"Dumbledore is Gay" sez Rowling

I thought Hermione was black before I saw the movies. It was kind of a disappointment.

I thought Harry Potter was small and fat when I read the book. Thatwas also a disappointment.

Would've voted for Potter (-> Gay in Dutch) himself.

so is Rowling herself

I owe this link to another messageboard, but...

http://bostonphoenix.com/boston/news_features/other_stories/documents/02977459.htm

Snape is probably into BDSM.

cue Andy Milonakis

Dumbledore is Gay
Dumbledore
Dumbledore
Dumbledore is Gay

" in other stories, Snape has a full-blown taste for bondage and discipline, seducing students of both sexes — including Harry and Hermione — during detentions in his dungeon. In one unrelenting bit of erotica, "The Nine Orgies: Affection" by one Kandyslasher (adultfanfiction.net), Snape spends the entire first section spanking a naughty Slytherin girl with every implement at a sadistic schoolmaster’s disposal. And in the luminous "Love’s Labours, Paradise Lost" by Veresna Ussep (adultfanfiction.net), a melancholy, Shakespeare-spouting Snape turns a prostitute into an elegant love slave, and the result is so affecting, you wish you could see this Snape on a movie screen."

The reaction from the mother of the girl who posed the original question was not recorded.

Dobby is of course a masochist. 'Dobby had to iron his hands'.

My gf reads that kinda stuff.

Weirds me out a little.

xxp

The audience fell silent, and then after a moment, Carnegie Hall exploded into applause. Rowling said that if she had known that her admission would get that type of response, she would’ve revealed her thoughts on Dumbledore earlier.

thats quite an admission big hoos

http://www.webwhispers.org/newspics/apr05/target.jpg

http://www.magazine.org/Editorial/40-40-covers/37e.jpg

It's just the prospect of a Professor doing the dirty with his underage students that weirds me out. Sorry if that wasn't clear. xp

i meant the part about yr gf reading hp sex slash

lolz

sorry gf mods should prob remove huh

what with ilx/facebook crossover and everything

"Can I say my girlfriend's into Harry Potter sex slash on Facebook?"

haha its a bit late for that now hoos

way xpost to Abbott -- I've always found it kind of cute/interesting how Rowling tries to use the kids' names/details to make various ethnicities clear without having to say anything (and without going overboard and being like "the young wizard LAMAR SINGLETON raised his wand"), which is funny business when you're trying to make things clear for children; there's some funny bit early on where one of the black kids wears dreadlocks for pretty much the sole purpose of us imagining him as black, instead of being told straight. (I find it funny, too, that one of the Indian girls is named Parvati, and so I consistently imagine her as Parvati-the-witch from Midnight's Children.) But then in standard British style she goes a bit broad with the foreigners ("Fleur"!), and Cho Chang has always made me wonder if maybe east Asians in the UK don't do the assimilated-name thing like in the US.

I assume the way ALL the names scan is way different in the UK, obviously (which kinda kills my Lamar Singleton joke) -- I'm probably missing a lot of class signifiers with the names, too, aren't I.

Hermione = posh
Ron = common as dog muck

Harry = wtf is this the 1940s?

Yes, yes, definitely a step back in time. There is more than a touch of Enid Blyton.

Hermione pretty much seemed like Theo in a cloak to me.

OOOOPS maybe I meant Rudy (meaning I entirely meant Rudy, I wasn't THAT, um, unclear on Hermione.)

I just canceled an 8-paragraph post about Theo's late-diagnosed learning disabilities

There IS that one scene where she keeps calling Ron BUUUUD

HAHAHA sorry to make you abort what was surely a hilarious frolic.

There was nothing hilarious about it, Abbott. In fact, his early-college discovery of the simple learning disabilities that had made him struggle in high school was precisely what made him decide to major in education, so he could help kids like himself find ways to

I'm sorry, I'm getting a little misty, one second

wait you guys don't know anyone named harry? i have THREE friends named harry.

I have never known a person named Harry that was younger than 60.

nice of jkr to make the reveal after she's already ended the series and sold 15 gajillion books. woo yay and all, but also kind of having yr cock and eating it too.

prince harry

Now this raises all kinds of interesting questions.

1) Does what Rowling think matters?

lol subject-verb agreement

my little dog is called harry, he is like a tiny old-fashioned travelling salesman who breezes into town and makes hearts flutter.

in the remaining films, dumbledore will now be played by ian mckellen

because he's gay!!

it would be funny if michael gambon took a cue from this and just really queened it up in the next couple movies.

s1ocki have you heard his rationale for why he played magneto and the lotr dumbledore

Harry has definitely come back into fashion as a kids name, like George and Alfie, but Ron is really dated. Plenty of people with east Asian ethnicity have English names in the UK, not sure how different it is to the US though.

My best mate is called Harry, but then he was named after a man born in 1907.

two of my harry friends are jews, which makes some sort of sense to me, at least. they're both around 23?
the other is more peripheral, and he is (surprise) Japanese.

lol @ LAMAR SINGLETON

Every time I see this thread title I want it to say "'Dumbledore is Mad Gay' sez Rowling".

ya rly xpost

nice of jkr to make the reveal after she's already ended the series and sold 15 gajillion books. woo yay and all, but also kind of having yr cock and eating it too.

OTM. I find it hard to believe she's really like, "Oh, he's always been gay, I just didn't bother to mention it before."

ppl get *christened* harry?

the fuck, people.

it's like christening your kid dave.

'christened' to troll tuomas; insert whatever equiv you might want.

What?

To troll me how?

no other thread

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/07/15/books/a-detective-storys-famous-author-is-unmasked.html?smid=tw-share

That is one of the coolest things ever. It must have been really gratifying for her to get reviews minus all the usual "for grown ups, Harry Potter, mature, change of direction, blah blah" BS.

yeah gonna buy this to see what the fuss is all about

Don't expect a trans retcon in the Potterverse:

https://www.out.com/transgender/2019/12/19/harry-potter-author-jk-rowling-comes-out-terf

Yeah she’s been a fucking mess on this for years. Think I read somewhere she’s friends with W1ngs 0f Sc0tland?

That seems unlikely as she's anti Scottish independence.

You’re right but I am sure there’s some weird connection between them and some really objectionable people? Let me check this out

They both live in Dorset perhaps?

jk rowling has been a terf for years. she is also very friendly on twitter with "brian spanner" a unionist troll account that has tweeted at multiple female snp msps calling them cunts

don't want to link to wings over scotland but he details her literally @ing the brian spanner account 200 times.

xp ok thank you, that’s who I meant!

Here we have positive proof, if any were needed, that writing a series of wildly popular and lucrative children's books does not guarantee one has the ability to think sensibly about every issue that arises in a society. Other than her being rich as Scrooge McDuck, why would anyone regard her opinion about this as worth repeating?

That's Twitter for you.

now fantasy fans can have the same crushing disenchantment and disappointment in their authors that sci-fi fans have had to deal with since forever.

to me it seems unlikely that an angry entitled millionaire soft Tory would be a terf

sister is watching the TV adaptations of her detective books and dear god do i hate Rowling on a near visceral level

this is a brief interruption to my "more positivity" resolution, she pushed me into it

I've almost finished the last book with my kids

- She refuses to use the present subjunctive, which is infuriating

- She has a remarkably small stock of ideas

- Her conception of what magic is, and what wizards and witches are, and what they’re for, is weirdly stunted/unarticulated. She starts from a base of adorable cliches i.e. cauldrons, broomsticks, wands, but they never turn into anything interesting. They’re trappings. There’s a bank, a prison, a series of schools with terribly important exams but.. what are these wizards actually expected to do with these powers?

- Technically she’s quite good imo. Good sentences. The language flows. It’s extremely easy and satisfying to read aloud. And she always gives a clue as to what sort of voice to use i.e. Flitwick’s “squeaky voice” etc

- I don't buy Hermione and Ron at all. Ridiculous

- Harry and Ginny I do buy, depressingly. Harry supposedly cares about her deeply then manages to spend the entire last book without her. Would have served him right if she'd ended up among the dead

- They did Hagrid dirty. He starts as this cool big old gamekeeper who takes a shine to Harry. quite quickly he becomes The Crying Guy. oh he’s huge and rough- but he has a sensitive side! he’s just a big old softie! who’d a thunk it??? if i have to read one more time about the large tears rolling down Hagrid’s cheeks, each big enough to fill a teacup etc I’m hurling the book out the window

- speaking of, I never, ever need to read about Harry’s scar throbbing ever again. twice, three times- it’s enough. when he wakes up in the white mist-world talking to dead Dumbledore and he reaches up and doesn’t have a scar i was like 🎶 HALLELUJAH

can’t wait for my wee girl to be old enough to want to read these and then spend years trying not to yell about how all harry does is defend his elite private school and the horrible racist status quo it supports from having to make any sort of change and then grows up to be a cop so he can do it some more

and also that rowling is a blairite terf

I read all the books and enjoyed them but nothing stopped JK's horrible politics and generally shitty world-view soaking thru. She did one of her usual Twitter "body-shaming women is bad" things a couple of months ago which a friend approvingly shared and I bit my lip because I didn't wanna be that guy but I was gagging to shout about how she wrote seven books where one of the marks of the Dursleys's wickedness is "lol they fat"

She is a fucking mare, don't start me on this detective shite.

https://i.imgur.com/1AlWxfi.jpg

lol

lol

(for the record, gender is real)

if j.k. rowling tried to make an album based on the harry potter novels it would be so fucking awful

btw I didn't get into all the house elf / snape's hooked nose etc stuff because I figure it's all been hashed out plenty; ditto everyone being straight; but yes it is EXTREMELY PROBLEMATIC.

lol when dobby dies and rowling tries to make it into a Big Moment and has harry really drinking in his grief, it all rings so fucking hollow.

I'm still mad about Hermione and Ron btw - there is absolutely NOTHING between them for like four books. Ron's an idiot. it comes from nowhere. no little clues, no key moment where Ron does something unexpectedly gallant, nothing. it's like jkr really doesn't know her characters. Hermione and George I could see. Ron and Parvati. we're starting to get into that second tier of jkr character now though, the characters with no personalities of their own. God knows how I ever managed to differentiate the voices of Dean and Seamus.

I don't think it's that weird that there's nothing between them at ages 11-14, but then as teens they couple up. All the couplings in Harry Potter seemed as stupid as inconsequential as teenage love so often is. And then at the end it turns out they all married and stayed together forever, and that's when it became shitty...

yes, THAT’s when it became shitty, otm

look it isn't the place of fiction to explore characters' motivations or give them any kind of internal consistency

On the plus side, everybody on my feed has stfu about Harry Potter for once

Teens don't have internal consistency :) That's one of the few things Rowling got right, actually. #Bookfiveisthebest.

neither true nor an excuse for bad lazy writing tbf Fred

my biggest problem with the books is that she uses this phrasing fucking non stop: "well its xxxxx, isn't it?" I swear someone says this on every page.

well, it’s rowling, isn’t it?

She uses "ejaculated" a lot

neither true nor an excuse for bad lazy writing tbf Fred

― Bojo Rabid (Noodle Vague), 28. december 2019 17:38 (three minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

It's definitely bad and lazy, I'm just saying, it's not because the teens are oblique and acting inconsistently.

I also love that they make fun of Muggles for approximating magic, meanwhile they have to wait for an owl to show up to get a message from someone

Also quidditch is a stupid game, only getting the snitch ultimately matters

Also they use Time Turners to give Hermione special privileges and save a hippogriff

Also love killed Voldemort

probably worth noting that Hitler was a big fan of Karl Friedrich May who was sort of the JK Rowling of that era, but his famous characters were rugged German cowboys!

Also quidditch is a stupid game, only getting the snitch ultimately matters

you could develop a tactical approach to quidditch that tried to negate the glaring hole in its structure as a game but you wouldn't bother because it's fucking stupid and this is the best you can come up with despite millenia of superpowers

probably worth noting that Hitler was a big fan of Karl Friedrich May who was sort of the JK Rowling of that era, but his famous characters were rugged German cowboys!

― calzino

fuck karl friedrich may, that fucking terf

I am also reading these with my kids and have also had many thoughts, which have nowhere else to go apart from this thread.

* After book 3 she seems to have been too important for an editor to intervene, huge books aren't a bad thing, when they have less content than short, better books, like the first one, that should be a clue.

* Yes, the worldbuilding is really sloppy and not well thought-through, the interaction between wizards and muggles could have been a strength, instead it's almost wilfully stupid and makes no fucking sense. These muggles live among them, many are from muggle families, why then do they understand them so little? what do they make of films? or all the culture of the last 100 years for that matter? and the food is obviously english food of the 20th century, what is the reason for this? also a hundred other things, so obviously a rich seam of ideas, neglected completely.

* one of the big themes is class but it's handled so badly throughout, the moral seems to be that public schools should accept a few poor and / or foreign students but they must conform to the school's traditions, as a former teacher she has very old fashioned ideas about education.

* and related to this in terms of politics, there is a decent effort made towards showing their government to be corrupt and their media completely compromised, but the obvious baby step from that to advocating systemic change is never once attempted, it's like she feels a need to defend this often horrible world she has made, because questioning its logic means questioning her own poorly thought through concepts.

* the relationships stuff is both icky and prudish, she does not want any sex in there at all but feels for some reason that it should be covered anyway. hermione and ron is foreshadowed in TGOF and THBP but it never convinces at all. in TDH the story naturally comes around to a place where harry and Hermione feel like they are about to pair up, but she never lets the story tell itself and these moments are always wasted.

