Why I am Not a Harry Potter Fan ... (A Remix)

In 2007, when I lived alone in a new state where I had almost no friends, I learned what it is to be a geek and be alone: It really sucks. If you haven't gone to a comic book convention by yourself I wouldn't recommend it. Sure, you might pick up nice swag but what's that without a friend to show it to and compare your bounties? Same with going to a showing of the Rocky Horror Picture Show without another Virgin to buoy you. Half-way through throwing toilet paper at the screen from your empty row you'll realize you're not having fun.

Still, I have an affection for the night I went to the midnight release of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows at the Borders in Newark, Delaware. Uninterested in any of the contests or most of the rigmarole going on within the center of the store, I hunkered down in the Shakespeare section along with two preteen girls with braces on their teeth and a guy inexplicably dressed in a black t-shirt and red clip on bow-tie getting a backrub from his Goth girlfriend. I drank hot chocolate from the Seattle's Best Coffee and chatted with the girls. After midnight hit I still had to wait until they called my letter (which was J or something) to get in line for my book, and ended up taking a nap on the floor, my head on a copy of The Portable Dorothy Parker that would also be coming home with me. I left that night happy to have experienced a special event the likes of which probably never would be seen again. Okay, so the midnight release of Breaking Dawn quashed that dream, but it was nice while it lasted.

If you actually read the title of that post, I am sure you are confused. I like Harry Potter. I've read all the books and seen all of the movies, about half of them when they came out in theaters. In one memorable instance I went to the movie of Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix with my college buddies after an afternoon wedding/civil union ceremony and ended up sitting in the theater in a ball gown. I think the books are a lot of fun and occasionally quite clever. The movies a bit less so (what the heck happened with the sixth?), but I still like them just fine.

Yet I am not a Harry Potter fan. I know Harry Potter fans, I have walked among them. I know who they are and what they do and how they think.

Harry Potter fans hate Harry Potter.

The main focus of the fans' hate is J.K. Rowling, the author and mother of the franchise and Richer Than The Queen of England (TM). Unlike Twilight fans, who are quick to shun any who speak badly of Stephenie Meyer, in the Harry Potter fandom hatred of J.K. Rowling is encouraged if not required.

They hate that J.K. Rowling got it wrong from the beginning, making Slytherin a house that was always more evil than ambiguous. They hate that Harry didn't get together with Hermione, his actual true love, instead dating Ginny, who is a whore because she dated TWO GUYS before bestowing a kiss on Harry Potter's pure lips. They hate Hermione and Ron together, which is sure to degrade into domestic violence for some reason. They hate that the books didn't focus on the true protagonist of the series - Ron, Hermione, Snape, Neville Longbottom or Draco, depending on who you talk to - and instead focused on a rules-breaking athlete who got fame for not dying.

Harry Potter fans hate Harry Potter.



(These excited children are not Harry Potter fans. The average Harry Potter fan is 30 or something.)

Harry Potter fans hate Harry Potter books. They hate that the first book was too reminiscent of Roald Dahl's writing, and believe the increasing size of the books was not due to a world growing more complex, but due to the writer's own increasing ego. J.K. Rowling needed a better editor. Nevertheless, the books could have always been longer, if only to get in all the parallels between Snape, Dumbledore and Tom Riddle. Do you know all the parallels? J.K. Rowling doesn't, and this makes Harry Potter fans angry.

This is the crux of Harry Potter fans' complaints with the series. J.K. Rowling does not understand her own work. Did you know that Blaise Zabini should have been Italian instead of black, and also possibly a woman? Did you know that werewolves are a metaphor for homosexuals? Did you know that when the centaurs took Umbridge out into the woods they raped her? J.K. Rowling doesn't, and this makes fans angry.

Harry Potter fans hate Harry Potter.

There is also material supplemental to the books, and Harry Potter fans hate this too. Why should Crookshanks' origin be revealed in a charity book? Who does J.K. Rowling thing she is, making books primarily to raise money for charity? And don't even get them started on the upcoming encyclopedia, whenever that will come up.

Harry Potter fans hate Harry Potter.

