Wouldn’t pirating it be most ethical?

pirating it a thousand times so they lose the cost of making it a thousand times

Moreover - who cares? They already made the movies, which I'm told are not bad. There's literally no reason to do a remake

i would simply never eat any tv show

Really not looking forward the constant talk about Harry Potter in every trans space for the next several years. It's so exhausting. Why can't the mold defeat Rowling already?

It’s going to be shit anyway. Why would anyone waste their time on this.

Disney adults but more embrassing

there are uncritical fans of things who like any shit as long as it has the label on it. They're the kind of person to like star wars 9 or the simpsons season 25

I mentioned this myself in another thread. Scream in particular has become the very kind of franchise it used to clown on.

I actually enjoyed every Scream movie up until the latest 7.

Have a look at Goodreads and realize there's plenty of worse slop that people are weirdly obsessed with.

The stills coming out make it look so cheap.

JK Rowling is a thought experiment crafted in a thought lab specifically to refute the concept of separating the art from the artist CMV

CMV

if you separate the art from the artist, you can hate her twice. food for thought.

Her art sucks too

Nah she's just a massive fuckin piece of shit

Rowling use hundreds of million money from harry potter she gets to fund transphobes and MSM is okay with transphobia shes one of the worst creators in terms of material harm.

You can ethically watch this if you simply pirate it. But why on earth should you?

It's ethical to waste energy to pirate and watch this shit?

Fuck JKR for being transphobic. But also it hasn't even been that long since the movies came out. No one is asking for this HBO show...

This show will be bad and will not make it season 5

CONSOOM DIFFERENT SLOP, DIVERSIFY YOUR TASTES, GROW THE FUCK UP

But have you considered that I NEED to watch wizard slop?

Good news! If you like Wizard slop, we got Diskworld right over there!

Discwhat?

dis squirrel:

Worst wizard slop cuz instead of using spells in creative battles its mostly beam slop vs beam slop

Dresden Files is superior wizardslop in every conceivable way. Also there's like 17 books. Far more deserving of the endless adaptation treatment than this garbage.

beam slop

I fucking hate beam slop. its not even limited to magicslop either.

Eg this would have potential but it turned out to be fucking beamslop of the worst caliber.

I did not, in fact, consider that, DAMN

First 10 minutes of kpdh mogs all of harry potter

I watched like a fourth of the trailer and honestly? Just watch the movies it's literally the same thing.

The movies are also really good, all things considered.

actually it's the black mold lining Joanne's brain that's doing the transphobia therefore yom yum guilt free wizard slop

Chat, I fucked up my 4 houses magic college story and moved onto other novel ideas. The news covering this shit instead of my novel is my fault. I'm sorry

You should watch a lot less TV

Yes, it is totally completely impossible to watch it without paying

Or do anything better with your time.

Separating the art from the artist occurs at the point of distribution, ill probably seed it out of morbid curiousity, the hogwarts:racism got to 12 ratio for me

I think it occurs at the death of the artist (unless they set up an IP management firm or a foundation or anything to support what they would have wanted after their death). If you watch it, make sure not to mention it to anyone who you're not sure would pirate it, or you're doing free advertising.

No yar maties?

Why would any respectable adult waste limited torrent bandwidth on this

This is me when I see a lot of the media fellow hexbears consume, but I do have the decency to keep it to myself.

Let people enjoy their slop. The world sucks

In this case, it's slop made by an author who is using her wealth and influence to actively make the world worse for me, so yeah i take it personal when people stan the pro-slavery pro racism pro cop show from the person that successfully bankrolls campaigns to put trans women in men's prison for consensual sex with cis people.

First, there's a paywall so thank you but no thank you to reading this article and shame on you for not providing a synopsis. (Don't worry, I still love you.)

But if we really want to have a discussion about "ethical consumption", maybe start with listing something "ethical" about Hollywood? Isn't it all tainted, in one way or another?

It seems to me that people can consume digital content and still do their best to minimize profit for the creator. Organize a large viewing party, for example, so that instead of 10 people streaming the show, only one person has to. Or watch a pirated version. Etc, etc.

Lastly, it might be too little too late. Has Rowling already been paid for the rights? Does she get residuals? How do we know that boycotting the show will actually affect her finances?

