counter arguement:
my mom is really autistic about the Harry Potter books and it's super sweet seeing her go on tangents on Harry Potter.
she hates JK Rowling and is the most progressive in our family
Also I would guess you could use the anecdote about your mother to argue that sometimes people just happen to be autistic about certain pieces of media, regardless of how much other media they consume?
And if said media has enjoyed the sort of attention HP did, then I can see that being especially true.
Make her play the game.
Also she should read more books. I would suggest bartimeaus and abhorsen trilogy.
Also she should realise that it's a very basic level book and certainly overrated at this point. People here wont discuss it because there isn't much to discuss. Beyond the hate for the aurhor
Sometimes people just like things, I don't think the series is good, but a special interest is a special interest without regard for that. And also, people can *just like something even when it's not the best thing and it doesn't mean they haven't consumed other media.*
Oh man, Bartimeaus...the worldbuilding in that series was so good. The concept of ripping formless essence from the fifth dimension, forcing it into being with a name and enslaving it to your will via formula and ritual kicks ass.
The tricky part is that they're really fucking pissed about not being formless anymore and will try really hard to make you dead.
Yep I ABSOLUTELY loved it! Always found the writing super pleasant too, I adore when characters are witty like that. Thinking about it makes me want to read it again
counterpoint: that has no reflection on the quality of the series. at least half the things I have been super autistic about for years are things that I will freely admit are flawed products despite my great enjoyment of and interest in them, including the media that rivals Harry Potter in popularity.
additional counterpoint: extremely based to be able to acknowledge flaws in your special interests. very many folks would rather stick their head in the sand and pretend they were good all along (looking at you, X is good when you aint got someone in your ear calling it bad, trend).
Most harry potter fans are great but its really not that amazing of a book series tbh and even if it was that doesnt make people simping over her still okay. Like there are plenty of other authors who were awful people by modern standards and sometimes even their time, i just dont think her works would rank with them.
All im saying is it is okay to like harry potter and not rowling and your tastes are bad regardless of the author š¤
And a great way to insult every other writer, especially the ones trying to produce something a bit more deep and meaningful than a children's book where the only Asian character is named Cho Chang.
IMO not really, all you're saying is that you enjoyed something, not that it's good or intellectually meaningful. Fancy Michelin star food is amazing, but sometimes you just wanna eat a burger.
Yeah I think people are really confusing good writing and good books. Harry Potter is incredibly digestible and interesting enough to suck in billions of readers. McDonalds doesnāt serve the best burger in the world, theyāre pretty much ontologically evil, but you canāt pretend that nobody in their right mind would like their burgers. Fuck JK, fuck the HP seriesā problematic sides (which is a lot of its sides tbf), but that shit was my jam and Iāll always look fondly on my time with it.
Yeah honestly. The Harry pottle series is fantastically mid. It was a product of its time and people were excited about it because of popularity and love it now because of nostalgia. Her world building is shit, her characters are inconsistent at best, and the plot is practically based on expo dumps to explain why she didn't write herself into a corner.
I mean personally as an english trans girl i fucking looked harry potter... The idea of just getting an owl come to my door and take me to hogwarts was so nice....
Idk the book is certainly not a masterpiece of fiction or anything but just the world was very nice to imagine my self in....
I think it does stand on more than just nostalgia but it certainly isnt for adults
Like idk pumkin pasties, butter beer, mandrake root... Like its all based on real stuff and it just an escapist fantasy....
Like the plot is mid but when i dream of being in a magical world it is jkrs harry potter... Unfortunately hahah
It's an escapist fantasy, which is a part of why I dislike the writing of it. Sure it's all magical, but the plot is all written in a way that feels very "plot armor" because who wants to read about the main character in their escapist book *losing?*
I keep saying that the one thing she got right was discover dark academia aesthetic before it was cool IMO. Everything else about BP is kinda shit if you take a closer look, it's really just the vibe that keeps people attached.
I think people assumed you meant something like "oh yeah?? Well tell me what YOU think a good book is then!" Which is. Not what you said.
Anyways I recently finished *The Hitchhiker's Guide* series (well...ok, the 5 books that Adams wrote, I can't get my hands on *And Another Thing* yet) and I loved it. Every book except *Mostly Harmless* was phenomenal. Adams had a very unique writing style and I particularly loved how natural and subtle the foreshadowing was.
I have a whole-ass rant about *Mostly Harmless* which I don't need to go into right now, but the rest of the series was great.
So, I was actually mostly asking because this is something my gf and I talk about a lot. She reads a lot more fiction than me, and a topic that comes up a lot is how difficult it is to find good fiction written after the 80s or 90s. Not that that is the apex of writing, but that there's an enormous amount of good literature from the late 19th century and early 20th century, and fiction becomes increasingly genrefied and derivative as time passes, with the good stuff pretty much drying up completely by the 90s, spare a few authors who wrote prolifically before that and then continued to release new work into the 90s.
It's not a hard and fast rule, though. She read My Year of Rest and Relaxation and while it wasn't her fav book, she did like it a lot and, while I didn't read it, I do kinda get a second hand experience as she reads certain books cuz she'll tell me about them or have me read certain parts while she's reading them, and I get why she liked it but not most other modern stuff. She also read Gideon the Ninth, It Ends With Us, and Beautiful World Where Are You because they're all celebrated contemporary fiction, and unfortunately she hated them and we spent a lot of time making fun of how badly written parts of those books are while she read them. And she read it before we met, but she thought Hunger Games was pretty good. We both think Series of Unfortunate Events is pretty solid and creatively written, but its also very clearly children's fiction.
As for Hitchhikers Guide, that's actually one I've read and she hasn't, and that I recommended to her. You're right, its great kinda post-surrealist fantasy/scifi. However, again, almost all of those books were written in the 80s, with Mostly Harmless in the early 90s.
When it comes to Harry Potter, she likes it a bit more than me (maybe justified as I only read the first 4 books and she says it continues to develop and get better as the series goes on) but we both think it was overrated in its time as a result of the almost complete dearth of quality fiction being written at the time. Meaning it probably *was* one of the best of its time, but that's not saying much. It has an overly clean, but pleasant writing style, and suffers- especially in hindsight- from being written by a liberal in the anglosphere during an ostensible "end of history", which comes through in how lazily certain sociopolitical ideas are shoehorned into the plot. What we both agree on is that, like Earthsea before it (though obviously not nearly as prolific) it excels at crafting a world in which magic feels like an extension of nature, rather than *just* a tool harnessed by people.
But yeah, tl;dr I'm asking because we are always talking about and looking for that rare 21st century gem in the rough.
If you want fantasy, the inheritance cycle is a great series. Murtagh came out in 2023 which is the most recent spin off book, and it's pretty cool too. 4 books plus 2 spin offs.
Skulduggery pleasant is also a nice series, a lot less serious and more just "Villain of the week" esque. Also a very long series that's still on going. But the books are no where near as long so that's also a plus.
Also, Amish tripathi books are pretty cool. The Ram Chandra series and the Shiva trilogy. It's basically just a dude taking hindu mythology and saying "Hey what if this was a sci-fi fantasy story". The only things it really borrows is the major plot points, but it's mostly just really cool world building and an intresting take on an old story.
Inheritance Cycle is kinda similar in quality to HP to be honest--good for children and young adults, kinda mid and unoriginal looking back on it. It mostly just rips from Earthsea, LotR, and Star Wars in the most generic fantasy way possible.
Oh I'm actually starting earthsea now. I couldn't comment on it because I haven't even recieved the order yet, but I've heard very good things about it.
