Harry Potter Game Defies J.K. Rowling With They/Them Pronouns
“Harry Potter: Quidditch Champions” is the latest Potter entry to embrace the trans community despite Rowling’s rhetoric.
Warner Bros.
J.K. Rowling and her anti-trans sentiments are on an island, as game developers continue to make the franchise more inclusive.
Harry Potter: Quidditch Champions, a new video game from Warner Brothers Games, has arrived. And despite Rowling’s consistent heckling of trans people, it allows players to select they or them pronouns and play as nonbinary characters. Now, fans have taken to taunting Rowling with the new game’s feature on Twitter/X.
Harry Potter: Quidditch Champions features the option to use They/Them pronouns.
— Jordan Middler (@JordanMiddler) September 3, 2024
Somewhere in a mouldy shack in Edinburgh, a lone scream rings out. pic.twitter.com/JQLjMBdFmt
JK Rowling: pic.twitter.com/Nv6S63FdXZ
— DrEmettBrown (@DrEmettBrown) September 3, 2024
The news comes as Rowling is embroiled in a cyberbullying lawsuit brought by Olympic female boxer Imane Khelif, whose boxing performance Rowling described online as “a man beating a woman in public for your entertainment.” Rowling has targeted several others online, both trans and cisgendered, in recent years. This week, she turned her typing fingers to chastising visually impaired Italian Paralympian Valentina Petrillo.
Despite Rowling’s constant jeering at trans people, other Harry Potter franchise entries have ignored her online commentary in favor of embracing the community. Quidditch, the fictional game from the series that became a real-life sport, changed its name in 2021 to Quadball to “distance themselves from the works of J.K. Rowling, who has increasingly come under scrutiny for her anti-trans positions in recent years.”
Elsewhere in the video game world, the popular game Hogwarts Legacy also went against Rowling when it became the first franchise entry to include a trans character. So far, Rowling has not commented on any of these developments—and since she'll get paid anyway, it stands to reason that she won’t.
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