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She's so horrible, and she doesn't even try to hide her cruelty any more. I suppose it's because she doesn't have to, she has so many sycophantic transphobes (and bigots and alt-right personalities in general) cheering her on at every turn.
There are very few people I feel this way about because I believe most people possess the capacity to change, but honestly? I'll buy a Friendly's ice cream cake and celebrate when Rowling and Trump finally do a good deed and die.
Unfortunately the list of people I’m wishing would shuffle off this mortal coil is steadily expanding and that is distressing in and of itself.
Can we just please be less terrible so we don’t have to contemplate celebrating another’s demise? Ugh I hate it here.
Every time I see this woman posting something hateful and transphobic on Twitter (X? What are we calling it?), I am genuinely baffled. She must spend all her time on it, hunting down tweets to respond to — this one obviously tagged her, but there are so many instances where she’s angrily tweeting at some random normal person with like 100 followers.
Imagine being this famous and this rich and spending your time this way. Obviously it’s cruel and hateful (talk about punching down), but even putting that aside — imagine being a billionaire and spending your time hunting down people on Twitter to yell at to support your imagined witch hunt? When you could be doing literally anything else with your time???
I’m always struck by how, were I a billionaire, I would simply not spend my time doing this, let alone when it’s such an unpopular position that has absolutely TORCHED her legacy/reputation. Why on earth did she pick this hill to die on?
I’m left with the belief she is somehow deranged, because I cannot make sense of it otherwise. Of course, I am also not transphobic, nor do I think these horrid things, so that might be the difference between me and Joanne. Maybe I just don’t know what it’s like to virulently hate someone???? I can’t imagine a world where I hated any group of people enough to spend my time this way, tbh.
This interaction is about a theater show called TERF that is about Rowling being a bigot and being confronted by a bunch of people. India said she is too young to play her.
Idk who this India person is beyond my quick google search, but they are both 58 y/o so I don’t get it? I get Rowling being a POS, but I don’t understand the original tweet?
Yep - being hateful likely raises cortisol cause you spend your time obsessing and stressing over invisible monsters you see in other genders, races, identities, etc.
Like, get your cortisol the old fashion way, by being stressed about life! 😂
There's an irony here that India used to be more right wing. But then the TERF crew started up their nonsense and she really seemed to go through an emotional growth moment and has since become really left wing, pro immigration, anti Brexit, pro Palestinian. Then there's JK Rowling who was meant to be the "normal" "progressive" person who became a TERF and recently liked Tweets defending TERFs for attending Tommy Robinson (right wing fascist) street protests.
It’s such a weird hill to die on. Listen, if I had written the most successful novel series that turned into theme parks and movies, you’d never hear from me again. I’d be on an island living my best life.
That’s the thing. She has made so much money she couldn’t spend it all if she tried. She can show her true colors. This IS her version of sitting on an island, living her best life.
Yup. When you're that rich life is just a series of preferences. You can be anywhere doing anything you want every single day. Being a bigot online is her preference.
She founded the awesome charity Lumos that helps institutionalised children around the world and I cannot for the life of me figure out why she hasn't spent life since her literary success just leaning into that, doing good work, and hosting fun charity galas etc. Instead she had to make hatred her full time job??
I can't personally guarantee any of it, but a good friend's uncle lives there and he's shared stories about her being known for being rude to staff, throwing around her weight at her kids school (super posh), and also apparently her hedges are really intense and trimming them causes traffic issues. The last one I googled and it's at least somewhat true.
[for anyone else on the thread](https://www.google.com/imgres?imgurl=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.deadlinenews.co.uk%2Fwp-content%2Fuploads%2F2022%2F07%2FJK_ROWLING_HAS_HEDGE_CUT_DN02-scaled-e1657629334797.jpg&tbnid=DamxJMpGuOfPLM&vet=1&imgrefurl=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.deadlinenews.co.uk%2F2022%2F07%2F13%2Fj-k-rowling-closes-road-outside-her-2-2m-home-to-have-hedge-trimmed%2F&docid=8jD2gjpKZv9ZBM&w=1200&h=900&hl=en-us&source=sh%2Fx%2Fim%2Fm4%2F3&kgs=f0c0c47fdae8849b&shem=abme%2Ctrie)
It’s truly wild. Especially since (unsure of how big a following/presence India here has) so many of the tweets she goes after are 1) not even sent to her and 2) from random normal person accounts where the person has like 300 followers and is just minding their own business.