I have lots of other thoughts too, but main one is that I will try to get younger son into something else if possible.

Get your children into Earthsea instead of Harry Potter imo

^^^

These books are amazing. Harry Potter is the Star Wars prequels.

i always found the potter books incredibly claustrophobic. and magic is the matter of learning a latinate word.

whereas earthsea is climactically various and expansive, and magic is earned at the cost of experience and pain.

yes, why does magic = Latin? This is never explained or justified, were the Romans wizards?

I have many issues with the Potter books but the key one comes down to something Tove Jansson said - “Every children’s book should have a path in it where the writer stops and the child goes on. A threat or a delight that can never be explained. A face never completely revealed.” Rowling never, ever does this and it's a real drag.

Earthsea's greatest feature imo is Le Guin's own changing attitudes on full display

I keep waiting for JK Rowling to announce that the JK stands for "jk"

I also love that they make fun of Muggles for approximating magic, meanwhile they have to wait for an owl to show up to get a message from someone

the truly amazing thing about the stupid world she created is that everything she’s added since makes it even more nonsensical and offensive

Xpost oh...my...god....

I had no idea.

Just..wow

https://i.kym-cdn.com/photos/images/newsfeed/001/480/743/2c0.jpg

which one was the book that after reading it, it was obvious that she cribbed the emotional denoument from Spider Man 2, which had come out not long before? book 5 maybe?

I will say this for Rowling, getting the two first books for christmas in 98, after just turning 12, knowing nothing about them, and reading the first fifty pages that night on the floor of my kid brothers room, as the house was filled with family, is one of my fond christmas memories. They're addictive, the world building is fascinating, incoherent as it finally ends up being, and growing up with them for a few years was fun, and there were so many satisfying twists in books three and four. When book seven came out I couldn't remember who half the characters were, they seemed to die as if they were ticked off a list, and I really didn't get the epilogue.

I think it's too easy to say, that because Rowling clearly is an idiot and a bigot, that all her writing must be bad. Nah. The good parts are really really good. And I suspect kids will still pick it up and be captured by it, if she can stop making shitty films, and being an asshole.

One hopes that children who begin with the Potter books later move on to books which will teach them life lessons of greater value. But discovering that books can be engrossing and entertaining is a necessary first step.

One hopes that children who begin with the Potter books later move on to books which will teach them life lessons of greater value.

It's been 20 years, doesn't seem to have happened yet for many of them.

xps to Neanderthal

Hogwarts didn't always have bathrooms. Before adopting Muggle plumbing methods in the eighteenth century, witches and wizards simply relieved themselves wherever they stood, and vanished the evidence. #NationalTriviaDay

— Wizarding World (@wizardingworld) January 4, 2019

I started reading these when Goblet of Fire first came out (I was staying at someone's apt who had them). I still really like the entire series and have very fond memories of that time. But I also will re-read stuff like Nancy Drew or VC Andrews, even though it aged terribly, if I see it lying around someone's house.

I have always maintained that the only actually good thing about these books is Snape's Only A Pawn In Their Game backstory and redemption arc. Everything else is filler.

I never understood why there's no criticism of the House system; why would everyone be so tolerant of a system where one-quarter of the student body gets sorted into White Supremacist House at age eleven?

We have an education system where 1% of the nation's children are sorted into White Supremacist School tbf

My bad, more like 7%

Yea i always loved "one of our houses tends to spit out evil people at a really high rate, shame really. We were going to maybe do something about it, but...we didn't."

Perhaps they shoulda just called him Professor Dumb instead amirite

Everyone going on and on about how Harry Potter is really bad because it's not about systemic change and kids should really read this edited book of the best speeches by Jeremy Corbyn that Tribune is putting out for christmas is really boring me, but... It is kinda weird that they have Slytherin, and basically the entire house bands together in a genocidal mania that nearly kills off everyone, and then they just keep on as if nothing happened, and then fifteen years later the entire house again bands together in a genocidal rampage, and... Again nothing happens? Like, clearly Rowling is aware something is very very wrong with boarding schools, yet she is unwilling to even consider that something should be done to fix it.

Like, the moral of the story is basically 'tories are only ever one charismatic leader away from going full fascist, but eh, what are you going to do...*

Everyone going on and on about how Harry Potter is really bad because it's not about systemic change and kids should really read this edited book of the best speeches by Jeremy Corbyn that Tribune is putting out for christmas is really boring me, but...

they're just bad children's books lads

and movies and theme parks and political outlooks and

Never go full Jolyon.

One hopes that children who begin with the Potter books later move on to books which will teach them life lessons of greater value.

It's been 20 years, doesn't seem to have happened yet for many of them.

― Greta Van Show Feets BB (milo z), Saturday, December 28, 2019 2:53 PM (one hour ago) bookmarkflaglink

A friend of mine posted a FB story the other day that was a multi-part video of two of her friends (both around 30) having a heated argument about Potter arcania--pretty sure it was meant to be an "oh, how cute!" thing, but it left me fearing for our nation and ashamed of my generation.

Someone’s (fortunately) never heard of Harry Potter fandom, you’re like 20 years late on this.

I should have informed everyone itt that I am being dragged to a live showing of Goblet of Fire at the performing arts center tonight, with a live orchestra playing the score.

It's a present for my parents.

(I actually liked the books and movie, but I'm sick of Potter, living a half hour from the Potter park)

spare a thought for me, i (almost literally) work at hogwarts

Some of these dorks are dressed up.

Ugh

Another complaint is that my nearly-9-y/o son's teacher has told the class that they aren't allowed to use the word 'said' in their creative writing, and must cram in as many adjectives and adverbs as they can. I understand that this is an attempt to broaden vocabulary use, but it's still the imposition of an ugly style, and it seems like the HP books are the model for it.

Elementary school teachers never give correct or even good writing advice. Be fearful of their rules.

yikes I really made a mistake taking Fred off of killfile, fixing that now

and thanks for that great Tove Jansson quote, JoeStork!

I remember a creative writing teacher telling us we could set our film scripts anywhere except the USA and could use any topic except organised crime, that was a good example of restriction, but was at university, actually that was the only good writing teacher I've ever had, he was called Seamus Finnegan, which is also the name of a character in the HP books, he would not be impressed by this run-on sentence.

So glad I grew up in a time when children's books weren't subject to such analysis; no-one gave a shit about Jennings and Darybishire, afaik.

Yeah CaAL my daughter used to get told to use "wow words" and it was painful explaining decent prose style to her

I count among many of my students and colleagues in the university English department where I work and study a large number of people who got into reading via the HP books and then moved on to various other literary fields. These books are basically Star Wars, in that some people are going to use these touchstones as a jumping-off point towards the wider, richer world of film/literature, while others are going to remain willfully trapped in their fanboy bubble.

Star Wars is also bad though

Personally I think it's OK to chat shit about the terrible politics of children's authors who publicly flaunt their terrible politics but I guess there's more important stuff we could be doing

my nearly-9-y/o son's teacher has told the class that they aren't allowed to use the word 'said' in their creative writing

tell him that whenever he might use "said", he should just substitute "burped". that should appeal to a 9-y/o boy.

I guess there's more important stuff we could be doing

potter

fanboys?

what a poor selection of a word

Fanbutts

I had an English teacher in the early '80s who forbade the use of "get/got" or "nice". He also taught us the correct plural of "gin and tonic" is "gins and tonic". Stood me in good stead, that.

tell him that whenever he might use "said", he should just substitute "burped". that should appeal to a 9-y/o boy.

I have virtually no Harry Potter exposure (read maybe a couple chapters of the first one as a kid and bounced off hard; watched a few of the movies when friends did but had no real opinion) but some people seem a lot more outraged about the existence/imagined reading habits of harry potter fans than anything the author has said

xp also the "said"/"got"/etc thing extremely predates HP

this is a very lazy google books search but should illustrate well enough that it's been around https://www.google.com/search?q=%22dialogue+tags%22+%22said%22&rlz=1C1CHBF_enUS838US838&tbs=cdr:1,cd_min:1900,cd_max:1999&source=lnms&tbm=bks

(yikes, sorry)

Sometimes it seems like the poptimism ethos does not include books!

Poptimists can’t keep a straight face when it’s books

I know it predates HP, but it seems to be pushed now in a way it very much wasn't when I was in school here in the 80s, it's like she has shown this is a good model and everyone has got trapped in her slipstream. on the plus side seems like they have shit up about split infinitives.

We were barred from using said and also in elementary school writing.

only a poptimist knows how to accurately complain about pop culture

Poptimism does fine with books, sci-fi/fantasy/other genres aren’t ghettos nearly as much as they used to be.

YA is a whole other thing - even poptimists would look askance at an adult who only listens to Disney Channel compilations.

he can't even use the same verb twice

he already knows "belched", now you can teach him "eructed".

I know it predates HP, but it seems to be pushed now in a way it very much wasn't when I was in school here in the 80s, it's like she has shown this is a good model and everyone has got trapped in her slipstream. on the plus side seems like they have shit up about split infinitives.

― mfktz (Camaraderie at Arms Length), Saturday, December 28, 2019 7:23 PM (thirty-six minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

just a wild guess but there might be more influential changes in the writing curriculum since the 1980s than harry potter

the split infinitive 'rule' is easily the worst pile of dogshit among all the trumped up grammatical 'rules' foisted on helpless youngsters. it's nonsense.

oh, it gets worse, he can't even use the same verb twice, burped is good once, then it becomes this ridiculous game of searching for new verbs, they have not thought it through at all.

As a college comp teacher, I spend so much time correcting the damage done by idiots like these. So many obedient students writing unreadable crap because they've been told "said" and "asked" are bad words.

The book Three Lives to Live, by Anne Lindbergh, has a great chapter about this - since the premise of the book is that the narrator is writing it as an assignment for her middle school English class, we get this amazing scene where the class workshops a chapter we've already read and then the teacher makes her rewrite it with new verbs.

Camaraderie, I would absolutely encourage your son to subvert the exercise in creative ways, like making all the characters act like birds, so they sing, tweet, squawk, twitter, or chirp. Or have all of them gargling, gurgling, burbling, snorting and wheezing. At least that will make it less tedious for him. Hand him a thesaurus, let him go wild, then tell him to throw the thesaurus away as soon as he loses that teacher.

So it's over...i forgot this is the movie where Ron is obsessed with butts and Myrtle keeps trying to see Harry's weiner

gah all those ghosts.. having established that ghosts exist and are essentially comic she proceeds to do.. nothing with them

and speaking of speaking with the dead, how come harry never just asks dumbledore’s picture frame all those burning questions about horcruxes, the sword of gryffindor etc?

You know, I don't really think whoever wrote this bit was purposefully aiming at Rowling, but I think they hit her pretty well with it:

https://entertainment.theonion.com/frozen-2-creators-confirm-that-elsa-gay-but-also-tran-1839981134

Hey, I deprogram eighty students a semester from the twaddle enforced by high school teachers, for example forbidden from starting sentences with conjunctions; it's how we get horrifying constructions like "due to the fact that."

I'm not super happy with the response of "she was a shit writer anyway". I know why it happens. A lot of people, particularly here where a lot of us are writers, have always hated her writing and her saying some fucking awful things is a free pass to dunk on her.

I know a lot of young trans people who did grow up on her writing, who do like her stories, and a lot of this thread is just out and out dunking on those people. Fuck anybody who was ever stupid enough to _like_ Harry Potter, right? What do they know? They should have been reading Le Guin!

criticizing any artist is dunking on people who like them if you look at it that way, but it seems an extreme position or one that's not really meaningful

generally opinions about why a piece of art is bad are trite, misdirected, function as a critique of the critic, are just more words

but at the same time saying why you think something is bad is a way of expressing personal and political thoughts, sometimes indirectly

of course nobody has to engage with any piece of art or criticism

the kind of meta "climb above the validity of critique" which we are all wont to play sometimes is only another layer of "i like this thing v i don't like this thing"

JK's politics are fair game for bagging on especially since she constantly obtrudes them into her fandom and the broader world

any cultural product is fair game for dissection/critique

leave Britney alone

one can be an adequate or better artist in all sorts of ways, e.g. technique, but have flaws that negate your positives so much they make you bad

the artist isn't the main arbiter of the value of the work

people can like stuff and get something from stuff that's terrible and that's more than ok

yes, all of that.

but also, conversations move on, we were not discussing the transphobia at that point, don't think anyone on here feels extra emboldened to criticise jkr because she's done this, she was already fair game as much as any other writer.

There’s a bank, a prison, a series of schools with terribly important exams but.. what are these wizards actually expected to do with these powers?

this is true in real life too fwiw

lol good point. but we do have an entire body of world literature dedicated at least in part to investigating these questions and jkr seems uninterested in them. she did manage to stick a set piece in gringott’s for the last book but gaining access was absurdly easy, and we learned nothing new about it

it just feels like she only has the vaguest idea how anything in her world works

it me.jpg yes yes - but i want something more from my detailed fantasy worlds than the quotidian enfugment i already know - i want a glimpse of the mechanism, a flash of the green field of play. is the wizarding world really just a kind of shit edwardian echo of our own with the added ability to set the table more quickly??

dunk on rowling all you like, i'm old and didn't grow up with her and don't particularly care about her mythos or her writing one way or the other; i haven't read any of her books. dunking on the people who grew up with those stories as kids for continuing to like those stories, however, strikes me as being somewhat mean-spirited and unfair.

omg yr such a hufflepuff

which is the house with the trans people in it

oh wait

i'm just tired of spending every weekend trying to persuade various friends of mine that not _everybody_ in the world hates them and no, they don't need to hurt themselves, and the stupid shit j.k. rowling says makes it harder, and i know that's not as _relevant_ to some of y'all's lives as her apparently dodgy writing style, but i'm probably not going to shut up about the things that matter to me. and if that makes me a "hufflepuff", sure, fine, whatever, feel free to fp me if you're sick of reading my posts and go back to spending your time talking about what a ridiculous name "neville longbottom" is.