There have also been seven going on eight movies based on the Harry Potter series, and fans hate these too. They hate the first two movies, directed by that over-literal dork Chris Columbus, and that they never got to see Rik Mayall as a ghost. They also hate Alfonso Curazon for putting the kids in street clothes instead of robes, as well as for making it okay to actually cut things. They hate the sixth movie for blowing up the hollow, and the seventh movie for being two parts, and it will probably still not get in all the details that they want.

Also, Pottermore will probably suck.

Yes, Harry Potter fans hate Harry Potter, which of course begs the question: why do they read and watch and consume and write fanfics about Harry Potter? Why the real life Quidditch games? Why the cosplay? Why the bands? Why?

I don't know. Ask a Harry Potter fan. I'm not a fan of Harry Potter.

This post was stolen heavily based on The Complex and Terrifying Reality of Star Wars Fandom by Andrey Summers. I still haven't seen Green Lantern and thought it needed adaptation.

A few belated thoughts on X-Men: First Class ...

I know the comics blogosphere has moved on to bashing/playing apologist for Green Lantern, but work and the odd business that comes with going on vacation has prevented me from being on time and possibly relevant. So let us travel weeks back in time and discuss X-Men: First Class.

First things first, I did like the movie. I've never liked the X-Men movies as much as the majority of the geek community but it was a large step up from X-Men: The Last Stand. What would have otherwise have been a mediocre reboot was elevated by the characterization of the central characters and the performances of James MacAvoy (Professor), Michael Fassbender (Magneto), Jennifer Lawrence (Mystique) and Kevin Bacon (Sebastian Shaw). I don't think it's a great movie, but it's an enjoyable movie, and considering I had low expectations for this movie given that it takes its title from a solid, unique X-Men comic series that this movie has nothing to do with I was overall pleasantly surprised.

Yet, I always have a certain problem with the X-Men movies ... nay, the X-Men franchise in general, and that's this. Now, let's say you're a preteen girl with limited funds. Let's say said preteen girl is interested in superheroes. She watches the 90s X-Men cartoon but for the backstory largely learns about said superheroes not from comics so much but from the trading cards and profiles she reads on the Internet. Basically, this is how it plays out.

Cards/Profiles: "Hey Kid! Look! We have girl superheroes! Lots and lots and lots of girl superheroes! We have ones that fly and ones that control the weather and ones that make fireworks and ones that fuck your shit up and eat a whole sun! Read us! We are fun! Come play with us forever!"

Actual Stories: "Giant mutant horde fights other giant mutant horde. Wolverine mostly does everything."

That's not to say that I've never enjoyed an X-Men story or never found X-Men stories that didn't follow that formula, but the first three X-Men films, as much as I liked aspects of them, were basically that formula. Also, did I mention Wolverine is my least favorite X-Man and Storm my favorite? Yeah. So I've basically been brokenhearted since 2000.

Still, for all the heavy focus on Wolverine, and as much as I appreciate how this movie focused more on XavierMagneto (they are one word) and Mystique, I still feel like the first three movies had more for my metaphorical preteen self than this one. Did no one in the boardroom go, "Hey, so ... in our metaphor for racism it seems like all the people who end up on the good side are white American males. Should we think about this?"

Granted, I'm far from the first person to complain about this and whatever I write here probably won't be as eloquent as what David Brothers said. But sheesh, we couldn't have even had a good team that spanned the globe, even the white parts of it? I know there were some bad accents in the last films but what is an X-Men story without terrible accents, anyway?

So given that in the end we close with no female superheroes, this is what we do have.

Mystique - Now, despite her small amount of lines, I've always liked the movies' Mystique. I even dressed up as her in high school, which was probably a bad idea given that I was too lazy to add the spines and didn't cut my hair so nobody knew who I was. (Some guys liked my costume, but probably for the wrong reason.) Still, as much as I appreciate what a good sport Rebecca Romijn was for wearing all that makeup and terrible contacts in the first three films, the future Katniss Everdeen was definitely a step up, and her storyline was compelling. It's essentially a tragedy (the girl who could have been good turns evil), although the star of the tragedy doesn't see it as one.