Imagine how much time and energy she must put into hunting these tweets down. Does she have a google alert (or twitter equivalent) for anytime someone mentions a trans person in a tweet? Does she do it herself? Does she have an intern?
Good lord, what a tremendous waste of time. This alone shows you how strongly she holds these beliefs, since you couldn’t pay me to spend the time to do something like this — even putting aside the fact that I find her views repulsive and cruel.
It’s like me trying to find every person who tweets something positive about Trump so I can yell at them — I hate the man, hate his beliefs and can’t stand his followers, and I still couldn’t be bothered to spend my time that way.
It's crazy because I read that and think "ok now of course she doesn't have an intern for that". But then immediately I'm like nah that's completely on brand for her. She would absolutely hire a minion just to hate on randoms Trans people. And then have some effed up justification for why that is pro woman.
Every time she thinks about tweeting something cruel she should just go to a beach and drink a fun beverage out of a fruit.
Her life would be so much better and she could just leave people alone to live their lives without a damn billionaire harassing them.
Imagine owning a comedically ornate castle in the Scottish countryside and spending all your time in one room rage tweeting instead of just walking around outside lol
It’s also not just being a bigot, it’s making being a bigot online her entire personality. She’s spending all her time arguing with people on Twitter when she has the resources to do anything in the world she wants to do. She has all that and chooses cruelty on Twitter.
Right??? This is what I always say. THIS is how she spends her life??? Talk about chronically online.
Not trying to erase or downplay the hatred and bigotry involved, but I at least conceptually understand the idea of someone being a bigot, even if I find it gross. What I REALLY can’t wrap my head around is being this rich (and therefore having the freedom to do literally whatever) and spending your time this way?!?!
Not to mention, of all the groups to pick to discriminate against, she’s really picked a group that 1) has little power and 2) has never done anything to her in any way. I suppose I’m treating it like bigotry and transphobia are rational decisions, but it just boggles the mind.
Like, if I was this rich, and also secretly hated some group of people, I would just…keep it to myself??? Instead of tweeting about it and torching my legacy? But I suppose that would require an understanding that the hatred is socially unacceptable and that holding those beliefs puts you in the wrong. And if she could grasp that (that transphobia is cruel and wrong), I suppose she wouldn’t hold the beliefs to begin with.
But still. Girl. Get a hobby.
Her targeting of India has been off the wall deranged harassment. The idea a billionaire is obsessed with random trans women like this is unfathomable to me.
> In March 2024, Willoughby became embroiled in a row with author J. K. Rowling on Twitter after Rowling deliberately misgendered Willoughby, referring to her as "cosplaying a misogynistic male fantasy of what a woman is".[19] Willoughby reported Rowling to the police[20] but Northumbria Police stated that Willoughby’s accusation did not “meet the criminal threshold”.[21]
I'm sure they've interacted before this too.
This is especially fucking horrible since India herself was on a documentary recently saying that the way the media & public treated Miriam (transgender woman, star of There’s Something about Miriam) delayed her own process of coming out as trans by *years* because she thought she’d be ruining her own life.
It would be horrible to say anyway. But something about that makes it especially fucking horrible.
No, she’s a writer whose books got very very popular … mostly with kids who didn’t recognize she was borrowing from all over the place and not thinking deeply about it. Her writing style is … fine. Kind of a pastiche of Roald Dahl and Charles Dickens.
High quality and mass popularity are very much not the same thing. She did manage to hit the zeitgeist and connect to a lot of kids who didn’t like reading. They read her books and some of them kept reading, so that’s the best part of her legacy.
The worst part of her legacy we’re seeing now, of course.
I've always maintained that these books were so popular because they're fantasy books written by someone who didn't read fantasy books, and that meant they were fantasy enough for the kids who like fantasy but not so bogged down in the standard conventions/writing style/lore bullshit of the genre that they would be off-putting to normie kids who didn't like fantasy.
