I know it’s probably just because it’s kid’s media, but it’s interesting that she managed to build up so much goodwill with a story that has so many deeply unpleasant aspects in the first place. I mean, the woman wrote a universe where fighting slavery is bad because the enslaved just love being slaves so much. She said lycanthropy was a metaphor for AIDS… When in her story, lycanthropes prey on children. She named her one black student, and I apologise for repeating this because it’s so fucking gross but this is true, “Kingsley shacklebolt”. She named the one black student shacklebolt. In a story with a species of fantasy slaves who actually you shouldn’t free because they love being slaves. She made a story where drapetomania is real, then decided her one named black character should be called shacklebolt.
After all that, the fatphobia, misogyny, ableism and, yes, transphobia (because she even managed to sneak transphobia into harry potter) seems almost quaint.
Why did anyone ever let children read this absolute rubbish.
I was a Harry Potter lore nerd as a kid (before I found Touhou) so I just wanna do a minor correction that the one black student’s name is actually Dean Thomas. Kingsley Shacklebolt is an adult and an auror (wizard FBI). Different characters
She did however name the one Asian student “Cho Chang.”
Also JK Rowling is a massive Terf and I despise her
Haha, fair. I read the first one when I was 18 not long after it came out, then went back to Discworld, not exactly full bottle on this stuff. And yeah, Cho Chang is also a… Choice, but at least it’s not “shacklebolt”. Still gross but didn’t feel worth mentioning alongside all the slavery stuff.
In the UK they group the Indian peninsula in with Asia, so, the Patil twins also fall in with the JK naming conventions. Also being along with Cho being ‘training wheel’ dates/relationships for Ron and Harry to realise they actually want to date white girls Hermione and Ginny. (Putting Lavendar Brown aside briefly)
A lot of her story is very meanspirited towards a lot of different peoples. Like you can feel the disgust through her writing when she comments on several women’s features and their “big hands”.
It’s funny that all that problematic stuff got blasted into the forefront by Rowling being unable to shut up.
I could see myself in a different timeline saying “yeesh maybe I shouldn’t recommend these books to my nephew this ‘Chinese girl named Cho Chang’ kinda sucks.”
But now I actively oppose anyone reading them because Rowling sucks ass and her ass sucking caused a lot of people to go back and reexamine those books with a critical eye and notice the endless stream of problematic shit she wrote into them.
About once a month I think of how the American localization changed the shirts on the demons in hell (which just said HELL) to HFIL and it became the Home For Infinite Losers
And it makes me lose my shit. It’s so goddamn funny to my broken brain.
In Poland we watched it at first in the form of French dubbing with Polish lector. So you can imagine. For example Mr Satan was called “Hercules” and Piccolo was for some strange reason “Little Heart Satan”.
don’t forget the antisemtism that was so thinly-veiled that when set designers/writers for the film adaptation added six-pointed stars (not in the book) to the jewishgoblin bank she thought that was a great touch
minor correction, those stars are just the floor of the actual building they filmed in
however if you’re not trying to tie your already extremely dodgy goblins to antisemitic tropes you would cover those up lol
Her naming sense is so awful i didn’t even manage to register the racism very much because how awful literally every name was. Holy shit series like Discworld or Malazan or Black Company are also full of ridiculous names but those feel just fine in universe, and Harry Potter was just awful, possibly because of britishness overdose.
Oh but later i seen how goblins look in the movies. Like nazi caricatures of Jews.
I don’t think Discworld naming is particularly bad, Pratchett was perfectly happy to use names like Susan, Polly, and Sam. The more out there ones were deliberate choices that mostly made sense imo, especially because they were at least partly pulling the piss out of stuff like malazan and black company
I dunno I might be a bit of a fanboy, I’ve read every Discworld novel, probably at least twice. Grew up with 'em, read my first around thirty odd years ago when I was about 12 or 13 years old.
