"Dumbledore is Gay" sez Rowling

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.