That's why it's so funny to me that people insist she ripped off Neil Gaiman because the kid from Books of Magic has glasses and wears a British school uniform. (The students in Harry Potter don't even wear those kinds of school uniforms. The Hogwarts uniform in the books is a wizard hat and a gender neutral black dress, which is bizarre in hindsight.) She never read any of that stuff. She just knows the pop culture idea of witches and magic and fantasy books, and so she created something that is both weird and deeply generic. That's why you can point to 20 different fantasy series and claim she copied them somehow.
It's the same thing as Twilight. People cry that it's not possible that Stephenie Meyer wrote those books without having seen Buffy or read Interview with the Vampire, but cultural osmosis is a thing. Twilight makes perfect sense as being a vampire novel written by someone who only has a basic pop culture notion of how vampires are written, and Harry Potter makes perfect sense as a fantasy book written by someone who doesn't like fantasy enough to sit through (or create) magic rules or elaborate worldbuilding.
I would add divergent as another example of this, dystopian by someone who doesn't really get why the Hunger games were genuinely complex. It's paper thin world-building.
I think that makes sense, it really has a something for everyone kind of thing. I remember being in elementary school when the first couple were really taking off in the US and I feel like everyone liked it but got something different from it. Some people focus on the good vs evil but my friends and I made school schedules for Hogwarts.
I don’t think they’re the pinnacle of literature or anything, but there is an appeal for these books that I think makes sense. I personally liked other fantasy series as a kid but Harry Potter seemed approachable to all.
JKR is an unrepentant asshole but I think the enduring popularity is why it hurts so much for people, especially considering lots of books get popular but not many last quite as long in the spotlight.
Have you ever watched The Worst Witch? I watched that with my nephew on Netflix about 5 years ago. She ripped Harry Potter off from that. I was shocked.
I read the books the TV show was based on when I was a kid. Along with a lot of other fantasy books and folklore. She cribbed stuff from all over, and the still-living authors who people recognized clear *influence* from were *very polite* about it (e. g. Neil Gaiman when people pointed out the similarity of Harry to his Tim Hunter from The Books of Magic.)
Magic School novels were pretty much a subgenre, which is fine. Boarding School Novels are an even older (and often very English) genre. There isn’t anything particularly wrong with being derivative, but Harry Potter was never a good example of the traditions or a thoughtful contribution to the ongoing conversations that genre literature has.
The annoying thing was when people completely ignorant of how well trod a path Harry Potter was following praised it form”originality”.
I actually have beef with the Netflix Worst Witch show because it's heavily influenced by HP instead of sticking closer to the source material.
Unfortunately HP redefined the magic boarding school genre and now everything is being Potterized even when based on books that predate HP by decades.
THANK YOU. I was in my early 20s when I got into HP and I worked at a bookstore so it was impossible to avoid. I truly loved those books. Tried to reread them 10 years ago...and was left wondering WTF I had been thinking. I made it to the third book and gave up.
ugh so I'm not defending her (we hate transphobes here) but the context is a bit confusing from what is shown. India was referring to the role of J.K. Rowling in this new play called TERF (saying that she was too young to play her). And she's actually responding to something JKR posted, not a random tweet at her. JKR posted this screenshot of another of India's tweets about the play having trouble casting the part, saying she'd be down to play it and that the trouble was due to fear of JKR. JKR said something snippy, India's response is above, and then this new tweet is JKR's attempt at a clapback. I'm sure the idea of a trans woman playing her has her seething.
Also the comments on X are vile, even by X standards. Super transphobic.
As a cis person I am of course not the worst affected by her actions, but Harry Potter was a refuge for me growing up in an abusive home, as it was for so many others. Ten years ago I got a deathly hallows tattoo as a symbol of the hope the books kept alive in me, now every time I see it I wish I could make it disappear. I hate her with every fibre of my being.
I don't know if this will make you feel better, but I always consider that sort of thing to be... defiant in a way. Like you loved her books so much, it gave you strength, and that strength is why you are able to say that her views are terrible and wrong. She can't really take away the fact that her own work is what has empowered people who will never agreed with her bigoted bullshit.
