sure, please hit me up with that link. I also appreciate the post about the connection between protestantism and SJWism, fascinating stuff.
But the sorting hat was trans!!!11!Also there's the uncertainty about Rowling and her statements.
I like the pick of Rowling in this discussion, as the YA Twitter crowd almost universally recognizes her as an irredeemable perpetrator of racism and transphobia now and yet she's still an absolute juggernaut in the YA industry.
My problem with Rowling is not even her crappy book about a college athlete who grew up to be a cop, but her Twitter tirades. She is using her author authority (no pun intended) to spread bad political views and hit pieces against people she dislikes. You'd think someone who has made million and will continue millions for the rest of their lives can just calm the heck down and not spread bad takes all over social media... but you'd be wrong, I guess. Rowling is in the club with Elon Musk, Kanye West, and other people of questionable quality* spreading bad ideas and posing as modern geniuses. Now that's really infuriating.
*Ok, Kanye's music is (was) actually good, unlike anything Musk or Rowling produced.
My problem with Rowling is not even her crappy book about a college athlete who grew up to be a cop, but her Twitter tirades. She is using her author authority (no pun intended) to spread bad political views and hit pieces against people she dislikes. You'd think someone who has made millions and will continue millions for the rest of their lives can just calm the heck down and not spread bad takes all over social media... but you'd be wrong, I guess. Rowling is in the club with Elon Musk, Kanye West, and other people of questionable worth* spreading bad ideas and posing as modern geniuses. I am just tired of it.
*Ok, Kanye's music is (was) actually good, unlike anything Musk or Rowling produced.
To me, Rowling and Lucas represent the best exempla of the problem of tying interpretation and criticism inherently and unassailably to to pursuit of a "true" understanding of some kind of an authorial intent. Mostly because they a) appear to change their minds constantly about what that intent was, b) represent that change not as a change in actuality but as an absolute reflection of their initial vision which is either noncontradictory, or contradicts only inasmuch as some kind of impediment prevented them from effecting their true vision originally, c) that these changes often, at times even objectively, render the original work less nuanced and less interesting, and d) wield their status as authors with authoritarian force, branding anybody who contradicts or disputes this interpretation-handed-down-from-on-high as heretical.
"Narratives of whirlwind romances were rare but the significance and meaning of love, as well as the romantic image of ‘the one true love’, led the respondents to define love in a very specific way. Thus it was common for them to denounce the love they felt in past relationships in the form of ‘I thought it was love . . .’. Michelle was a good example of this: ‘I thought I was in love with him and in hindsight it was quite an inappropriate [relationship]’. Michelle later ‘realizes’ that it was not love at all."
So apparently black Americans were the only people ever enslaved in the history of the planet and nobody can include slavery as a theme in a novel without them.
This is the novel: "In the Cyrilian Empire, Affinites are reviled and enslaved. Their varied abilities to control the world around them are unnatural--dangerous. And Anastacya Mikhailov, the crown princess, might be the most monstrous of them all. Her deadly Affinity to blood is her curse and the reason she has lived her life hidden behind palace walls."
To those wondering about what the terrible crime was - it was having non-race based slavery in a fantasy universe, thereby, somehow, denying the experience of black Americans. This is now the party line of the social justice movement.
Spoiler NSFW :You can read more about the craziness here.
Books can be canceled for any number of reasons. There's a reason, for example, why we're not allowed to discuss story ideas in the TrekLit forum at TrekBBS. Some of the pro Star Trek authors read that subforum and post there, and one day one of them read a post by someone who included an idea for a novel... and the author informed us that he just had to ditch the novel he'd been in the middle of, as the member's post touched too closely on something that was in the novel. For legal reasons, authors have to be paranoid about not using other people's ideas, lest said fan(s) sue them.This seems like a big deal for fantasy readers. I've never heard of an actual novel being cancelled before.
It never really went away in some parts of the world or even in some jurisdictions. People are trying to get The Handmaid's Tale banned because since the TV series started, they think it's all about Trump and/or the Middle East, even though the book was published in 1985 and Margaret Atwood stated that her primary inspiration was the Puritans.Book burning has returned. You could see it coming with the Proper-speak on campuses. How much longer til we get the next Joseph Mcarthy seeking to stamp out MAGA.
J
Maybe not on Twitter, but sometimes an Amazon review can persuade people away from a book, if it's sufficiently scathing.The average reader doesn't have any power at all.
Literally 3 pages of the thread discussed how this is not true and just something marginal reactionaries said on Twitter, and that's the conclusion you arrived at? Groundbreaking.So apparently black Americans were the only people ever enslaved in the history of the planet and nobody can include slavery as a theme in a novel without them.
Wow.
I highly doubt that. Reviews are reviews, but I don't make up my mind based on what other people think.Maybe not on Twitter, but sometimes an Amazon review can persuade people away from a book, if it's sufficiently scathing.
Sarcasm. It is a difficult concept.Literally 3 pages of the thread discussed how this is not true and just something marginal reactionaries said on Twitter, and that's the conclusion you arrived at? Groundbreaking.
When I'm unsure of a book or product I do read the reviews. Most of the time I prefer to make up my own mind, but if someone says a thing isn't put together well or is not as advertised, that's a good indication that I would regret buying it.I highly doubt that. Reviews are reviews, but I don't make up my mind based on what other people think.
Pulling J.K. Rowling here? That wasn't sarcasm until you said so.Sarcasm. It is a difficult concept.
I highly doubt that. Reviews are reviews, but I don't make up my mind based on what other people think.
I actually hate reading and therefore don't read books.* With other content, like games, I actually get the game, or better yet a demo, and play it to form my opinion of whether I like it or not. For something like Civilization, there are literally let's play videos from developers showing gameplay, so you can figure out whether that's something you want to play or not. Game footage is not an opinion (though it can certainly be manipulated to present the game in a better light, but that's capitalism).so how do you make up your mind about a book before reading it. do you.. judge it by it's cover? do you judge it by it's author, a fallacy at best? better yet, what do you judge a book from a lesser known author, who doesn't have a wiki page by? just the title or what? "genre"? you see this is quite the conundrum.
what other people think (or even just how other people summarize for example) can be quite helpful, which is why so many people read music and film reviews. roger ebert is just a glorified Amazon reviewer.