J. K. Rowling and other TERFs

I think she’s an ok YA writer, I’ve read the 3 Galbraith books and they progressively got worse but they are at best Agatha Christie lite.

You don’t need to be the best writer to be famous and I don’t begrudge her previous fame but to be mediocre and nasty? That’s a major sin.
 
I've never understood, as I have aged, why adults at the time liked Harry Potter. It only still works(ed) for me because of the nostalgia, and I was the same age roughly as the characters for every book. If I read it for the first time now, I wouldn't give it the time of day.
 
Phoenix said:
I think she’s an ok YA writer, I’ve read the 3 Galbraith books and they progressively got worse but they are at best Agatha Christie lite.

You don’t need to be the best writer to be famous and I don’t begrudge her previous fame but to be mediocre and nasty? That’s a major sin.
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I don't think you have to be the best writer to have an ultra successful series, but there is such a huge gap in quality between Harry Potter and something like Twilight. Regardless of how dark JKR becomes, it will go down as a series that engaged a generation of non readers and hold Narnia esque esteem in the future. She isn't CS Lewis as a writer, but as an isolated series? Yes.
 
This may not be entirely on topic, but I've always thought this was a great summation of Rowling's worldview and how it permeated the Harry Potter series, and is part of why I found them less than satisfying:
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I feel like we're all piling on you Chlammy and it's not my intention :D but to be honest comparing ANYTHING to UTTER SHIT like Twilight is setting the bar perhaps A BIT LOW. Compare her to contemporary fantasy classics like Le Guin, Tolkien, Herbert, Pratchett... and there's a similar gap in quality between them and Rowling. She's just ok and she got lucky, good for her, but completely overrated at the end of the day. And now FULL OF HATE to boot.
 
Chlammy said:
I don't think you have to be the best writer to have an ultra successful series, but there is such a huge gap in quality between Harry Potter and something like Twilight. Regardless of how dark JKR becomes, it will go down as a series that engaged a generation of non readers and hold Narnia esque esteem in the future. She isn't CS Lewis as a writer, but as an isolated series? Yes.
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I’m not disagreeing with you on any of that. I said she’s an ok writer and yes she captured something with that series (I’ve read the books 2-3 times myself).

All I’m saying is if she wanted to preserve her legacy she shouldn’t have kept tinkering with the series after she finished it (people were already getting worn out by the revisions and Fantastic Beasts) and she shouldn’t be so awful because if you take the goodwill of the people out what you have is a series that will become less relevant as the main readership ages out.
 
Phoenix said:
I’m not disagreeing with you on any of that. I said she’s an ok writer and yes she captured something with that series (I’ve read the books 2-3 times myself).

All I’m saying is if she wanted to preserve her legacy she shouldn’t have kept tinkering with the series after she finished it (people were already getting worn out by the revisions and Fantastic Beasts) and she shouldn’t be so awful because if you take the goodwill of the people out what you have is a series that will become less relevant as the main readership ages out.
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I definitely agree with the second paragraph, though I think they're so important culturally that she'll have to go a lot further for people to disregard them completely as must reads in future years.
 
Speaking of Fantastic Breasts, is the third film even still happening? It felt like the last one almost had NEGATIVE BUZZ, and I haven't heard anything... I also wonder whether Rowling's newly controversial status would make the marketing a nightmare. I read something recently about a new Harry Potter videogame that's due to be unveiled soon, apparently a lot of the team who have worked on it are furious at her for essentially poisoning something they've spent years on :(
 
I don't like this revisionism that she isn't or wasn't a good writer. The Potter books were excellent and I won't be throwing mine. I refuse to let that incredible world she created be tainted by what she has become because that isn't the person she was then and I still want to enjoy the films, the books (the later ones especially) and the nostalgia of the period in my life it takes me back to. as @Chlammy said her prose was ok but her world and character building and narrative grasp were pretty spectacular.
 
Jark said:
I don't like this revisionism that she isn't or wasn't a good writer. The Potter books were excellent and I won't be throwing mine. I refuse to let that incredible world she created be tainted by what she has become because that isn't the person she was then and I still want to enjoy the films, the books (the later ones especially) and the nostalgia of the period in my life it takes me back to. as @Chlammy said her prose was ok but her world and character building and narrative grasp were pretty spectacular.
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Agreed.