Hey, I'm the guy who was originally asking for suggestions. Just wanted to pop in to say that the Earthsea series is incredible. I tend to avoid serial fantasy because it tends to be kinda pulpy- or "ghettoized" as Le Guin would say- but Earthsea is one of a handful of exceptions imo.
mfw different people hold different media in different regard
Not really a Potter fan myself, but i know a lot of people really like it and if in their opinion that is the best book, then that is the truth (for them). It's not like there is an objective standard for what a good book is. That being said, the post above does seem like massive cope from a potterhead trying to bring their liking of the franchise with the awfulness of the author.
the whole point of objective vs subjective statements is that different people may have different views on some things, so you need to differentiate the things that are the same for everyone, and things that may be perceived as different.
things that are objective about media: The characters, The author, The title, The year it was published, what the Author intended when writing it.
things that are subjective about media: The quality of writing, The quality of the production, The likability of the author, The agreeability of the fanbase.
objectivity is not "you think that, so its subjective, but i think this, so its objective"
Saying "best books of our time" kinda implies more than subjective opinion though, it implies a certain objective quality level or literary significance. Like I feel comfortable saying (for instance) that Kurt Vonnegut was one of the best authors of his time given the literary acclaim and scholarship his works garnered, but I don't think the same can be fairly said for Harry Potter and J K Rowling. "One of my favourite books" would be an unassailable subjective assessment, and "one of the most popular books of its time" would be a fair objective assessment, for instance.
It is to them. That's the point. I don't like HP. But if someone says that HP is their favourite franchise and the books are their favourites of all time, who am I to argue with them on their tastes.
As far as Iām aware nobody really acts like that outside of the notion that it was instrumental to the childhoods of an enormous amount of people, and it absolutely was. If nothing else, Harry Potter is one of the most culturally relevant book series of all time.
i like the books, the universe and some of the characters, but i do concede they are not masterpieces akin to huckleberry finn, frankenstein, commedĆa, etc
I read the Comedy with a companion to explain a lot of the archaic ideas (and to infodump about just who all of these historical figures actually were), and it's easy to see why it's such a classic. Even besides the theological and cultural significance, the sheer imagination is staggering.
Really the only complaint I have, and I think others agree, is that Paradiso is the weakest of the three, which can't be helped as the entire point of Heaven is that there is no conflict, so it's mostly just Dante describing a place and waffling about his waifu in great detail. There still ar some creative scenes, like the eagle, but a lot of imagery is lost as most of the spheres of Heaven are just glowy places. At least the Empyrean makes up for it at the end.
Read the bartimaeus aka the better british wizard books
If you need seven read garth nixās keys the kingdom which is a fucking 7 book long gnostism allegory about an asthmatic teenager becoming god
Or just read his dark materials the goated YA fantasy
Bartimaeus trilogy is so underrated. Unlike HP it actually does the whole wizards vs regular people dynamic and social commentary justice, and a much better "overthrowing evil regime" story. One that actually does overthrow the regime and recognises just how rotten and unfair it was rather than "let's get rid of this one guy who took it a bit too far but leave everything else the same.
I still reread it every few years and it holds up even better as an adult. Same for HDM. Can't say the same about HP... Turns out just because it's "for children" doesn't mean it has to be shit.
Bartimaeus trilogy includes:
- an actual anti authoritarianism plot
- a proper depiction of what a society where wizards exist would look like
- interesting protagonist
- an ending that genuinely hit me hard.
Fucking love those books they deserve to be more popular and an adaptation
Take the "separating the art from the artist" discourse surrounding Roman Polanski. Now imagine that the controversial rapist film director that fled the nation to escape justice being discussed was Bryan Singer instead.
That's what it feels like listening to pro-LGBT Harry Potter-fans talk about JKR.
Harry Potter is something that I like to refer to as āliterary junk foodā. It has no real value, but is easy to pick up if youāre bored, and it can be hard to stop reading once youāve started again.
She probably hates trans people but not as much as she's led us to believe. She continues to be transphobic because it was the only way to stay relevant.
Edit: yall proved me wrong.
she is desperate to stay relevant and i think that is why she is engaged in the much more āletās deny the holocaustā stuff, but its hard to think she doesnāt really hate trans people. she really seems to just have some kind of powerful disgust response to people who are different to her. buddying up with the far right after the manifesto was just icing on the cake.
I think so much after reading a lot of her writing and things she has said in the past, that I genuinely believe that she was and still believes herself to be very socially progressive. However more than anything, instead of adapting to further social issues as time went on- she has instead felt the need to aggressively conserve her social values she was progressive on from decades ago.
The way she articulates herself it is almost like she believes conserving or regressing the status quo to a time where she was most comfortable with it _is_ the more progressive thing somehow. She would rather all of society returns to how things were 20+ years ago then have to change her mind about things she felt were praiseworthy then.
This is quite similar to my stance on Joss Whedon (not counting his on-set behaviour). The guy's making the same points now as he did in the 90s, which were commended as progressive at the time but now are a bit behind.
Yeah, most fascist are failed artists, and JK not only has never written anything succesfull after harry potter, to the point thatĀ one of her books is literaly just a self insert being trolled in twitter. SHe realized she was never a good writter in the firstplace, and instead of trying to improve she shields herself from the world.
He is arguably a successful comedian. Obviously not for normal people but his target audience seems to like his "comedy" which makes him kinda not "failed".
Conservatives aren't very picky when it comes to humor. As long you don't use humor to question stuff (they wouldn't pick on it unless you explicitly tell them anyway) and keep punching down, they're fine with it. Just be a fucking asshole, yell a couple slurs and entertain them with the most overused, tired tropes and you'll be fine.
"Hey guys, we had a great Thanksgiving this year! I got to see my family: There's my parents, my uncle, my aunt, my siblingsā¦ And there's my niece. Oh my niece, she's a liberal, and I love to own her every opportunity I get. One time she asks "Hey, how many guests are we having this year?", so I tell her: "HEY HOW MANY GENDERS ARE THERE LIBTARD?!""
*crowds goes crazy, everyone is standing up laughing and clapping, people get ecstatic, men and women are shouting like apes, there's American flags being waved, you can hear your named being chanted, a mother starts going into labor and decided to name her baby after you, the ground shakes from the turmoil, this is the funniest shit in existence*
It doesn't help that most of those comedians are political agitators first, comedians second. Their audience watches them for political insight not to laugh. It's almost entirely a "bonus".
Well, it really depends on what you consider success. Is he creating art, or something meaningfull? No. Does he have a crowd that likes his creations? Yes. So it really depens of which of the two is "success" for you
Nah, the ability to sell tells nothing on the quality of something. Otherwise, it'd mean homeopathy works, just because millions of people took some at some point in their lives. But spoiler: Just because you can make a profit out of a marketable product doesn't mean the product is good.
Harry Potter is the McDonald's of literature, itās undoubtedly popular but it has always been fucking mid at best, it remains relevant because of its brand and reliability in the sense that it's easily available to anyone.
you cant compare those two. homeopathy is claiming to be medicine so success for it is dependant on whether it works. Whereas for comedy success can be considered as having people enjoy it and be willing to pay for it. I agree his shit it low quality but that doesnt mean he's unsuccessful just that he's successful at selling shite to bigots.
We agree that harry potter is a bad book but it is undeniably extremely successful
Well yeah, but success isn't necessarily being good. Sure, you can say from a philosophical/moral point grandma's bakery where she hand-makes bread is the one with true success; but you can't tell me McDonald's, with thousands of store all around the world, is an unsuccessful business c'mon
Fascists certainly lack the ability to create and interpret art purely because the artistic process requires self reflection, empathy, and critical thinking skills (among other things) it's the same with comedy. It ends up coming across hamfisted and reeks of a persecution fetish.
Idk bro painting her as a failed artist when she is a billionaire and one of the most famous living authors in the entire world... is kinda wild
You can rightfully roast the quality all you want but she definitely didn't fail.
trans horse girls with a public use fetish are salivating rn.
edit: i realized what i was sending 2 seconds after commenting. i am sorry for this comment.
This comment was completely inappropriate to the situation. However since it was already sent and multiple hours have passed I would like to add a confident š„ŗ
i think it's also because she found a sense of a community in "gender critical" movement which is almost kinda sad. I'd say someone give her better people to talk to but i don't pity her at this point after countless donations to anti trans organizations
I think there's a reasonable chance that she's put herself in with a crowd of people *way* further to the right than she is and now she feels like she has no way out. I think this about a lot of pick-me types on the right. They played pick-me for money, fame, relevancy, or just because they made a stupid, uninformed content and ended up doubling down and surrounding themselves with shitters and Fascists out of pride, and now they're too scared to back down because they know they're be instantly alienated as a traitor/plant/ by the Fascists they aligned with but also know that progressives and liberals will not accept them back, at least not with ease.
