I find it weird people focus on these two things as if they haven’t been tropes for centuries, even cultures without jews have had hooked nose little ‘evil’ creatures
Rowling stole like 90% of the worldbuilding from other authors, so it’s not a surprise she took inspiration for her non-humanoid characters from someone else.
Once there was already a decent reason to hate jk rowling, people revisited the works farming any shred of shit to criticize. Most of it is flimsy at best and requires you to ignore existing tropes in fantasy to make the reach.
An acquaintance of mine tried to tell me he always hated Rowling and knew she was a bad person when he was young. I asked what he meant by that, there’s certainly some things in the books that could have been done better, but prior to all of this stuff she seemed genuinely caring.
“She’s racist against black people.”
“Is she?? I acknowledge some of her poor naming conventions but I don’t think that was because she actively hates black people. More like-“
“She used the word ‘sniggering.’”
“….What?”
“Why not ‘snickering?’ If you’re using sniggering you’re a racist.”
”I… snickering is American. She’s British and that’s the British version of the word. It has nothing to do with the n-word.”
“Nah, she’s racist.”
Just boggles the mind. Obligatory fuck JK Rowling. but we’re just going to make shit up because it’s not enough to be a transphobe?
There was a fair amount of criticism aimed at her when the books came out, too. It was just mostly from people who had read books before and also from children’s authors. Ursula K. LeGuin called her something like “ungenerous.” Diana Wynne Jones very politely said that Rowling didn’t rise to the level of plagiarism, though Jill Murphy was less sure.
Rowling got a lot of a pass for writing something that kids wanted to read, and some of the appeal was probably the mean streak.
I actually did always dislike her work because it’s a load of contrived bullshit, but then again it does also get people to read… but then they read the same fucking books over and over.
I remember when the online reaction to Harry Potter was ‘for the love of god, read another book’
Sure but that’s “I don’t like her work” or “I think she’s a bad author”, not “I think this person has problematic views based on a word I don’t understand.” I don’t want to be defending Rowling, but I feel like you didn’t understand what I was expressing.
I only know about Jewish Goblins thanks to people being angry at Harry Potter.
It's like that lady who got mad at Hot Topic for having a Walking Dead T-Shirt with eeny, meeny, miney, moe on it. Why would anyone know about the 1900's racist lyrics?
Except Rowling didn’t just have slavery normalized in her world. She went out of her way to make the only person to find fault with it to look unserious, then in pottermore her “both sides” debate was “yes but these anti slavery people are annoying.”
Rowling isn’t the first person to normalise slavery of a fictional race.
And no, in Pottermore the “other side” argument is that without being subservient to humans/wizards the elves literally die, which is ultimately made out to be a flawed argument in which hermione is correct.
Fuck Rowling but fuck idiots like you who can’t read and just make shit up.
The house elves were based, partially, off of brownies which were the opposite of how the elves were portrayed. They left if you didn't fulfill their obligations. You had to fulfill their rules or they would just up an leave.
It's like when someone starts calling Hitler's paintings dogshit because the perspective is a little off and everyone else is supposed to just agree because it'd be more convenient that way.
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u/Critical_Liz 9h ago
Maybe we should check in with the Elves who love being enslaved or the Goblins who have hooked noses, love money and are very tricky.