“J.K. Rowling gave us Harry Potter; she gave us this world,” said Renae McBrian, a young adult author who volunteers for the fan site MuggleNet. “But we created the fandom, and we created the magic and community in that fandom. That is ours to keep.”...ADDED:
For Talia Franks, who is nonbinary and works with an activist group called the Harry Potter Alliance, Ms. Rowling’s comments were disturbing and demoralizing. But they said that they won’t have a problem continuing to write their fan fiction (where queer characters abound), attend Wizard Rock concerts and participate in the online Black Girls Create community, where they often discuss “Harry Potter.”
“I don’t need J.K. Rowling at all,” Mx. Franks said.
This is the most absurdly biased piece, which cannot even explore the core issue Rowling was discussing. This is why the NYT is becoming unreadable. Woke dreck like this. https://t.co/2OgGY5sIQV
— Andrew Sullivan (@sullydish) June 13, 2020
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57 comments:
Well good. I'm glad they've got that all worked out.
I love that people are free to create fantasy worlds that can survive on their own. The problem we are having is that these people are no longer able or willing to separate their fantasies from reality.
Harry Potter books are a bit overrated anyway.
“I don’t need J.K. Rowling at all,” Mx. Franks said."
Except for crating the characters and stories in the first place.
Squatters.
I am Laslo.
So, is it all right to listen Wagner and Michael Jackson songs? Trying to understand the artist vs. art rules these days. It's so confusing.
War of the Witches. May the one with the best powers win.
This is the enemy.
This is what they care about.
I know we're not supposed to shoot children.
But they're vicious.
Waving wands to cast spells of making.
Like violently delusional schizophrenics.
What shall we do in the face of such foes?
Give them to God.
Let him sort them out.
Only he can.
Others felt that they could simply turn away from the politics of the real world and focus on what’s happening in the wizarding world.
Or maybe, NYT, they’re just tolerant of diverse opinions, and don’t believe “politics of the real world” should be about ostracism and blacklisting?
Copyright is a great thing. Thank you Founding Fathers. And DIS for DMCA. JK’s heirs and devises also thank you.
“J.K. Rowling gave us Harry Potter; she gave us this world,” said Renae McBrian, a young adult author who volunteers for the fan site MuggleNet. “But we created the fandom, and we created the magic and community in that fandom. That is ours to keep.”...
Haha. That sounds exactly like how every non-western person is treating the western world right now
Lots of mentally unstable people seem especially drawn to the "Harry Potter" franchise.
“I don’t need J.K. Rowling at all,”
Tone deaf to the max. Does she need Tolstoy? Spike Lee? Oprah? I don't need any of them. That says way more about me than the artists, doesn't it?
Rowling? I never read anything of hers.
I put my foot in my mouth at a family gathering. In the height of the Harry Potter series. One 40 something guy said he read the first one. It was a fast read and he really enjoyed it.
I said without thinking, "Of course its a fast read, its written for 10 year olds."
The larger point, while I don't read Rowling, She has probably done more to get kids into literature than any contemporary author. But what some person that is desperately trying jam their personal delusion into reality is supposed to be important?
Besides, its entertaining when the left eat their own. All the while thinking they themselves are immune from the same happening to them.
When you only agree 99.97% of the time with the official Lefist narrative.
Was just reading an article on "racist" Magic:The Gathering cards. The article and most of the comments are in full-blown hysteria mode. Ascribing the worst motivations to things that rational people don't even see a problem with is going to end well.
Circle jerks are the best kind of jerks.
“I don’t need J.K. Rowling at all,” Mx. Franks said.
What have you done for me lately?
Weren’t these books written for children?
How dare she not echo the thoughts and feelings of everyone who benefited from her work!
Maybe they could,you know, read another book?
I never got interested in her books. I think it says a lot about this generation that they live in fantasy literature and are such fans of "Hunger Games" and "Game of Thrones." Now, they are trying to turn reality into fantasy.
Sure, she has money. So no harm,no foul, right?
Hey, here's an ides: let's hound her in public. So what, she might have to live in isolation, but the furnishings will be plush.
Gawd the far left are the most insensitive louts imaginable.
Hey, guys - you didn't build that!