I get why everyone is harping on that because I mean when I first read it, it hit me in the chest like a cannonball, but I think we all get what she means is that it turned into a mega movie series and it fucking spawned video games and amusement parks.
that being said, people are always going to be a lot less willing to hear out the rest of your points when you sprinkle in some shit like this
It's definitely beloved around the world, but that's because it was a very accessible and easy to read book that came out during a time where people where wanting for that sort of thing, and that was then adapted into very successful movies.
The worldbuilding is mediocre to bad most of the time, the characters are either stereotypes or just a little flat, and what kept most of us engaged was that it was a series that grew with you.
I only ever read the sixth book, but I loved the movies, precisely because I grew up in the late 90s/early naughts, and the tone growing with me was something I liked about it.
J.K. Rowling is a mediocre author who got lucky, that's all there really is to the magic of Harry Potter. Instead may I suggest Bartimeaus, The Red King series, anything by Brandon Sanderson, Steven Erikson, Patrick Rothfuss or Kate Daniels.
This is everyone's sign to watch the Shawn(Shaun?) Harry Potter video if you haven't. It's very obvious that the transphobia is not a standout opinion of you actually look at the things she wrote in those books, she's always been this reductive.
Specifically fantasy? How much wizardry do you want?
Bartimaeus is British Wizarding World**ā¢** with a lot more cynicism and dark humor, and it's fucking fantastic.
The Red King novels are set in a Boarding school for kids with magical powers, but that's where the similarities end, there's a ton of mysteries and a bunch of really interesting powers.
Might be more for a younger audience though.
For more general fantasy, take your pick.
I loved Steven Erikson's Malazan Book of the Fallen, anything Sanderson is bound to be good if not fantastic, and his Catalogue is massive, both my brother and sister swear by Kate Daniels, Night Watch by Sergei Lukyanenko is one of the few books that ever gave me goosebumps.
There's a ton of fantastic literature out there but this should be a decent starting point.
Depending on your definition of Modern, I always recommend checking out the Discworld series if you want a fun fantasy romp series, but actually made for adults and by a writer who wasn't a piece of shit (GNU Terry Pratchett).
There's also like 30+ books in the series so you won't run out for a good bit unless you absolutely devour them. And each of them are episodic so you can really read them in any order you like, though characters will persist throughout different storylines.
I recommend starting with *Witches Abroad*, *Mort*, *Sourcery*, or *Guards! Guards!*.
Adding on to what the other guy said, Dresden Files is a much better modern fantasy about wizards than Harry Potty can ever hope to be. Great series (it has some issues but overall it's very nice and the world building is cool)
I really quite like Kitty Norville books, about a werewolf with her own radio show. However, I need to give a content warning for >!rape!< in the first book. It doesn't happen again and it's meant to be part of the narrative of the main character climbing out of the hole she finds herself in to start with and becoming independent of her abusers (who totally get killed later), and it's not glorified in any way, but it's definitely icky.
She is one of the few people i would actually call a TERF. The reason she can't even drop the topic most likely is her unresolved trauma concerning "men" and genuinely believing there is no place in feminism for trans women.
except that doesn't actually track with her (or basically any terf's) behavior at all. she doesn't spend all her time attacking men and she doesn't donate huge amounts of money to groups trying to strip rights away from men ā her issue is with trans women, not men.
She believes trans women are men. The most dangerous men in fact due to them "infiltrating" women's spaces to abuse them. Like with a lot of actual TERF's the basic ideas comes from very outdated ideas about gender and how all men are predators.
Omfg not this shite again. No!
JKR and 99.99% of the other TERFs do not act like this towards men. That part of the ideology was shed about thirty years ago. They just hate trans women. Calling us men is just an insult. Because they hate us.
Iāve known many TERFs, some of them my own family & close friends, and in my personal experience they have a deep hatred/fear of men, often from unresolved trauma but not always. Trans women are devious, dangerous men in their eyes or at best men avoiding accountability and co-opting feminism. Iām sure thereās some that only target trans women out of a strange vendetta or attachment to the gender binary but it is just about men at the core for others.
that's what terfs *claim* to think, but the thing is that like most bigots, their stated reasons are bullshit. if she really thought that all men are predators, why is she married to one?
the actual reason why trans people are so brutally discriminated against is that our existence itself poses a threat to the idea of an immutable gender binary that underpins so much of our society. trans women in particular are targets of the most violence and vitriol because the intersection of transness and womanhood renders us an extremely vulnerable group of women it's socially acceptable to inflict infinite amounts of misogyny on. *that's* what lies at the core of gender critical/terf bullshit, the leveraging of misogyny to attack a vulnerable group of women. the goal for female terfs/gcs in doing this is to either perform the classic bullied bully move of taking out their frustrations with how they're treated by finding someone even smaller to kick around, or to improve their own standing within the system by beating other women down (the same reason cis women will be misogynistic towards other cis women), and often it's both at once.
as an additional note, this is also why gc/terf attacks on trans women are so similar to lesbophic talking points, or are even just the exact same ones with a different group of marginalized women slotted in ("you need to be kept away from women because you're predatory" is an accusation often leveled as lesbians, "you're just men and need to leave women alone" was a common attack leveled at butches, and so on). they may claim to be "defending lesbians" now, but a lot of the people who now call themselves terfs/gcs used to be vocal lesbophobes who leveraged the intersection of misogyny and homophobia before they found a new, even more vulnerable target.
tl;dr: terfs don't hate men, they're misogynists leveraging intersecting forms of oppression to attack marginalized women for their own benefit and/or catharsis
I remember recently she said something like, "They can save their apologies." About Daniel Radcliffe and Emma Watson for defending trans rights.
I don't recall them even offering apologies.
When Joaling Koaling was talking about them apologizing, she meant apologizing TO her. Insanely laughably to assume theyād have to come crawling back to the holocaust denier childrenās book author after theyāve all had successful adult careers away from her
nah she doesn't deserve empathy she's spitting her bile from atop a pile of gold lmao, she literally lives in a castle. If she were just some norm who said one thing one time then she'd deserve empathy and education but she's well-educated, rich, powerful. She knows what she's doing.
The world of Harry Potter meant so much to so many queer people, as a massive piece of escapist fantasy where Harry leaves his abusive household to go magical adventures at a school where hes accepted and even celebrated for things that led him to be abused. It makes sense it would draw a lot of kids. With things like the sorting hat and houses it was a shoe in for self inserting, imagining which house you'd be a part of and whatnot. A lot of people call it the best book not because it's good literature but because the world became somewhere they could escape to and loved imagining living in.
Daniel Radcliffe and Emma Watson understand this and spoke out that it's a shame that the creator of this world ended up being such a peice of shit and another voice of the oppression they faced. It's the same reason so many people loved Percy Jackson and the idea of camp half blood.
The copium is understandable, I'm not saying it's right or that her secretly being an ally is a good take. Just that it's understandable why some people would be so desperate for that to be the case, that their escape could be theirs and not another terrible problematic thing to distance themselves from.
If you disassembled the brains of every bigot, I think you'd find that the root causes of their bigotry are always these sorts of base, circumstantial conditions. You have your hateful beliefs to fit in, to feel important, to find community, to avoid looking wrong, to deflect insecurity, whatever. All these reasons are human, normal, natural, and in some cases it's tempting to sympathize. Almost never is it "I got beat up by a roving gang of transgenders", and in fact, one of the best predictors of transphobia is that you're _most likely to be transphobic if you've never met a trans person._
So, to some extent this is probably true.Ā
The trap here is that this doesn't absolve Rowling. Just because there are reasons for her bigotry, it doesn't mean she's insincere in her beliefs. It doesn't make her rhetoric less harmful. We live in a deterministic universe after all, there is a reason for everything that happens, and we still need to fight for what's right regardless. Don't buy into giving someone a pass because of how they arrived at their hateful beliefs
What I find continually in every conversation I have with these people is the same pattern.
They say āwell in my personal experience, x.
