alexseanchai: Katsuki Yuuri wearing a blue jacket and his glasses and holding a poodle, in front of the asexual pride flag with a rainbow heart inset. (Default)
let me hear your voice tonight ([personal profile] alexseanchai) wrote2020-09-07 07:55 pm

CN JKR, Nazis (also how am I only hearing this part two months later)

Jul 8, [twitter.com profile] jk_rowling quote-tweeted someone who was distancing themself from JKR on the basis of JKR being transmisic

[twitter.com profile] bethanyshondark, whose bio point blank says she's a neo-Nazi, replied "You are the hero we needed."

[twitter.com profile] jk_rowling replied "You are the comfort I needed".



I thought it would be possible to hold on to the good bits of Harry Potter canon and sift out the parts rooted in JKR's transmisia and queermisia and antisemitism and

I think I was wrong.



ETA: apparently the reason I did not previously hear about this is because the other participant in this twitter thread is a Jewish TERF, not a Nazi (see [personal profile] seekingferret and [personal profile] jadelennox below)
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[personal profile] polyfrazzlemented 2020-09-08 03:56 am (UTC)(link)
I've heard the story summarized as "Trust fund jock becomes a cop." For everything the story is, progressive is not it.
elf: Snape catches the snitch (Team Snitch: Reaching for Gold)

[personal profile] elf 2020-09-08 05:20 am (UTC)(link)
It is impossible to separate out the transphobia, the homophobia, the misogyny, the quasi-Nazi sentiments, the extreme heteronormativity, and the overt support of child abuse and neglect from the "good bits." What you'd be left with is fragments.

(I mean. Fragments is enough to build fanfic empires, and some people have. But some of us like a bit more canon in our fic than that.)

Rowling has fallen into that pit where she believes everyone critical of her work or her public statements is anti-woman, anti-poor (because nevermind where she is now; she started poor), anti-creativity. And that's not going to change because she's never going to take a break long enough to perceive the arguments from a different perspective.

Other than that... the books themselves are packed with cliche tropes which is why they caught on so well. Mass popularity does not come from groundbreaking, innovative work; it comes from works that resonate with millions of people who agree on nothing but "wouldn't it be awesome if everyone married their high school sweethearts and they stayed married for life."

I don't blame anyone for liking it. I haven't sorted out my own level of "like." But the problematic starts early in the series and just never lets up. The only reason it works at all, is that it's told from a young, unreliable narrator POV--once Rowling speaks up and starts confirming details, that's lost.
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[personal profile] worlds_of_smoke 2020-09-08 09:14 am (UTC)(link)
I feel infinitely blessed that I never got into HP because I can't imagine how this feels for people who grew up adoring HP.
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[personal profile] chanter1944 2020-09-08 01:08 pm (UTC)(link)
I'm trying to assume that JKR didn't read the profile info of the person she was replying to, just responded to the tweet. Bad enough.
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[personal profile] silveradept 2020-09-08 02:56 pm (UTC)(link)
I suspect JKR and HP Lovecraft will eventually occupy the same general space as having a mythos and a setting that people will riff on and make allusions to and write fix-its for in their own works, but that everyone who goes into that space will do so knowing the author is ultra-problematic.
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[personal profile] seekingferret 2020-09-08 03:38 pm (UTC)(link)
I don't like Mandel very much at all, but she's an observant Jew and not a Neo-Nazi, the twitter bio is a bad attempt at irony.
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[personal profile] swingandswirl 2020-09-09 10:50 am (UTC)(link)
Maybe I'm a bad person, but I just can't let HP go, and I'm relieved to hear that the person wasn't a Nazi, just a TERF. (Not that TERFs don't deserve to be yeeted into the sun, but it's a prejudice I'm aware JKR has versus it being a new one, you know?)

/sighs/ Oh JKR. Why couldn't you just take your money and SHUT UP like a lot of other terrible people.