Ep. 52: "HogwartsPilled" - Harry Potter Video Games (w/ Leo Grierson)

Gay for Play: A Video Game Podcast

Yer a wizard, podcast listener!
This week we are here to discuss the Harry Potter franchise, its various video game adaptations, and our complicated relationship with the franchise as queer & trans individuals whose childhood fondness for this series has turned sour in our mouths like a bad Bertie Bott's Every Flavour Bean in light of JK R*wling's dangerous and repeated transphobic comments over the past few years.
Our guest (and DEAR friend of the pod) Leo Grierson unpacks their feelings with us through the lens of the old PC Harry Potter video games, how we can approach those games (and by proxy, the series,) with a queer eye, why turning out backs on the franchise wholesale isn't necessarily the only way to reckon with this series, and what the current cultural climate around the HP franchise could spell for the upcoming video game Hogwarts Legacy, an "immersive, open-world action RPG" set in the Harry Potter universe set to come out later this year (although let's be honest girl we're pretty sure it's getting delayed...)
We also ask ourselves if there is any ethical way support the game devs/creators of HP content that *aren't* JKR knowing that she's still making money off of the franchise. We don't have a clean-cut answer, but we certainly ponder it!
Leo Grierson (he/they) is the host of That Do It For Ya? A Sexual Awakenings Podcast.
Available on iTunes and Spotify!
He is the Artistic Director of The Juvenilia Collective (of which G4P is a proud member!)
Follow Leo on Instagram and Twitter
**Links to Support/Donate to Trans & Queer Youth in Texas & Florida**
Texas Organizations to donate to:
NCTE Texas Action Center https://transequality.org/texasactioncenter
Transgender Education Network of Texas (TENT) https://www.transtexas.org/
Equality Texas https://www.equalitytexas.org/
More ways to support Trans Youth in Texas
Florida Organizations to donate to:
Equality Florida https://www.eqfl.org/Take_Action
SunServe https://www.sunserve.org/
Community resources https://cfgalla.org/community-resources/

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CREDITS
Intro and outro music by Connor Marsh (@connorjmarshmallow)
Show art by Nick Adams (@nickadams.art)
Special thanks to our patrons: Blueberri Mary, Elijah Punzal, Trevor McTavish & Martha Turner <3
MUSIC THIS WEEK:
"Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone Title Screen" by Jeremy Soule
"Quidditch-Kazooie" by Laurence Turner-Cordova