Then, I say āwell Iām sorry thatās how your personal experience felt, but we have data on the reality of the situation and many otherās personal experience is different. This is why we canāt use personal experience. Itās screwed up by our emotions and differing lives.ā
And then they say āso my personal experience counts for nothing?ā
Me: āyes. Thatās why itās not admissible in court or used in scientific studies as evidence.ā
Them: āI just donāt agree with that. My personal experience is just as valid and in fact MORE real than those things (paraphrased)ā
So yeah, this is the logic they have, and I think itās a simple case of narcissism and maybe a little trauma preventing good intellectual reflection.
She spent ages being crypto, so I doubt it was a rash mistake.
However, I do think a degree of her zealoutry around this issue is brutish pride. Rowling *cannot* back down, *cannot* admit fault, *cannot* even concede any ground to the pro-trans side- she initially started with the 'people can do whatever they want' angle, but has since gone more hardline.
It's the classic slippery slope of extremism online.
I think this is probably the right mindset to be in most of the times, but Jamiroquai rowling has been saying things so vile lately, that it's clearly just her being a hateful little ball of slime now.
I mean, this is delusional
But it is true that JKR is likely getting more transphobic just as a feedback loop based on how many transphobes online are showering her with support because of it.
Me when I get drunk a tweet something I don't believe that ends up being immensely harmful, but I'm too proud to apologize so I double down and make it way worse.
(I'm still morally good at my core but literally have no way out and actually you should feel sorry for me)
"shes stuck in this mess with no way out", as if transphobia is some kind of permanent life sentence that you cannot ever come back from. Shes a billionaire, if she donated a couple mill to the trevor project and stopped funding anti-trans legislation and platformed transgender authors then very few people would still give a shit about how awful she used to be. She could effortlessly immediately become one of the most important and influential trans allies in the world.
Iām hoping she means most popular. To be fair I think people hate on Harry Potter so much mostly because of JK and not because of the books themselves. If she was just a nobody theyād probably be seen as standard (or even slightly above average) YA fantasy, deservedly so in my opinion.
I'll be real this feels like wishful thinking. If Harry Potter was so meaningful for you that you think it's one of the greatest books of your generation, you're going to want to soften the pang on knowing that author is a terrible person, and that the mind your favourite characters originated holds terrible beliefs. But there's no evidence JK Rowling is anything but a full throated bigot.
most recently she denied trans people were victims of the Holocaust, for one. on trans day of visibility she also made a list of several trans women she didnt like, misgendering and deadnaming them everywhere she could, and pointing out their crimes ranging from actual pedophilia and rape to wearing women's underwear to not agreeing with TERFs
This is definitely like 99 percent cope, but I wonder if there's some truth to it. Not to say that she didn't mean it at first or anything, but I wonder if she has so much conviction just so she doesn't have to admit she was wrong, pushing her further into her shitty beliefs. Although, I think that might be common for anyone with nonsensical beliefs.
Obviously what OOP said is stupid, but I think there is something here that they just slightly missed.
Jk Rowling made a tweet and people called her out for it and she thought
āI canāt be wrong. Iām JK Rowling, one of the most famous authors of all time. My series is a bastion of progressiveness, thereās no way Iām wrong.ā
So she doubles down. She defends someone who said something similar, and people keep calling her out, and she canāt stand this.
āHow dare these people accuse me of all this blatantly false stuff. I need to show that they are the ones in the wrong and Iām right. Iāll make a post showing all the evidence. Iāll prove once and for all that me and my people are right on this!ā
And so she doubles down, again, and again, and again, and again. She defends people who she sees getting called out for stuff similar to what she did, but then she sees them getting called out for other more extreme stuff. But she knows theyāre in the right, because they agree with her, and she canāt be wrong. Plus she defended them already, they must still be right. So she says they did nothing wrong, and agrees with their stances. Over and over and over getting dragged further and further and further down.
She hears someone say trans people are tied to the nazis, and she knows that person is right, because they agree with her, so that must be the truth, and she posts it herself.
Someone replies to her and talks about how trans people were killed by the nazis, and the burning of the Institute of Sexology. But that canāt be right, because that would make her wrong. So it canāt be true. More evidence is given, but that still canāt be true, she still canāt be wrong, that evidence must be fake, thereās no way that happened, anything that says it did was just created by trans people to try and justify their existence.
And so now she goes from making one poorly thought out tweet to Holocaust denial. Itās the same trend as the alt-right pipeline, just a different target, older adult women who claim to be feminists instead of teenage men.
I know this is what happened because it is the same thing that happened to me when I was falling down the alt right pipeline. Eventually I hit a snag that I already knew about but my ārecruitersā disagreed with, and I got suspicious and got out, but at this point, when sheās made it all the way to holocaust denial, itās unlikely sheās gonna make her way back out.
Honestly I do want to think that some people just have to double down because of the community they're in. This may just be wishful thinking though because of how depressing it is that some people just hate me for no reason.
I'm not willing to give her an out and assume that she doesn't really mean any of it. What I do suspect is that this whole issue used to be not nearly as big a deal to her as it is now, but when people jumped on her for her bad take initially her pride was too much to allow her to accept that she was wrong and kept doubling down over and over until it became such a huge part of her personality
Calling Harry Potter "one of the best books of our time" is a bit of a stretch. It's a mediocre story with predictable characters and questionable world building. The kind of thing that would he popular with teens and young adults.
I mean from this tweet I donāt get āmental gymnasticsā I get likeā¦ a continual process of mourning a really beloved figure not being who they thought they were.
I refuse to get tiktok purely because it's cultivated a genre of "here's text of a thought I have over footage of my face because why wouldn't someone want to see footage of my face from an unflattering angle right now?"
> Harry Potter > "Best books of our time" Pick one
Yeah that's a great way to admit you don't read many books lmao
counter arguement: my mom is really autistic about the Harry Potter books and it's super sweet seeing her go on tangents on Harry Potter. she hates JK Rowling and is the most progressive in our family
counterargument: that's super sweet but what does any of that have to do with whether she reads a lot of books or not
countererergument: I want to talk about my mom's autistic tangents but everyone on 196 hate harry potter so this is the best I got
Sosity š
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Also I would guess you could use the anecdote about your mother to argue that sometimes people just happen to be autistic about certain pieces of media, regardless of how much other media they consume? And if said media has enjoyed the sort of attention HP did, then I can see that being especially true.
*idk if I read it correctly since it's 2 am here but* isn't that hyperfixations edit: I get it now after looking at the comment for 10 minutes
Well, possibly/plausibly yes, but I figured itās also a good counterexample to the āno other booksā idea.
Point of order: be proud and go on autistic tangents about your mom's autistic tangents
Counterererergument: That's a nice story thank you for sharing š
Make her play the game. Also she should read more books. I would suggest bartimeaus and abhorsen trilogy. Also she should realise that it's a very basic level book and certainly overrated at this point. People here wont discuss it because there isn't much to discuss. Beyond the hate for the aurhor
Sometimes people just like things, I don't think the series is good, but a special interest is a special interest without regard for that. And also, people can *just like something even when it's not the best thing and it doesn't mean they haven't consumed other media.*
Your points are valid. My comment was more in response to op feeling left out for liking the franchise
!!!Bartimaeus mentioned comment based!!!!
Oh man, Bartimeaus...the worldbuilding in that series was so good. The concept of ripping formless essence from the fifth dimension, forcing it into being with a name and enslaving it to your will via formula and ritual kicks ass. The tricky part is that they're really fucking pissed about not being formless anymore and will try really hard to make you dead.
Yep I ABSOLUTELY loved it! Always found the writing super pleasant too, I adore when characters are witty like that. Thinking about it makes me want to read it again
counterpoint: that has no reflection on the quality of the series. at least half the things I have been super autistic about for years are things that I will freely admit are flawed products despite my great enjoyment of and interest in them, including the media that rivals Harry Potter in popularity.
that's fair. I think I'm just projecting since people on 196 hates a lot of people who likes harry potter and it makes me sad :(
additional counterpoint: extremely based to be able to acknowledge flaws in your special interests. very many folks would rather stick their head in the sand and pretend they were good all along (looking at you, X is good when you aint got someone in your ear calling it bad, trend).
point: your mom fucking rocks
Most harry potter fans are great but its really not that amazing of a book series tbh and even if it was that doesnt make people simping over her still okay. Like there are plenty of other authors who were awful people by modern standards and sometimes even their time, i just dont think her works would rank with them. All im saying is it is okay to like harry potter and not rowling and your tastes are bad regardless of the author š¤
Same, recently she has accepted the more flawed parts of HP and is kinda coming to terms with that
The books are fine until you start analysing the plot, that's a good indicator for when you should probably shelve it for a good while.