Harry Potter should be starting on his way out of copyright. The person who invents the coronavirus vaccine gets 20 years to exploit it, there's no reason that the inventor of fictional characters should get 100. Perpetual copyright is just feeding enormous media companies and their Hollywood spawn.
“Non binary” until it comes to thought. Then it’s 100% us vs them. Just hope “Us” doesn’t decide you’re one of “Them.”
“Non binary” until it comes to thought. Then it’s 100% us vs them. Just hope “Us” doesn’t decide you’re one of “Them.”
Mx. Franks is nonbinary, and she has a problem with JK Rowlings words, but she'll manage to still be a fan of the books, just not the author.
Do the writers at the Times ever read their own words and wonder about the world they're creating?
As for Mx. Franks, you can be sure that when the totalitarians get done attacking traditional America, they'll find the nonbinary people a simple next target. No one will be considered 'clean'. No one is every clean. Everything must go. Except those in charge, of course. Too bad the Mx. Franks of the world didn't get around to studying any 20th century history. They might have seen this movie before.
I like the Harry Potter books. They have heroes. Some of the heroes are boys - normal boys, not boys-plus-a-woke-characteristic. Some of the heroes were born with a disproportionately large talent that others don't have or have less of, for which they don't apologize, which they doesn't try to reject or discount, and which they work to develop. Some were born with less of that talent, which they still strive to develop to its utmost, but they recognize that they're not as good at the talent as others and seek to develop their other talents - they don't ever spend a moment complaining about the injustice that some got more of the talent than others or demanding that the more talented be somehow handicapped to bring everyone's talent to the same level. Even the adults don't try to do that. And in the end, with great sacrifice (for a YA series), the good side wins.
It actually amazes me that Rowling is as left as she is, given all that.
“I don’t need J.K. Rowling at all,” Mx. Franks said.
Guess who doesn't need Talia Franks at all, who is not non-binary?
Everybody.
I don’t need her at all said someone who has built her life around the woman's thoughts.
Actually, Mx. Franks, you very much need J.K. Rowling. Rowling has the legal right to shut down derivative works, very much including "fan fiction", in almost every country on Earth.
(The exceptions are Cape Verde, East Timor, Eritrea, Ethiopia, Iraq, Iran, Kiribati, Marshall Islands, Nauru, Palau, San Marino, Somalia, and Tuvalu.)
What does Mx. mean?
First time I've seen that.
DDB
He/Him/Conservative/Straight/White/Nebraskan but not Husker/Creighton/Hair challenged/Screenwriter, "Frankenstein, Part II"
What does Mx. mean?
Mexico.
Temujin said...Do the writers at the Times ever read their own words and wonder about the world they're creating?
Used to, but recently they were all pushed out.
Mx Franks is neither fish nor bicycle.
Can JK Rowling exert a copyright claim against fan fiction?
This is why it’s important to cancel people before they get rich.
“We don’t need JK Rowling,” xe said. I’m sure that fundamental cognitive dissonance will be no problem for xer the rest of xer life!
I was a big fan of Isaac Asimov and Frank Herbert and many other lesser Sci-Fi authors. However, the Harry Potter series never appealed to me. I watched a bit of one of the movies and it confirmed by choice. It seems overly childish and simple.
I think "Mx." means that the author is non-binary. Get with the times Begley, you cis-gendered old fogey.
You know, I was a big fan of Arthur C Clarke but finding out he went to Sri Lanka because he was a pedophile and could have access to young boys was it for me. I've never read another one of his books
What is it about fans?
The problem is, in part, that many of these people are obsessives and read nothing else. So all that is worth knowing must be contained in the ouvre, or the author. Insane people are usually far more trouble than they are worth.
I can discount Tolstoy's world view, and not be quite in sync with his personal habits, but appreciate his works. And the same for any anti-Tolstoy, should there be such (Ernst Junger?). This gives us all, author and reader, leave to be human.
I like the Harry Potter books. Rowling created, after the first three books had made her rich and famous, Rita Skeeter, a journalist who made up details and skewed everything to fit her narrative. She wasn't evil, just going for more angst and drama, generally embarrassing Harry and his friends, sometimes even turning people against him. In the wizarding world The Daily Prophet generally got the story wrong until half the world had seen the truth with their own eyes.
Thus I'd had high hopes that the Potter generation would have been much more savvy media consumers. Alas, I was wrong.
