Why Wednesday is NOT a Harry Potter rip-off

Most of the “Hot Takes” about the Netflix series Wednesday are that it’s a shameless rip-off of Harry Potter.  Why? Because there’s a boarding school and supernatural creatures?   

Wednesday features Wednesday Addams going to Nevermore Academy, a school for “Outcasts.”  In the context of the show Outcast means monsters or people with super powers.  The school residents include werewolves, vampires, gorgons, and sirens as the main species based cliques. And the Principal was a shapeshifter. Other supernatural creatures in attendance include a telekinetic, an artist who has psychic visions and can temporarily bring his art to life, and a boy who can control bees.  A ghost and a Hyde monster also makes an appearance. And Wednesday, herself, is a seer.

 As far back as the 1930s the Addams Family has had witches. Charles Addams, himself, said that Morticia was a witch and he was her creator.  In the 1960s Addams Family show the opening theme song has the line “So get a witch’s shawl on, a broomstick you can crawl on.  We’re gonna pay a call on... The Addams Family.”  Grandmama brewed potions in every incarnation of the family and cursed a man in the 90s Addams Family movies.  Morticia’s sister, Ophelia, had flowers growing out of her head in the 1960s show.  If you think there was nothing supernatural about The Addams Family, you clearly were not paying attention.       

Now, in the show Wednesday, anyone with powers or who is of another species other than human, are called Outcasts.  Everyone else is a Normie. No, this is not a rip-off of Harry Potter’s Muggles.  In role playing games I sometimes had ordinary human characters called Vanillas.  In The Dresden Files TV series they were called civilians. Fables called them Mundies, which was short for Mundanes.  In Fred Saberhagen’s Dracula books the humans are sometimes called Breathers or Mortals.  Breathers is also what the ghosts in a few young adult book series call humans.  That and “Fleshies” like in the Casper movie.  In Bewitched and Sabrina: The Teenage Witch, non-magical people were called mortals.  The vampires of Anne Rice’s novels the human characters are called mortal.

So between Civilians, Breathers, Fleshies, Mundies, Mortals, and Vanilla, the idea of the supernatural society having another name for the non-magical ordinary humans also was not invented by J. K. Rowling for Harry Potter. You would have to have had very limited experience with the horror and fantasy genres if you think Harry Potter was the first to come up with the concept of a school of the magically incline.  

The Worst Witch- about a little girl in Witch School, was first published in 1974 and the first movie version was in 1986 and then it had two TV show adaptations. 

Even Monster High- which I, myself, have compared the school in Wednesday to- was not the first of it’s kind.    

In 1988 there was an animated movie called Scooby Doo and the Ghoul School where Shaggy got a job as a Phys Ed Teacher in an “All Ghoul school” inhabited by the daughters of the classic movie monsters.  You had the daughter of Dracula, the daughter of The wolfman, the daughter of The mummy, and a daughter of a ghostly phantom.  Sound familiar?  It was Monster High before Monster High. 

And don't forget even the novel Dracula in 1897 mentioned Scholomance (School of Magick) a mystical school supposed to be hidden in Eastern Europe over a lake. Also unlike Harry Potter, in the world of Wednesday, much like True Blood, the general public do seem aware that werewolves, vampires, and the like exist.  

Does Wednesday borrow from other Gothic Horror and teen dramas or who-done-its?  Of course.  But it’s done in its own unique way.  And it’s a spin-off of a beloved property, The Addams Family.  So just sit back and relax and enjoy it for what it is.  This is not a rip-off of Harry Potter.  It’s a hodgepodge of Gothic fantasy and it’s the first time Tim Burton has felt like ...well, himself, in over fifteen years.  Stop looking for reasons to hate it and just have fun. With Gothic horror films like The Invitation also embracing old Gothic Horror tropes, and Neil Gaiman’s The Sandman finally having its own TV show adaptation, I find it to be a breath of fresh air to see 2022 being the year that Gothic Horror has finally made a pop culture return without a cynical deconstruction by people who never appreciated the genre.  I had been hoping for this kind of entertainment for a long, long time.

As much as i hate JKR i will not tolerate any slander or hatred aimed towards the kids that get casted in the Harry Potter reboot.

If they get accurate aged kids then they’re gonna be between 10-12/13 years old to represent year 7’s (11-12.) Chances are they’re child actors aiming for a big break which shouldn’t be biased on who they author of the books are or they are being pushed by their parents which is something that happens more often than not.

I refuse. point blank refuse to fuckin ‘cancel’ any kids casted. They are children and they deserve a chance.