Ofc ideally you would have control over whether you want it to be visible or not, and ofc it's hard if you're worried someone might think you agree with her/are unsafe. I don't mean to invalidate any of that.
I know multiple people who got HP tattoos years ago and have since come out as nonbinary. I always wonder how much regret and cringe they feel about that decision.
Just get a little trans ally tattoo next to it, that would piss her off ❤️
She has “fuck you” money and doesn’t care. She doesn’t have to appease anyone. She can be a horrible human and still never have to worry about a thing. It’s wild.
I just don't get having too much money to ever spend and deciding to be hateful and weird about stuff rather than using your money to help people or just continuing to write books or something. Wasting so much time on social media being a jerk is just so lazy. Like, go travel! Do literally *anything*.
Rowling sees herself as a perpetual victim but had to conjure up an opponent when her money and fame made her untouchable. No amount of money will appease the gaping hole inside of her.
Really just makes me wonder about the rumor that she’s a shut in and disconnected from her family and lives online raging and trolling since Pottermore came out.
She seems to have no life. If I were rich you wouldn’t see me arguing online with anyone let alone being an asshole.
I highly recommend everyone go watch Caelan Conrad's videos on Gender Critical people and JK Rowling specifically. They're a fantastic "bash back" queer, AKA those of us JKR wish didn't exist.
Remember when they were telling us that she was just standing up for women, we needed to give her the benefit of the doubt and her rhetoric wasn't directly harmful?
She could've written her little books, have them adapted into a blockbuster franchise, taken her massive paycheck, shut the fuck up and live worry free for the rest of her days but she chose this.
I don't understand the hate she has for other human beings who don't bother anybody.
If I had one of the most successful franchises ever, I would just vibe and have fun every day instead of go on weird rants on Twitter.
Tf?
What a hateful person. She’s just constantly tweeting this kind of shit, I think we’re better off just blocking and ignoring her instead of constantly being informed of her latest bullshit.
Ma’am, take all that money and go somewhere without internet. Perhaps buy a Russian oligarch’s super yacht and try enjoying life, instead of dedicating yourself to being bigoted. We’d all be better for it, since learning is not on the table for you.
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She's so horrible, and she doesn't even try to hide her cruelty any more. I suppose it's because she doesn't have to, she has so many sycophantic transphobes (and bigots and alt-right personalities in general) cheering her on at every turn.
The world will be a better place once she shuffles off this mortal coil
There are very few people I feel this way about because I believe most people possess the capacity to change, but honestly? I'll buy a Friendly's ice cream cake and celebrate when Rowling and Trump finally do a good deed and die.
Unfortunately the list of people I’m wishing would shuffle off this mortal coil is steadily expanding and that is distressing in and of itself. Can we just please be less terrible so we don’t have to contemplate celebrating another’s demise? Ugh I hate it here.
Can we not banish her to Azkaban or somewhere that doesn't have internet in the mean time?
I'm convinced she's at least one person who appealed to Elon to hide likes.
Every time I see this woman posting something hateful and transphobic on Twitter (X? What are we calling it?), I am genuinely baffled. She must spend all her time on it, hunting down tweets to respond to — this one obviously tagged her, but there are so many instances where she’s angrily tweeting at some random normal person with like 100 followers. Imagine being this famous and this rich and spending your time this way. Obviously it’s cruel and hateful (talk about punching down), but even putting that aside — imagine being a billionaire and spending your time hunting down people on Twitter to yell at to support your imagined witch hunt? When you could be doing literally anything else with your time??? I’m always struck by how, were I a billionaire, I would simply not spend my time doing this, let alone when it’s such an unpopular position that has absolutely TORCHED her legacy/reputation. Why on earth did she pick this hill to die on? I’m left with the belief she is somehow deranged, because I cannot make sense of it otherwise. Of course, I am also not transphobic, nor do I think these horrid things, so that might be the difference between me and Joanne. Maybe I just don’t know what it’s like to virulently hate someone???? I can’t imagine a world where I hated any group of people enough to spend my time this way, tbh.
This interaction is about a theater show called TERF that is about Rowling being a bigot and being confronted by a bunch of people. India said she is too young to play her.
