Time article

[Wellthatsit]

Has anyone seen this article by AJ Sass in Time (I am assuming that is THE 'Time' magazine.) Several sweeping inaccuracies in it, and ridiculous insinuations (like the fact that there is a Robert Galbraith who was a conversion therapist). This is truly how young people think, isn't it? I am depressed by that.
time.com/5855633/jk-rowling-gender-identity/

I'm not sure it is just ownership though. It's victimhood. If anything dodgy were to come out about Terry P or any of our hero's we'd be annoyed with them and might dump their work in the bin. What none of us would do is claim there was any affect on us personally.

It's a whole "I'm sadder than you" production, with many encores.

@TheProdigalKittensReturn

Some elements of the Discworld put on screen haven't matched the Discworld in my head. Oh well!

Practically none

What I definitely wouldn't do is try to retcon the franchise so that I could keep loving the books but pretend someone different had written them. They really are so odd about their fandoms.

DH and I have a long running argument about who would make the best Granny Weatherwax and the best Vimes. I am almost certain neither of us will get our preferred options.

(Wails dramatically, holds hanky to forehead)

Poor hk has to deal with the book fans and then the film fans.
It's like that poor guy that writes game of thrones. His obessive fans are really quite mad. He can't do anything without his fans demanding he finish the last book.
Reminds me of the film misery.

Hopefully now all the obessive fans have burned their books and jk can get on with her life free of their opinions of her

I remember finding out as an adult that Roald Dahl had made anti-Semitic statements and had treated his first wife horribly. I was disappointed, but it didn't stop me loving James and the Giant Peach or reading it to my kids.

@MrsTerryPratchett

She already dealt with HogwartsGate when the films came out. I think her reply was "it might not be the Hogwarts in your head but it is mine" or something. Same weird ownership issue.

Daniel Radcliffe didn’t match the Harry Potter in my head - although now I feel rather vindicated 😂 little cretin. Hermione should have been me.

I'm really quite fond of children's lit which is part of the reason I work with children and in literacy now. I do from time to time reread books I enjoyed as a child or young adult, though I am not a HP fan especially. (I fact I've notices that HP tends not to appeal to serious fans of fantasy as much as to readers who normally don't enjoy that genre.)

But my observation has been that a lot of students now don't mature much beyond the HP reading level. One of the downsides of becoming more open to alternate choices in schools in that some kids manage to get through without reading much that challenges them, ether in terms of complexity in the ideas or in terms of the difficulty of the text in a technical sense or the language.

Something related to the trans identification that's causing the immaturity

If they were put on puberty blockers then definitely - they have not been able to mature as this is blocked.

@DreadPirateLuna

I remember finding out as an adult that Roald Dahl had made anti-Semitic statements and had treated his first wife horribly. I was disappointed, but it didn't stop me loving James and the Giant Peach or reading it to my kids.

He was also terribly cruel to his daughter. I'm not sure that his books would have been as good had he been a fluffy nice person, though.

I think the vast majority of young people heavily invested in fandoms are perhaps on the periphery of life and look to fandoms for all sorts in a not entirely healthy fashion. The internet gives them added visibility and a tribe, as well as a sense that it’s okay to take comfort in fandoms and you don’t need to engage with reality.

I wonder how lucrative the NB children's book racket is? That article is basically a big fat advert for the author's novel, piggybacking off what I think it's safe to say is the far bigger Harry Potter series. Conflict of interest much?

@Floisme

Who are all these grown ups who still lean on Harry Potter in graduate school?

I'm sorry if that sounds rude and unsympathetic but I just don't get it. I mean I'm still very fond of Mallory Towers and The Chalet School and Sue Barton but I don't expect comfort or sustenance from them and haven't since I was about 12.

I was a HUGE fan of Enid Blyton back in the day. I remember well one or two instances in her stories where her racism came through, and it gave me a moment of truth; one was when Anne saw a face in the window at night and she was terrified in case it was a BLACK man. Yes, that did hurt, and I remember it to this day; but that, and later discovering that EB was a horrible person and very racism certainly did not spoil my entire childhood (as the HP wokesters keep saying) and it would never occur to me, were she alive, to start a vendetta against her, burn her books, advise people not to read them, call fer her death, etc. In fact I have bought her books for my grandchildren as I remember the magic in them very well.

All I can say to these people is: grow up. Even if JK WERE as transphobic as you say, she is not responsible for your feelings.

I would be disappointed if Terry Pratchett had drunk the Koolaid had he lived.

There is not a cat in hells chance that Pratchett would have bought the nonsense. I'd love to have seen him skewer it.

I also realised there were some dodgy bits in Enid blyton when I was a kid - there was a fairground story (secret 7 I think?) and they were really horrible about gypsies.

But I still read them to my children. Because the Wishing Chair and some of the other books are really good.

@donquixotedelamancha

I would be disappointed if Terry Pratchett had drunk the Koolaid had he lived.

There is not a cat in hells chance that Pratchett would have bought the nonsense. I'd love to have seen him skewer it.

Well obviously. Cheery, and people pretending to be vampires to take a big bath in the oppression of others, and the whole of Monstrous Regiment. I could bore everyone to tears go on. But you just never know. I wouldn't have called Louis CK or Jos Whedon either.

I edit Rudyard Kipling a little. When reading to DD.

@MoltoAgitato

I think the vast majority of young people heavily invested in fandoms are perhaps on the periphery of life and look to fandoms for all sorts in a not entirely healthy fashion. The internet gives them added visibility and a tribe, as well as a sense that it’s okay to take comfort in fandoms and you don’t need to engage with reality.

Thats a good point. I think social media has a lot to answer for, there seems to be a lack of nuance with everything now. I listen to a podcast called Evil Genius, its a comedy podcast about the dark side of famous historical figures, I like it because its something I'm very interested in but the idea you can just consign a great figure from history to the bin because they were human is so strange to me.

There are so many authors I loved growing up who turn out to be very questionable.

Roald Dahl
Enid Blyton
Rudyard Kipling
Charles Dickens

To name a few, I still love their work and am grateful for the world they opened up to me.

I think the only person I ever 'cancelled' was R Kelly, he is on another level of wrong.

But my observation has been that a lot of students now don't mature much beyond the HP reading level

I agree. Reading simply drops of the radar. It would require concentration for long periods and with technology they have become so used to instant gratification.

I also realised there were some dodgy bits in Enid Blyton

Reading it to my kid and I change 'queer' to odd or strange all the way through

See, there is always this debate about separating the art from the artist, but I don't even think that applies in this case. I loved all the Harry Potter books as a kid and teenager, and I still do really, and I don't understand how anyone can be a fan of the books and what they have to say about the world, and then not understand JKR's point of view on this.

Because the books are literally about having the courage to know the truth even when everyone else, including the media, is trying to tell you otherwise. I mean, Harry gets "I must not tell lies" scratched painfully into his hand as a punishment for telling the truth that nobody wants to hear!

@OhHolyJesus

I also realised there were some dodgy bits in Enid Blyton

Reading it to my kid and I change 'queer' to odd or strange all the way through

Really? I skip the bits where Anne is portrayed as weak or unadventurous because she's a girl. And attribute some of the leadership or ideas to someone other than Julian. And the housework/food prep gets allocated evenly and not just to Anne and George (who doesn't get out of it by using a boy's name and having short hair).

And attribute some of the leadership or ideas to someone other than Julian.

I once went through a Secret Seven book with a pencil and swapped all the Peters with Janets and vice versa and swapped all the pronouns referring to them. Then I read it. It was the one about stolen dogs.

😊 We are on the same page Scrappy