Hopefully I can find them at my local library in the future.
So in a way, it sounds almost easy to separate this very clearly disliked author from the stories she wrote right…wrong. In all honesty, no matter what fans of this series do, Rowling is still very tied to this franchise and it’s almost impossible to ignore this fact. I do feel that if she cares to maintain what reputation she has left, she should stay off sites like Twitter, or better yet, the internet all together. For all she has done, though, people love Harry Potter and will continue to love it. And hey, since we live in a digital age, chances are someone has probably managed to post the Harry Potter series online for free, and if they haven’t, I would like to point people in the direction of this amazing kind of building called a library. Libraries are also free and it’s very easy to get a card for said libraries. So hey, you may not be able to separate her from the books, but you can still read them without contributing to her revenue at the very least.
Featured Image by Aleishka Ruiz via Canva
