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Everyone posted:I admit that it's been a while but weren't the racists/supremacists Voldemort's followers who got their asses handed to them? -a race of greedy big-nosed bankers who view everything as rightfully their property -a race of house slaves but it's ok because they love to be slaves and only one deviant among them wants freedom, how bizarre he is -a literal government registry for people who can transform into animals (this one hits a lot different when you know she's a terf) -exactly one asian kid at Hogwarts (named Cho Chang) This isn't even getting into the wider universe, where she did all kinds of crazy poo poo with like Native American magical traditions and you can imagine etc.
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Mar 18, 2022 16:17
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HP is a british boarding school series written by a white middle class british person, it's not going to be everything to everyone so the inevitable backlash that happened isn't really that surprising. and JKR is now obviously out on social media saying stupid poo poo all the time which made everything way worse. imo the books are fine, there's a lot of unconscious bias stuff happening but the explicit message in the text is that racism and prejudice are bad. if the outcome of all this is that it becomes a series parents read with their preteen kids and discuss the uncomfortable stuff rather than some weird fandom where 40 year olds run around on brooms and drink butterbeer that's probably a net win
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Mar 18, 2022 16:20
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racism and prejudice are bad but the hero joins the met and everything's sorted
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Mar 18, 2022 16:21
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Copernic posted:At least the Guests of Honor are uncontroversial universally regar-- That's a profoundly disappointing article, particularly where Lukianenko is proudly stating that Russians are being allowed to criticise the military in the streets while the rest of us are watching footage of Russian cops dragging away people because they were talking to the press - in one case, even as a woman was saying to them that she agreed with the war. I didn't expect the guy whose best known works make it very clear that Light isn't the same as Good to take that line. At best he's been duped into believing the propaganda like so many others; at worst he's actively promoting it. 
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Mar 18, 2022 16:23
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buffalo all day posted:imo the books are fine, there's a lot of unconscious bias stuff happening but the explicit message in the text is that like this is literally how that plotline is resolved, I can't argue that the antisemitism is coded rather than overt but the slavery thing is absolutely skincrawling
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Mar 18, 2022 16:25
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DACK FAYDEN posted:the house elves like being slaves so who are we to demand an end to slavery quote:
Hermione is treated as a freak for trying to end slavery, both in the book (her friends think she's silly) and outside the book (the author has her name her organization SPEW)
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Mar 18, 2022 16:30
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Many of the things that go wrong in the series do so explicitly because people treat the elves so shittily, and making a real effort to treat them as people is key to saving the day. The last book explicitly states that Hermoine is right about the elves, and that the people who criticize her are wrong. The entire sequence there is more about mocking a certain kind of "well, of course I know what's best for them" kind of activist, who doesn't bother to learn about the people they're trying to help and just assumes they can fix things.
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Mar 18, 2022 16:37
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StrixNebulosa posted:Hermione is treated as a freak for trying to end slavery, both in the book (her friends think she's silly) and outside the book (the author has her name her organization SPEW) if your impression of the whole dobbie/hermione/ron plotline was that ron was smart and wise and hermione trying to help dobbie was a big waste of time and dobbie should have shut up or something, then all i can say is that i think most kids reading the books would disagree. hermione is the author-insert voice of reason like 99% of the time and ron is a dumbass, that's like their entire characters. in short Gnoman posted:Many of the things that go wrong in the series do so explicitly because people treat the elves so shittily, and making a real effort to treat them as people is key to saving the day. The last book explicitly states that Hermoine is right about the elves, and that the people who criticize her are wrong. The entire sequence there is more about mocking a certain kind of "well, of course I know what's best for them" kind of activist, who doesn't bother to learn about the people they're trying to help and just assumes they can fix things.
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Mar 18, 2022 16:39
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The books go out of their way to show the magical creatures that aren't wizards are discriminated against by wizards but also doesn't resolve the issues at all. The heroes work to reestablish the status quo instead of fighting for something better, which basically squanders all the lore Rowling set up. Then they become part of the system that reinforces that status quo (Harry a cop, Hermoine Wizard President, Ron a joke store owner - ok maybe that one doesn't track but lol). It may be more realistic that everything is not magically fixed, but this is a book series about magic that is also entirely fictional and could end however Rowling wanted it to.
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Mar 18, 2022 16:43
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buffalo all day posted:if your impression of the whole dobbie/hermione/ron plotline was that ron was smart and wise and hermione trying to help dobbie was a big waste of time and dobbie should have shut up or something, then all i can say is that i think most kids reading the books would disagree. hermione is the author-insert voice of reason like 99% of the time and ron is a dumbass, that's like their entire characters. So what you're saying is that Rowling is just a talentless hack who managed to write the exact reverse of her own opinions into the story, and not a hate-filled bigoted idiot as evidenced by her every post on Twitter for the last two years?