Emma Frost (January Jones) - On the other hand, Emma starts off as a bad girl who is powerful but underappreciated by her boss Shaw, who at one point requests she get him ice for his drink, spends many of her scenes in her underwear and the climax of the movie largely out of the action. In the end she switches to working for the other bad guy, most of her motivations largely unknown. I think the character of Emma Frost has been largely mismanaged in recent years, and this tepid portrayal didn't help. At least she got a decent fight scene.

Angel Salvadore (Zoe Kravitz) - Well, her makeup and the effects for her powers were nice. Unfortunately, as others have pointed out, this was the case of the only black female character turning evil soon after the one black male character is killed, and most of her motivations for doing so are not well developed.

Moira MacTaggart (Rose Byrne) - It's kind of standard that the role of the normal woman is diminished in comparison to the heroes, but despite Moira's importance to the plot in a lot of smaller ways, I came away without much of an impression of her beyond when Magneto choked her. Compared to the work done with Pepper Potts in the Iron Man movies and Jane Foster in Thor, I was rather bummed.

I am aware that a two hour movie isn't the time to have an in-depth exploration of every character's psyche, which is okay, but I do wish these movies ostensibly about teams weren't one-man shows. This movie does improve the formula by making it more of a three-person show, but I think my wish for a glorious team movie where all characters - male and female, all different races - get to shine is still a dream for the future.

***

By the way, not that this is related to anything said above, but Good God Internet, you are hard on Xavier.

I mean, look, we all agree that the prejudice metaphor has long been a part of the X-Men mythos but as a result of this it occasionally runs up into ideas that are rather retrograde, such as the idea of proving yourself to be the "good type" of minority. It's totally an issue that should be talked about, and is a problem to be expected, given that the principal creators of the franchise were 1960s-era liberal Jewish men and thus saw it through that lens rather than the lens of 21st century progressives. I do think that comics and sci-fi lean on racism as a metaphor in ways that are often uncomfortable and borderline offensive rather than working to make their stories more diverse (i.e. District 9 and James Cameron's Avatar), and X-Men can occasionally fall into the trap.

But are we really going to side with the guy who wants to solve the problem by killing many people and starting a war to kill many, many more? Don't get me wrong, I like Magneto, but the guy's least death-filled plan to solving this problem in the comics is to bring all the mutants to their own island. I do not think the best way to dismantle the kyriarchal system is to kill everybody or take your toys elsewhere. I find fandom painting him as the good guy who knows what's really going on and how to really solve the problems as a bit disturbing.

Yes, I was there when Xavier said things like "We have the chance to be the better man" or "They're just following orders" but Magneto also counteracts this and when he does Xavier has nothing to say. Xavier is a hero who is sometimes wrong, and pays the price for it, losing his best friend and sister. He lives in an imperfect story, but he's an imperfect character who suffers for his beliefs and mistakes, and I don't see how some in fandom seem to not find that compelling.

Just because Twilight is stupid doesn't mean girls are stupid

For a long time I resisted reading the Twilight series, first because I heard it was bad, and then because everyone had read it and said it was bad. What could I possibly add to the discourse that Cleolinda Jones or Stoney or countless other parodies hadn't already said? (This one is the best, by the way.) Yet as I began to listen to the discourse in the geek community around Twilight, I decided I did have something to say: I usually fucking hate it when men/guys talk about this series.

Let me back up. Of course, pretty much everyone knows the story by this point. Sullen average teen girl Bella Swan moves to Forks, Washington and meets a boy named Edward in her class who is really beautiful but is also a vampire and blah blah abstinence metaphor blah blah bad writing blah blah vampire is with her and then leaves her and then the book goes blank and wastes trees blah blah Team Jacob blah blah Edward's back blah blah love triangle goes on forever blah blah Edward takes the engine out of her truck blah blah marriage and horrible death baby scene blah blah imprinting blah blah small perfect piece of our forever.

