woke.

[CharlesTuckerTheThird]

Is it just me or are we seeing more and more of JKR being accused of being anti-something and then trotting out minor characters that were barely mentioned in the books as if to say "Nooo, I'm not anti-Semitic, I have an Jewish character!"?

[Carbomb]

5 minutes ago, CharlesTuckerTheThird said:

Is it just me or are we seeing more and more of JKR being accused of being anti-something and then trotting out minor characters that were barely mentioned in the books as if to say "Nooo, I'm not anti-Semitic, I have an Jewish character!"?

She's always done that, I think. I also remember someone some years ago calling her out about her claims that Dumbledore was gay, effectively saying that if it's never represented in the story, it's not representation.

Edited April 17 by Carbomb

[BomberPat]

3 minutes ago, Carbomb said:

 I also remember someone some years ago calling her out about her claims that Dumbledore was gay, effectively saying that if it's never represented in the story, it's not representation.

The root of her deciding to claim "Dumbledore is gay, it just never comes up in the books" tends to be forgotten these days too - it was her reaction to a reader who was claiming Harry Potter as an analogy for coming to terms with one's sexuality; a young boy with a family who don't understand him is literally forced to live in a closet, until his true identity and purpose are revealed. Rowling rejected the idea that there could possibly be queer subtext or a queer reading of the book, and threw down the breadcrumbs of "Dumbledore is gay, though" as a kind of literary "some of my best friends are..". 

[deathrey]

I was a huge Harry Potter fan for many many years and adored the books, but always found some of her tropes very lazy i.e all the nasty lazy characters are fat. Her portrayal of the Patel twins always made me roll my eyes, they were so token, they may as well have had a big siren over their heads going 'I'm inclusive, look at me'. 

The books are essentially a fantasy retelling of World War 2 so for her to partake in any kind of Holocaust denial makes me baulk. 

Edited April 17 by deathrey

[Chest Rockwell]

1 hour ago, BomberPat said:

This is something I've had to kind of teach myself to consider in other areas too - I used to be really critical of Chyna being used as an example of female empowerment in wrestling, because I don't think that was ever the intent; Chyna being strong and fighting men was never meant to say "women can be as good as men", it was a freak-show act to say "this woman can wrestle women", because she was the exception to the rule. But then I speak to lots of women in wrestling who were inspired by Chyna, and whatever my thoughts on her and how she was booked, it's only right that I take a step back and let the women who did see her as empowering and inspirational step up.

Yeah that's a weird one that is. When you're part of a group that is really starved of representation you frequently find the positives in less than stellar examples. Which then become very dated as we make progress. Brings to mind the whole Apu thing, and Peter Sellers doing brown face.

[Carbomb]

7 minutes ago, Chest Rockwell said:

Yeah that's a weird one that is. When you're part of a group that is really starved of representation you frequently find the positives in less than stellar examples. Which then become very dated as we make progress. Brings to mind the whole Apu thing, and Peter Sellers doing brown face.

Yup. Same with East Asian representation - before Bruce Lee emerged as a self-realised, potent model of an Asian identity, the only representations ever presented in the West who had agency and prominence were either Fu Manchu (a completely Western-created and racist model, and mostly played by white men on screen) or Charlie Chan (equally racist in presentation, and partly Asian-American-realised, but played by a white man).

Other than that, Asians were portrayed as impotent/childlike figures, like Mickey Rooney's really rather horrendous portrayal in Breakfast At Tiffany's.

[Loki]

9 minutes ago, deathrey said:

I was a huge Harry Potter fan for many many years and adored the books, but always found some of her tropes very lazy i.e all the nasty lazy characters are fat. Her portrayal of the Patel twins always made me roll my eyes, they were so token, they may as well have had a big siren over their heads going 'I'm inclusive, look at me'. 

The books are essentially a fantasy retelling of World War 2 so for to partake in any kind of Holocaust denial makes me baulk. 

She's a terrible author, I think that's where a lot of this comes from.  She's lazy, she steals without realising it, and in the latter stages of her career didn't have a decent editor so her books becoming rambling messes.

She pretty much lifted the whole idea of Harry Potter from A Wizard of Earthsea (and then claimed she didn't, which is bollocks).  And it annoys me that Potter became so much more ubiquitous than Earthsea because Le Guin is one of the greatest authors of her generation and her books are fantastically complex and deal with topics like race and sexuality in a properly mature fashion.

I had to read the last two Potter novels when I was working on the games, and it was awful.  They're just bad books.  

 

[Carbomb]

3 minutes ago, Loki said:

She's a terrible author, I think that's where a lot of this comes from.  She's lazy, she steals without realising it, and in the latter stages of her career didn't have a decent editor so her books becoming rambling messes.

She pretty much lifted the whole idea of Harry Potter from A Wizard of Earthsea (and then claimed she didn't, which is bollocks).  And it annoys me that Potter became so much more ubiquitous than Earthsea because Le Guin is one of the greatest authors of her generation and her books are fantastically complex and deal with topics like race and sexuality in a properly mature fashion.

I had to read the last two Potter novels when I was working on the games, and it was awful.  They're just bad books.  