And it definitely isn't completely down to fame, because there are plenty of non famous people who share her views or spout views that are much worse, but I do think part of how she's turned out must be tied in some way to be constantly praised in almost every regard for the guts of 20 years. I don't believe that present day JKR would approach Harry Potter in the same way. As stories in isolation they absolutely set a good example for young people in so many regards.
 
Jark said:
I don't like this revisionism that she isn't or wasn't a good writer. The Potter books were excellent and I won't be throwing mine. I refuse to let that incredible world she created be tainted by what she has become because that isn't the person she was then and I still want to enjoy the films, the books (the later ones especially) and the nostalgia of the period in my life it takes me back to. as @Chlammy said her prose was ok but her world and character building and narrative grasp were pretty spectacular.
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This is the last I'll say on the matter because I have not read the FLIPPING books but it isn't revisionism AT ALL. I remember distinctly when the books came out and they started to gain momentum A LOT of critics were saying exactly what some of us have said above, that they were merely ok and not very original. Harold Bloom famously wrote a whole op ed on the Washington Post saying they were HEAVY ON CLICHÉ and that she DUMBED DOWN issues of good and bad, two things that for me personally are cardinal sins in fantasy books for kids.

But AS WITH MILEY CYRUS I do not want to destroy OTHER PEOPLE'S FANTASIES so I'll shut up now.
 
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Peekaboo said:
This is the last I'll say on the matter because I have not read the FLIPPING books but it isn't revisionism AT ALL. I remember distinctly when the books came out and they started to gain momentum A LOT of critics were saying exactly what some of us have said above, that they were merely ok and not very original. Harold Bloom famously wrote a whole op ed on the Washington Post saying they were HEAVY ON CLICHÉ and that she DUMBED DOWN issues of good and bad, two things that for me personally are cardinal sins in fantasy books for kids.

But AS WITH MILEY CYRUS I do not want to destroy OTHER PEOPLE'S FANTASIES so I'll shut up now.
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I think for me it's more a case of either people picking apart the books for items that could cause offense, or people who otherwise wouldn't be doing so suddenly dismissing the books as being without merit.

There have always been critics, definitely.
 
She's a fairly compelling writer, but in retrospect it is flat out astonishing that Goblet of Fire managed to win a Hugo. Whilst competing against A Storm of Swords.
 
Peekaboo said:
This is the last I'll say on the matter because I have not read the FLIPPING books but it isn't revisionism AT ALL. I remember distinctly when the books came out and they started to gain momentum A LOT of critics were saying exactly what some of us have said above, that they were merely ok and not very original. Harold Bloom famously wrote a whole op ed on the Washington Post saying they were HEAVY ON CLICHÉ and that she DUMBED DOWN issues of good and bad, two things that for me personally are cardinal sins in fantasy books for kids.

But AS WITH MILEY CYRUS I do not want to destroy OTHER PEOPLE'S FANTASIES so I'll shut up now.
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GIRL!

Sorry but if you haven't even read the books then you can't double down on the belief that they were shit. Critics' opinions of fiction are as much to be trusted as what some idiot from the Observer thinks of the new Kylie album, especially in the realm of fanbase fiction.
 
I will say I did read all the books, although by the end only for completion's sake. This is in part because I was a precocious fuck who grew out of them while they were being released, and in part because I think the books needed a good editor to prune them down, which, with JK having become the saviour of the publishing industry, clearly wasn't going to happen.

I think she's a perfectly decent writer, especially for children's lit. She clearly got a lot of kids into reading, and that's great. Her prose is uninspiring, but again, when you're writing kids' fantasy stories, you don't need to be FITZGERALD, do you?

I don't think it's revisionism to say she's never been a great writer. BUT I'd definitely agree a lot of the 'SHE HATES JEWISH PEOPLE AND IS PRO SLAVERY' is thinking more deeply about the politics of the books than anybody did putting them together.
 
She's not a great writer so much as she had an incredible IDEA and struck a perfect level of fantasy that was palatable to everyone. All of the ingredients were just there for it to be as iconic as it was.