I hope that when my novel, X-59 and the Mechanical Boop-Boops of Bleeple Blorp Sector, is finally published that a bunch of internet wisenheimers don't come along two decades after the fact to point out that it was all built on a foundation of every lazy robot cliche ever.

lol sorry that was joeks rush

i did quite carefully explain what i like about her writing! i think there are good reasons why she’s popular.

xpost

I will say that the overriding feeling I have with her is of disappointment, her world has potential but she is too lazy and conservative a thinker to flesh it out. This fundamental timid english conservatism explains both her defense of privilege and her transphobia. Her "feminism" if she ever had any was always of the sheltered cis/het/white upper-middle class lady type, and her imagination for societal change was simply non-existent.

This is probably another of those instances where, because a ubiquitous cultural object is relatively marginal to my own life, I fail to understand why anyone feels a need to strongly critique or defend a thing which seems more deserving of casual acknowledgement or dismissal.

xxp the two are intertwined although not necessarily related

I’ve never really liked or rated her writing as much as some people have. My opinion doesn’t affect her or her billions in any way. However, her appalling political opinions take it from “read another book ffs” to “I’m so glad this bigot has a massive platform and loads of fans to defend their every fucking utterance”. Like I’m not forgetting she’s a horrible person when I make fun of her writing!

Rowling is a shit writer —> everyone hates ppl who grew up reading these books is a huge enough leap that it’s v v weird to put the latter onto some messageboard posters expressing the former, there have been like 2 posts this revive that are maaaaybe dismissive of fans which seems ok to me — again, unless simply stating the opinion that some books are bad amounts to a personal attack, in which case we’re all fucked

i will cop to enjoying the books, even while getting bothered by some of the internal flaws of the universe the further I went.

the only fans I have any gripe with are the nutbars who talk about nothing but POtter, which is admittedly a very, very, very tiny minority of people, and yet I happen to know at least five of them. probably cos of proximity to Potter world at Universal STudios.

One thing that repulsed me about the novels: who on earth thought drinking fermented butter was a good way to spend Saturday night?

I do also know a lot of LGBTQ+ fans struggling with the TERF news and I truly do sympathize with them as these books were very important to them growing up and now they feel betrayed.

xpost lol Alfred

i couldn't stop giggling last night because I had this asshole co-worker who kept reminding me ofs omeone and I couldn't think of who and then Voldemort showed up and it was very clear. he looks like him in a way Rick Scott never could. it's uncanny.

One thing that repulsed me about the novels: who on earth thought drinking fermented butter was a good way to spend Saturday night?

― TikTok to the (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn)

at a guess, scandinavians

There's an implicit air of superiority when your reaction to somebody being revealed as a shitty person is "I never liked them anyway" - like you can somehow divine someone's badness by disliking their art, and that anyone who liked their art is a foolish rube. I also deeply feel rushomancy's post because of my own friendship group, which includes a LOT of trans/queer people who grew up loving HP - they don't really need people rubbing it in, y'know? They're already having a shitty enough time. And I get the side of "but we're just discussing Rowling on a Rowling thread", but it still makes up part of this continual discourse of "ha ha you idiots, not only does the creator of this thing you love despise you and your very existence, but it's YOUR fault for being so stupid as to like it in the first place".

didn't this latest discussion start less from the TERF comments and more from Tracer's post about reading the last book with their kids?

I started reading from cryptosicko's post, so it certainly looked to me like it was about her transphobia, but I guess there was a bit of a gap?

Yeah it felt way more like normal conversational drift than a pile on to me. I get what you guys are saying but I don’t know what the alternative is, discussion boards gonna discuss

christ, i'm not calling for a fucking struggle session, just try to be kind and considerate of other people, ok?

xps to emil.y I’m looking at it from the perspective of someone who knows people who absolutely cannot look past their own love of the series, and don’t care about what she’s putting out into the universe.

I think what many are trying to understand is where the lack of consideration has been, as an overall trend? It's a long thread, so maybe I missed several posts.

I would get if this was a Facebook thread and someone had just posted that Rowling was a TERF, and the sub-comments were all dismissive "I never liked her terrible books, this is just icing!" responses....but it's a message board thread, and most of the discussion on the books themselves seemed to follow Tracer Hand's focus on they noticed while reading the books to their kids.

I get the overall point, but I don't see where the insensitivity is happening in this thread. If I missed it, then I apologize, but as far as pile-ons go, this seems rather benign by ILX standards.

nv otm

perhaps its because this is the thread where the conversation occurred and not a generalized Potter thread, but I can attest these same criticisms appeared in Potter threads many years ago almost verbatim. hence why most of the posts I read had an aire of familiarity to them, as I read similar criticisms here while I was actually making my way through the books.

There's an implicit air of superiority when your reaction to somebody being revealed as a shitty person is "I never liked them anyway" - like you can somehow divine someone's badness by disliking their art, and that anyone who liked their art is a foolish rube.

I get that, and I'm guilty of it. But with HP I think there's the added factor that for decades it's been impossible to voice even a mild criticism (like, "Hey, I like Snape but think her other characters are kinda flat) without Harry Potter fans coming after you like you just pissed on their sacred tree. When a work of art is so beloved people cannot tolerate any criticism of it, there's going to be a backlash, and I think a lot of the "I never liked them anyway" is coming from a place of "Hey, we're in a thread where it's okay to say something negative about these books? Sweet, I've got some thoughts I've been saving up."

Not much different from Star Wars and Donald Trump then

thr answer to who like to eat fermented butter = everyone

oh, it gets worse, he can't even use the same verb twice, burped is good once, then it becomes this ridiculous game of searching for new verbs, they have not thought it through at all.

As a college comp teacher, I spend so much time correcting the damage done by idiots like these. So many obedient students writing unreadable crap because they've been told "said" and "asked" are bad words.

― Lily Dale, Saturday, December 28, 2019 8:47 PM (yesterday)

As a middle-grades comp teacher, I also work to undo this damage. It's pre-existing, and I blame a series of terrible SAID IS DEAD posters/worksheets that were disseminated in the wake of the 2000s Writer's Workshop classes proliferated by Columbia Teachers' College.

http://mjgds.org/classrooms/2ndgrade/files/2014/04/Said-is-Dead.jpg

continually grateful i went to journalism school where you better have a good fuckin reason to use a word that isn’t “said”

lol otm

mouthfarted

"stated" = hate 4ever

I wage unceasing war against "stated." That and "individual."

lol we used "stated" a lot at my job when we were summarizing phone calls for escalated situations. mostly because who really cared about the literary quality of what essentially amounted to the "begat" segment of the New Testament.

due to the fact that begat was said by Jehoshaphat

'flatly stated' has its uses :P

(if you're a CLICHEMONGER)

"dicked" should be used as a synonym for "said"

posts very much in please stop

woulda made the Bible juicier

you want me to explain why, in the recent wake of a beloved children's author publically and openly aligning herself with an ideology that denies the existence of and seeks to erase me, people like me, people I care about (with, i should add, no small measure of historical success), i'm upset that the reaction has been "Yeah, she sure is a jerk! Now, about that writing style of hers..."

no, i don't think i can do that, sorry, never mind me, i'm just being an Overly Sensitive Trans Person again, forget i said anything, thanks.

look, i'm also the person who whenever the topic of gridiron football comes up starts talking about CTE. i'm just that sort of a, err, hufflepuff. terribly sorry.

my wife (who is 46) got an MFA a couple of years ago and the preponderance of Potter fans among her cohort (who were all about 15 years younger than her) got really super annoying (to her).

rush i used this thread as the general one because it seemed like the most recently posted in, that’s all. happy to talk about any aspect! believe me after reading every line out loud i have a lot of Opinions

god, anita bryant is such a corny-ass singer

Part of this I think is not "Rowling's writing is bad" but "Rowling's reactionary bullshit is heavily implicit in the work" - without saying "haha can't believe you fell for this". Like a bunch of posters on here I don't hate the books; it seems to me that almost every fandom involves a degree of consciously overlooking the bullshit until it gets to be too much

sorry rushomancy, really feel that the "well I never liked her anyway" argument is not being made by anyone ITT, and neither is the "anyone who likes her is an idiot" argument, ftr I have a lot of friends / relatives to whom the books are important, some of whom are trans and are struggling with this stuff. It was the same discussion about "is this person's badness reflected in their work", which is important to have, and involves discussion of the books. then I did admittedly go on a tangent about my son's teacher, this was probably unnecessary, but hope it wasn't taken as a slight against anyone, except said teacher who has apparently been fired now, I have just learned.

apparently been fired now

"Caloo! Callay!", he yodeled.

to be fair she was probably fired for the shocking incompetence rather than the "said" thing

one hand washed the other

you want me to explain why

not really

good luck to ya rush but ppl can dislike her or anyone for whatever reason divorced from your personal reasons for boosting her and thats rly about it

part of this is the argumentative skip -- here I am talking about The Discourse more than any individual poster -- from "she has said some pretty awful terfy things lately" (inarguable) to "this reactionary stuff filtered into the series" (probably, I haven't read them so I can't really weigh in) to "lol harry potter fans hell yes love getting an excuse to mock them" (subjective, doesn't follow from anything, and suggests that maybe people wouldn't really care about what rowling said if it didn't give them a segue to dunk on people for doing things they find personally gauche) and also, apparently, to "rowling is the one responsible for sixth-graders being asked to generate synonyms for 'said'" (?????)

Lot of the posts itt are funny to me cause I’m finishing off the year reading Stephen Kings on writing whose advice (never use anything *but* said) feels much closer to orthodoxy ime

"lol harry potter fans hell yes love getting an excuse to mock them"

have at me with the irrelevance of the "said" discussion all you like, fair enough.

suggests that maybe people wouldn't really care about what rowling said if it didn't give them a segue to dunk on people for doing things they find personally gauche

no, it really doesn't suggest that

almost as if there are people always looking isnt it

nobody has said or even as far as I can see implied this
― mfktz (Camaraderie at Arms Length), Sunday, December 29, 2019 4:39 PM (eleven minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

this is why I put the disclaimer about "this is more The Discourse than any individual poster" because I fucking knew this was going to happen, but spend more than like 5 minutes on twitter and you'll see it

it did sound very like you were talking about the discourse in this thread, especially after the fourth point related to me and my son.

I haven't encountered these bad takes on twitter, but I prune my follows heavily

I have never read these books, they seemed a bit ... gingerbread to me as a kid, but I gather a lot of LGBT people like the books and feel at home in them, must be an unpleasant experience to hear the author make these comments.

FWIW said comments seemed more in ignorance than malice to me - the whole tangle of feminism and transgender rights and all that is something it's a blessing not to be directly affected by.

Like to me, it seems p reasonable to say gender is what you want it to be, and also reasonable to say it isn't. Probably because this is academic to me. I'd hate to be reading these debates whilst being under discussion myself.

Sex and gender are different things fwiw

Yeah let’s get into it

In this thread of all things.

rowling's comments are absolutely not in ignorance - she didn't say something stupid that demonstrated she's just completely clueless on trans issues, she said something that makes it very clear she's aware of the trans rights "debate" that's happening and is directly aligning herself with the transphobes. maya forstater, who rowling's comments were in support of, has gone well beyond any confused-but-still-harmful "reasonable concerns" into shit like writing essays comparing the idea of using preferred pronouns to date rape drugs.

no one who's been paying attention really shocked by rowling's mask coming off though since she's had a reasonable history of liking tweets by those types, followed by her publicist going "oh she says that was just a mistake :)" whenever it gets brought up

The TERF label is weird because I don't think anyone would describe her as a "radical feminist," she's just a garden variety reactionary transphobe.

Her politics have been shit forever so I don't know why it's a surprise.

TERF as a label has gotten a little divorced from its origins these days but that's because transphobia masquerading as 'feminism' has somewhat moved away from those roots too, making things a fair bit more muddled. as a movement it still has ideological ties to the transphobic side of 70s radical feminism etc. even if the parts of their 'feminism' that don't relate to transphobia are nearly completely divorced from it now, so i don't think it's an entirely inappropriate term (people who insist on calling people like trump a 'TERF' are just bizarre though) but i'm happier just to say transphobic 'feminism'.

all attributions are bad, regardless of the verb

Yeah there are a few problems with chucking 'TERF' around, I think that word needs bringing to heel a bit - the discussions around girl's sports and women's prisons have to happen, and 'TERF' gets used to hold up those discussions. On the other hand actual TERFs don't do themselves any favours eh

Her politics have been shit forever so I don't know why it's a surprise.

― Greta Van Show Feets BB (milo z), Sunday, December 29, 2019 6:43 PM (yesterday) bookmarkflaglink

not everyone who has shit politics is necessarily transphobe but i’m glad you see her clearly

The issue I had with the rumors of her transphobia was it was based purely on Twitter follows and handfuls of retweets. It did paint a picture that she was probably someone who at least sympathized with TERFs, but I don't like the precedent that might start cancelling people that are more ambiguous cases based on iffy circumstantial data.