Thanks for the context.
Idk who this India person is beyond my quick google search, but they are both 58 y/o so I don’t get it? I get Rowling being a POS, but I don’t understand the original tweet?
I think she’s saying that Rowling looks old for her age. Which is true, being a bigot ages the skin.
Yep - being hateful likely raises cortisol cause you spend your time obsessing and stressing over invisible monsters you see in other genders, races, identities, etc. Like, get your cortisol the old fashion way, by being stressed about life! 😂
She is Britain's first transgender national television newsreader and the first transgender co-host of an all-women talk show, *Loose Women* on ITV.
There's an irony here that India used to be more right wing. But then the TERF crew started up their nonsense and she really seemed to go through an emotional growth moment and has since become really left wing, pro immigration, anti Brexit, pro Palestinian. Then there's JK Rowling who was meant to be the "normal" "progressive" person who became a TERF and recently liked Tweets defending TERFs for attending Tommy Robinson (right wing fascist) street protests.
It’s such a weird hill to die on. Listen, if I had written the most successful novel series that turned into theme parks and movies, you’d never hear from me again. I’d be on an island living my best life.
That’s the thing. She has made so much money she couldn’t spend it all if she tried. She can show her true colors. This IS her version of sitting on an island, living her best life.
Yup. When you're that rich life is just a series of preferences. You can be anywhere doing anything you want every single day. Being a bigot online is her preference.
Wow, framed like that….. that’s some dark energy in one’s soul to pick that over ANYTHING else. You blew my mind with that comment.
She founded the awesome charity Lumos that helps institutionalised children around the world and I cannot for the life of me figure out why she hasn't spent life since her literary success just leaning into that, doing good work, and hosting fun charity galas etc. Instead she had to make hatred her full time job??
Supposedly a horror in Edinburgh too...
I’m intrigued?
I can't personally guarantee any of it, but a good friend's uncle lives there and he's shared stories about her being known for being rude to staff, throwing around her weight at her kids school (super posh), and also apparently her hedges are really intense and trimming them causes traffic issues. The last one I googled and it's at least somewhat true.
[for anyone else on the thread](https://www.google.com/imgres?imgurl=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.deadlinenews.co.uk%2Fwp-content%2Fuploads%2F2022%2F07%2FJK_ROWLING_HAS_HEDGE_CUT_DN02-scaled-e1657629334797.jpg&tbnid=DamxJMpGuOfPLM&vet=1&imgrefurl=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.deadlinenews.co.uk%2F2022%2F07%2F13%2Fj-k-rowling-closes-road-outside-her-2-2m-home-to-have-hedge-trimmed%2F&docid=8jD2gjpKZv9ZBM&w=1200&h=900&hl=en-us&source=sh%2Fx%2Fim%2Fm4%2F3&kgs=f0c0c47fdae8849b&shem=abme%2Ctrie)
It’s truly wild. Especially since (unsure of how big a following/presence India here has) so many of the tweets she goes after are 1) not even sent to her and 2) from random normal person accounts where the person has like 300 followers and is just minding their own business. Imagine how much time and energy she must put into hunting these tweets down. Does she have a google alert (or twitter equivalent) for anytime someone mentions a trans person in a tweet? Does she do it herself? Does she have an intern? Good lord, what a tremendous waste of time. This alone shows you how strongly she holds these beliefs, since you couldn’t pay me to spend the time to do something like this — even putting aside the fact that I find her views repulsive and cruel. It’s like me trying to find every person who tweets something positive about Trump so I can yell at them — I hate the man, hate his beliefs and can’t stand his followers, and I still couldn’t be bothered to spend my time that way.
It's crazy because I read that and think "ok now of course she doesn't have an intern for that". But then immediately I'm like nah that's completely on brand for her. She would absolutely hire a minion just to hate on randoms Trans people. And then have some effed up justification for why that is pro woman.
TERF Island!
Every time she thinks about tweeting something cruel she should just go to a beach and drink a fun beverage out of a fruit. Her life would be so much better and she could just leave people alone to live their lives without a damn billionaire harassing them.