I thought Prisoner of Azkaban was the best of them and didn't much care for the ones after.
 
Gangsta Nancy Lam said:
I will say I did read all the books, although by the end only for completion's sake. This is in part because I was a precocious fuck who grew out of them while they were being released, and in part because I think the books needed a good editor to prune them down, which, with JK having become the saviour of the publishing industry, clearly wasn't going to happen.

I think she's a perfectly decent writer, especially for children's lit. She clearly got a lot of kids into reading, and that's great. Her prose is uninspiring, but again, when you're writing kids' fantasy stories, you don't need to be FITZGERALD, do you?

I don't think it's revisionism to say she's never been a great writer. BUT I'd definitely agree a lot of the 'SHE HATES JEWISH PEOPLE AND IS PRO SLAVERY' is thinking more deeply about the politics of the books than anybody did putting them together.
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Thank you for saving me the mental energy of writing what I think about all this! I can’t phrase it better
 
No it’s just random art, i think it’s from Magic the Gathering. LOTR is lacking in fabulous ladies.
 
COB said:
Speaking of Fantastic Breasts, is the third film even still happening? It felt like the last one almost had NEGATIVE BUZZ, and I haven't heard anything... I also wonder whether Rowling's newly controversial status would make the marketing a nightmare. I read something recently about a new Harry Potter videogame that's due to be unveiled soon, apparently a lot of the team who have worked on it are furious at her for essentially poisoning something they've spent years on :(
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Well, Eddie Redmayne came out against her in the same way that the 3 main cast members of the HP films did. So would he do the next film?

It'll probably end up written by Linehan and staring Ricky Gervais. Or something.
 
Mr Kate will definitely want to watch it. Still, not my problem he doesn't have a TV :)
 
I saw a thing this morning about her latest Glabraith book being about a transvestite murderer-cum-pervert or something and went off her a bit more.

ZenGiraffe said:
I've never understood, as I have aged, why adults at the time liked Harry Potter. It only still works(ed) for me because of the nostalgia, and I was the same age roughly as the characters for every book. If I read it for the first time now, I wouldn't give it the time of day.
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It's hard for me to make a reasonable justification as someone who's struggled for 9 and bit years to explain why I like PONY, but I'll go with something similar for HP: everyone was talking about it (well, everyone online when it came to pony) and it was nice to be part of a widely shared interest and get excited with other people about the next book/series etc. Somehow "it just snowballed" and became a conversation subject and fandom. But obviously that doesn't happen in a vacuum either, you don't get a ton of people liking something that's utter shit (I've never followed Twilight or 50 Shades, so can't comment there). Both are pretty well written as kids' entertainment goes, and made to appeal to parents sharing them with their kids (or the accidental side effect of appealing to people of parental age who are childless, and young adult nerds). These things are, or at least HP started off as, lighthearted escapism to a magical fantasy world where you can conjure a teacup out of thin air just for the hell of it, and just... I don't know... nice. They resonate, and have believable heroes who represent what you wish you were and seem achievable in who you could aspire to be (especially, in hindsight, if you're a privileged white middle class centrist) and characters that represent various elements of your own personality. HP of course gets darker and more grim as it goes on and personally I enjoyed the earlier ones more and read to the end and battled through the UTTER EASTENDERS-TIER MISERY of the past couple of books just because I wanted to see it through. But another part of its appeal was the concept of being set in the real present world, and it being a sort of shadow society that we literally cannot see because of what Doctor Who would call a Perception Filter. (DW is yet another example of something made for families but also appealing to young adult nerds). It felt like "okay this would never be real, let's not be silly, but it's got an air of believability to it"

I'm not big on reading between lines and ASSUMING the worst of intentions, be it Harry Potter's hook nosed goblin bankers or notorious MLP episodes like the one where equality came across as if it was the stuff of a deranged commie despot. These things do raise an eyebrow though, and my eyebrow went flying off to the MOON with that latest Galbraith one.
 
I think a big part of it was also that the films and last few books came around at a PERFECT time to coincide with the rise of the Tumblr fandom communities (which bled out into other online venues), and was pretty tailor made for them in terms of subject matter, potential for fanfiction, available characters for shipping etc.
 
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