i think in part people got upset because they liked the books and were drawn to the progressive elements, and then felt attacked by stuff they came across later
and i think in part critics are always going to point out less savoury or unfortunate, probably unintentional elements of popular fiction and it seems pointless to get worked up about this. You just note that, whoops, that can be interpreted in a way that's kind of awful, and then you move on and don't make the same mistake yourself. it doesn't mean you throw your collection of harry potter books and DVDs and VHSes and replica wands and chocolate frog cards in the bin, it's not an attack on your fandom, any more than Rowling's political views are actually an attack on the aforementioned fans
I dont really need that explained to me. I only really get this defensive over Harry Potter bc I just really truly genuinely hate the way discourse about the series is conducted
well idk, i think you must just be seeing a lot more of said discourse than i am
although now you mention it this discussion did kind of remind me of SU and how it's clearly aiming to be progressive in its themes and how badly some people backlashed against it for stuff that obviously wasn't part of the intended message
Sincere-but-poorly-worded Response: Harry Potter discourse on the internet being what it is is the reason why I don't talk about Harry Potter on the internet.
Sarcastic-and-bitter-jerk Response: The Harry Potter books always demonstrated an unacceptable worldview (one quite irreconcilable with reality), in which the British Isles not only matter, but are the only places that truly matter, and America essentially doesn't exist. I DEMAND ACKNOWLEDGEMENT OF THE INTERMOUNTAIN WEST, ROWLING!
Look, you provincial writer-slime, Idaho's one and two-thirds the size of England, and yet you spend one million words on England and zero on Idaho?
When the heck is anybody ever going to spend a million words on Idaho? When's Idaho gonna get its fiction, huh? OR COLORADO? WHAT ABOUT COLORADO, ROWLING? It's more than twice the size of England.
Lol I'm ignoring the fact that Hogwarts is located in Scotland, and how I'm equating England with the United Kingdom with The British Isles with Great Britain. That's the joke here.
Also, lol at me ignoring that Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them mentions Arizona, and me ignoring the fact that Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them also mentions Utah.
Now just look here, my dear crocodilian à chapeau! Harry Potter was like the ONE big pop cultural artefact that i felt i could connect to as a kid, as something written for people my age, from a cultural perspective i knew well, and not about fast-talking Americans with their cool accents and slang, all rocking out on electric guitars while skate-surfing and rapping about their dark glasses and backwards Yankees baseball caps with their dollars and sidewalks and football helmets and being much cooler than everybody else. Your countrymen had Batman and Animorphs and Disney movies. Let 11-year-old tach have this.
Besides, JK already devoted more time to the US than any other foreign country in the HP universe. It's hardly her fault you guys don't export more stories from the Mountain states.
fast-talking Americans with their cool accents and slang, all rocking out on electric guitars while skate-surfing and rapping about their dark glasses and backwards Yankees baseball caps with their dollars and sidewalks and football helmets and being much cooler than everybody else.
hello I just wanted everyone to know that this is 100% what all Americans are like
You are the end result of a “would you push the button” prompt where the prompt was “you have unlimited godlike powers but you appear to all and sundry to be an impetuous child” – Zero, 2022
For some reason it amuses me that the New York Yankees were (presumably) the first major league baseball team that came to mind for Tachyon
You are the end result of a “would you push the button” prompt where the prompt was “you have unlimited godlike powers but you appear to all and sundry to be an impetuous child” – Zero, 2022
That makes sense
Better the Yankees than the Cleveland Indians with their rather uncomfortable "mascot", lol
what makes me sad about Rowling is that she's inspired real social change with her political commentary, particularly discrimination and how it affects sympathetic characters and stuff like that
on the other hand, her setting-building kind of...sucks? I mean, you can't create a thing out of thin air, you can only duplicate an existing thing, which aside from a few semantics is pretty much the same thing.
Rowling's worldbuilding doesn't hold up to a lot of scrutiny, but imo she is very good at setting a scene
her description is vivid and her world is just consistent enough to be convincing if you ignore the more technical aspects (gamp's law of elementary transfiguration or whatever) and focus on the general mood
she's not actually working in the vein of Tolkien, her borrowings from folklore and mythology are more like allusions or in-jokes than an attempt to build a plausible secondary world
I just wish she'd be a bit more honest about her shortcomings as both a writer and a political figure.
Like, I'm pretty sure she wrote Hermoine as white originally, else (among other factors) she would have gotten someone with more of a tan than Emma Watson. Opening her up for racial reinterpretation by her fans and other handlers of her work is good, mind you, but acting like black Hermoine was always a perfectly reasonable assumption to make smacks of covering her own butt. A better justification for black Hermoine would be invoking 'Death of the Author' but as previously discussed, she has a bit of an issue with losing control of her narrative
what did she say exactly? because i think "well i didn't think about it in a default-white way, but now that you mention it why couldn't she be black" would be fine
what did she say exactly? because i think "well i didn't think about it in a default-white way, but now that you mention it why couldn't she be black" would be fine
My understanding is it was a common-ish fan theory beforehand, due to the fact that Hermione's race is never explicitly stated in the books and that if you stretch a bit some of the descriptions of her appearance can be interpreted that way, and when JKR embraced that theory she kind of did so in a way that seemed to suggest she'd done that all on purpose, which is a little difficult to believe.
Blaise Zabini was just a name that got mentioned, before he was introduced; when he appeared as a character his race was pretty quickly established
(dropping a name into the story and having them become a character much later was a favourite tactic of Rowling's; happened with Sirius in book 1 and Aberforth in book 4, and led to much speculation when a non-entity in book 5 was accidentally given the same surname as Harry's mother)
Comments
Assassin poems, Poems that shoot
guns. Poems that wrestle cops into alleys
and take their weapons leaving them dead
Like, I'm pretty sure she wrote Hermoine as white originally, else (among other factors) she would have gotten someone with more of a tan than Emma Watson. Opening her up for racial reinterpretation by her fans and other handlers of her work is good, mind you, but acting like black Hermoine was always a perfectly reasonable assumption to make smacks of covering her own butt. A better justification for black Hermoine would be invoking 'Death of the Author' but as previously discussed, she has a bit of an issue with losing control of her narrative