Always be coconutting
I would literally become an invisibility cloak and be Enya-ed up in my own castle writing, getting dicked down and ordering DoorDash. BYE
That’s the main solace I take. That she’s fucking miserable despite all of her wealth.
Tom from MySpace is the exemplar. Be more like Tom, rich people.
She's been fully radicalised. Somebody counted up all her tweets and how often she's on there and it's astonishing
At this point it’s got to be affecting her personal relationships. She seems to spend literally all her time on the internet harassing trans people.
LITERALLY. Like how much time per day? I’m convinced it’s a large majority of the day.
Imagine owning a comedically ornate castle in the Scottish countryside and spending all your time in one room rage tweeting instead of just walking around outside lol
The sheer volume alone is alarming — add the volume to the hatred and I’m convinced she’s be on some sort of watch list if she wasn’t who she is.
Why be on an island when you could be on Twitter!
Island, ideological bubble, same same?
It’s also not just being a bigot, it’s making being a bigot online her entire personality. She’s spending all her time arguing with people on Twitter when she has the resources to do anything in the world she wants to do. She has all that and chooses cruelty on Twitter.
I would actually also live on twitter but I would be fun
Right??? This is what I always say. THIS is how she spends her life??? Talk about chronically online. Not trying to erase or downplay the hatred and bigotry involved, but I at least conceptually understand the idea of someone being a bigot, even if I find it gross. What I REALLY can’t wrap my head around is being this rich (and therefore having the freedom to do literally whatever) and spending your time this way?!?! Not to mention, of all the groups to pick to discriminate against, she’s really picked a group that 1) has little power and 2) has never done anything to her in any way. I suppose I’m treating it like bigotry and transphobia are rational decisions, but it just boggles the mind. Like, if I was this rich, and also secretly hated some group of people, I would just…keep it to myself??? Instead of tweeting about it and torching my legacy? But I suppose that would require an understanding that the hatred is socially unacceptable and that holding those beliefs puts you in the wrong. And if she could grasp that (that transphobia is cruel and wrong), I suppose she wouldn’t hold the beliefs to begin with. But still. Girl. Get a hobby.
https://preview.redd.it/cqz88b18nr7d1.jpeg?width=1004&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=a0c71c4e1fb777b3a17eb3edbb16c9310c638e39 What a vile person
Her targeting of India has been off the wall deranged harassment. The idea a billionaire is obsessed with random trans women like this is unfathomable to me.
Has she interacted with India before? Isn’t this a reply to a reply? Like she’s tagged her.
> In March 2024, Willoughby became embroiled in a row with author J. K. Rowling on Twitter after Rowling deliberately misgendered Willoughby, referring to her as "cosplaying a misogynistic male fantasy of what a woman is".[19] Willoughby reported Rowling to the police[20] but Northumbria Police stated that Willoughby’s accusation did not “meet the criminal threshold”.[21] I'm sure they've interacted before this too.
Transphobia rots brains.
anyone who calls tiktok brainrot has not heard a relative scrolling through conservative insta / fb reels
This is especially fucking horrible since India herself was on a documentary recently saying that the way the media & public treated Miriam (transgender woman, star of There’s Something about Miriam) delayed her own process of coming out as trans by *years* because she thought she’d be ruining her own life. It would be horrible to say anyway. But something about that makes it especially fucking horrible.
>There’s Something about Miriam We had some really awful TV shows in the 00s, but this one really takes the fucking cake.
Miriam killed herself age 38.
her post doesn't even make sense. isn't she allegedly a brilliant writer? every time i see a post from her it's indecipherable.
No, she’s a writer whose books got very very popular … mostly with kids who didn’t recognize she was borrowing from all over the place and not thinking deeply about it. Her writing style is … fine. Kind of a pastiche of Roald Dahl and Charles Dickens. High quality and mass popularity are very much not the same thing. She did manage to hit the zeitgeist and connect to a lot of kids who didn’t like reading. They read her books and some of them kept reading, so that’s the best part of her legacy. The worst part of her legacy we’re seeing now, of course.