I don't really feel bad for Rowling in this case because if she had mischaracterized, she had ample opportunity to clear things up and opted not to. Fortunately she removed any doubt with her actual Tweet

Yeah there are a few problems with chucking 'TERF' around, I think that word needs bringing to heel a bit - the discussions around girl's sports and women's prisons have to happen, and 'TERF' gets used to hold up those discussions.

i have no problem with just saying 'transphobe' instead because most of those scaremongering about things like women's sports, bathrooms, etc. are not particularly interested in discussing the issues and more interested in promoting anti-trans bigotry

I have no problem with saying TERF because it really pisses TERFs off

@UFO yup the RF bring in unnecessary associations. As you can be RF without being TE.

P.s. When I say the discussions around sports and prisons need to happen, what I mean is they need to happen and also are horrible and prone to hijacking by transphobic honkers. Imo the only people that matter here are the kids on the running team be they trans or cis and the prisoners likewise, really they should have a place to sort things out away from the honkers

Seems that JK's transphobic twitter nonsense was just the warm up / research phase for this

https://www.pinknews.co.uk/2020/09/14/jk-rowling-new-book-cormoran-strike-troubled-blood-killer-dresses-woman/

luckily nobody's giving free publicity to her

ok soz

no one is going to read that thing, just like no one reads any of her other 'adult' books

The BBC will be along shortly to throw her another few grand tho maybe

no one is going to read that thing, just like no one reads any of her other 'adult' books

― akm, Monday, September 14, 2020 7:18 PM (thirty-six minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

there's a built in audience for this one though

I hear way too much about this hack’s antics and I’d never even heard of this series before today. “Cormoran strike” certainly sounds like an adult book for adults tho I’ll give her that

sorry to report that these books are bestsellers and already have a 4-series BBC adaptation

Adults are fucking idiots tbf

I was trying to find global sales figures for the Robert Galbraith books but the only concrete figure I discovered was from 2015 - 1.5 million copies of the first two books sold in the UK alone across print/digital etc.

how do i shot moon? (Noodle Vague)
Posted: 15 September 2020 at 10:19:41
Adults are fucking idiots tbf

It is odd that when this thread was started, JKR was presumably seen as some kind of daringly progressive person for implying that some of her children's book characters might be gay.

It always seemed a cowardly lie, either it's in the book or it's not.

having read the books with kids recently, the handling of romantic relationships in general is one of the worst aspects of them (and obv there is plenty of competition there) - it's not like she is keeping sex out of it to keep the books PG-rated, it's like she is completely clueless about emotional development, which is weird because all the other teenage books on sale seem to have that in their DNA.

could've saved herself the effort of writing this 900 page book by just retconning voldemort as trans.

i've read the first 3 of these galbraith books and the first two are fine but the third one was a bit boring. and yes they sell really well where i work.

I wonder if their audience is mostly crime fic readers or Rowling stans

crime fic i think. most of the customers seem too old to have liked harry potter, at a guess i'd put the demographic at 45 yrs and older, based on one airport bookshop. i've never read the harry potter's but liked these well enough. tbh i churn through crime fic p easily and my standards aren't high. think i read the first 20 lee child's in the space of 3 months during the quiet season.

could've saved herself the effort of writing this 900 page book by just retconning voldemort as trans.

still eminently possible tbf

Not enough being said about how ludicrous a name Cormoran Strike is, tbh

ludicrous names are kind of a cornerstone of detective fiction tbf

We can only be grateful he wasn't called Cormorant Transhate

this name is some way down the list of bad things associated with this writer

it isn't even anything like the worst name they've come up with

It's hilarious how loads of people guessed Robert Galbraith was JKR before it was made public because of the distinctively shitty style.

Was trying to give her the benefit of doubt about all this—like, I was assuming she is a reasonable and humane person who somehow was not getting how much she was hurting people—but this is straight-up trolling.

I seem to remember there being a fuss about her being outed as Galbraith, because she had wanted to succeed under a man's name to prove the feminist point that it was easier for a male writer to be taken seriously.

I'm assuming her next book will lean heavily on a subplot about people on the internet being VERY mean to Cormoran Strike.

maybe cormoran strike will write some tedious and derivative kids books

JK Rowling is really three lizards sewn together

Years later I cannot believe that the Harry Potter theme park got away with posting this pic.twitter.com/8zKWvlo8fg

— keewa (@keewa) September 15, 2020

I remember that tweet, it got ratioed almost immediately and they deleted it but 😬

just leaving this here

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Galbraith_Heath

During the course of his experiments in deep brain stimulation, Heath experimented with gay conversion therapy, and claimed to have successfully converted a homosexual patient, labeled in his paper as Patient B-19

there's no reason to suggest that the Galbraith name is a hat-tip this guy

probably not

very apropos, though

There's no reason to think it isn't though, either

Even if it was a coincidence as she claims ("Robert" and "Galbraith" are tributes to significant figureszzzz etc) I simply can't believe that neither Rowling herself not all the other people involved in publishing this book didn't do a Google search and ask the question, are you sure about this?

And whether it was deliberate from the get-go or a happy coincidence or whatever, in the context of her sustained and active transphobic campaigning through social media and open letters, it is damning

can't wait for a new revision of the deathly hollows where hagrid stops hermione and tonks from drinking harry's polyjuice potion and points out how a biological woman can never be a man.

There's no reason to think it isn't though, either

There are multiple reasons, like this is one:

We called it one of the ‘great forgotten stories of neuroscience’ because everyone had forgotten it. @jk_rowling did not choose her pseudonym out of homophobia or insensitivity. She could not have known about this guy - who everyone called Robert Heath anyway, or just Bob. 2/2

— Robert Colvile (@rcolvile) June 10, 2020

http://web.archive.org/web/20120423214220/https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Galbraith_Heath
http://web.archive.org/web/20150320215902/https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Galbraith_Heath

Presumably everyone has now learned that JK Rowling's new book is not actually about a murderous cis man who dresses as a woman to kill his victims?

And sure, burning the witch and all that is great fun, but the Robert Galbraith Heath theory is about as idiotic as insisting that numerology proves "Joe Biden" is "Satan, Honest".

What makes you say that? I just read a positive and sympathetic review in the washington post that says: "In her new book, Rowling has created a creepy serial killer who dresses in women’s clothes to more easily reel in his female victims."

everything is - as far as I can tell, everyone is very subtle about this on ilx - sympathetic towards jk rowling's "legitimate concerns" about trans women, so that might be an influence on that post.

the Robert Galbraith Heath theory is about as idiotic as insisting that numerology proves "Joe Biden" is "Satan, Honest".

I agree with this completely

Yeah the Galbraith thing is unconvincing. I suppose everything might mean the book is not *exclusively* about the serial killer (it's apparently a compact 900 pages), but again the review I quoted was positive and even defended her decision to include that plot point, so I have no reason to doubt its veracity

https://www.nationalreview.com/2020/09/jk-rowling-new-book-troubled-blood-not-transphobic/

https://www.theguardian.com/books/booksblog/2020/sep/15/rowling-troubled-blood-thriller-robert-galbraith-review

https://www.nationalreview.com/2020/09/jk-rowling-new-book-troubled-blood-not-transphobic/

― everything, Thursday, September 17, 2020 3:18 PM (five minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

christ, have a look at the source - both the publication and the writer.

To be fair, the only review that all this came from the Telegraph. I also provided a similar article from the Guardian.

the guardian article is paywalled for me but at least it's not a bathroom warrior who uses the term "globalist" in her writings and works for the national review

As I mentioned, the idea that it's a transphobic book came from a review in the Telegraph. In other words zero credibility. Surprising no-one mentioned that upthread tbh.

Here's the review I quoted: https://www.washingtonpost.com/entertainment/books/jk-rowlings-troubled-blood-is-her-most-ambitious-robert-galbraith-novel-yet--and-likely-the-most-divisive/2020/09/17/abeded18-f8f3-11ea-a275-1a2c2d36e1f1_story.html

Not going to discuss the National Review (an absolutely biased right-wing trash heap if you're not aware); IMO the Guardian one concurs with what I read in the Post. Sounds like the Telegraph overstated the centrality of this plot/character, but the quoted passages in the Guardian are legitimately objectionable

plenty of racist content in the book in the excerpts i saw too!

ofc jkr is way past the point of benefit of the doubt on this one, ty Jim for pointing out everything’s bias in that regard

Drop dead. You know absolutely fuck all about me or my opinions on this.

you seem cool

In other words zero credibility

you just linked to a national review article written by someone who openly hates trans people

if there's one thing I fucking hate it's disingenuousness.

The Telegraph is trash. Pink News is trash. That's where the story came from. None of us here have read the book. I remember JKR getting burned at the stake over Scottish Independence. I remember getting burned at the stake for Brexit. What's new?

I don't know anything about everything

lol I can’t credit linking to the National fucking Review to support your point in the same argument where you refer to “witchburning”, jfc

Pink News is trash because it inconveniently covers trans people as though they are with respect and rights, yes

it really doesn't matter if the original article overstates it - jk rowling's public persona has been defined by her views about transgender people for the better part of a year, far far beyond her terrible post-HP writing no one cares about. there was never a possibility that a book she wrote that includes a crossdressing man doing literally anything wasn't going to attract attention and suspicion. if you don't think this response is exactly what she wanted you're a rube.

putting the rube in tru believer

guardian article is typical "I've read the book and I'm a professional writer, therefore I'm right" - when she actually gets down to it her argument seems to be "these tropes are familiar, therefore they can't be transphobic" which is less missing the point than sticking your head in the sand to avoid it.

it's annoying that any coverage of this book exists is in reaction to the Telegraph review, but Pinknews' reviewer aims to debunk Nick Cohen's debunking: https://www.pinknews.co.uk/2020/09/16/jk-rowling-troubled-blood-serial-killer-cross-dresser-womens-underwear-plot-character/

Wait the Guardian review was by Nick Cohen? 😬

there were two guardian articles

Troubled Blood indeed

Hmmmmmm, I'm not ~entirely~ sure I'd count The Guardian as a trusted source on what's transphobic and what's not.

but the guardian presented articles the topic from both sides, a TERF and a sex pest.

sad lol

https://images.contentstack.io/v3/assets/bltf04078f3cf7a9c30/blt37083bb618e0e529/5e3b0275db561b2b59d8ad85/Nick_C.png

as the Terf broadsheet of record i think we should trust the Graun on this

Go ahead and endorse an obvious troll from the Telegraph then if it makes you feel clever. They're laughing their heads off over there, I guarantee it.

well if the national review says it isn't transphobic

Aw man, the Telegraph is now declaring the book NOT transphobic after all! What a surprise. Surely this is also JKR's fault.

i'm not sure what level of smug satisfaction you're on but it's impossible to recognize as a human response

the guardian review reads as "it's not transphobic, it just has several tropes that are traditionally used to stoke hatred towards transgender people".
which is kinda how one could summarize jkr position on transgender people. she's not transphobic. she just likes promoting many tropes that are traditionally used to stoke hatred towards transgender people.

this however..

https://www.huffingtonpost.ca/entry/jk-rowling-trans_ca_5f5fb236c5b68d1b09c60ee5

"There’s a trans character named Pippa in Rowling’s book The Silkworm, who’s described as “unstable and aggressive,” according to Katelyn Burns, a trans author writing for Them. Burns quotes one section of the book, when Pippa tries to escape the hero detective: ”‘If you go for that door one more time I’m calling the police and I’ll testify and be glad to watch you go down for attempted murder. And it won’t be fun for you Pippa,’ he added. ‘Not pre-op.’”

so, jkr, let me see if i got this right: a suggested rape won't be fun, but hey, it just might be. post op.
this is not a dog whistle anymore. it's a fucking vuvuzela.

I took a look at Rowling's twitter feed today, I didn't realize how much she's doubling down on this cause. Jesus Christ lady. I guess she truly believes this otherwise I can't imagine her risking the threat to her career like this.

thanks, scanner darkly, I'd forgotten what a vuvuzela was.

it's fucked up all these newspapers are saying that jkr's book is transphobic when her social media presence is screaming "i'm transphobic" all on its own

how dare they misrepresent her work by suggesting it contains her actual views

considering it's a 900 page volume the ratio of transphobia per page is not that high surely

i'm not sure what level of smug satisfaction you're on but it's impossible to recognize as a human response

― mellon collie and the infinite bradness (BradNelson), Thursday, September 17, 2020 6:35 PM (three hours ago) bookmarkflaglink

I humbly apologize for mocking Telegraph stans.

love too burn witches at the stake (criticise billionaires for their consistently shitty politics and bigotry)

By all means go for it then! Stanning for a Telegraph article clearly intended to troll the left doesn't really do that.

She's got a whole twitter feed you could critique instead of genuflecting at clickbait trolls from the worst of the UK media.

Nobody is stanning or genuflecting itt, as you well know from having read the posts itt

Do you worship the national review?

Do you masturbate over the Telegraph?

No because discussion of rowlings transphobia is not endorsement of whatever pub has covered it obv. It’s a rhetorical q I’m assuming the answer is no for both of us but getting less sure

But yes nobody itt has mentioned her twitter feed or drawn conclusions from the other reviews of this book, the last 50 posts itt didn’t happen and we are all just saying “the telegraph is good”. You are either thick or trolling.

