#anti-jkr

[lizardsfromspace]

Talking about Chris Columbus made me think about what was probably the most prophetic part of JK Rowling's bad wizard books at the time

If you go back to coverage from the time (which I did verifying the info in the Chris Columbus post, discovering this) you see that she wanted a capital-d Director for it. A visionary auteur worthy of her wizard book for children. She wanted Terry Gilliam; the studio said no. She wanted Guillermo del Toro; he said no. She wanted Steven Spielberg; he said yes, then dropped out due to "creative differences" (he wanted to do it as an animated film, and chose to make A.I. instead). Then with the third movie, they landed one: Y tu mamá también director Alfonso Cuarón. At last, she would get to see what it was like for a visionary creative to tackle her work, as she wanted all along

And when it came out, there was one problem. The reviews were really, really good...and all of them were praising Alfonso Cuarón. They were saying that he had added so much to the wizarding world of JK Rowling (TM). Some were even implying he handled the material better than she did, and a few were saying that outright, because it was true

Suddenly, the prospect of her work being handled by a Visionary Aueteur was less appealing. Cuarón couldn't give less of a shit, he went off to make Children of Men, so strange how basically everyone involved in the bad wizard movies used the money from it as a springboard to kickstart a successful career doing shit they actually care about it except its writer. So two movies later, we meet David Yates, whose filmography looks like this

He does have works other than this - all of it on TV. Miniseries/TV movies and TV episodes. Though his only TV work since Harry Potter was one TV pilot.

Someone who had spent years talking about her hopes that Spielberg or Gilliam or del Toro or M. Night Shyamalan would add their Visionary Touch to her books was now happy having some random TV director handle everything forever. A random TV director who hardly does anything except Harry Potter. Whose career depends on her and her series. Anyway I'm sure she just really liked his miniseries about human trafficking a lot

It reminds me of when the director & writer of the first 50 Shades movie did a lot of editing to remove the unnecessary guff that was only in the book bc it was in the original fanfic - like pointless side characters who were only around bc they were a Twilight character in the original - & make it work better as a film, and then E.L. James fired everyone and had her husband write the sequels so they wouldn't ruin her baby. JK Rowling really wanted the prestige of her movie being made by a Steven Spielberg but didn't realize that a director like that would alter the material for film even when adapting a good book. She just wanted a famous person to enthusiastically co-sign that her book was very good and perfect and required not one change before becoming a classic of cinema. Meanwhile Alice Walker, Michael Crichton, Philip K. Dick and H.G. Wells are all better writers than JK Rowling, and none of them were granted that level of deference

Anyway who could have foreseen that the writer who made sure her film series was made as bland as possible after having one director actually dare to change and adapt her work would one day get so mad at her movie's cast no longer speaking with her she tries to remake the whole series to "replace" them

[sapphia]

jkr wrote several absolutely historic volumes on how naziism was in hiding and it was going to try and “come back” (a fact fantasy authors have been trying to impart on people since the day world war ii ended) only to end up on the side of the nazis and it’s like. hello?? Did you Read those books U wrote???

[joannerowling]

JK Rowling's concerns about trans women in spaces for meant for women are valid, because a lot of women don't want former men in their spaces even if they're women now, and not all trans women can be trusted, but isn't she donating to anti-trans compaigns that harm the good trans people? How will you justify that?

There is nothing to justify because she doesn't do that.

She donated money to For Women Scotland (a feminist organisation) in order to support their legal battle to protect the sex-based definition of "woman" in Scotland. The move was made to ensure sex parity would be respected under the Equality Act 2010, which classifies "sex" as a protected characteristic, and the Gender Representation of Public Boards (Scotland) 2018, a bill originally created to force public boards to have an equal amount of men and women as non-executive members, under the Nicola Sturgeon's administration. While feminists agreed with the necessity of such a bill, following pressure from the trans lobby, the GRPBA included a definition of womanhoood as “a person who has the protected characteristic of gender reassignment (within the meaning of section 7 of the Equality Act 2010) if, and only if, the person is living as a woman and is proposing to undergo, is undergoing or has undergone a process (or part of a process) for the purpose of becoming female”. Since "becoming female" is biologically impossible and there is no common ground of what "living as a woman" even means, this allowed any man merely claiming to be a woman without even being in possession of a GRC (gender recognition certificate) to essentially take a woman's job, in a sector where representation matters tremendously. For Women Scotland petitioned the UK Supreme Court to annul this section of the bill and won in 2022, but the GRA (Gender Recognition Act) still allows men to legally identify as women even for the context of female representation in politics. You can find more details about the case and its proceedings here.

WHY DOES THIS MATTER FOR WOMEN : As stated, this is a matter of female representation in politics and giving as much power to one sex as the other. Women (female born people) represent more than half the population of Scotland (and the world, of course). Ensuring that half of public servants be women guarantees a fairer democracy.

WHY IT IS NOT "ANTI-TRANS" : Nobody is trying to stop trans people from getting into politics. Only that they be counted as the opposite sex for the context of measuring sex equality. No trans right is effectively being suppressed, aside from their imaginary "right" of being perceived as the sex they would have prefered to be born with.

Additionally, JK Rowling has publically supported the LGB Alliance, a charity which chooses to focus its battles on homophobia, in reaction to most LGBTQ organisations focusing on the T, rather than what was originally the common ground between the letters. In particular, the charity board includes gay men and women who grew fed up with being told to "question their gender essentialism / genital fetishism" after saying they were homosexuals. This organisation is not "anti-trans" (any trans person can be homosexual, in fact many are, hence their original inclusion in the LGBT group), but anti-homophobia. This applies to JKR as well.