In the coming years, HBO wants its new Harry Potter series to become “the streaming event of the decade” as it adapts each of the franchise’s seven original books. The show could very well become a hit that captures the imaginations of a new generation of fans who weren’t there for the first wave of Pottermania that intensified with the releases of each book and Warner Bros.’ subsequent film adaptations. And if this Harry Potter is a success, it could give author J.K. Rowling a reason to consider writing more stories set in the magical world that turned her into a billionaire.

But all of that hinges on whether people will actually watch HBO’s Harry Potter, which is being executive produced by Rowling. In some cases, a franchise’s creator being so closely involved with new versions of their work can be a good thing, but Rowling’s involvement in this show casts a shadow over it that HBO can do very little to counteract. Rowling has made it abundantly clear that she thinks attacking transgender people via the legal system is a worthwhile cause and a good use of her vast personal fortune. And as much as Harry Potter fans might be excited to see what HBO has cooked up, there’s no way to watch this show without supporting Rowling’s bigotry and the structural violence she’s inflicting on a vulnerable minority.

For years, Rowling has trafficked in garden variety transphobia under the guise of being a champion for cisgender women’s rights. Last Thursday in a post praising the International Olympic Committee for banning transgender women from competing, Rowling implicitly misgendered 2024 boxing gold medalist Imane Khelif. The post was the latest instance of Rowling using transphobic dog whistles to attack Khelif, which is what led the athlete to file a criminal complaint against Rowling last year.

Many people had previously gleaned from Rowling’s online interactions with trans-exclusionary radical feminists (TERFs) that she might hold transphobic views. But it wasn’t until 2019 that she came out as a TERF herself while weighing in on a precedent-setting UK legal battle. On Twitter, Rowling voiced her support for Maya Forstater, a British tax consultant whose contract with the Centre for Global Development was not renewed in response to concerns about her tweeting and retweeting multiple posts misgendering and denying the existence of trans people. Forstater — a self-identified “gender-critical activist” — filed a lawsuit against the CGD and its president Masood Ahmed alleging that her non-renewal was a violation of Britain’s 2010 Equality Act.

While the Equality Act barred discrimination based on “gender reassignment,” Forstater claimed that she was being unfairly persecuted for her personal beliefs. One judge tossed the case out, ruling that Forstater’s views were “incompatible with human dignity and fundamental rights of others.” But Forstater was able to appeal, and in 2021, the Employment Appeal Tribunal decided in her favor.

Rowling’s tweet was not what led to Forstater ultimately receiving £106,400 ($141,683) in lost earnings and aggravated damages in 2023. But Rowling’s willingness to openly align herself with TERF agitators was significant because she was lending credence to the larger culture of transphobia that has plagued the UK for decades. By supporting Forstater, Rowling was encouraging the public to embrace their hateful beliefs and to think of transgender people as threats to society. That kind of rhetoric has been linked to spikes in hate crimes directed at queer people. Rowling knows full well that her celebrity helps her amplify transphobic ideology in ways that people like Forstater could not on their own. Rowling also understands that her wealth puts her in a prime position to advance the TERF agenda (read: enforcing gender essentialism and erasing trans people from existence) on a societal level.

That’s exactly what Rowling was doing in 2024 when she donated £70,000 ($93,212) to For Women Scotland (FWS), an advocacy group that challenged Scotland’s 2018 Gender Representation on Public Boards Act 2018. The Act’s definition of women included people who had “the protected characteristic of gender reassignment.” FWS won its initial judicial review in 2022, which deemed that defining women was outside of the Scottish Parliament’s purview. That decision was reversed in 2023, and in 2024, an amended version of the Scottish Gender Representation Act that used the British 2010 Equality Act’s definition of women — which included trans women — was signed into law. That same year, FWS filed and lost another judicial review against the amended Scottish Gender Representation Act challenging its use of the British 2010 Equality Act’s definition. And while FWS could not appeal that decision, the case went all the way to the UK Supreme Court, which ruled that the legal definition of a woman is based on biological sex assigned at birth. To pay for this extensive legal battle, FWS turned to crowdsourcing, and Rowling was all too happy to dump tens of thousands of dollars into their cause.