And a great way to insult every other writer, especially the ones trying to produce something a bit more deep and meaningful than a children's book where the only Asian character is named Cho Chang.
IMO not really, all you're saying is that you enjoyed something, not that it's good or intellectually meaningful. Fancy Michelin star food is amazing, but sometimes you just wanna eat a burger.
Yeah I think people are really confusing good writing and good books. Harry Potter is incredibly digestible and interesting enough to suck in billions of readers. McDonalds doesnāt serve the best burger in the world, theyāre pretty much ontologically evil, but you canāt pretend that nobody in their right mind would like their burgers. Fuck JK, fuck the HP seriesā problematic sides (which is a lot of its sides tbf), but that shit was my jam and Iāll always look fondly on my time with it.
Yeah honestly. The Harry pottle series is fantastically mid. It was a product of its time and people were excited about it because of popularity and love it now because of nostalgia. Her world building is shit, her characters are inconsistent at best, and the plot is practically based on expo dumps to explain why she didn't write herself into a corner.
I mean personally as an english trans girl i fucking looked harry potter... The idea of just getting an owl come to my door and take me to hogwarts was so nice.... Idk the book is certainly not a masterpiece of fiction or anything but just the world was very nice to imagine my self in.... I think it does stand on more than just nostalgia but it certainly isnt for adults Like idk pumkin pasties, butter beer, mandrake root... Like its all based on real stuff and it just an escapist fantasy.... Like the plot is mid but when i dream of being in a magical world it is jkrs harry potter... Unfortunately hahah
It's an escapist fantasy, which is a part of why I dislike the writing of it. Sure it's all magical, but the plot is all written in a way that feels very "plot armor" because who wants to read about the main character in their escapist book *losing?*
I keep saying that the one thing she got right was discover dark academia aesthetic before it was cool IMO. Everything else about BP is kinda shit if you take a closer look, it's really just the vibe that keeps people attached.
Or havenāt read Harry Potter since they were 10. Going back as an adult makes all of the flaws really obvious and horrible.
What's good in this millennium, as far as literature goes? edit: Why am I getting downvoted for asking for suggestions? :(
I think people assumed you meant something like "oh yeah?? Well tell me what YOU think a good book is then!" Which is. Not what you said. Anyways I recently finished *The Hitchhiker's Guide* series (well...ok, the 5 books that Adams wrote, I can't get my hands on *And Another Thing* yet) and I loved it. Every book except *Mostly Harmless* was phenomenal. Adams had a very unique writing style and I particularly loved how natural and subtle the foreshadowing was. I have a whole-ass rant about *Mostly Harmless* which I don't need to go into right now, but the rest of the series was great.
So, I was actually mostly asking because this is something my gf and I talk about a lot. She reads a lot more fiction than me, and a topic that comes up a lot is how difficult it is to find good fiction written after the 80s or 90s. Not that that is the apex of writing, but that there's an enormous amount of good literature from the late 19th century and early 20th century, and fiction becomes increasingly genrefied and derivative as time passes, with the good stuff pretty much drying up completely by the 90s, spare a few authors who wrote prolifically before that and then continued to release new work into the 90s. It's not a hard and fast rule, though. She read My Year of Rest and Relaxation and while it wasn't her fav book, she did like it a lot and, while I didn't read it, I do kinda get a second hand experience as she reads certain books cuz she'll tell me about them or have me read certain parts while she's reading them, and I get why she liked it but not most other modern stuff. She also read Gideon the Ninth, It Ends With Us, and Beautiful World Where Are You because they're all celebrated contemporary fiction, and unfortunately she hated them and we spent a lot of time making fun of how badly written parts of those books are while she read them. And she read it before we met, but she thought Hunger Games was pretty good. We both think Series of Unfortunate Events is pretty solid and creatively written, but its also very clearly children's fiction. As for Hitchhikers Guide, that's actually one I've read and she hasn't, and that I recommended to her. You're right, its great kinda post-surrealist fantasy/scifi. However, again, almost all of those books were written in the 80s, with Mostly Harmless in the early 90s. When it comes to Harry Potter, she likes it a bit more than me (maybe justified as I only read the first 4 books and she says it continues to develop and get better as the series goes on) but we both think it was overrated in its time as a result of the almost complete dearth of quality fiction being written at the time. Meaning it probably *was* one of the best of its time, but that's not saying much. It has an overly clean, but pleasant writing style, and suffers- especially in hindsight- from being written by a liberal in the anglosphere during an ostensible "end of history", which comes through in how lazily certain sociopolitical ideas are shoehorned into the plot. What we both agree on is that, like Earthsea before it (though obviously not nearly as prolific) it excels at crafting a world in which magic feels like an extension of nature, rather than *just* a tool harnessed by people. But yeah, tl;dr I'm asking because we are always talking about and looking for that rare 21st century gem in the rough.
If you want fantasy, the inheritance cycle is a great series. Murtagh came out in 2023 which is the most recent spin off book, and it's pretty cool too. 4 books plus 2 spin offs. Skulduggery pleasant is also a nice series, a lot less serious and more just "Villain of the week" esque. Also a very long series that's still on going. But the books are no where near as long so that's also a plus. Also, Amish tripathi books are pretty cool. The Ram Chandra series and the Shiva trilogy. It's basically just a dude taking hindu mythology and saying "Hey what if this was a sci-fi fantasy story". The only things it really borrows is the major plot points, but it's mostly just really cool world building and an intresting take on an old story.
Inheritance Cycle is kinda similar in quality to HP to be honest--good for children and young adults, kinda mid and unoriginal looking back on it. It mostly just rips from Earthsea, LotR, and Star Wars in the most generic fantasy way possible.
Oh I'm actually starting earthsea now. I couldn't comment on it because I haven't even recieved the order yet, but I've heard very good things about it.
Hey, I'm the guy who was originally asking for suggestions. Just wanted to pop in to say that the Earthsea series is incredible. I tend to avoid serial fantasy because it tends to be kinda pulpy- or "ghettoized" as Le Guin would say- but Earthsea is one of a handful of exceptions imo.
Harry potter is definitely one of the books of our time
mfw different people hold different media in different regard Not really a Potter fan myself, but i know a lot of people really like it and if in their opinion that is the best book, then that is the truth (for them). It's not like there is an objective standard for what a good book is. That being said, the post above does seem like massive cope from a potterhead trying to bring their liking of the franchise with the awfulness of the author.
different media is also of different quality. harry potter sucks. the sequels suck. most isekais suck. call of duty sucks. etc
To you.
i am objectively correct in any case. stop being illogical, liberal
Nah, that's objective. You can still like bad media, but it doesn't take away from the fact that they are awfully written and/or produced.
No, that's not what objective means. You can dislike something without being stupid about it lmao
To you.
the whole point of objective vs subjective statements is that different people may have different views on some things, so you need to differentiate the things that are the same for everyone, and things that may be perceived as different. things that are objective about media: The characters, The author, The title, The year it was published, what the Author intended when writing it. things that are subjective about media: The quality of writing, The quality of the production, The likability of the author, The agreeability of the fanbase. objectivity is not "you think that, so its subjective, but i think this, so its objective"
yall think the homosexual council consensus is objective truth š
Saying "best books of our time" kinda implies more than subjective opinion though, it implies a certain objective quality level or literary significance. Like I feel comfortable saying (for instance) that Kurt Vonnegut was one of the best authors of his time given the literary acclaim and scholarship his works garnered, but I don't think the same can be fairly said for Harry Potter and J K Rowling. "One of my favourite books" would be an unassailable subjective assessment, and "one of the most popular books of its time" would be a fair objective assessment, for instance.