This outrage about the book is a troll by right wing media. All the reports lead back to the one article in the Telegraph, who love to provoke the left on identity politics. A very successful troll btw and great for business. Sure, double down on trusting the now retracted clickbait review from the bullshit pape. jk rowling is frequently posting her own words on twitter which could be discussed but so far on this thread have not been.

A schism exists between feminist theory, queer theory and trans theory. Eg. gender-based rights vs. sex-based rights when applied to female-only safe spaces like prisons, rape shelters etc; how and when trans people should compete in sex-segregated sports; age of consent for minors to transition; & a couple of other topics. There are similar nuances in the BLM conversation which are beyond stating if you are for or against. It's more complicated than that.

Supporters of the Harpers article see that it's not a request by the signatories to not be flamed but that these conversations have become difficult to have in left-ish groups such as academia, the arts, non-profits, unions and so on. Meanwhile the right-wing look on & laugh.

ILX leans left and it's unlikely that there could be a thread on gender theory here. Several posts are already saying that this is a stupid thread - a reaction to some posts getting close to difficult viewpoints being aired. It's worth thinking about.

― everything, Saturday, July 11, 2020 11:34 PM (two months ago) bookmarkflaglink

Love the idea that nobody would have picked up on the transphobic content in this book if the telegraph hadn’t (even tho ppl have also discussed the guardian review, which is based on the content of the book and not just that telegraph piece, and drawn the same conclusions)(also a bullshit paper tbf)

jk rowling is frequently posting her own words on twitter which could be discussed but so far on this thread have not been.

did you read any of the other posts in this thread before saying this or were you just hoping people wouldn't remember

Xpost Not a gripe - a comment. I don't think ilx is particularly "left" either but maybe i dont spend enoigh time here. I dont feel like I am defending Rowling by pointing out what I feel was a huge successful troll by a publication known for such things.

You should spend less time here tbf

You should engage with JKR's actual words tbf.

jk rowling is frequently posting her own words on twitter which could be discussed but so far on this thread have not been.

jk rowling has been a terf for years. she is also very friendly on twitter with "brian spanner" a unionist troll account that has tweeted at multiple female snp msps calling them cunts

― xmas respecter (jim in vancouver), Tuesday, December 24, 2019 6:40 AM (eight months ago)

don't want to link to wings over scotland but he details her literally @ing the brian spanner account 200 times.

― xmas respecter (jim in vancouver), Tuesday, December 24, 2019 6:42 AM (eight months ago)

to me it seems unlikely that an angry entitled millionaire soft Tory would be a terf

― a very powerful woman in the dog world (Noodle Vague), Tuesday, December 24, 2019 8:06 AM (eight months ago)

can’t wait for my wee girl to be old enough to want to read these and then spend years trying not to yell about how all harry does is defend his elite private school and the horrible racist status quo it supports from having to make any sort of change and then grows up to be a cop so he can do it some more

and also that rowling is a blairite terf

― hot nuts (small) (bizarro gazzara), Saturday, December 28, 2019 11:56 PM (eight months ago)

You know, I don't really think whoever wrote this bit was purposefully aiming at Rowling, but I think they hit her pretty well with it:

https://entertainment.theonion.com/frozen-2-creators-confirm-that-elsa-gay-but-also-tran-1839981134

― revenge of the jawn (rushomancy), Monday, December 30, 2019 1:19 AM (eight months ago)

I certainly agree that tokenism is mockable.

The Telegraph is trash. Pink News is trash. That's where the story came from. None of us here have read the book. I remember JKR getting burned at the stake over Scottish Independence. I remember getting burned at the stake for Brexit. What's new?

― everything, Thursday, 17 September 2020 bookmarkflaglink

What's this burned at the stake for Brexit? You a Brexiteer?

'crossdressing serial killer' is still a transphobic trope even if that character isn't really the focus of the novel

like, congrats to rowling on managing to write a book that isn't as hateful as her public comments (but still very much reflective of her worldview) or one of her previous galbraith books ('the silkworm', as mentioned earlier)

lmao @ the idea the torygraph is "trolling the left" by pointing out transphobia in the works of a writer who agrees with the torygraph on Scottish independence, Corbyn, neoliberalism....

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2020/sep/20/making-a-demon-of-jk-rowling-is-a-wretched-sport-born-of-misogyny-and-resentment

Observer columnist says the JKR controversy is all about misogyny against JKR. Personally I am not convinced by that.

There’s a real vein of wealthy white terfs saint any criticism of them whatsoever is misogyny, and they’re not shy about using it against other women either. They’re also not shy about calling women who disagree with them handmaids, men, or just straight up predators ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

My colleague Nick Cohen’s reading is supported by early reader reviews on Amazon

lmao oh reader reviews on amazon you say?????

Citing Nick Cohen 😬😬😬😬

I have to agree: if your two supporting sources are a dire fellow writer at the same paper and Amazon reviews -- that's as weak as it gets.

Hey Nick Cohen knows misogyny when he sees it in the first person

The worst thing is that when The Observer dies all the worst ppl will just start writing for The Spectator or cow mag (the Jenny Turner -- in her latest for the LRB -- essay is quite good at covering these fault lines)

Definitely misogyny yeah

https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/how-graham-linehan-fell-foul-of-the-transgender-mob

I love that use of "fell foul", just innocently skipping along, Tweeting transphobia 24/7, and suddenly this horrible mob who are just looking for a fight set about you

GL of course no stranger to telling women who disagreed with him that they were misogynists

I love the balls on these guys. 2M followers too.

Transphobic creator J.K. Rowling 'not involved' in new Harry Potter game. https://t.co/I9FaT64vRv pic.twitter.com/JsWG3A8iHJ

— Kotaku (@Kotaku) September 17, 2020

As people used to say of Linehan 'What's the end game here?', has to be said i'm baffled. Whatever her intention is or was it's not working. Deliberate anti-marketing or something?

One comment I would hazard on that, without knowing too much about any of it, is:

JKR is used to people agreeing with her, buying her books, worshipping her and supporting everything she says and does, treating her like a cultural queen (a bit like a multi-million-selling Marina Hyde in a sense) - so she never expected many people to challenge her.

I feel like this is what happened with Linehan, what started as being mocked or corrected for ignorance rapidly hardened into outright war because he couldn't handle being owned on the Internet

Entitlement plus underlying previously unexamined bigotry

does her end game have to be any deeper than affecting public/political attitudes towards transgender people? she's already a gazillionaire, now she's found her passion

Tbh I am hesitant to point out the actual reason as both are extremely litigious

As people used to say of Linehan 'What's the end game here?',

Linehan now does a daily newsletter pointing and screeching at trans people on twitter, since his main account for abusing them directly was banned, and mocking people who turn the replies off on any given tweet. (He charges 8 quid a month for the ability to post comments on the blog version of his newsletter.)

The worst thing is that when The Observer dies all the worst ppl will just start writing for The Spectator or cow mag (the Jenny Turner -- in her latest for the LRB -- essay is quite good at covering these fault lines)

― xyzzzz__, Monday, 21 September 2020 4:13 AM (six hours ago) bookmarkflaglink

its already happening - hadley freeman, one of the guardian's many transphobe writers, wrote a piece in it the other day to complain about the oscars and then tell an anecdote where she explained to a friend how transphobic she is

I've become radicalised about gender, says Hadley Freemanhttps://t.co/09hOkimPxp

— The Spectator (@spectator) September 19, 2020

I don't think Rowling holding awful transphobic views and her receiving misogynistic abuse are in any way mutually exclusive.

it's problematic when it's used as a tool to shut down discussion that is specifically calling her out for being transphobic.

Neither justifies the other, obviously. But women in the public space with controversial views - good or bad - always get pushback that is more virulent, more personalised and more sexualised than men do. I don't know why this situation would be any different.

it's a consistent tactic of Linehanian terfs to categorise any pro-trans speech as misogynistic.

JKR receives the same kind of violent and sexualized abuse for being outspoken about Scottish independence and Brexit. Her sex is absolutely a reason for that.

I find it striking how suddenly people like Freeman appear to care deeply about edge cases in prison management and the finer points of eligibility in athletics competitions, having never evidenced any prior interest

This is entirely fine and thankfully one of the most famous and beloved authors in the world has no influence

JK Rowling platforms anti-trans shop selling ‘lesbians don’t have penises’ and ‘f**k your pronouns’ merch https://t.co/PtgoTSQEGY

— PinkNews (@PinkNews) September 23, 2020

i'm sure this has been said, but i do not understand having that level of wealth and caring about this issue in this manner

damn, is this a conservative paper psy-op too

This is a good if weird read:

I don't know what the interviewer was expecting but Butler
shutting down every poorly offered anti-trans dogwhistle here is something.https://t.co/hy9KFWqSRG

— Ian Williams (@Brock_toon) September 22, 2020

https://www.newstatesman.com/international/2020/09/judith-butler-culture-wars-jk-rowling-and-living-anti-intellectual-times

my college hero

and she's just whipping ass in this interview

"I think we are living in anti-intellectual times, and that this is evident across the political spectrum. The quickness of social media allows for forms of vitriol that do not exactly support thoughtful debate. We need to cherish the longer forms."

I tend to agree.

that was a great read, butler still as sharp as ever.

wow, she just cuts through all the bullshit in those questions so perfectly, amazing

and she's just whipping ass in this interview

― mellon collie and the infinite bradness (BradNelson), Wednesday, 23 September 2020 15:29 bookmarkflaglink

Just FYI, Judith Butler is nonbinary and uses they/them.

The footnote in the article mentions that Judith Butler goes by she or they.

TROUBLED BLOOD is as good or better than the other Cormoran Strike/Robin Ellicott novels. J. K. Rowling is a wonderful storyteller and a gifted stylist. I'm loving this one.

— Stephen King (@StephenKing) September 28, 2020

Read the room my guy.

look, the man pumps out like fifty blurbs a day. He can't be expected to vet every single one

lol it doesn’t matter, she already unfollowed him after he tweeted in support of trans women

I just feel like a guy that spends as much time on Twitter as he does would find this a pretty easy pothole to avoid stepping in.

Instances where you can't separate the art from the artist. vs. instances where you can.

https://clickhole.com/the-saga-continues-jk-rowling-has-revealed-that-ron-weasley-became-patient-zero-for-coronavirus-after-messing-up-a-spell-where-he-tried-to-turn-a-bat-into-a-larger-bat-he-could-have-sex-with/

Because I'm petty, I'm going to gather you all around and tell you about that time JK Rowling was extremely wrong about something and, by being wrong about it, poisoned Google search results for it for years afterwards and generally made the world ignorant about it

— Arthur Chu (@arthur_affect) September 29, 2020

Lol that Judith butler thing is p hilarious as there seems to be some implicit suggestion that there is some kind of intellectual equivalence here

(by here I mean in the article)

I mean King pumps out shitty books by the truckload, not astonishing he would also like to read shitty books.

re: that arthur chu thread, it's kind of astonishing how lazy and poorly thought out jk rowling's universe is, considering how big a deal it became

Harry Potter is not the millennial LOTR, it's the millennial Battlefield Earth.

People love CS Lewis and his worldbuilding is balls too, as Tolkien pointed out.

I do enjoy how the Wizards all make fun of "muggles" for trying to approximate magic, all while waiting months for owls with letters to arrive while the muggles get emails, texts, or snail mail in mere days.

A superior list.

More than 200 writers and publishers sign letter in support of trans and non-binary people https://t.co/bXG7z9bU0z

— Guardian Books (@GuardianBooks) September 30, 2020

I do enjoy how the Wizards all make fun of "muggles" for trying to approximate magic, all while waiting months for owls with letters to arrive while the muggles get emails, texts, or snail mail in mere days.

tbf I think it's made clear that Weasley dad's stance that muggle tech is actually very impressive and wizards should respect it more, while idiosyncratic in their world, is to be seen as correct.

Yeah but he’s seen as a weird fetishist, like a western hentai collector or something.

Funny you mention that, Rowling actually revealed in 2009 that Ron's dad loves hentai

xp right but I think narrative voice has it that it's an example of wizarding world's shortsightedness that he's seen as a weird fetishist, resonating with the general wizard bloodline obsession!

https://img.buzzfeed.com/buzzfeed-static/static/2017-01/25/15/asset/buzzfeed-prod-fastlane-01/sub-buzz-28441-1485375523-1.jpg?downsize=600:*&output-format=auto&output-quality=auto

like I like that these wizards had strong olfactory coping mechanisms cos even if I knew the poo and pee would flee after a flick of the wand, dear god, the sensation of wading in it and smelling it for those 3 seconds would make me hurl

This is the YA fantasy version of Badger's Star Trek: TOS treatment.

re: that arthur chu thread, it's kind of astonishing how lazy and poorly thought out jk rowling's universe is, considering how big a deal it became

The vagueness made the Potterverse a great sandbox in which the fandom could play. Rowling has said many disturbing and distressing things, but you should have seen the butthurt entitlement when JKR started saying things that contradicted fans' cherished fanon.

You don’t even have to read that Arthur Chu thread to get that, is the thing, you just have to look at that map of wizard schools or read that tweet about wizards shitting themselves where they stood (!)

I'm with M John Harrison, world-building is for rpgs tbh

yeah but Harrison has style

When Rowling starts writing impressionistic mosaic novels set in the world of Hogwarts we can stop scrutinising the exactitude of that world. As it stands, the later Potter books are essentially bad RPG sourcebooks anyway.

In a book series of which a large part of the appeal is the world building, that world building should probably be a bit better than "before the wizards had plumbing they all shat in the corner."

