Katie Mack: — Subium • Bluesky web client

I love how this is going to end deadline.com/2024/06/jk-r...

J.K. Rowling Blasts “Gender Taliban” David Tennant After ‘Harry Potter’ Actor Said “Whinging” Trans Critics Are On “Wrong Side Of History”deadline.com JK Rowling has branded 'Harry Potter' actor David Tennant the "gender taliban" after he said transgender critics are on the "wrong side of history."

When I think about JK Rowling and/or Harry Potter, which admittedly I rarely do, I think of Ursula Le Guin calling the Harry Potter series “stylistically ordinary, imaginatively derivative, and ethically rather mean-spirited”

I remember thinking that everything in those books was so incredibly detailed and original and then I learned about the British school system and realized that she just put the word wizard in front of actual things that already exist.

Harry Potter came out when I was in college, & I remember thinking it sounded like a typical boarding school story, only it ripped off Neil Gaiman's Books of Magic. I had read rather more of those than most American children, since I just happened to find a box of them in a thrift shop.

I follow Gaiman here & someone asked him if he’d read the Potter series & he said no, he got partway through the first book, but he stopped because he went through the English boarding school system himself & didn’t want to read about it. Which, fair.

His experience was extra weird because his parents were prominent Scientologists, which most people in the UK think is a potentially dangerous cult. He actually got barred from moving on to a boys' school, & had to stay where he was, the only boy left in a classroom of girls.

On this one topic the UK is correct. I guess the other topic the UK is correct on is how good the kinks are. Also Powell and Pressburg.

"most people think"... you misspelled "any reasonable person knows"

Yikes

yeah tbh I've long thought her biggest influence was Enid Blyton.

With a dollop of Narnia (minus the Christian allegory).

Harry's whole sort-of died and rose again schtick is very Jesus-y

Yeah, good point.

Le Guin's pretty much right. Particularly the mean spirited part becomes fairly apparent after one takes a closer look at it. And that's just the general tone, the actual content of the books and her world building are so, so much worse after taking a deeper look.

What so horrid is many of us did notice the mean spirited stuff but felt perhaps it was reflective of British boarding schools rather than a toxic author who has a toxic view of the world and people.

But upon reflection, it was SO MUCH MEANNESS. Snottiness at the Weasleys. Snottiness over fat people. And the weird, and creepy weird anti-authoritarian message coupled by pro blind obedience to the RIGHT authority

Dumbledore being a straight up villain...

Who is also dumb as fuck... And naturally runs a school that exploits the labor of enslaved and sentient beings. Honestly really sick of the dude being compared to Gandalf.

Despite the books' vague lip service to 90's era progressivism and inclusivity, the bones of the series are conservative and authoritarian. It ends with a reaffirmation that the status quo is best and shouldn't be questioned.

And then there's JKR's revelation that there's a genetic component to being magical. And Europe needing 3 magic schools while all of mainland Asia only needing 1 certainly implies some things about the world.

The only career choices they have are Hogwarts professor, Ministry of Magic employee, augur, or independently wealthy. That’s it. So BORING.

Pretty much. Like numerous elements pertain to the existing injustices for non-human magical beings, but it's either played for laughs or the particular group is portrayed rather negatively (and with elements or statements linking them to real human beings).

When I read the books I was struck by what a TERRIBLE society the wizard world would be to live in. Portraying a society as complex (which it wasn’t but just saying) & flawed is great, but it was just rigid & narrow-minded & BORING. I’d rather be a Muggle.

This!

It’s a bit of both. Certainly some of the masters at my boarding school were very arbitrary so I recognised the archetypes.

Boarding school is very uncommon in the US. One niblet is now boarded and the other will be soon, and people act like we're sending them to Pirate Island or something. They come home frequently, it's a VERY positive thing they want/ed and they got scholarships and it's an ELITE school.

But yeah in the US its seen as either a super rich kid thing, or you were send away for being bad (like military schools and shit)

I went to a very high profile/expensive boarding school thanks to what I jokingly call my “hereditary scholarship”. We had to get permission slips to go into town. Running laps was a usual punishment. In prep school my class had to sit without moving for a lesson as punishment - not sure what for.

My niblets' sitch is much more like it's college but with actual supervision by caring adults, and everyone has a roommate.

Harry Potter always gave me super Earthsea vibes, I mean they're both monomyth variants but the whole out-of-place overpowered student at wizard school with an animal companion vibe was a bit on the nose

Ged has a scar across his face! The rip-off couldn't be clearer. The biggest difference is Earthsea makes sense narratively - Ged summons death and is punished for his hubris, hence all the following terrors / adventures, whereas Harry got his scar because his mummy really loved him.

I forgot the scar!

I thought it was a Monster, which he named as his own shadow

It was his shadow all along—his hubris that he could deny his own darkness made it into a monster that rampaged without his awareness. The only healthy way to be is as a whole person.

Regardless, there is death magic in a later book, and it is also a Mistake.

Yes, but more than that. I reread the end last year. It wasn't a defeat. His shadow also mutually named him, meaning he couldn't be controlled by name by others.

Me too, never warmed to Harry Potter as a result. Didn’t help that it wasn’t nearly as good as the Earthsea stories.

I got to the part where she said the difference between a good person and a bad person is weather or not your mother loves you. And since my mother is a sociopath, I disagreed. Ironically I tried to read the series after trump got elected as it was basically and anti fash manual. Got to book 5

LeGuin bodied JK several times. She saw what Eowling was long before most.

Yeah, le Guin had some great shade for pieces of media. Her takedown of Cameron's Avatar was simple...but delicious.

And in dire need of an editor, maybe 12. The Half-Blood Prince was a mighty slog. It always enraged me that HP wasn't a 10th as imaginative and witty and gorgeously written as anything by Diana Wynne Jones and her acolyte Megan Whalen Turner, but that transphobic witch's crap got all the play.

I did not know she said that. Wow. 100% spot on And from Le Guin! That has to hurt

This may be a dark timeline we're in, but at least we're living in the same one as David Tennant

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