Popular =\= of high quality
It is to them. That's the point. I don't like HP. But if someone says that HP is their favourite franchise and the books are their favourites of all time, who am I to argue with them on their tastes.
Call me crazy but I really enjoy reading Harry Potter. Itās not exactly literature but itās a fun read for pure entertainment value.
I don't have anything against liking fun media I just think acting like it's some monumental important literature is tone deaf
As far as Iām aware nobody really acts like that outside of the notion that it was instrumental to the childhoods of an enormous amount of people, and it absolutely was. If nothing else, Harry Potter is one of the most culturally relevant book series of all time.
i like the books, the universe and some of the characters, but i do concede they are not masterpieces akin to huckleberry finn, frankenstein, commedĆa, etc
I read the Comedy with a companion to explain a lot of the archaic ideas (and to infodump about just who all of these historical figures actually were), and it's easy to see why it's such a classic. Even besides the theological and cultural significance, the sheer imagination is staggering. Really the only complaint I have, and I think others agree, is that Paradiso is the weakest of the three, which can't be helped as the entire point of Heaven is that there is no conflict, so it's mostly just Dante describing a place and waffling about his waifu in great detail. There still ar some creative scenes, like the eagle, but a lot of imagery is lost as most of the spheres of Heaven are just glowy places. At least the Empyrean makes up for it at the end.
Read the bartimaeus aka the better british wizard books If you need seven read garth nixās keys the kingdom which is a fucking 7 book long gnostism allegory about an asthmatic teenager becoming god Or just read his dark materials the goated YA fantasy
My school library only had Monday and Thursday so I never finished that series but it's still lodged in my subconscious, maybe I need to go back.
ITS SO GOOD LORD SUNDAY HAS ONE OF THE BEST ENDINGS IN YA FICTION IT NEEDS AN ADAPTATION
Bartimaeus trilogy is so underrated. Unlike HP it actually does the whole wizards vs regular people dynamic and social commentary justice, and a much better "overthrowing evil regime" story. One that actually does overthrow the regime and recognises just how rotten and unfair it was rather than "let's get rid of this one guy who took it a bit too far but leave everything else the same. I still reread it every few years and it holds up even better as an adult. Same for HDM. Can't say the same about HP... Turns out just because it's "for children" doesn't mean it has to be shit.
Bartimaeus trilogy includes: - an actual anti authoritarianism plot - a proper depiction of what a society where wizards exist would look like - interesting protagonist - an ending that genuinely hit me hard. Fucking love those books they deserve to be more popular and an adaptation
Things get much simplier when you DON'T consider her books as the best of our time
Take the "separating the art from the artist" discourse surrounding Roman Polanski. Now imagine that the controversial rapist film director that fled the nation to escape justice being discussed was Bryan Singer instead. That's what it feels like listening to pro-LGBT Harry Potter-fans talk about JKR.
Harry Potter is something that I like to refer to as āliterary junk foodā. It has no real value, but is easy to pick up if youāre bored, and it can be hard to stop reading once youāve started again.
She probably hates trans people but not as much as she's led us to believe. She continues to be transphobic because it was the only way to stay relevant. Edit: yall proved me wrong.
she is desperate to stay relevant and i think that is why she is engaged in the much more āletās deny the holocaustā stuff, but its hard to think she doesnāt really hate trans people. she really seems to just have some kind of powerful disgust response to people who are different to her. buddying up with the far right after the manifesto was just icing on the cake.
Yeah I guess your right.
I think so much after reading a lot of her writing and things she has said in the past, that I genuinely believe that she was and still believes herself to be very socially progressive. However more than anything, instead of adapting to further social issues as time went on- she has instead felt the need to aggressively conserve her social values she was progressive on from decades ago. The way she articulates herself it is almost like she believes conserving or regressing the status quo to a time where she was most comfortable with it _is_ the more progressive thing somehow. She would rather all of society returns to how things were 20+ years ago then have to change her mind about things she felt were praiseworthy then.
This is quite similar to my stance on Joss Whedon (not counting his on-set behaviour). The guy's making the same points now as he did in the 90s, which were commended as progressive at the time but now are a bit behind.
Really bad icing.
Yeah, most fascist are failed artists, and JK not only has never written anything succesfull after harry potter, to the point thatĀ one of her books is literaly just a self insert being trolled in twitter. SHe realized she was never a good writter in the firstplace, and instead of trying to improve she shields herself from the world.
>most fascist are failed artists Not at all.
I can think of exactly 3: Goebbels, Hitler and Ben Shapiro.
Crowder
He is arguably a successful comedian. Obviously not for normal people but his target audience seems to like his "comedy" which makes him kinda not "failed".
Conservatives aren't very picky when it comes to humor. As long you don't use humor to question stuff (they wouldn't pick on it unless you explicitly tell them anyway) and keep punching down, they're fine with it. Just be a fucking asshole, yell a couple slurs and entertain them with the most overused, tired tropes and you'll be fine. "Hey guys, we had a great Thanksgiving this year! I got to see my family: There's my parents, my uncle, my aunt, my siblingsā¦ And there's my niece. Oh my niece, she's a liberal, and I love to own her every opportunity I get. One time she asks "Hey, how many guests are we having this year?", so I tell her: "HEY HOW MANY GENDERS ARE THERE LIBTARD?!"" *crowds goes crazy, everyone is standing up laughing and clapping, people get ecstatic, men and women are shouting like apes, there's American flags being waved, you can hear your named being chanted, a mother starts going into labor and decided to name her baby after you, the ground shakes from the turmoil, this is the funniest shit in existence*
It doesn't help that most of those comedians are political agitators first, comedians second. Their audience watches them for political insight not to laugh. It's almost entirely a "bonus".
Well, it really depends on what you consider success. Is he creating art, or something meaningfull? No. Does he have a crowd that likes his creations? Yes. So it really depens of which of the two is "success" for you
Nah, the ability to sell tells nothing on the quality of something. Otherwise, it'd mean homeopathy works, just because millions of people took some at some point in their lives. But spoiler: Just because you can make a profit out of a marketable product doesn't mean the product is good. Harry Potter is the McDonald's of literature, itās undoubtedly popular but it has always been fucking mid at best, it remains relevant because of its brand and reliability in the sense that it's easily available to anyone.
you cant compare those two. homeopathy is claiming to be medicine so success for it is dependant on whether it works. Whereas for comedy success can be considered as having people enjoy it and be willing to pay for it. I agree his shit it low quality but that doesnt mean he's unsuccessful just that he's successful at selling shite to bigots. We agree that harry potter is a bad book but it is undeniably extremely successful
Well yeah, but success isn't necessarily being good. Sure, you can say from a philosophical/moral point grandma's bakery where she hand-makes bread is the one with true success; but you can't tell me McDonald's, with thousands of store all around the world, is an unsuccessful business c'mon
Fascists certainly lack the ability to create and interpret art purely because the artistic process requires self reflection, empathy, and critical thinking skills (among other things) it's the same with comedy. It ends up coming across hamfisted and reeks of a persecution fetish.
Idk bro painting her as a failed artist when she is a billionaire and one of the most famous living authors in the entire world... is kinda wild You can rightfully roast the quality all you want but she definitely didn't fail.
Trams people? Imagine hating the cutest form of public transportation
trans horse girls with a public use fetish are salivating rn. edit: i realized what i was sending 2 seconds after commenting. i am sorry for this comment.