It's just so weird to me that she didn't just leave it as a vague "which was a vast improvement on their previous system", but instead had to dive right into them being incredibly lazy and filthy.

Yeah but he’s seen as a weird fetishist, like a western hentai collector or something.

― seumas milm (gyac), Wednesday, September 30, 2020 12:17 PM (yesterday) bookmarkflaglink

Funny you mention that, Rowling actually revealed in 2009 that Ron's dad loves hentai

― ✖, Wednesday, September 30, 2020 12:20 PM (yesterday) bookmarkflaglink

really underrated exchange here

Arthur Chu needs to bone up on his Latin, "imperio" is a perfectly fine Latin-y word for a spell that controls others. There's also the fact that Western magic has a long and grand tradition of using terrible Latin (and any other delicious-sounding words from antiquity) in their spells.

That said, fuck J.K. Rowling, I can't believe how shitty she is being on the trans issue.

Also before Europeans had plumbing they shat in pots and threw it out the window (or into the basement) so...

yes even versailles pretty notorious for people just shitting behind the drapes

xp yes, in pots, not literally on themselves

Not just a Euro trend:

https://livesandlegaciesblog.org/2015/07/15/of-chamber-pots-and-close-stools/

god help us all

I appreciate that yeah we can discuss the technicalities of JK as author and how fantasy fiction might work and still acknowledge that her public persona has been wicked, dishonest and destructive for years now

Also the current widespread acknowledgment of the toxicity of that persona makes shall we say robust critiques of her creative output particularly satisfying.

why couldn't they magick their excretions directly out of their bladders/intestines?

Yeah I feel double edged about that but fuck it's fair territory. I mean I don't think she's a good writer but I'm not strong on rules

xp obv

"Where they stood" doesn't necessarily imply "without even bothering to remove any clothing". One of my lingering disappointments with the Harry Potter books is how Rowling failed to make the school hallways as comically violent as they surely would have been given the combination of teenagers and the ease of both causing and healing bodily damage. Then again, magic in her novels is a cosmetic addition to the classic British school story. Her magic system simply won't bear very much scrutiny because the books aren't about magic, they're about schoolchildren, contrary to the way Lord of the Rings is about language and not hobbits.

I was willing to forgive a lot of the terrible stuff in the HP books (Rowling really, really wants to equate physical ugliness with evil which is some truly medieval bullshit) but once her true nature was revealed from incessant attacks on the trans community, it's hard not to revisit and re-evaluate all the questionable stuff in the HP novels.

why couldn't they magick their excretions directly out of their bladders/intestines?

Because the entire pelvic region is subject only to the supreme ironclad laws of biology which no human endeavor can ever change

you can imagine the Weasley twins developing a spell that makes you excrete out of your mouth, call it trittilo

f.hazel I.... don’t think it matters if they were clothed or not, they were still shitting on themselves like

this might be better for the bidet thread

otm about the magic. the stories are about wizards who can cast spells to do pretty much anything but there’s this pretty much total lack of interest in integrating this into the kids’ reality. the spells just kind of mimic guns, handcuffs, hypnotism etc

ditto the ghosts. it’s like, ghosts exist!! and then, well, they pop up now and then for comic relief. could never tell the difference between peeves and filch. when i read out loud to my kids they had the same voice.

people are immortal as ghosts and in paintings, but this is basically never explored or useful as a plot point, when obviously it should be, these are people from history, who you can talk to!

Rowling really, really wants to equate physical ugliness with evil which is some truly medieval bullshit)

This is the bottom line

The rank hypocrisy when she called out body shaming online

the conversational paintings always remind me of the ROM construct Dixie Flatline from Neuromancer

the ghosts and paintings are used as plot points iirc, like when they're trying to find the Ravenclaw themed Horcrux in book 7. but yeah it's not like a hard scifi "in a world where ghosts around, culture and society would be so totally different, let's explore that" kinda thing.

not to come to rowling's defense as she is obv terrible, but the books clearly begin from a "fun bedtime stories" mode, heavily loaded up with Roald Dahl and a grab-bag of silly fantasy elements. you don't really expect "world-building" there --- but when the books morphed into an epic YA fantasy series, they were still stuck with this fairly goofy, punny, kitchen-sink universe that makes no goddamn sense. each attempt to expand the wizarding world's geography and institutions beyond Hogwarts and Diagon Alley just made things less believable.

moaning myrtle's witnessing of historical events also is important, ghost-wise, but the series is full of other devices like the Pensieve for doing that kind of stuff. basically the issue is that the ghosts don't do anything of their own volition, just hang around waiting for someone to ask them the right question.

why couldn't they magick their excretions directly out of their bladders/intestines?

― mookieproof, Thursday, October 1, 2020 11:07 AM (one hour ago) bookmarkflaglink

Ahem:

This is the YA fantasy version of Badger's Star Trek: TOS treatment.

― Quiet Storm Thorgerson (PBKR), Wednesday, September 30, 2020 7:56 PM (yesterday) bookmarkflaglink

the books clearly begin from a "fun bedtime stories" mode, heavily loaded up with Roald Dahl and a grab-bag of silly fantasy elements. you don't really expect "world-building" there --- but when the books morphed into an epic YA fantasy series, they were still stuck with this fairly goofy, punny, kitchen-sink universe that makes no goddamn sense. each attempt to expand the wizarding world's geography and institutions beyond Hogwarts and Diagon Alley just made things less believable.

This is OTM. Rowling definitely a victim of her own success creatively, if the books had sold more modestly she likely either would have scaled back her misguided ambitions for the latter half of the series, or an editor would've done it for her. It would take a far defter writer to pull off the gradual tonal shift she was presumably going for.

imo the main point of arthur chu's thread is not that jkr makes mistakes. it's that she is now in a position where anything even slightly lazy or incorrect gets amplified. and while it's more amusing that anything when it comes to spell and name origin, there is quite a bit more at stake when you get something wrong about a whole group of people - and instead of understanding your responsibility, you insist on amplifying incorrect info - while knowing full well that your amplification will be used as a weapon against these people.

and jkr getting called out on these things (which have been well documented before) is exactly because she now presents herself as the "voice of reason" on transgender issues. so what was seen as a mere inconsistency or lazy research will be now similarly magnified. deservingly so.

speaking of inconsistencies in HP.. "The vagueness made the Potterverse a great sandbox in which the fandom could play." - it also allowed the fandom to call out things that are handwaved in the novels. http://www.hpmor.com/ even with its own failings is a great example of a fanfic that calls out all the ridiculous rules / spell names etc etc and tries to at least retrofit the magic system with some more consistent logic (often to hilarious and better results).

if i were to pick the most ridiculous thing though, it's the polyjuice potion. apparently, it's entirely possible - not just possible, but totally ok - to change your gender if you use magic. don't remember if this was just in the movie, but when a bunch of them takes the potion in the beginning of deathly hollows, fleur says (as she changes into harry): "bill, don't look at me, i'm hideous". a throwaway cheap comic relief line, sure, but now combined with everything else it's amplified to something nastier.

But could also be read in the "death of the author" spirit as a depiction of the visceral pain felt by people forced to present as a gender they're not (since Fleur actually IS a girl and would suffer that pain when appearing as Harry.)

HPMOR is one of the worst fucking things on the Internet, almost bad enough to make me feel sorry for JKR for getting famous enough for her work to inspire fic. It’s like, none of the things people like about the series written and delivered condescendingly and full of massive Do You Sees & it’s almost, almost enough to make me take back what I said about JKR being a lazy writer wrt the magic.

This reviewer otm, basically:

This story reminds me of reading Ayn Rand, where a fictional story is merely a vehicle for bludgeoning the reader with a "superior" worldview; characters espousing said worldview win out over those who don't in equal parts wish fulfillment on the part of the author and morality play for the reader. Rather than organic dialogue, the reader receives mini-lectures delivered using different characters as mouthpieces and/or sounding boards. In this chapter, it was the Sorting Hat waxing on thoughts of self-awareness in the Harry Potter analogue of machine consciousness, the author's professional bailiwick.

I'm sure you've all read the Ayn Rand's Harry Potter series from The Toast?

https://the-toast.net/2014/06/18/ayn-rands-harry-potter-prisoners-collectivism/

"HPMOR is one of the worst fucking things on the Internet" granted, still the way it exposes the various inconsistencies and plot holes is hilarious.

(this is not from HPMOR) like, why the hell wouldn't harry just talk to dumbledore's portrait to get at least some intel?

omg i had never heard of HPMOR

660,000 words???

like, why the hell wouldn't harry just talk to dumbledore's portrait to get at least some intel?

this bugged the hell out of me. all the old headmasters.... in picture frames... harry desperately needs to know information that only dumbledore has... but it’s just never brought up. she could have at least said something like “But Harry knew that Albus would need to spend the Year Of Trial before appearing in any of the frames around his old beloved school” etc. — or maybe he’s imprisoned in a particular frame and must be liberated by a thrilling rescue.. nope

you assume at some point during the writing of book five Rowling was like "shit, what am I going to do about the existence of time-turners once major characters start dropping like flies? I know! write a chase scene where the stockroom they're all kept in gets destroyed! sorted."

xp i vaguely recall something about dumbledore's frame being conveniently empty but without any particular reason. and it's not like all the previous headmaster portraits weren't present for various conversations albus had in his office with snape / the order etc.

"hey albus, do you want us to communicate anything to harry in case something happens to you?"
"nah, he'll figure it out exactly at the right moment as a consequence of a bunch of other random things also happening at the right moment"
"but how do you make sure all those things happen?"
"magic!"

i mean if we're talking bad plotting, then nothing tops love-starved, desperate-for-family-contact Harry Potter just plain ol' forgetting to open that mysterious birthday present from Sirius until after the latter died, at which point Harry remembers, opens it, and discovers that - of all the rotten luck! - it was a magic mirror that would have let him contact Sirius at any time!!! if only he'd had that before, everyone could have avoided the confusing and deadly mess at the Department of Mysteries! the most artificial and unconvincing ginning-up of bathos in any of the books imo.

You guys have all read every word of these bullshit books, huh?

Sorry, that was snarkier than I meant to sound, it's just--if you're reading this shit and you notice it's shit, why keep reading it?

short answer = because it's yr defining worldview and you and all your friends translate life thru it?

Or perhaps because you were a child/teenager when they came out and they were always knocking around the house? Not that deep.

You guys have all read every word of these bullshit books, huh?

well when we discuss the subject in the Proust thread people get confused so

tbh i didn't even read JM's post before i jst assumed it was lazy and pointless

soz

xp or perhaps because there was enough payoff to ignore the cringey parts, we are just more inclined to talk about the cringey parts now.

the real lol is that if instead of doing 3 turns of the time turner ("that should do it, ms granger" says albus) they did, i donno, 5, instead of just saving sirius's life they could've captured pettigrew while he was still a rat, thus allowing sirius's name to be cleared completely - which would mean harry would be able to communicate with him freely and pettigrew wouldn't be able to help voldemort.

really, the more you think about it, the more it feels like a lot of the world building depended on a reader's good will, so once you remove it, poking holes is both easy and fun.

like, why didn't albus just use a time turner to go back in time to warn potters?

I can buy that a time turner might have a functional limit to how far back it can take you... like a week or two max, but as a plot device it's like a nuclear bomb, you can use it once and then everyone has to agree it can't be used again or the world is over

except they used in the cursed child again, and to bypass the previous plot driven limitations they had to make it "a prototype of a more powerful version of the Time-Turner"

Cursed Child so surgically excised everything I liked about Harry Potter and replaced it tedious middle-aged existential crisis I have nixed it from my personal HP canon

replaced it with

not having read these (or seen 'frozen') is killing my crossword game

the time-turner is another thing that makes way, way more sense for a series of charming little mystery/adventures - the wizardly equivalent of like, the Boxcar Children sequels. it's a cool gimmick that once revealed, explains all these odd things from earlier in the book, and lets them do a fun time travel thing to repeat the climax of the book but get the good ending this time, so long as they tie up all the loose ends and land where they're supposed to. great, cool, fun. just doesn't wash at all once the stakes are elevated to super intense epic, which tbf is already starting to happen or be hinted at with that book.

but yeah even then it's like, this seems WAY too powerful to be something that teachers loan out to overachieving kids

Prisoner of Azkaban was probably the high point of the HP novels, before Rowling got too powerful to be reined in by an editor and everything got bogged down in mytharc stuff

I agree. I was never a fan of the series, and I really lost patience with it when the books started getting bloated with mytharc, but I remember thinking Prisoner of Azkaban was much better than the first two. I think she'd gotten a little better at the nuts and bolts of writing by then, and having Sirius to focus the story on helped as well. I generally find her adults more interesting than her child characters, and troubled-hero-escapes-from-prison is always fun.

Fuck you, Noodle Vague.

As to what the rest of you are saying, fair point. I forget how long ago these things started coming out--they still have such a weird presence in the forefront of popular culture for something that ostensibly ended 13 years ago.

yeah the last book was released in 2007 but that was the beginning, not the end. movies went through 2011, then the Cursed Child in 2016, the Fantastic Beasts movie trilogy (2016, 2018, and... next year maybe?), and a couple dozen video games and then there's the toys and merch. Harry Potter is basically Agatha Christie x Star Wars, it is never, ever going away (despite Rowling's best efforts to be a stain on humanity)

tbf though most of those later items have failed to really arouse anything like the same public enthusiasm as the source material. the fantastic beasts movies in particular seem to suggest that rowling's name and "from the wizarding world of Harry Potter" isn't going to make an event out of just any old weird unappealing wizard movie. the masses got invested in the setting of Hogwarts, the familiarity of a cast of charming characters they'd come to know, and the melodrama of Harry, Snape, etc. it's not like Star Wars where you can get a lot of people actively and sustainedly amped, most of the time, so long as it's got stormtroopers and lightsabers and some plucky heroes.