These are childrens books, and in themselves quite harmless.
The only point of adult interest is the background politico-social themes of the last few of the "Harry Potter" series, which are quite libertarian, which are unusual in context. The last three or four of these are however quite a slog, as kids books go, and I'm surprised the fans tolerated them.
"Hunger Games" is extremely interesting in its premises, which are in effect a manifesto for the American "deplorables" party - that is, there isn't a hairs difference between these and the recent work of Angelo Codevilla. If someone wanted to say outright that these are political novels they would be justified in doing so.
This doesn't make them complex, or good literature.
Rita Skeeter was unavailable for comment.
Rita Skeeter changed her name to Brian Stelter and got hired by CNN.
If Harry Potter is cancelled, what books will millennials have left?
I know an earnest young radical type. The only fiction she appears to have read are the Harry Potter books and The Handmaid's Tale.
Of course, that cultural ignorance is why they are so willing to deface statues of abolitionists and Union soldiers.
Congrats, educational establishment, for creating a couple of generations who leave college dumber then before.
in particular, the capital, is roughly contiguous with boulder or denver, the former capital in district 6, now the maze runner, that really was a slog, but there is a lesson here, katniss the relucatant heroine ultimately is the tool of rebel leader coin, who arranges an atrocity, akin to the massacre outside the tauride gates, to depose the despot, snow,
Not just the NYT, Andrew. I subscribed to WaPo for decades. I subscribed to the Atlantic, even Rolling Stone, for years at a time. No more.
I can't remember the last time I read any of these woke rags for anything but comedic value.
I wonder if they realize just how phallic the thrusting of "magic wands" at others is?
Once again the Left makes claims to virtue without making any sacrifices.
You know, I was a big fan of Arthur C Clarke but finding out he went to Sri Lanka because he was a pedophile and could have access to young boys was it for me. I've never read another one of his books
I was taught to separate the man from his work. I can appreciate something created by a man I despise, and I can hate something created by someone I like. I evaluate each independently. So yes, Clarke is detestable, and any discussion of him must include his depredations. However his work has value still.
At least you back your convictions with some sacrifice. These fools want to savage Rowling while enjoying and appropriating her work.
Four women cast "Expecto Patronum"; four silvery shrews appear.
The lesson is that liking something and being a "fan" can be quite different things.
A lot of these folks are organizing their entire social lives around online communities that were originally fan sites. The Harry Potter books are the motivation for the sites, but don't really govern day to day interactions. There's a lot of fan created fiction out there, so in principle you could be a "Harry Potter Fan" who seldom reads anything by Rowling.
I admit, I've never understood the appeal of Harry Potter. For kids? Yeah. But I see way too many adults - typically those from the left side of the spectrum - making references, cites and acting like it's some kind of Bible.
I was buying my daughter one of the Potter books, on its first day of sales, of course, at a bookstore. The cashier saw my selection, and said, "I don't know about these books, aren't they full of magic?"
I responded, "Think of them as a modern version of Kipling's "Stalky & Company," books about kids in boarding school in England. With magic wands."
She laughed, and said, "Well, that makes it all OK, then." I paid for the book and left, thinking I'd converted at least one old woman to a position of enlightened enjoyment of JK Rowling's books.
"This is why the NYT is becoming unreadable. Woke dreck like this."
Woke dreck is what its audience wants, and as recent events prove beyond doubt, what the NYT intends to deliver. My only quibble with Sullivan's comment concerns the tense of the verb -- the NYT is not 'becoming' unreadable, it has been unreadable for a while now, unless of course your taste runs to woke dreck.
AA's blog abut the NYT attack on Wintour is the flip side of woke dreck -- celebrity worship, with the understanding that the worshippers can be fickle. But it's still just dreck.
The problem for those of us who can't bear to support the NYT is finding an alternative source of news.
I admit, I've never understood the appeal of Harry Potter.
I tried, and couldn't read them, and I love to read. I'm pretty sure I haven't seen all of the movies, which were OK.
As a teacher it was pleasing to see kids picking up books and reading. Hunger Games had the same effect.
As for the story of Harry Potter, I actually kind of like it. The sidekick gets the girl, and the true hero turns out to be a sociopathic incel who was the asshole everyone hated for most of the series.
Just dunk Rowling and see if she floats.
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