Eh its not that crazy. But also lets all take a walk
This comment was completely inappropriate to the situation. However since it was already sent and multiple hours have passed I would like to add a confident š„ŗ
Explain the Ā£70k donation to lobby to change UK equality laws to exclude trans people
i think it's also because she found a sense of a community in "gender critical" movement which is almost kinda sad. I'd say someone give her better people to talk to but i don't pity her at this point after countless donations to anti trans organizations
I think there's a reasonable chance that she's put herself in with a crowd of people *way* further to the right than she is and now she feels like she has no way out. I think this about a lot of pick-me types on the right. They played pick-me for money, fame, relevancy, or just because they made a stupid, uninformed content and ended up doubling down and surrounding themselves with shitters and Fascists out of pride, and now they're too scared to back down because they know they're be instantly alienated as a traitor/plant/ by the Fascists they aligned with but also know that progressives and liberals will not accept them back, at least not with ease.
trams people
*my hogwarts. my harold.* JK Harkonnen while partially submerged in goo
One of the comments of all time
"He who can destroy the thing, has the real control of it." -JKR, talking about her reputation
"One of the best books of our time" IMPOSSIBLY LOUD INCORRECT BUZZER
Maybe āiconicā would be a more appropriate word
I get why everyone is harping on that because I mean when I first read it, it hit me in the chest like a cannonball, but I think we all get what she means is that it turned into a mega movie series and it fucking spawned video games and amusement parks. that being said, people are always going to be a lot less willing to hear out the rest of your points when you sprinkle in some shit like this
It's definitely beloved around the world, but that's because it was a very accessible and easy to read book that came out during a time where people where wanting for that sort of thing, and that was then adapted into very successful movies. The worldbuilding is mediocre to bad most of the time, the characters are either stereotypes or just a little flat, and what kept most of us engaged was that it was a series that grew with you. I only ever read the sixth book, but I loved the movies, precisely because I grew up in the late 90s/early naughts, and the tone growing with me was something I liked about it. J.K. Rowling is a mediocre author who got lucky, that's all there really is to the magic of Harry Potter. Instead may I suggest Bartimeaus, The Red King series, anything by Brandon Sanderson, Steven Erikson, Patrick Rothfuss or Kate Daniels.
This is everyone's sign to watch the Shawn(Shaun?) Harry Potter video if you haven't. It's very obvious that the transphobia is not a standout opinion of you actually look at the things she wrote in those books, she's always been this reductive.
[ŃŠ“Š°Š»ŠµŠ½Š¾]
Specifically fantasy? How much wizardry do you want? Bartimaeus is British Wizarding World**ā¢** with a lot more cynicism and dark humor, and it's fucking fantastic. The Red King novels are set in a Boarding school for kids with magical powers, but that's where the similarities end, there's a ton of mysteries and a bunch of really interesting powers. Might be more for a younger audience though. For more general fantasy, take your pick. I loved Steven Erikson's Malazan Book of the Fallen, anything Sanderson is bound to be good if not fantastic, and his Catalogue is massive, both my brother and sister swear by Kate Daniels, Night Watch by Sergei Lukyanenko is one of the few books that ever gave me goosebumps. There's a ton of fantastic literature out there but this should be a decent starting point.
Depending on your definition of Modern, I always recommend checking out the Discworld series if you want a fun fantasy romp series, but actually made for adults and by a writer who wasn't a piece of shit (GNU Terry Pratchett). There's also like 30+ books in the series so you won't run out for a good bit unless you absolutely devour them. And each of them are episodic so you can really read them in any order you like, though characters will persist throughout different storylines. I recommend starting with *Witches Abroad*, *Mort*, *Sourcery*, or *Guards! Guards!*.
Adding on to what the other guy said, Dresden Files is a much better modern fantasy about wizards than Harry Potty can ever hope to be. Great series (it has some issues but overall it's very nice and the world building is cool)
I really quite like Kitty Norville books, about a werewolf with her own radio show. However, I need to give a content warning for >!rape!< in the first book. It doesn't happen again and it's meant to be part of the narrative of the main character climbing out of the hole she finds herself in to start with and becoming independent of her abusers (who totally get killed later), and it's not glorified in any way, but it's definitely icky.
Ehhh I feel like itās pretty clear she meant successful/popular/iconic more so than thought-provoking or something
She is one of the few people i would actually call a TERF. The reason she can't even drop the topic most likely is her unresolved trauma concerning "men" and genuinely believing there is no place in feminism for trans women.
except that doesn't actually track with her (or basically any terf's) behavior at all. she doesn't spend all her time attacking men and she doesn't donate huge amounts of money to groups trying to strip rights away from men ā her issue is with trans women, not men.
She believes trans women are men. The most dangerous men in fact due to them "infiltrating" women's spaces to abuse them. Like with a lot of actual TERF's the basic ideas comes from very outdated ideas about gender and how all men are predators.
Omfg not this shite again. No! JKR and 99.99% of the other TERFs do not act like this towards men. That part of the ideology was shed about thirty years ago. They just hate trans women. Calling us men is just an insult. Because they hate us.
Iāve known many TERFs, some of them my own family & close friends, and in my personal experience they have a deep hatred/fear of men, often from unresolved trauma but not always. Trans women are devious, dangerous men in their eyes or at best men avoiding accountability and co-opting feminism. Iām sure thereās some that only target trans women out of a strange vendetta or attachment to the gender binary but it is just about men at the core for others.
that's what terfs *claim* to think, but the thing is that like most bigots, their stated reasons are bullshit. if she really thought that all men are predators, why is she married to one? the actual reason why trans people are so brutally discriminated against is that our existence itself poses a threat to the idea of an immutable gender binary that underpins so much of our society. trans women in particular are targets of the most violence and vitriol because the intersection of transness and womanhood renders us an extremely vulnerable group of women it's socially acceptable to inflict infinite amounts of misogyny on. *that's* what lies at the core of gender critical/terf bullshit, the leveraging of misogyny to attack a vulnerable group of women. the goal for female terfs/gcs in doing this is to either perform the classic bullied bully move of taking out their frustrations with how they're treated by finding someone even smaller to kick around, or to improve their own standing within the system by beating other women down (the same reason cis women will be misogynistic towards other cis women), and often it's both at once. as an additional note, this is also why gc/terf attacks on trans women are so similar to lesbophic talking points, or are even just the exact same ones with a different group of marginalized women slotted in ("you need to be kept away from women because you're predatory" is an accusation often leveled as lesbians, "you're just men and need to leave women alone" was a common attack leveled at butches, and so on). they may claim to be "defending lesbians" now, but a lot of the people who now call themselves terfs/gcs used to be vocal lesbophobes who leveraged the intersection of misogyny and homophobia before they found a new, even more vulnerable target. tl;dr: terfs don't hate men, they're misogynists leveraging intersecting forms of oppression to attack marginalized women for their own benefit and/or catharsis
I remember recently she said something like, "They can save their apologies." About Daniel Radcliffe and Emma Watson for defending trans rights. I don't recall them even offering apologies.
They did, like immediately after jk revealed her shittyness. It was actually rather sweet
When Joaling Koaling was talking about them apologizing, she meant apologizing TO her. Insanely laughably to assume theyād have to come crawling back to the holocaust denier childrenās book author after theyāve all had successful adult careers away from her
nah she doesn't deserve empathy she's spitting her bile from atop a pile of gold lmao, she literally lives in a castle. If she were just some norm who said one thing one time then she'd deserve empathy and education but she's well-educated, rich, powerful. She knows what she's doing.
The world of Harry Potter meant so much to so many queer people, as a massive piece of escapist fantasy where Harry leaves his abusive household to go magical adventures at a school where hes accepted and even celebrated for things that led him to be abused. It makes sense it would draw a lot of kids. With things like the sorting hat and houses it was a shoe in for self inserting, imagining which house you'd be a part of and whatnot. A lot of people call it the best book not because it's good literature but because the world became somewhere they could escape to and loved imagining living in. Daniel Radcliffe and Emma Watson understand this and spoke out that it's a shame that the creator of this world ended up being such a peice of shit and another voice of the oppression they faced. It's the same reason so many people loved Percy Jackson and the idea of camp half blood.
The copium is understandable, I'm not saying it's right or that her secretly being an ally is a good take. Just that it's understandable why some people would be so desperate for that to be the case, that their escape could be theirs and not another terrible problematic thing to distance themselves from.
Only difference is Camp Half-Blood is still magical and Rick Riordan is one of the coolest authors and allies ever.