I can tell you from spending time with my sister's kids that they are actively and sustainedly amped about Harry Potter, and they weren't even born in 2007

if we survive the 2020 election, I confidently predict a Harry Potter TV series by 2025 that retells the original story of the books and it'll be on par with any of the recent Stars Wars nonsense in hype terms

o no

xp i've been thinking for a while that a big TV series revive will happen but probably not that soon if rowling keeps trying to make herself the face of the anti-trans movement. that would have to die down, the beasts movies would have to finish and become completely forgotten, it'd really have to play on millennial nostalgia. from what i gather from The Youths on social media, your sister's kids aren't the norm, 30-something dorks are still driving this IP train. and their kids might not latch onto it like they always dreamt they would.

it'll be Hogwarts: The New Class

if you're reading this shit and you notice it's shit, why keep reading it?

my kids demanded it. tbf even they started quailing by the last book. it took us about two months to finish it.

as i think i've said before here, she is actually really good at writing for 'easy reading' - the sentences flow really well, the dialogue works, it's always easy to keep to track of who's saying what, and every character is given just enough of a characterisation that someone reading aloud knows what sort of voice to put on. it's impressive. it was more fun to read to my kids than a wizard of earthsea, though of course earthsea is in every way a better book.

it'll be Hogwarts: The New Class

Saved by the Spell

✓

The book series's timing was absolutely perfect for my nephews (born 1993ish?). They got all the excitement of new books coming out, not knowing what was going to happen, having Quidditch-themed birthday parties, etc.

By the time my daughter (born 2007) was reading age, the books and movies had all already happened. By then it was a global industry, complete with amusement parks with themed rides. She read the books perfunctorily because everyone in her demographic had, but it never quite approached the quasi-religious state that I saw in the early oughts.

On some level, asking it to have continuity and make sense is beside the point - like, you are okay with wizards and witches and magic and reincarnation and immortality and time travel, but you're displeased with how the series handles... toilets? Or if somehow there was a slipup between west Africa and Madagascar (while talking about a minor detail of a fiction that is, at root, a voluntary leisure activity? Ok nerd.

At the same time, sure, Rowling either was lazy or became lazy. No argument there. And her utterly shit opinions now don't make anything better. At first, people understandably loved her rags-to-riches story, but she has used up that goodwill.

And, as has been pointed out upthread, she could just disappear onto a private island and go count money, letting people be happy with the pleasurable aspects of what they've already been given.

But some perverse impulse of massively famous and influential persons is to never quite be done, and to eternally wish to kick the beehive. I dunno.

like, you are okay with wizards and witches and magic and reincarnation and immortality and time travel, but you're displeased with how the series handles... toilets? Or if somehow there was a slipup between west Africa and Madagascar (while talking about a minor detail of a fiction that is, at root, a voluntary leisure activity? Ok nerd.

I really loathe this kind of argument - there's such pleasure to be had from a really well crafted, consistent and unique secondary world, whether fantasy or SF. When you read a lot of authors who put so much time and care into creating theirs, it can be fairly enraging to read one (a highly feted one at that) who can't really be arsed to do so. Sorry if that makes me a nerd.

Having said that, I did read and mostly enjoy all the Potter books for the first time as an adult, and they definitely have plenty of redeeming qualities, particularly the third one, as pointed out upthread. But she's not a serious fantasy author by any means.

Sorry, that was snarkier than I meant to sound, it's just--if you're reading this shit and you notice it's shit, why keep reading it?

― Tsar Bombadil (James Morrison), Thursday, October 1, 2020 7:38 PM (yesterday) bookmarkflaglink

Well, her world building may be shit, but JKR's prose is so elegant that it doesn't really matter.

This is a very good piece on fandom, the writer, and the last few years.

Rowling had never been a particularly controversial figure. Her books sold hundreds of millions of copies, they inspired films that brought in billions of dollars, and she used the money she made to save children from orphanages. In 2012, she gave enough to charity and paid enough in taxes to knock herself off the Forbes billionaires list. In 2020, she was tweeting links to a store that sold pins that said F*CK YOUR PRONOUNS.

i will read that gyac, but my eye keeps getting magnetically drawn to the line from PBKR in the post above that says

but JKR's prose is so elegant that it doesn't really matter.

no wish to inflame tempers or anything, but genuinely is that a joke?

(i don’t mind people’s love of HP, and frankly who cares if i did, people have got real enjoyment out of the books, but my god the writing is like telephone hold music)

I hadn’t seen that either before I came back to post but I agree entirely, I have to assume so? I will read literally any old shit but I have never thought this of her prose even at its most enjoyable.

yeah my comment was unnecessarily troll-y but i was genuinely interested if someone did find her prose elegant what it was they saw in it.

i don't find it elegant but as i've said before here it is exceptionally easy to read out loud, and you never really lose your way in all the proper nouns and potions and corridors and whatsits - which i reckon is not very easy to do on a technical level. as for characterisation.. plot.. the sense of the world.. it's risible - so my view is that the easiness with which her prose goes down is what makes it 'work' to the extent that it does

you never really lose your way in all the proper nouns

brb gonna make some “F*CK YOUR NOUNS” pins

Sorry, yes, it was a joke (part of which is it's a statement that not even HP-defenders usually make).

^^is yr DN a direct Loud Family reference btw or have you stumbled across the same pun 22 years later :P

Not familiar with the Loud Family - I've just been playing a ton of Cortex and Neil Young lately.

It's possible all my jokes/puns are 22 years late.

JKR sentences are usually ok, it's the overall pacing that blows dead bears

like, 400 pages of "OMG what's going on?!?!?!?" followed by 40 pages of "now Exposition Guy will explain everything in a tedious extended monologue."

The first three books, written before she was a superstar, are ok I guess. The last four have 200-page stretches where nothing really happens, not even character development. Order Of The Phoenix / Half Blood Prince are the worst, no idea how I got through these with the kids.

Ive re read like Robert Jordan multiple times so let me not serve as someone with #notions but no, even on a sentence level rowling is a poor writer id have said

yes her dialogue writing is fucking irritating as shit. I read all of these books and enjoyed them to varying degrees but I've said many times before her reliance on a certain type of speech patterns makes me insane. "it's xxxx, isn't it?" each character says something like that three times a chapter.

also I know the british overuse the word 'brilliant' but I'd be interested in knowing exactly how many times things are described with that word in her books. My guess is four hundred million.

in the UK we call a hundred million a "brillion"

Ha

In the UK, they say "Bra"

and "ooh ah cantona"

worst pacing/edit remains Goblet of Fire for opening, with 200 pages hanging around at the world quidditch finals before fucking anything happens whatsoever. but i remember it fondly, as i was working in a bookstore at the time, and dressed up as Harry for the midnight unveiling of pre-sale copies... it made the local paper!

i was also working in a bookstore when goblet of fire came out (and share your view of its pacing). i did not dress up, having had to dress up as a christmas elf when i worked in woolworths left me traumatised.

I got a big emotional reaction over the Boyhood scene where they're in a lineup for something and it turns out to be a new harry potter book. Massive anticipation over a book launch is something that doesn't happen often.

wow more like gobshite of dire

xp

I was working in a call centre on the publicity campaign for the Hogwarts express

...when I met you

Ha

quidditch is such a dumb sport

quidditch analytics teams just like "turn all your players into seekers and get the fuckin golden snitch"

https://www.usquidditch.org/about/rules/

M@tt otm

m bison brings analytics to quidditch #trusttheprocess

that aggravated me so much when I read it!

I suppose a person who doesn't watch sorts sports inventing a sport wasn't going to go well

"how can I make running around a soccer field feel more like Settlers of Cataan? WAIT I'VE GOT IT"

Quiddich is one of many examples of her refusing to involve anyone (in this case someone who has ever watched any sport) in her research and worldbuilding.

We tried to do Quiddich (as described in those rules) at a summer school once, opinions varied as to whether it was awful or just meh.

Jesus kids are jaded these days, we were lucky to get a broomstick amongst four at christmas in our house in the 80s

i will read all the HP books through twice to get sight of a photo of fizzles dressed as an elf

elfie

xp see I felt bad for him reading this cos I always think that’s cruel but I’d love to see you rageblogging the series

I'm reading the whole series for the first time, aloud to my 6 year old. Just finished Goblet of Fire. Yes, those first 200 pages were an unbearable slog. It seems like Rowling found it important/fun to create analogues in the HP/wizarding world for literally anything she could think of, like going on an overnight excursion to a massive soccer/football match. But for those of us who don't share those particular cultural and personal touchstones (I'm American), those are the moments when the books are weakest. Those World Quidditch Finals are like the macrocosm of every time pages are wasted on some whimsical aspect or ritual of Hogwarts that only exists to be an analogue to some arcane detail about the stereotypical British boarding school.

everyone otm upthread about her repetitive, awful prose. That said, I am enjoying the storytelling. And I think Tracer makes a good point about the technical skill required to build such a dense world and not have it be disorienting and overbearing. It would just be nice if the dialogue and relationships between characters resembled the complexity of actual humans.

the thing is, she could have just had them playing cricket and the overall effect would have been the same

The worst book (& film) is probably Order of The Phoenix - it's 800 pages of absolutely fuck all happening - even the ending does not advance the story one bit. The only good bit is the introduction of Umbrige, she is a well thought-through villain, though I wouldn't be surprised if plenty of people found her cruelty unbearable to read about.

xp She'd never manage to put the spin on it douglas adams did

Order of the Phoenix was the movie that made me go "you know what, fuck all of this"

Harry Potter himself is such an intrinsically boring character. To a certain extent, it doesn’t matter because having a relatively bland lead character your readers can identify with is a fairly standard part of children’s literature. But when a series has such a huge adult audience, and one of the few things I think about these books (having recently read the last one when I was...22?) is how much more interesting the side characters are, I wonder what people get out of it on repeat reads once all the plot twists are known.

My older kid is rewatching all of the films right now and I am usually in the same room (though generally have headphones on) - was struck by how good HP&POA looks, like I would be really happy to watch a whole series like that, and how homogenised HP&OOTP looks, suits the source material I suppose.

This was a good comment from under the article, btw

The series has a sorting hat and kids go into their thematically and temperamentally appointed social circles. Conservative essentialism was always baked in. Labeling gives freedom when you name your own, but it's always also been accepting a structure at the same time So what happens when you want to break that structure? Elves are happy as a servant class, and though Rowling tried to change that, she couldn't imagine a way out. (it's a magical world, but the essential never changes.)

This always seems like a story about fandom and hero worship to me--and maybe don't do the latter? Make no mistake, Rowling is a fan of Rowling's work at that's part of it. The same constricted reading of text is in her own opinion and that of fandom. Dumbledore was always gay? That's a fan's reaction to aligning the work to their beliefs. And here we have an author and fans, labeling themselves to different ends, one end labeling for protection and another to break and remake the culture that allows things to happen, mixed in with a mess of hero worship.

was also working in a bookshop at Goblet Of Fire time, also stopped reading there as she was now obviously too big to take any scrap of advice from an editor, let alone cut the book down to the reasonable size of the first three

(I'd only read them in the previous year, taking store copies home to read on the train to and from work)

(mostly from tbh, I got good at putting my head on the vibrating window at 6:54 and waking up at 7:37)

i had to tap out after order of the phoenix which i could not remember a single thing about after reading it.

i will see re: goblet of fire, at the time ppl were just hoovering up as much HP content as they could so 200 superfluous pages was in some sense welcome even though it made for bad pacing/construction from the standpoint of trying to write a good novel

Was also working in a bookshop when some of these were oozing out, which is a small part of why I hate them. So many adults wandering in, demanding to know when the next one would come out, insisting I put in a preorder for them for a book not yet announced, then wandering off and never coming back.

Quidditch is a terrible sport that's improved about a thousand times over if finding the Snitch merely ends the game without adding any extra points (so if you find it when losing you have to renounce it) or maybe only like 30 points or something

JK Rowling didn't understand sport dynamics or game theory though

It would so be helped if the Seeker could be assisted by the other players, who might notice the Snitch in passing and take time out from their bashing and hurling to relay the info idk

But none of that stops it from basically being aerial water polo

And water polo is the worst spectator sport in the entire world

it's not a sport, it's a one on one match with many diversions

they should be able to destroy the snitch and then nobody can ever stop playing

LJ how much of the last 20 years have you spent thinking about this

I wonder what people get out of it on repeat reads once all the plot twists are known.