I've always maintained that these books were so popular because they're fantasy books written by someone who didn't read fantasy books, and that meant they were fantasy enough for the kids who like fantasy but not so bogged down in the standard conventions/writing style/lore bullshit of the genre that they would be off-putting to normie kids who didn't like fantasy. That's why it's so funny to me that people insist she ripped off Neil Gaiman because the kid from Books of Magic has glasses and wears a British school uniform. (The students in Harry Potter don't even wear those kinds of school uniforms. The Hogwarts uniform in the books is a wizard hat and a gender neutral black dress, which is bizarre in hindsight.) She never read any of that stuff. She just knows the pop culture idea of witches and magic and fantasy books, and so she created something that is both weird and deeply generic. That's why you can point to 20 different fantasy series and claim she copied them somehow. It's the same thing as Twilight. People cry that it's not possible that Stephenie Meyer wrote those books without having seen Buffy or read Interview with the Vampire, but cultural osmosis is a thing. Twilight makes perfect sense as being a vampire novel written by someone who only has a basic pop culture notion of how vampires are written, and Harry Potter makes perfect sense as a fantasy book written by someone who doesn't like fantasy enough to sit through (or create) magic rules or elaborate worldbuilding.
I would add divergent as another example of this, dystopian by someone who doesn't really get why the Hunger games were genuinely complex. It's paper thin world-building.
I have never thought of it this way, but it makes so much sense for both HP and Twilight. And might explain their weird super-massive appeal!
I wonder if this is the reason that *The Time Traveller's Wife* was popular with people who hate sci-fi / speculative fiction.
I wonder if this is why Fourth Wing got so popular despite being awful
I think that makes sense, it really has a something for everyone kind of thing. I remember being in elementary school when the first couple were really taking off in the US and I feel like everyone liked it but got something different from it. Some people focus on the good vs evil but my friends and I made school schedules for Hogwarts. I don’t think they’re the pinnacle of literature or anything, but there is an appeal for these books that I think makes sense. I personally liked other fantasy series as a kid but Harry Potter seemed approachable to all. JKR is an unrepentant asshole but I think the enduring popularity is why it hurts so much for people, especially considering lots of books get popular but not many last quite as long in the spotlight.
Excellent comment
Have you ever watched The Worst Witch? I watched that with my nephew on Netflix about 5 years ago. She ripped Harry Potter off from that. I was shocked.
I read the books the TV show was based on when I was a kid. Along with a lot of other fantasy books and folklore. She cribbed stuff from all over, and the still-living authors who people recognized clear *influence* from were *very polite* about it (e. g. Neil Gaiman when people pointed out the similarity of Harry to his Tim Hunter from The Books of Magic.) Magic School novels were pretty much a subgenre, which is fine. Boarding School Novels are an even older (and often very English) genre. There isn’t anything particularly wrong with being derivative, but Harry Potter was never a good example of the traditions or a thoughtful contribution to the ongoing conversations that genre literature has. The annoying thing was when people completely ignorant of how well trod a path Harry Potter was following praised it form”originality”.
I actually have beef with the Netflix Worst Witch show because it's heavily influenced by HP instead of sticking closer to the source material. Unfortunately HP redefined the magic boarding school genre and now everything is being Potterized even when based on books that predate HP by decades.
THANK YOU. I was in my early 20s when I got into HP and I worked at a bookstore so it was impossible to avoid. I truly loved those books. Tried to reread them 10 years ago...and was left wondering WTF I had been thinking. I made it to the third book and gave up.
ugh so I'm not defending her (we hate transphobes here) but the context is a bit confusing from what is shown. India was referring to the role of J.K. Rowling in this new play called TERF (saying that she was too young to play her). And she's actually responding to something JKR posted, not a random tweet at her. JKR posted this screenshot of another of India's tweets about the play having trouble casting the part, saying she'd be down to play it and that the trouble was due to fear of JKR. JKR said something snippy, India's response is above, and then this new tweet is JKR's attempt at a clapback. I'm sure the idea of a trans woman playing her has her seething. Also the comments on X are vile, even by X standards. Super transphobic.
I do not understand this tweet and I do not wish to ☺️
She’s a complete and utter fascist and she has been for ages. She surrounds herself with literal Nazis.