This UK Supreme Court’s definition is itself problematic because human sex biology is not a binary. And in addition to preventing transgender people from having their gender identity legally recognized, the ruling makes it much harder for them to pursue legal action for gender-based discrimination. Rowling celebrated the Court’s decision by posting a photo of herself with a very clear message: “I love it when a plan comes together.” The plan in this case was to help bankroll an anti-trans group’s campaign against trans people, and it culminated with the passage of a law that reduces all women living in the UK down to the way their bodies are perceived when they are born.

Rowling has been transparent about her desire to keep assisting people in their efforts to rob transgender people of their dignity and human rights. That seems very much to be the entire point of The J.K. Rowling Women’s Fund — an organization Rowling launched in 2025 that claims to be “fighting to retain women’s and girls’ sex-based rights in all aspects of life.” The Fund offers financial support provided by Rowling to cisgender women who are looking to file lawsuits. The Fund’s website makes no mention of gender as a concept, but it explicitly points to the For Women Scotland case as the kind of “victory” that it wants to see more of in the world.

Rowling has been rich enough to pour cash into organizations like this for some time now because she continues to hold primary intellectual property rights to the entire Harry Potter franchise. Every Harry Potter book, movie, video game, stage show ticket, theme park pass, and piece of merchandise that’s sold puts money into Rowling’s pocket, which she can use to keep her crusade against trans people going. Given the property’s lasting popularity, Rowling, who is currently worth about $1.2 billion, could probably do all of this even if HBO wasn’t producing a new Harry Potter series. But because the network is and it wants to keep the show going for at least a decade, Rowling will have even more capital at her disposal to impose her retrograde views onto others.

Clearly, this doesn’t concern HBO’s executive leadership whose primary goals are to boost the company’s stock value while taking home outsized paychecks and hefty exit packages of their own. But it is absolutely something that HBO’s subscribers should be thinking about as Warner Bros. cranks the Harry Potter hype machine up ahead of the show’s premiere later this year. HBO does not want you to think about how it is platforming a known bigot and making it easier for her to spread patently hateful, harmful messaging that can endanger people. And Rowling would probably rather people not consider the fact that there are plenty of other magical academia series to become obsessed with.

Thank you for posting this!

One the one hand, I'd love to see Rowling drop off the face of the earth. I don't think she's a great writer and, while I love the visuals in the Wizarding World, the story is absolute drivel. In short, I don't think she's a top-tier artist worthy of earning either the admiration or the hard-earned cash of her adoring fans. Her stance on transwomen is especially infuriating, because I came out as trans about the same time that she started her anti-trans campaign.

On the other hand, Rowling's involvement in anti-trans organizations started after her long involvement with other charitable organizations, most of them dedicated to helping women and children.

  • Lumos: Founded by Rowling in 2005, this charity works to end the systemic institutionalization of children in Europe and elsewhere. She has donated over £63 million to it.

  • Volant Trust: Established to support projects that help women and children at risk, as well as fighting social deprivation.

  • Beira's Place: A women's sexual assault support center in Edinburgh funded by Rowling.

  • Gingerbread: She was an Ambassador (and later President) for seven years for this organization, which supports single-parent families.

  • Multiple Sclerosis Society Scotland: She was a patron for nine years and heavily funded MS research.


The article stops short of sorting out the funding behind The J.K. Rowling Women's Fund, Rowling's anti-trans lobbyist group. It's difficult to tell without knowing how much cash she's pouring into her anti-trans charity, and how much of that flows to legislators.

In my mind, it comes down to whether she's trying to be a net good for society or a net bad.

I kind of empathize with Rowling, in a twisted way. She reminds me of my mother. Involved in many solid charities, honestly trying to use her wealth for the greater good, but also misguided in a slightly evil way on certain issues. The good doesn't wash out the bad, but we can't ignore her good deeds. She seems to be trying to impact women's lives in a positive way.

It's kind of like a carbon tax - yeah, I hate seeing the super-rich climb into private jets and selfishly burn through resources. But I hate them a little bit less when they purchase carbon offsets or donate to environmental causes. So yeah, I hate Rowling, but there's a lot of anti-trans artists that I hate more.

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