{"id":1103958,"date":"2023-02-06T06:00:18","date_gmt":"2023-02-06T11:00:18","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.prime-wow.com\/?p=1103958"},"modified":"2023-02-06T06:00:18","modified_gmt":"2023-02-06T11:00:18","slug":"why-im-reviewing-hogwarts-legacy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.prime-wow.com\/?p=1103958","title":{"rendered":"Why I\u2019m reviewing 'Hogwarts Legacy'"},"content":{"rendered":"

Five days ago, a review code for Hogwarts Legacy<\/em> landed in my inbox. I\u2019ve been thinking about this moment for more than a year, ever since the backlash against the game started gaining traction online. The author of the Harry Potter novels is transphobic and she\u2019s targeted transgender women in particular. For this reason, some people in the LGBT+ community, and allies beyond, have decided to boycott Hogwarts Legacy <\/em>and admonish anyone who chooses to play or stream it themselves, sparking explosive arguments across social media, Twitch and YouTube. Those in favor of the boycott argue that playing the game benefits the author financially and indicates support for her beliefs. On the flipside, potential players point out that the author wasn\u2019t involved in the creation of Hogwarts Legac<\/em>y and her status as the world\u2019s richest author won\u2019t change regardless of the game\u2019s success. Also, they really want to play it.<\/p>\n

I fall into the second category. I\u2019m currently about 15 hours into Hogwarts Legacy<\/em> and I\u2019m just barely scratching the surface; I\u2019m having an incredible time. This feels like the RPG that Harry Potter fans have been waiting for, rich and alive and absolutely packed with magic.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

It\u2019s slightly frightening to write that down, knowing the condemnation I could receive. It\u2019s an extra-light version of the dread I felt while publishing literally anything during Gamergate, but this time it\u2019s more personal: The hate would be coming from people I actually care about.<\/p>\n

I\u2019ve been a video game journalist for the past 13 years, I\u2019m a bisexual woman and I have a big ol\u2019 Harry Potter tattoo next to an anti-TERF tattoo. I feel uniquely positioned to care about this particular topic, and to that end, I have a quick story to tell. It involves literary internet culture in the early 2000s, and I hope it illuminates factors that entwine the Wizarding World with the LGBT+ community, while demonstrating the vast divide that\u2019s existed for decades between the fantasy and its creator.<\/p>\n

As a pre-teen and throughout high school, I found solace in Harry Potter fanfiction, a bustling online ecosystem<\/ins><\/a> powered by Livejournal, FF.net, AO3 and other community-run sites. I cannot overstate how popular Harry Potter fanfiction was and still is, nor how queer it\u2019s always been. Most stories in Harry Potter fanfiction center on LGBT+ characters, and for good reason \u2013 in the early aughts, media for and by gay people was ridiculously hard to come by, and then when you did find something, it was often campy, trashy, or both. It was a pre-streaming, pre-YouTube, pre-TikTok way of life. So we wrote our own stories as fanfiction. Long before the release of the final Harry Potter book, we infused the halls of Hogwarts with magically amplified, non-heterosexual and non-cisgender characters, and we wrote millions of words about them living full, fantastic lives. We made Dumbledore gay long before the canon did.<\/p>\n

In those early days, an important part of the Harry Potter fanfiction process was critiquing the world and recognizing the limits of the author\u2019s imagination. With each new book release, the forums would light up with praise and criticism, and our own stories would continue to evolve outside of the pages of the novels. These fics are more real to me than the source material; when I traverse the hallways of the Slytherin dungeons in Hogwarts Legacy<\/em>, my mind accesses memories from my favorite fanfics \u2013 not the books \u2013 and I\u2019m infused with warmth. The halls of Hogwarts are my safe space, still.<\/p>\n

I recognize my circumstances are incredibly specific, but I also know mine isn\u2019t a unique experience. Fantasy worlds offer an escape for queer and non-queer people alike, and coming-of-age fiction can be powerful, formulative stuff. This particular fantasy universe was a place of belonging for me, and I think its latest iteration, Hogwarts Legacy<\/em>, could offer a similar slice of peace to young players today.<\/p>\n

I understand the anger and protective energy from people who don\u2019t want to play the game. It\u2019s a terrifying time to be transgender: Ultra-conservative lawmakers are writing discrimination and blind hate into law, while neo-nazi rhetoric has found new life on mainstream social media platforms. Deadly violence against trans people, particularly Black transgender women, remains a pervasive epidemic<\/ins><\/a> in the United States. Among these real-world threats, we\u2019re clashing over the virtues of playing or not playing Hogwarts Legacy<\/em>. It\u2019s been depressing to observe as this conversation sows division and sucks attention away from our shared goals, limiting our ability to celebrate new successes.<\/p>\n

Harry Potter will outlive its author. She is not the future of the franchise. Avalanche, Portkey Games and Warner Bros. have been well aware of the pervasive disgust for the author\u2019s ideology for years, and I believe it encouraged them to include more representation in the game than the series has ever seen. Hogwarts Legacy <\/em>allows for various expressions of gender identity in the character creator and casually drops \u201cthey\u201d pronouns in conversation; all around, the cast is diverse and Avalanche writes non-white characters better than the original author did. There\u2019s still room for improvement, and that\u2019s why the conversation needs to be ongoing: Positive progress is our shared goal.<\/p>\n

As someone who searched desperately for an example of my own identity in the pages of Harry Potter novels, I deeply appreciate the evolution and inclusion in Hogwarts Legacy<\/em>. This level of representation didn\u2019t exist in AAA games 15 years ago, and it\u2019s the result of all the progress made, through protest and education, since the books were published. Long before the in-fighting over a choice to play a video game.<\/p>\n

If you don\u2019t want to engage with Hogwarts Legacy<\/em>, please, boycott the game \u2013 just don\u2019t boycott the players. It\u2019s us\u00a0<\/em>against the transphobic people in the world, not us against each other. Some of us will choose to play, some of us won\u2019t. Even more will wonder why anyone even cares about this fictional kid and his heteronormative, whitewashed, multibillion-dollar franchise. These are all valid options. Playing Hogwarts Legacy <\/em>doesn\u2019t automatically make you transphobic. Boycotting it doesn\u2019t automatically make you an ally \u2013 supporting our community members does.<\/p>\n

We\u2019ll have a full review of Hogwarts Legacy <\/em>later in the week, once I\u2019ve had enough time with this enormous game to fully form an opinion on it. Even if I catch hell for this perspective, I\u2019ll be here, supporting local inclusion efforts, protesting discrimination, calling my lawmakers, loving my community and playing the gayest version of Hogwarts Legacy<\/em> possible.<\/p>\n


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\nSource: Engadget – Why I\u2019m reviewing ‘Hogwarts Legacy’<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Five days ago, a review code for Hogwarts Legacy landed in my inbox. I\u2019ve been thinking about this moment for more than a year, ever since the backlash against the game started gaining traction online. The author of the Harry … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[99,110],"tags":[98],"class_list":["post-1103958","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-engadget","category-unfiltered-rss","tag-engadget"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.prime-wow.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1103958","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.prime-wow.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.prime-wow.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.prime-wow.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.prime-wow.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1103958"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.prime-wow.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1103958\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.prime-wow.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1103958"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.prime-wow.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1103958"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.prime-wow.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1103958"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}