 

FUCKING YES. Fantasy and sci-fi make up the bulk of my reading, and the Potter series just comes across as derivative as hell, nothing original or inventive at all. Obviously, there's a reason they've done well, and I reckon it's because she did a decent job of making the characters seem comparatively more realistic and relatable to the reader than your average fantasy character, which is usually quite heightened and theatrical. 

It does bug me just how undersung LeGuin is regarding Earthsea - I remember the whole to-do when the TV series got made and she disowned it because they'd cast all the main characters as white.

[The Gaffer]

5 minutes ago, Loki said:

She's a terrible author, I think that's where a lot of this comes from.  She's lazy, she steals without realising it, and in the latter stages of her career didn't have a decent editor so her books becoming rambling messes.

She pretty much lifted the whole idea of Harry Potter from A Wizard of Earthsea (and then claimed she didn't, which is bollocks).  And it annoys me that Potter became so much more ubiquitous than Earthsea because Le Guin is one of the greatest authors of her generation and her books are fantastically complex and deal with topics like race and sexuality in a properly mature fashion.

I had to read the last two Potter novels when I was working on the games, and it was awful.  They're just bad books.  

 

I can see the films becoming the 'main' medium of the whole thing over time, if they haven't already, which is probably for the best because the universe undoubtedly has some fun elements to it and a whole load of stuff that's just seeped into the public conscious now but it all works better in some goofy films with a load of esteemed stage actors having a ball pretending to be wizard satanists rather than the books which are more up against their rapid-ageing pitfalls of being poorly written, badly edited dirges of tokenism and nostalgia for shit things. 

[SuperBacon]

Did anyone hear actually read the books as a kid? Its absolutely fine for us to all go "Yeah they were shit! Badly drawn characters and rubbish dialogue!" which I do actually agree with, but then I didn't read them as a child, and love them as a child. My actual children did though. 

Big difference that. And I'm not saying kids should only accept silly/base/badly written/made/filmed things, but we do often forget we've only ever looked at these things through adult eyes.

I loved Biff and Kipper when I was a kid. I'm sure they're not the height of literature.

Disgusted at myself for adding to fucking HARRY POTTER discussion. Piss off, all of you.

[deathrey]

I read them as teen so not quite a child but they were an entry in to these kind of books for me. I went from Goosebumps , Sweet Valley High and Point Horror to Harry Potter so they were, at the time, a revelation to me and I looked forward to every subsequent book release. Obviously, I have grown up now and my reading tastes have matured but they will always hold a place in my heart, but no longer a special place due to JKR's views ruining it a bit for me. I always looked forward to one day sharing this with my kids but I'm not sure I will do that anymore.

Edited April 17 by deathrey

[SuperBacon]

3 minutes ago, deathrey said:

Goosebumps , Sweet Valley High and Point Horror

Now we're talking!

[Lorne Malvo]

3 minutes ago, SuperBacon said:

Did anyone hear actually read the books as a kid? Its absolutely fine for us to all go "Yeah they were shit! Badly drawn characters and rubbish dialogue!" which I do actually agree with, but then I didn't read them as a child, and love them as a child. My actual children did though.

I loved the first 4 as a kid, especially Prisoner of Azkaban and Goblet of Fire. I think the gap between Goblet of Fire and Order Of The Phoenix killed my interest though. The fifth book came out when I was 13 and I thought it was a load of shite - I was moving onto things like Stephen King and more grown-up literature at the time (and the Darren Shan series, which was my personal YA obsession) and Harry Potter had cooled off significantly in my social circle at the time so that may have had a lot to do with it. Never finished the fifth book and never bothered with the rest.

I did attempt to re-read them about 10 years ago and got halfway through Chamber of Secrets and gave up. Couldn't be arsed.

I'll never bother attempting to read them again because shes a fucking ghoul who needs to find something better to do with her millions.

[Carbomb]

11 minutes ago, SuperBacon said:

Did anyone hear actually read the books as a kid? Its absolutely fine for us to all go "Yeah they were shit! Badly drawn characters and rubbish dialogue!" which I do actually agree with, but then I didn't read them as a child, and love them as a child. My actual children did though. 

Big difference that. And I'm not saying kids should only accept silly/base/badly written/made/filmed things, but we do often forget we've only ever looked at these things through adult eyes.

I loved Biff and Kipper when I was a kid. I'm sure they're not the height of literature.

Disgusted at myself for adding to fucking HARRY POTTER discussion. Piss off, all of you.

I was never young enough to read them as a kid, so I'm automatically at a disadvantage by that metric. There's plenty of kids'/YA literature I did grow up with that I can compare them to unfavourably in terms of their construction, even if they're a little dated and a bit more problematic, like Kidnapped, Treasure Island, The Hobbit, 20000 Leagues Under The Sea, and The Chronicles of Narnia, but BomberPat already raised the best example, which is Terry Pratchett's Discworld series. Less accessible to small kids, but for a ten or twelve year-old, no fucking comparison - and they're the gift that keeps on giving as you get older. Only other series I can think of that's comparable in that regard is Asterix. 

[SuperBacon]

6 minutes ago, Carbomb said:

Only other series I can think of that's comparable in that regard is Asterix. 

And Tintin.