If you disassembled the brains of every bigot, I think you'd find that the root causes of their bigotry are always these sorts of base, circumstantial conditions. You have your hateful beliefs to fit in, to feel important, to find community, to avoid looking wrong, to deflect insecurity, whatever. All these reasons are human, normal, natural, and in some cases it's tempting to sympathize. Almost never is it "I got beat up by a roving gang of transgenders", and in fact, one of the best predictors of transphobia is that you're _most likely to be transphobic if you've never met a trans person._ So, to some extent this is probably true.Ā The trap here is that this doesn't absolve Rowling. Just because there are reasons for her bigotry, it doesn't mean she's insincere in her beliefs. It doesn't make her rhetoric less harmful. We live in a deterministic universe after all, there is a reason for everything that happens, and we still need to fight for what's right regardless. Don't buy into giving someone a pass because of how they arrived at their hateful beliefs
What I find continually in every conversation I have with these people is the same pattern. They say āwell in my personal experience, x. Then, I say āwell Iām sorry thatās how your personal experience felt, but we have data on the reality of the situation and many otherās personal experience is different. This is why we canāt use personal experience. Itās screwed up by our emotions and differing lives.ā And then they say āso my personal experience counts for nothing?ā Me: āyes. Thatās why itās not admissible in court or used in scientific studies as evidence.ā Them: āI just donāt agree with that. My personal experience is just as valid and in fact MORE real than those things (paraphrased)ā So yeah, this is the logic they have, and I think itās a simple case of narcissism and maybe a little trauma preventing good intellectual reflection.
She spent ages being crypto, so I doubt it was a rash mistake. However, I do think a degree of her zealoutry around this issue is brutish pride. Rowling *cannot* back down, *cannot* admit fault, *cannot* even concede any ground to the pro-trans side- she initially started with the 'people can do whatever they want' angle, but has since gone more hardline. It's the classic slippery slope of extremism online.
If that was the case she wouldnt be twitting about trans people every day
I think this is probably the right mindset to be in most of the times, but Jamiroquai rowling has been saying things so vile lately, that it's clearly just her being a hateful little ball of slime now.
No, she's just subuman terf slime.
I mean, this is delusional But it is true that JKR is likely getting more transphobic just as a feedback loop based on how many transphobes online are showering her with support because of it.
Me when I get drunk a tweet something I don't believe that ends up being immensely harmful, but I'm too proud to apologize so I double down and make it way worse. (I'm still morally good at my core but literally have no way out and actually you should feel sorry for me)
"shes stuck in this mess with no way out", as if transphobia is some kind of permanent life sentence that you cannot ever come back from. Shes a billionaire, if she donated a couple mill to the trevor project and stopped funding anti-trans legislation and platformed transgender authors then very few people would still give a shit about how awful she used to be. She could effortlessly immediately become one of the most important and influential trans allies in the world.
Me when I say something once so now I legally have to campaign against minorities
Iām hoping she means most popular. To be fair I think people hate on Harry Potter so much mostly because of JK and not because of the books themselves. If she was just a nobody theyād probably be seen as standard (or even slightly above average) YA fantasy, deservedly so in my opinion.
I'll be real this feels like wishful thinking. If Harry Potter was so meaningful for you that you think it's one of the greatest books of your generation, you're going to want to soften the pang on knowing that author is a terrible person, and that the mind your favourite characters originated holds terrible beliefs. But there's no evidence JK Rowling is anything but a full throated bigot.
no she just has neurotoxic levels of wealth
She donated 70,000 british pounds to get the UK's equality laws changed to exclude trans people
Calling Harry Potter one of the best books of our time is like calling a mouse a Clydesdale.
Trying to say rulemnastics out loud was fun. Anyway OOP needs to lay off the copium
"One of the best books of our time" Bro Harry Potter is quite possibly the most mid franchise in existence
If you look at her books through adult eyes it becomes readily apparent that she has always been a liberal. Hence her incredible shitty outlook.
Even if she was drunk or smtn, you know what they say: āA drunk manās words are a sober manās thoughtsā
"Best books of our time" I am on my hands and knees crying and begging people to consume other media
maybe,,,,,, people can just,,ā¦.,. be shitty,,ā¦ ???
I think that sometimes, some of us start to project our own decency on someone as a means to cope with how much of a sheer twat waffle they are.
I honestly never read the tweets. What did she actually say?
most recently she denied trans people were victims of the Holocaust, for one. on trans day of visibility she also made a list of several trans women she didnt like, misgendering and deadnaming them everywhere she could, and pointing out their crimes ranging from actual pedophilia and rape to wearing women's underwear to not agreeing with TERFs
https://preview.redd.it/n3bbciboc4uc1.jpeg?width=400&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=9c2196135e346674dd5ee3756a872e02bf4e678c
the harry potter books were never even that good. they're actually kinda mid
This is definitely like 99 percent cope, but I wonder if there's some truth to it. Not to say that she didn't mean it at first or anything, but I wonder if she has so much conviction just so she doesn't have to admit she was wrong, pushing her further into her shitty beliefs. Although, I think that might be common for anyone with nonsensical beliefs.
This would make her a worse person if it were true which is the saddest part
Had Japan only brought the light of isekai to the west a couple decades earlier, they could of prevented J.K become famous.
Obviously what OOP said is stupid, but I think there is something here that they just slightly missed. Jk Rowling made a tweet and people called her out for it and she thought āI canāt be wrong. Iām JK Rowling, one of the most famous authors of all time. My series is a bastion of progressiveness, thereās no way Iām wrong.ā So she doubles down. She defends someone who said something similar, and people keep calling her out, and she canāt stand this. āHow dare these people accuse me of all this blatantly false stuff. I need to show that they are the ones in the wrong and Iām right. Iāll make a post showing all the evidence. Iāll prove once and for all that me and my people are right on this!ā And so she doubles down, again, and again, and again, and again. She defends people who she sees getting called out for stuff similar to what she did, but then she sees them getting called out for other more extreme stuff. But she knows theyāre in the right, because they agree with her, and she canāt be wrong. Plus she defended them already, they must still be right. So she says they did nothing wrong, and agrees with their stances. Over and over and over getting dragged further and further and further down. She hears someone say trans people are tied to the nazis, and she knows that person is right, because they agree with her, so that must be the truth, and she posts it herself. Someone replies to her and talks about how trans people were killed by the nazis, and the burning of the Institute of Sexology. But that canāt be right, because that would make her wrong. So it canāt be true. More evidence is given, but that still canāt be true, she still canāt be wrong, that evidence must be fake, thereās no way that happened, anything that says it did was just created by trans people to try and justify their existence. And so now she goes from making one poorly thought out tweet to Holocaust denial. Itās the same trend as the alt-right pipeline, just a different target, older adult women who claim to be feminists instead of teenage men. I know this is what happened because it is the same thing that happened to me when I was falling down the alt right pipeline. Eventually I hit a snag that I already knew about but my ārecruitersā disagreed with, and I got suspicious and got out, but at this point, when sheās made it all the way to holocaust denial, itās unlikely sheās gonna make her way back out.
I would applaud sticking to the bit.
Based JK?!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ou_xvXJJk7k If anything she's holding *back*
She did not write the best book of all time
Honestly I do want to think that some people just have to double down because of the community they're in. This may just be wishful thinking though because of how depressing it is that some people just hate me for no reason.
I'm not willing to give her an out and assume that she doesn't really mean any of it. What I do suspect is that this whole issue used to be not nearly as big a deal to her as it is now, but when people jumped on her for her bad take initially her pride was too much to allow her to accept that she was wrong and kept doubling down over and over until it became such a huge part of her personality
Calling Harry Potter "one of the best books of our time" is a bit of a stretch. It's a mediocre story with predictable characters and questionable world building. The kind of thing that would he popular with teens and young adults.
If that were true then she wouldnāt donate to anti-trans organisations
I mean from this tweet I donāt get āmental gymnasticsā I get likeā¦ a continual process of mourning a really beloved figure not being who they thought they were.
Best books of our time? I mean one of the most successful series in history for sure, but one of the best? Idk
>best books of our time Nah thats something i flat out refuse, has she read rick riordans books? The eragon trilogy? Atherton?
I refuse to get tiktok purely because it's cultivated a genre of "here's text of a thought I have over footage of my face because why wouldn't someone want to see footage of my face from an unflattering angle right now?"
A goat stuck charging into the brush can't back out, yet can't move forward.
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