![[cw: queerphobia] JK Rowling is going after ace people now](https://hexbear.net/pictrs/image/e80c8d1c-70b9-4eb8-841a-51f3d8f6272a.jpeg){kind=link}
I know it’s probably just because it’s kid’s media, but it’s interesting that she managed to build up so much goodwill with a story that has so many deeply unpleasant aspects in the first place. I mean, the woman wrote a universe where fighting slavery is bad because the enslaved just love being slaves so much. She said lycanthropy was a metaphor for AIDS… When in her story, lycanthropes prey on children. She named her one black student, and I apologise for repeating this because it’s so fucking gross but this is true, “Kingsley shacklebolt”. She named the one black student shacklebolt. In a story with a species of fantasy slaves who actually you shouldn’t free because they love being slaves. She made a story where drapetomania is real, then decided her one named black character should be called shacklebolt.
After all that, the fatphobia, misogyny, ableism and, yes, transphobia (because she even managed to sneak transphobia into harry potter) seems almost quaint.
Why did anyone ever let children read this absolute rubbish.
I was a Harry Potter lore nerd as a kid (before I found Touhou) so I just wanna do a minor correction that the one black student’s name is actually Dean Thomas. Kingsley Shacklebolt is an adult and an auror (wizard FBI). Different characters
She did however name the one Asian student “Cho Chang.”
Also JK Rowling is a massive Terf and I despise her
Haha, fair. I read the first one when I was 18 not long after it came out, then went back to Discworld, not exactly full bottle on this stuff. And yeah, Cho Chang is also a… Choice, but at least it’s not “shacklebolt”. Still gross but didn’t feel worth mentioning alongside all the slavery stuff.
That name always reminds me of the late Deftones bassist Chi Cheng.
In the UK they group the Indian peninsula in with Asia, so, the Patil twins also fall in with the JK naming conventions. Also being along with Cho being ‘training wheel’ dates/relationships for Ron and Harry to realise they actually want to date white girls Hermione and Ginny. (Putting Lavendar Brown aside briefly)
A lot of her story is very meanspirited towards a lot of different peoples. Like you can feel the disgust through her writing when she comments on several women’s features and their “big hands”.
Yuuuuup. I think that’s closely related to her transphobia. She has a real problem with women who she sees as “inadequately feminine”.
It’s funny that all that problematic stuff got blasted into the forefront by Rowling being unable to shut up.
I could see myself in a different timeline saying “yeesh maybe I shouldn’t recommend these books to my nephew this ‘Chinese girl named Cho Chang’ kinda sucks.”
But now I actively oppose anyone reading them because Rowling sucks ass and her ass sucking caused a lot of people to go back and reexamine those books with a critical eye and notice the endless stream of problematic shit she wrote into them.
Dragon Ball fans stay winning.
The two most iconic villains are a real estate investor and some “perfect life form”.
About once a month I think of how the American localization changed the shirts on the demons in hell (which just said HELL) to HFIL and it became the Home For Infinite Losers
And it makes me lose my shit. It’s so goddamn funny to my broken brain.
In Poland we watched it at first in the form of French dubbing with Polish lector. So you can imagine. For example Mr Satan was called “Hercules” and Piccolo was for some strange reason “Little Heart Satan”.
I watched this recent Monkey King movie with my kid and couldn’t not think of HFIL when all the characters were talking about hell lol
don’t forget the antisemtism that was so thinly-veiled that when set designers/writers for the film adaptation added six-pointed stars (not in the book) to the
jewishgoblin bank she thought that was a great touchcw: antisemtism
minor correction, those stars are just the floor of the actual building they filmed in
however if you’re not trying to tie your already extremely dodgy goblins to antisemitic tropes you would cover those up lol
Her naming sense is so awful i didn’t even manage to register the racism very much because how awful literally every name was. Holy shit series like Discworld or Malazan or Black Company are also full of ridiculous names but those feel just fine in universe, and Harry Potter was just awful, possibly because of britishness overdose.
Oh but later i seen how goblins look in the movies. Like nazi caricatures of Jews.
I don’t think Discworld naming is particularly bad, Pratchett was perfectly happy to use names like Susan, Polly, and Sam. The more out there ones were deliberate choices that mostly made sense imo, especially because they were at least partly pulling the piss out of stuff like malazan and black company
I dunno I might be a bit of a fanboy, I’ve read every Discworld novel, probably at least twice. Grew up with 'em, read my first around thirty odd years ago when I was about 12 or 13 years old.
I’m not saying it’s bad, the opposite, he was able to use quite a lot of silly names without sounding cringe.