Love how dedicated she is to being remembered as a horrible unhinged person instead of a beloved writer of children’s books lol
As a cis person I am of course not the worst affected by her actions, but Harry Potter was a refuge for me growing up in an abusive home, as it was for so many others. Ten years ago I got a deathly hallows tattoo as a symbol of the hope the books kept alive in me, now every time I see it I wish I could make it disappear. I hate her with every fibre of my being.
I don't know if this will make you feel better, but I always consider that sort of thing to be... defiant in a way. Like you loved her books so much, it gave you strength, and that strength is why you are able to say that her views are terrible and wrong. She can't really take away the fact that her own work is what has empowered people who will never agreed with her bigoted bullshit. Ofc ideally you would have control over whether you want it to be visible or not, and ofc it's hard if you're worried someone might think you agree with her/are unsafe. I don't mean to invalidate any of that.
This is very sweet, thank you ❤️
I know multiple people who got HP tattoos years ago and have since come out as nonbinary. I always wonder how much regret and cringe they feel about that decision. Just get a little trans ally tattoo next to it, that would piss her off ❤️
She has “fuck you” money and doesn’t care. She doesn’t have to appease anyone. She can be a horrible human and still never have to worry about a thing. It’s wild.
I just don't get having too much money to ever spend and deciding to be hateful and weird about stuff rather than using your money to help people or just continuing to write books or something. Wasting so much time on social media being a jerk is just so lazy. Like, go travel! Do literally *anything*.
Rowling sees herself as a perpetual victim but had to conjure up an opponent when her money and fame made her untouchable. No amount of money will appease the gaping hole inside of her.
When is this carbuncle going to go away and shut up? She’s so garbage and violent
I have never read a good headline about this person. She goes out of her way to be awful and I don’t understand it
India Willoughbly is a racist and made derogatory comments about butch lesbians. Neither of them are that great.
Really just makes me wonder about the rumor that she’s a shut in and disconnected from her family and lives online raging and trolling since Pottermore came out. She seems to have no life. If I were rich you wouldn’t see me arguing online with anyone let alone being an asshole.
I highly recommend everyone go watch Caelan Conrad's videos on Gender Critical people and JK Rowling specifically. They're a fantastic "bash back" queer, AKA those of us JKR wish didn't exist.
Remember when they were telling us that she was just standing up for women, we needed to give her the benefit of the doubt and her rhetoric wasn't directly harmful?
she’s calling herself punk now on the twitter because you know…there’s nothing more punk than a billionaire
And at punching down at a socially-marginalized group 🤨
Such an odious person. Why is she so gleeful about being horrible?
She could've written her little books, have them adapted into a blockbuster franchise, taken her massive paycheck, shut the fuck up and live worry free for the rest of her days but she chose this.
I don't understand the hate she has for other human beings who don't bother anybody. If I had one of the most successful franchises ever, I would just vibe and have fun every day instead of go on weird rants on Twitter. Tf?
She is vile and I would love a ban on sharing her toxic shit on this sub, so much. She doesn't need to be amplified.
She has become Lucius Malfoy
To be filled with such hate that it becomes a defining part of your career after once being so beloved is crazy
I'm really stupid and don't understand what's going on in the photo. What's the context? Like I said I'm very stupid.
The person she is quoting is a trans woman, so JK is essentially saying “young” is a weird way to say you’re a man.
What a hateful person. She’s just constantly tweeting this kind of shit, I think we’re better off just blocking and ignoring her instead of constantly being informed of her latest bullshit.
I looked up india and her age made this so funny
Ma’am, take all that money and go somewhere without internet. Perhaps buy a Russian oligarch’s super yacht and try enjoying life, instead of dedicating yourself to being bigoted. We’d all be better for it, since learning is not on the table for you.
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I don’t even understand what she’s saying here.
Whoa. This is ghastly.
I'm continually amazed at how so much late 1990s-2000s culture & nostalgia has come from such brain rot.
Honestly it can't have been that hard for Joanne to come up with all those ogres and monsters etc when she's like this inside
I hate this asshole.
I’m so tired of her
In other news, scientists discover that water is wet. When in the last five years or so hasn't she been openly transphobic?
What even was the context?