Okay, look. I have no great love for this series. I think it's problematic on levels of sex and race. Even considering that as a Young Adult novel it is printed in big text and big margins it is still WAY too long for its flimsy content. Stephenie Meyer's plots are incompetent, her sense of suspense nonexistent and she seems to have an allergic reaction to writing anything resembling a fight scene. As a journalist her attempt to write a news article in Eclipse gave me hives. I don't like Edward. I hate Jacob even more. Meyer constantly brings up moral dilemmas ("Is it right to get help from vampires who eat people?") and then cops out on them ("Well, we just won't think of all those people they're killing out-of-state."). And did I mention the length? I know I did, but sheesh that last book was heavier than my copy of Moby-Dick and it's mostly made up of two characters having the same conversation ad nauseum. That's ridiculous.

Still, as bad as the books are, with all their Edward-sneaking-into-Bella's-room-at-night and Jacob-force-kissing-Bella and Bella-turning-into-a-zombie-because-Edward-leaves-her, I don't think they're the world's worst books. They're not even the worst I've ever read. Most people get stuck over the sparkly vampires that don't have fangs, but to be honest there have been so many modifications to vampires I don't in the end think that's a big deal, especially when there's so much more that's discomforting about the series. Plus, there are some genuine high points. I do appreciate how it ends with Bella becoming a vampire and being more powerful than Edward, even if that may be less of a feminist statement and more of me liking girls killing things and getting sick of her whining. Some of the minor characters such as Alice, Aro and Garret are a lot of fun. Finally, when Meyer finally does touch the darker elements of vampirism the book shines. I have to admit when I did decide to read the series I was most looking forward to the terrible vampire birth and in its own way it didn't disappoint. The scene in New Moon when Bella watches the Volturi murder tourists who come into their castle or whatever is another rare moment of powerful writing in the series. There does seem to be something resonant about these books, something that seems to entrance those who love and hate it, in a way that I don't think lesser bad books do.

And, as horrible as these books can be, sometimes people turn the message from "Wow, these books are stupid" to "Wow, girls who like these books are stupid." The commentary thus becomes not how the books fail, but why girls like stupid things. I hate this type of commentary, especially because it comes out as sexism with a feminist mask.

For one, I wish we could just call a moratorium on men whining about pretty boy actors. One because being in a culture where if I complain about sexualized women I'm just jealous and men need their jiggle-vision on video games and sex is awesome if you don't like a woman being sexy get the fuck off this messageboard, but if a guy without a beard takes off his shirt and shows muscles it's giving women unrealistic expectations about men and has to be stopped just makes me want to tear my hair out. Also, I was a teenager when Titanic came out and don't particularly like to feel like I'm back in 1997.

However, more irritating is when commentators take the legitimate complaint of "The romance in this book has a stalkery element" and turn this into "This book will lead girls into abusive relationships," or, worse, "Girls who read this want to be abused." To those who think that, are you kidding me? Did I miss all those news stories in the 1980s where Flowers in the Attic led to an epidemic of girls fucking their brothers? Where is the geek community that rails against how shooting people in a video game doesn't have anything to do kids who shoot up their schools when this garbage comes up?

Look, I'm not saying I'm okay with Twilight's messages. My younger girl cousins read them and the first thing I said to them when I heard was, "If a guy comes to your window at night, he's not cool" but I think they know that anyway. Teenagers aren't always the brightest, but a good number of them know the difference between fantasy and reality, and I think girls deserve just as much credit in this arena. And it is still fantasy. Most of the girls who have a crush on Edward Cullen now aren't going to try to find a guy like him, just as most of the women who like Star Wars aren't going to look for a guy who can crush a man's windpipe with his mind. That doesn't mean that there aren't some fans that take their obsessions to the point where they shouldn't, but I don't think in that respect women are necessarily worse than men.

So some girls like things that aren't very good. If movie grosses have taught me anything, quite a lot of people like things that aren't very good. That's no reason to complain harder about when Twilight fans come to Comic Con any more than when Transformers movie fans come to Comic Con. That doesn't mean that they're both above criticism, or that fans in of themselves can't be criticized, but I think this sort of broad brush isn't fair.

Oh, and guys, please try not to paint a picture of Twilight fans by picking and choosing the worst of what the most disengaged from reality say. You hate that when the mainstream media does that to comic book and video game fanboys. Do unto others.