People who hate jk Rowling have gotten so comfortable demonizing her (and also have such poor reading comprehension and critical thinking skills in general) that they will literally backdate their contempt for her and act like her writing was bad just because they don’t like it anymore
They’ll take things from the HP books that were clearly intentional writing choices and act like they were mistakes or things she did wrong
“She was such a coward for never saying Dumbledore was gay in the books”
So true bestie! At a time where books with gay characters would literally be banned from schools and public libraries in the uk (section 28) she just completely coincidentally wrote him as flamboyant, eccentric, mysterious, oddly lonely, intensely private, estranged from his only living family, openly hated by conservatives, criticized for making his school too inclusive, consistently choosing to employ social undesirables at great personal risk, never married or partnered, and suspiciously close with his best friend that he had a tragic falling out with
“She was so racist for naming the only Asian character Cho Chang / giving the only Indian characters the surname Patil / giving a black character the surname Shacklebolt”
There are so many ways to transliterate names from Asian languages into English, let’s not pretend that a white author in the nineties couldn’t have done a lot worse than choosing safe and extremely common names from other cultures rather than risking making something up. Also a huge amount of the names in the book are silly or goofy or specific to people’s skills or jobs, and a TON are alliterative. I’ve seen people say jk essentially named her “ching-chong” and quite frankly i think they’re the racist ones for even suggesting it
Also after centuries of the global slave trade of African people are we really supposed to act like the only acceptable surnames their descendants are allowed are the ones they remember from their homes or the names they married into or the names of their former masters? Is it really impossible that some would choose new names for themselves based on how they escaped or were freed, or that were particularly meaningful to them?
“She was so evil for creating a race of creatures that are happy to be enslaved”
It’s funny how that was your take away - did she actually write house elves as being happy to be enslaved or is that just what all the pureblood students constantly repeated to the concerned outsider who threatened to dismantle that? It’s not like she constantly makes use of unreliable narrators in her writing or anything.
She gets flak for having written hermione as a good hearted little crusader who didn’t ever actually ask the elves what they wanted. She also gets flak for having the elves not want to be freed, even when the text makes it clear that the act of being freed causes them some amount of actual physical suffering.
If we put our critical thinking to good use and actually analyze the literature instead of taking every piece of it at surface value, it’s almost like she was making commentary about how people who get taken advantage of often become trapped in situations they can’t escape and try to make the best of it. Wonder why on earth that might’ve resonated with a woman who had an abusive husband she had to run away from. I’m sure it’s probably not connected.
“She was so nasty for saying they used to just shit on the floor and vanish it”
It’s almost like throughout her book series she established that the British magical world was so contemptuous of muggle technology and innovation that they were literally stuck in the past living like it was still Victorian times, using quills and parchment and candles and carrier birds.
I’m sure it’s not at all connected that she would suggest that a backwards technology hating population would most likely avoid indoor plumbing for as long as they possibly could
Oh and when they’re looking for things to be mad about and can’t find anything else from the text to misinterpret in bad faith, they shift to straight up pulling stuff out of their asses
“She was racist for switching from a black to a white actress in the film where Lavender finally got a speaking role”
I think we can all agree that it was a racist casting decision, but one that jk rowling had absolutely nothing to do with. The studio treated that character like a background extra until that film, and there had actually already been two different black actresses who had played her. Warner brothers’ excuse was that they recast a more experienced actress, but they also supposedly auditioned a ton of people and if they really needed to replace her than they could easily have chosen another black actress.
Rowling may have had unprecedented creative control over the films but she didn’t have total veto power, and there were so much going on in those movies that there had to be tons of decisions made that she was simply never consulted on
“She was anti-Irish for having Seamus constantly blowing things up” (i have seen people earnestly argue this)
You mean the behavior the production team invented out of whole cloth for the films? His character caught a single feather on fire once in the books and they ran with it and made him a full blown pyromaniac in the movies. But sure, we can play pretend that she maliciously wrote him that way as insensitive commentary on the violent Irish conflict that was taking place at the time
“She was antisemitic for writing a jewish character with the last name Goldstein”
Again, it’s an actual jewish surname??? And a common one at that. It’s not a dog whistle or hidden commentary, it’s literally an actual jewish last name. The 2010 US census documented 30,000 living people with the last name Goldstein, making it roughly the 1200th most popular last name in the country