I won’t be watching it. But i will not obliterate a child’s chances to succeed based on a woman’s shitty view of human beings

Man I'm actually glad people are waking up to the fact this show is going to be a dumpster fire for whoever they cast as Hermione

You know none of them bitches are going to defend her from HP fans being shifty about her being black, or being anti-slavery

JKR is now calling trans women “trans identified men” - while still somehow preaching about the ways that men police “femaleness.” JKR and her allies are the only ones who are allowed to gatekeep who and what counts as a woman, apparently. The hypocrisy here is multilayered - she rebukes someone who has a particular idea of what a woman is, and yet she herself has constructed a similarly limited idea of what a woman is - one that excludes trans women. But also - it’s not an accident that all the targets of this kind of transphobia (“protect women’s sport,” “protect women-only spaces,” “some trans women are abusers”) are trans women - not trans men. Under the guise of feminism, she denies the identities and rights of some of the most vulnerable and systemically oppressed women alive today. Trans women are women. To deny that because it doesn’t conform to your “sex-based” definition of womanhood - THAT is the very definition of misogyny.

image id: picture of JKR from the the Onion with text reading

“would you tell us about a time you were personally victimised by a trans person?“ JKR: “yes I remember like it was yesterday, you see, I was advocating for their total annihilation and then a few of them said some mean words to me on the internet“ end id

the onion is choosing violence and I am here for it *few hours later*

I read the article here and my god fucking hell the sound I made reading this bit was not human

“Do you feel at all guilty to have disappointed some fans with your views?”

J.K. Rowling: “Hell no. Look, I wrote those books for kids 20 years ago. If you’re still into that shit, you’re a fuckin’ loser.”

in conclusion this tweet puts it best

image id: twitter screen shot from anna phylaxis reading “god I hope JK is vain enough to sue the Onion, I want to see that legal battle as badly as the Onion clearly also wants to see it“/ tweet two “her litigiousness, her obvious willingness to launch a lawsuit she would so clearly lose, makes her such an irresistible target for satire“

There is no "fuck J. K. Rowling" or "fuck TERFs" while you still actively obsess over Harry Potter.

And then you decided to use your mega platform voice to spew hatred against other humans.

Goodreads should remove her quote and replace it with someone who isn’t actively harming the trans community.

🏳️‍⚧️

spop fans criticize authors like j.k rowling (as she should be criticized) for declaring characters' sexualities offscreen, instead of showing it onscreen. but then they praise the crew-ra for lgbt and poc representation when more than half of those things were "confirmed" offscreen.

😇  This totally won't piss off J. K. Rowling, right?  😉

JKR’s world building is child’s play building blocks compared to the pillars the fandom has created with their own fan fiction. Have I read the books? No and I do not want to.

Putting this article on tumblr bc I’m still getting hits on it

I know with 100% certainty that jk Rowling read and hated this article, because a few days after I published it you could no longer find it on google search, even if u searched for my username & profile

You can find it on google now, right at the top of the search results

If you hate jkrowling and used to like the books, please share this

(Also reddit really hated this article too)

You know I'm not sure why we were surprised that J K Rooling was a bigoted piece of trash. It was pretty obvious

Seamus Fucking Finnegan, the one Irish character is good at blowing shit up. I mean, come on

The women that are there and are significant exist to either use the "not like other girls" trope, or to simper over or help the men, or at least aid in their development. Hermione ends the series with 0 development from where she began

The one queer character in the story is a) in love with a villain, b) morally grey, and c) not even portrayed as gay in the fucking books. A single Tweet was used to reveal this fact. She was definitely doing it to get on the hype train while it was in the station

Cho Chang. Just.... Cho Chang

The Goblins !! Anti-semitism galore

House-elves... apparently they like being slaves... HMMM... Where have I heard that before ? Oh yeah, white slave-owners said that about their black slaves

Harry becomes a cop, which is not necessarily bigoted but it is terrible writing

Once again, 0 rep for anything other than cishet white people. The ethnic character are there, and are only there, to act as background decorations. There are straight-up no openly queer people

The thing about Death of the Author is that it was put forward by Barthes as a fresh perspective on literary criticism focusing on elements of the text itself, instead of trying to relate it back to the author's opinions and the rest of their body of work, which had been the going trend in the literary criticism at that time. It was written by a literary academic for other literary academics to use in their academic work - it was never meant to have any practical purpose.

The publishing industry is not affected by Death of the Author. As long as you continue to engage with Harry Potter online, J.K Rowling will make money. Publishers and producers look at social media stats to market, Harry Potter still having an active fandom is why Rowling continues to get book/movie deals. J.K Rowling benefiting financially actively harms trans people in the UK and your believing in Death of the Author does nothing except make you feel better.

The lives of Jewish and trans people are more important than your little nazi wizard game