I'd say it's like wanting to crawl back into the womb, but instead it's the urge to live in a fantasy world that feels more welcoming and wonderful than their real life.

xpost honestly when I read the rules of Quidditch in whatever book it was introduced, I spent 20-30 minutes unable to move ahead, fixated on the stupidity of a sport in which the majority of position players have no outcome in the results of the game

but enough about Sheffield United

I have spent surprisingly little time thinking about Quidditch, but plenty thinking about sport as a whole

Goblet Of Fire was the one that killed it for me, didn't read the last three

Reading that Vulture article, every time a name of a character Rowling had invented came up, I wanted to spit blood. She's George Lucas-level.

it's easy to make up Rowling names

Ansel Thimbleknocker

Theo Bumblesnatch

Vera Spinabifida

It would so be helped if the Seeker could be assisted by the other players, who might notice the Snitch in passing and take time out from their bashing and hurling to relay the info idk

I literally wrote that bit as I thought it up

_I wonder what people get out of it on repeat reads once all the plot twists are known._

I'd say it's like wanting to crawl back into the womb, but instead it's the urge to live in a fantasy world that feels more welcoming and wonderful than their real life.

i liked these books tbh, I just think the hyperfandom is nauseating. but I feel for everybody who feels betrayed by Rowling - a lot of my LGBTQ+ friends who were megafans are still dealing with how to deal with Rowling's ultimate betrayal.

just realized I said betrayal twice. ooof...tired brain

xps - I would appreciate your explaining why that simile is unacceptable, instead of just darkly hinting about it. idgi and if there's something to 'get' I'd rather know it than stay ignorant.

Was also working in a bookshop when some of these were oozing out, which is a small part of why I hate them. So many adults wandering in, demanding to know when the next one would come out, insisting I put in a preorder for them for a book not yet announced, then wandering off and never coming back.

― Tsar Bombadil (James Morrison), Tuesday, December 22, 2020 7

No offense, but I find this a weird take. I worked at an indie bookstore between 2001-2004 and Harry Potter adult fans, if they didn't buy other books, brought relatives, friends, etc. who did.

Rowling sales buoyed our other sales. I don't get the sneering.

they should be able to destroy the snitch and then nobody can ever stop playing

― Looking for Cape Penis house (Neanderthal), Tuesday, December 22, 2020 7:35 PM (one minute ago) bookmarkflaglink

I once was told that they could easily be stitched up, so that shouldn't be an issue. Same person also told me to "watch yourself, PUNT" which is excellent advice for any quidditch player looking to improve their form.

The illogical and dumb rules of Quidditch was intentional I think. The wizarding world felt very small and sclerotic, with their political, media and education system rooted so firmly in tradition. (The slytherin house was still allowed to exist even after it was shown that its founder installed a monster in the school to kill minority students). In this world, there is no space for innovation and progress. The wizards know it which is why they seek “rejuvenation” through the Nazi-esque politics of Voldemort, who gains the support of the majority of the government, I think, almost immediately after regaining his bodily form. Theirs is a dying world, and its vulnerability lies precisely in its resistance to change.

I’ll take the fps.

agreed with Alfred. overwhelmingly Potter led to people buying other books they would not otherwise have bought. depending on the kid or the way the parent described the kid, you could at LEAST potentially steer them onto age-appropriate fantasy classics, and maybe even less genre-oriented stuff.

Yeah i agree with alfred too. These books are perfectly fine things for children and pre-teens and helped many kids kickstart a reading habit.

threesh i agree with your quidditch take, at least the part about it showing the limitations of the tradition-bound wizarding world, and that's how i always took it. however it didn't make it any less annoying to read about or watch actual adults try to retrofit for the real world.

During that era I had adults (no teens, alas) buying The Dispossessed, Borges, and Ballard when asked if I could recommend "anything like Rowling."

Maybe they threw these books in the rubbish bin. But they bought them.

I grew up on these books and I despise everything about them now. the cruel but saccharine worldview, the sub-blyton gender politics, the fanatical divine right of the author cult the writer encourages to shut down young fans' attempts at more imaginative readings. I think I would have been better off without them and so would the world

Thank you for your service, Alfred.

I grew up on these books and I despise everything about them now. the cruel but saccharine worldview, the sub-blyton gender politics, the fanatical divine right of the author cult the writer encourages to shut down young fans' attempts at more imaginative readings. I think I would have been better off without them and so would the world

― Left, Tuesday, December 22, 2020

Well, this is a novel interpretation.

No offense, but I find this a weird take. I worked at an indie bookstore between 2001-2004 and Harry Potter adult fans, if they didn't buy other books, brought relatives, friends, etc. who did.

― Patriotic Goiter (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Wednesday, 23 December 2020 11:26 (two hours ago)

Rowling sales buoyed our other sales. I don't get the sneering.

― Patriotic Goiter (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Wednesday, 23 December 2020 11:27 (two hours ago)

But that's the thing--there were numerous people who just seemed to wander into bookshops, demand an as-yet nonexistent book, and then leave, without buying or even looking at any other books.

Also, if someone buys a Dan Brown or a Jordan Peterson and also buys other books, I'm still going to sneer at them for buying a Dan Brown or a Jordan Peterson.

Part of the requirements of working at an indie bookstore is sneering at customers buying anything we don't like.

dan brown is such a bad writer it's kind of amazing in a way

Brown understands the need to move the plot along fast enough to glide past the other weaknesses of his novels, and knows how to select plot elements that readers will want to see resolved, so they keep reading with interest to the end. That's a talent, but it's just for making books people are excited by briefly, then forget a week later.

I suppose a person who doesn't watch sorts sports inventing a sport wasn't going to go well

― Blues Guitar Solo Heatmap (Free Download) (upper mississippi sh@kedown), Tuesday, December 22, 2020 4:38 PM (two hours ago) bookmarkflaglink

i'm a sports fan and probably my most unpopular opinion about any popular property is that rowling actually invented a good, well-balanced sport - she just had no idea what she was doing and clearly didn't spend a second thinking about how a game would actually play out, so she presented it in the stupidest way possible

i would lower the snitch value because 150 is ridiculous (just cut it to 75 to make ties impossible, but even 100 wouldn't be terrible) but it's good tbh, would be engrossing to watch assuming the teams are actually employing strategy to win which they never do in the books

But that's the thing--there were numerous people who just seemed to wander into bookshops, demand an as-yet nonexistent book, and then leave, without buying or even looking at any other books.

It definitely worked as a gateway to reading for many kids, as a very brief pathway to a bit of other reading for some kids, and I'm certain that James' personal experience is honestly reported.

none of those people read the Ballard. you just sold them paper

yeah, that's bad bookseller practice imo. sell 'em something that influenced Rowling but is very good, like Dianna Wynne Jones' Chrestomanci series and Archer The Goon, or is popular fantasy but excellent, like Pratchett, especially the witches and young-protagonist novels. stepping-stone them in towards literature.

treeship. at 1:19 23 Dec 20
The illogical and dumb rules of Quidditch was intentional I think. The wizarding world felt very small and sclerotic, with their political, media and education system rooted so firmly in tradition. (The slytherin house was still allowed to exist even after it was shown that its founder installed a monster in the school to kill minority students). In this world, there is no space for innovation and progress. The wizards know it which is why they seek “rejuvenation” through the Nazi-esque politics of Voldemort, who gains the support of the majority of the government, I think, almost immediately after regaining his bodily form. Theirs is a dying world, and its vulnerability lies precisely in its resistance to change.
I’ll take the fps.

yeah hermione/ron was where i was finally like oh wow - she doesn’t understand her own characters! very odd.

Lads I stg if this revival gets diverted into discussing one of the the internet’s most prolonged shipper grudges I’ll fp ye all, I don’t care if it’s Christmas.

Didnt you just divert it there

lol i had never seen any of that but i guess i did always assume there was a great seething mass of it out there just beyond the fringes of my vision

Have had a brief look at that, and yeah, once again her fans have spent 1000x more time thinking about this than she did.

none of those people read the Ballard. you just sold them paper

― plax (ico), Wednesday, December 23, 2020 2:56 AM (two hours ago) bookmarkflaglink

yeah, that's bad bookseller practice imo. sell 'em something that influenced Rowling but is very good, like Dianna Wynne Jones' Chrestomanci series and Archer The Goon, or is popular fantasy but excellent, like Pratchett, especially the witches and young-protagonist novels. stepping-stone them in towards literature.

― huge rant (sic), Wednesday, December 23, 2020

Eh, who cares? It was 20 years ago.

We sold books, I felt morally cleansed, and the customer felt flattered by the attention. Win-win for everyone, as Trump might say.

xp I mean, you did post that whole “and then everyone clapped” story without prompt, so you I guess?

War stories are occasionally fun.

tell us one

Our call centre (200 employees) was sent one copy of the books so far to enjoy and to make us feel included

They sat beside other such client offerings in the staff room: fat-reducing belt, micro-gym 3000 chair, epil spray (the burns calls here were numerous), three plates with the queen, the queen mum and a world war ii bomber on em, and a box of sex toy returns

returns

That's a great New York mag piece; especially the bit about that fantastically stupid 'Wimpund..' tweet. What a silly arse.

ffs theres totally a market for those returns ppl

shy market tbs

also george lucas is fine with names by comparison get a grip

tell us one

― plax (ico), Wednesday, December 23, 2020

Dip daily into the U.S. politics thread.

Now that evil Trump is gone all will be peace

https://media3.giphy.com/media/4fGVV61rsPT0s/200.gif

Vera Spinabifida

― Looking for Cape Penis house (Neanderthal), Tuesday, December 22, 2020 6:44 PM (yesterday) bookmarkflaglink

Thanks for making me nearly choke to death on my breakfast, there.

Incredible content, this

Later on, they explained to the author that Harry Potter’s scar looks like the “Z”, the symbol used by the Russian on their military vehicles, and ask her to change it to the Ukrainian trident. Rowling took notes and said “I will look at that. It might be good for me to do something with that myself on social media, because I think that will get into the newspapers.”

ah, vanity plus stupidity, the magic combination

I'm assuming her next book will lean heavily on a subplot about people on the internet being VERY mean to Cormoran Strike

― soaring skrrrtpeggios (jon /via/ chi 2.0), Tuesday, 15 September 2020 19:02 (one year ago) bookmarkflaglink

stoked for characters named like Enby Snowflake and Trance U. Premissist

I realize JK Rowling's new novel might seem a little long at 1200 pages but a good portion of the space is taken up by fictitious mean tweets pic.twitter.com/6xaH27fUUT

— Nathan J Robinson (@NathanJRobinson) August 31, 2022

Extraordinary, scarcely-believable stuff here. Would love to see her defend herself on these points.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ou_xvXJJk7k

these english feminists are fucking weird

these fascists get to dominate UK coverage of feminism because they offer a version that doesn't threaten power and punches down at all the same targets the state and media already wants to eliminate... most english feminists i know think this crowd is full of shit they just can't get a word in since this is the only feminism UK state/media gives a shit about

(relevant that these self-described radicals are uncritically supportive of empire, nation, police, prisons, borders, the nuclear family - and don't seem to care much about abortion access or reproductive labour or gendered poverty or basically anything except transphobia and the purity of white womanhood, conceived of as essential to the national project)

this crowd might represent an official english or british feminism but they're deliberately unrepresentative of feminisms that exist within britain - I wanted to draw that out because I think the specifically national and nationalist character (and utility) of the terf wave is fairly underexamined even as people make jokes about terf island and so on

yeah this is mainly an english thing afaict. for instance check out this booming answer:

https://vm.tiktok.com/ZMF6cD2U5/

I’ve never seen these terves talk about the lack of provision of abortion in Northern Ireland, or even very much about Roe v Wade.

Let’s not forget you have the right to call Johnny Depp a wife beater in this country cos even a shitehawk like Dan Wootton could notice the incongruity of these beliefs.

https://www.lawfuel.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/07/danwoottonlibel_lawfuel.png

they don't want US evangelical funding to dry up and honestly they seem a step away from going full pro-life anyway given the rest of their politics and their general attitudes about reproduction and bodily autonomy

has JKR reacted at all to the recent depp bullshit? I know she loves using the law to silence people too - but people must have been asking her to comment

I am watching the trash truck take away my complete set of harry potter books - so long!

feels good man!

This makes me feel like one of the Old Ones sagely nodding as things come full circle, saying, "I saw Harry Potter arrive and I saw it go."

The Rise and Fall of The Writer Who Stole the Ideas From "The Worst Witch"

first time seeing the term “terves,” excellent work

she's approaching Glinner-level brainworms at this point, seems to tweet about nothing else.

you're constantly being told how brave and righteous and important you are while being initiated into this ideological bubble within which every question always comes back to this, you get to feel like an underground resistance fighter for inciting violence against a minority group, all this must be intoxicating and once you're in so deep entertaining any reservations would shatter your entire identity so any doubts others may share become deeply threatening attacks on you personally and by extension women in general (even if you're a man) - and if you ever change your mind about all this (generic "you" since she's not doing this) you'll end up on the receiving end of everything you and your friends have been dishing out which isn't an attractive prospect

I don't have any sympathy because you have to indulge some really shitty parts of yourself to start down this path in the first place but once you're on it it's like a runaway train which very few people seem to get off

xp and yet, afaict she has yet to acknowledge his existence in any way

Glinner says the quiet part out loud too much.

Oh totally, he’s going to get himself banned again and probably sued and I can’t wait. Read some old tweets from his ex brother in law who said they’d tried to reach him for two years or something.

you get to feel like an underground resistance fighter for inciting violence against a minority group,

This is the magic ingredient, I feel

Rowling's feed is pretty similar to Brietbart or any other White Supremacist site that just highlights crimes committed by immigrants or minorities or whatever.

Ridiculous and bad way to conduct politics.

The SNP leadership candidates were asked if JK Rowling is a national treasure in live Sky News debate

Read more: https://t.co/WUnquWwffN pic.twitter.com/uWuKW5BAcw

— Sky News (@SkyNews) March 13, 2023

Pathetic and enraging.

So, within a week of an American conservative radio host calling for the elimination of "transgenderism," JKR is likening trans activists to Death Eaters?