Due to author J.K. Rowling's anti-trans statements, some Harry Potter fans are working to reclaim the franchise as a space of inclusion and acceptance. One such individual is Harley, a nonbinary gamer and the co-founder of the popular collaborative TTRPG (tabletop role-playing game) channel Stories Told, who recently participated in a Harry Potter campaign designed to spite the author.
Speaking with Game Rant, Harley (known as Breadwitchery online) discussed Stories Told's ongoing Harry Potter campaign, called The Fifth House. While they acknowledged that some viewers may not be comfortable watching a campaign set in the Wizarding World because of Rowling's transphobia, Harley described how it's important to fight back against the author's harmful views. The Fifth House, which featured a cast of predominantly people of color and trans individuals, was an intentional rebellion against the author and her transphobia.
More importantly, it was an expression of the gamers' love for a story that has helped many people become secure and confident in their identities. "We're using it as a personal reclamation and bastardization of the narrative and it's very much like we're trying to reclaim this for our nostalgia, and we think it's funny if it's a bunch of nonbinary people trotting around in the world," Harley said.
The first season of the campaign ended earlier this year and featured a surprise that caught the cast off-guard. The villain of the season was revealed to be someone who helped build Hogwarts but was actually a "horrible person," a metaphor intended to mirror Rowling's own fall from grace. According to Harley, the metaphor's execution was subtle throughout the campaign, and that no one fully caught on until the end. It was "really, really good," they said, and the cast loved it.
However, The Fifth House's rebellion against Rowling went deeper than the campaign itself. Throughout the entirety of the first season, Stories Told ran a fundraiser for Mermaids UK, which is an organization that supports transgender, nonbinary and gender-diverse individuals through their personal journeys. Harley explained that the organization was chosen in part as another way to spite the author. Over the course of The Fifth House's five episodes, a total of $1,300 was raised.
"As a nonbinary woman, a bastardization of [Rowling's] work by including nonbinary characters and also fundraising for a cause she'd hate is something that I find very funny and it's very comforting to me," Harley said.
The Fifth House can be viewed through Stories Told's YouTube account or its Twitch channel and is a rare Stories Told campaign that will be returning for a second season. The channel's current campaign Good Society airs on Wednesdays at 9 p.m. BST (4 p.m. EST).
Source: Game Rant