There is no evidence that JKR ever donated to the LGBA.

Finally, JK Rowling founded, and continues to fund, Beira's Place, a center (and not shelter) for women who are victims of rape and/or domestic violence. The particularity of Beira's Place is that it is female-exclusive. It was created in reaction to crisis centers and shelters in Scotland becoming all-sex inclusive (again, under pressure from trans activists), with no option left for women who desired to be only in the presence of other women, whether for religious reasons, ones linked to trauma, or any other which simply aren't our business.

In this context, JK Rowling doesn't "donate" money to herself. She's choosing to spend her own money as she sees fit. And she sees fit to donate it to female victims of rape and DV.

[tofugargoyle]

maybe a hot take but the whole 'buying/streaming Harry Potter media and then donating to a trans organisation' isn't the net neutral some people seem to think it is. you're still contributing to the evil, donating to the efforts trying to do damage control on that evil doesn't take that away.

[nerianasims]

My husband just came into the room and told me, "In her ongoing campaign to have everyone's attention on her at all times, Joanne Rowling has posted a flurry of tweets making fun of the concept of asexuality."

[agentem]

today i am pleased with myself because i found out my nephew is going as percy jackson for halloween. (my parents thought the book series was called, "derek jackson and the oligarchs" and that made me laugh. my dad can't hear well.)

you may recall, about two years ago i started a concerted campaign to get him into percy jackson and the olympians instead of harry potter.

so my mom is buying him merch for his birthday (i had to explain what camp halfblood was) and now i'm doubly pleased because the merch money is NOT going to anti-trans groups.

[lacependragon]

I wanna mention something about my experience in the Harry Potter fandom, way back in 2007, that makes me extremely "yeah, no, that ain't gonna work" re: the "reclaiming" of HP by the fandom from JKR.

The fandom is really fucking racist.

When I was a kid, before Half-Blood Prince came out as a book, I was in love with Blaise Zabini. Who, at the time, the fandom wrote almost entirely as either a) a GNC guy taller than Draco or b) an athletic guy, taller than Draco.

He was always written white.

And then, when he was very much confirmed Black in Half-Blood Prince, his fandom disappeared. These ships, these characters, these writers I had followed in my middle school years, eagering awaiting things, vanished.

People purposely wrote White Blaise. White!Blaise became a tag for a while on a few HP fandom archives. No book accurate Blaise's were in shipping fics anymore.

The fandom saw he was Black instead of their precious white boy and threw him out like the trash.

And they treat every other character of colour like that, too.

JKR is a shit person and her story is shit too. It promotes a lot of awful things, obviously.

But can we stop pretending that the fandom could fix this? They're just as bad. Just because they aren't preaching obvious transphobia doesn't mean they aren't bigoted little shits. Widespread fandom is only going to make it worse.

So when people are like "no the fanworks don't promote HP" it's like. Okay. 1) We know that isn't true. and 2) They don't have to be promoting HP to be promoting horrifically bigoted messages that you are happy to trot out while, I dunno, Harry and Draco or Remus and Snape make out in the background. Fuck.

If you're going to "take something back", you need to be actually critiquing the whole source. Not just the parts you dislike. And the colourism and racism in Harry Potter in just as big in its fandom as in its source material.

[hopeymchope]

Oh GOD the fiendish David Zaslav is rebooting Harry Potter with a new "extremely faithful" adaption of the seven books. J.K. TERFling is heavily involved, she's executive producing, and they've made a TEN-YEAR COMMITMENT already.

Five Rapid-Fire Thoughts I Had in Reaction to This News:

Fuck Zaslav. (Btw, did I mention that — after deleting half of HBO Max's original content — Zaslav has now announced a price hike to the newly christened "MAX" service? As if giving a shitload of money to the planet's most notable TERF wasn't enough fuckery. FUCK that fucking shitheel.)

See below.

3. All y'all who were like "Boycott Hogwart's Legacy or You're Automatically a Terrible Person" or whatever because Rowling was going to make like a 1% royalty off of that game had GODDAMN BETTER boycott HBO MAX (....uh, sorry, it's just "MAX" now, I keep forgetting bc that name sucks — "HBO MAX" wasn't all that good a name to begin with IMO, but now it's worse) from here on out. YES, I know it's harder to boycott an entire streaming service that may contain OTHER content you want, but c'mon now, just bootleg anything you want off MAX in the future. (I'll help! I will send you a link or whatever if you need assistance. Message me. It's cool.) Because this is going to make her SO MUCH MORE MONEY due to involving her FAR MORE DIRECTLY. FUCK. WHY. Why did they fucking do this.

4. There are so many things in the books that are either A) poorly explained workarounds for continuity/logic issues or B) extremely problematic that the movies were actually BETTER for ignoring them. Can't wait to see the scene where every single known Time-Turner gets accidentally broken shortly after Prisoner of Azkaban in order to ensure the characters can never use time travel to fix their problems again! SUPER excited for the plotline where Hermione has to learn that she's silly and wrong for trying to free slaves because the slaves are fucking happier being enslaved! OH BOY!

5. God, a ten-year production commitment UP FRONT. I hope they lose so much money on this stupid-ass project that they wind up dragging their feet to produce future seasons for so long that the contract runs out before they've gotten farther than like, the third novel, and then it just dies on the vine. Would be HILARIOUS.