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Mar 18, 2022 16:44
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Jedit posted:So what you're saying is that Rowling is just a talentless hack who managed to write the exact reverse of her own opinions into the story, and not a hate-filled bigoted idiot as evidenced by her every post on Twitter for the last two years? I mean, those two options are by no means mutually exclusive
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Mar 18, 2022 16:46
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Jedit posted:So what you're saying is that Rowling is just a talentless hack who managed to write the exact reverse of her own opinions into the story, and not a hate-filled bigoted idiot as evidenced by her every post on Twitter for the last two years?
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Mar 18, 2022 16:51
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Jedit posted:So what you're saying is that Rowling is just a talentless hack who managed to write the exact reverse of her own opinions into the story, and not a hate-filled bigoted idiot as evidenced by her every post on Twitter for the last two years? im pretty sure i said what i think on this very page (which is not that): there's a lot of her unconscious bias/prejudice (which she clearly has) in the books that's in tension with the explicit message that racism/prejudice are bad.
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Mar 18, 2022 16:51
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Except for the TERF part (which may not have been a factor when she did most of her writing, a lot of people got radicalized into that stance after it became a culture war issue), what evidence of her "actual opinions" is there? This is an honest question - the only evidence for things beyond that I see are the same sort of "well, if you take this paragraph and ignore all other context and later events it becomes obvious" logic that was once used as "proof" she was a satan-worshipping demon out to brainwash kids into actual black magic.
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Mar 18, 2022 16:56
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90s Cringe Rock posted:racism and prejudice are bad but the hero joins the met and everything's sorted Well, that worked out pretty well for Peter Grant.
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Mar 18, 2022 16:56
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Gnoman posted:Many of the things that go wrong in the series do so explicitly because people treat the elves so shittily, and making a real effort to treat them as people is key to saving the day. The last book explicitly states that Hermoine is right about the elves, and that the people who criticize her are wrong. The entire sequence there is more about mocking a certain kind of "well, of course I know what's best for them" kind of activist, who doesn't bother to learn about the people they're trying to help and just assumes they can fix things. Yeah, this seems correct. This as well: Tars Tarkas posted:The books go out of their way to show the magical creatures that aren't wizards are discriminated against by wizards but also doesn't resolve the issues at all. The heroes work to reestablish the status quo instead of fighting for something better, which basically squanders all the lore Rowling set up. Then they become part of the system that reinforces that status quo (Harry a cop, Hermoine Wizard President, Ron a joke store owner - ok maybe that one doesn't track but lol). It may be more realistic that everything is not magically fixed, but this is a book series about magic that is also entirely fictional and could end however Rowling wanted it to. The books' bias towards the status quo is very strong, that things are "mostly good" outside of the Wizard Nazis and once you've defeated the Wizard Nazis it's OK to go back to "normal."
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Mar 18, 2022 17:39
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To be fair, a return to the status-quo is a common part of fantasy fiction. There is some evil or corrupting force, and once it has been dealt with, things can return to a happy timeless normal.
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Mar 18, 2022 17:46
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Everyone posted:I admit that it's been a while but weren't the racists/supremacists Voldemort's followers who got their asses handed to them? They were the bad racists who do the hand signal and wear pointy hats. Harry is the good racists who are tended to by a separate race of obedient domestic servants, mock the primitive beast people, and outsource banking to greedy gremlin caricatures I like Harry Potter it is a fun kid's fantasy book that grows up with the reader over ~5 years
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Mar 18, 2022 17:58
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Very late to responding but thank you for all the suggestions. 
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Mar 18, 2022 18:02
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I dunno, I just think that if you imply someone is a race traitor for not being loyal to your country, that's pretty bad.
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Mar 18, 2022 18:06
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https://twitter.com/Hugo_Book_Club/status/1504497746123755520
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Mar 18, 2022 18:21
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Mar 18, 2022 18:23
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I admit I got so over a return to the status-quo after that became the entire rallying cry to vote for a segregationist rapist over the other rapist who was more rude, complete with guarantees that nothing will fundamentally change. Being stuck in a time loop where we recreate the very conditions that cause the problems in the first place is no longer a fantasy, it is hell world.
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Mar 18, 2022 18:32
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Mar 18, 2022 18:58
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The odd thing I remember best from Harry Potter is that she really really hates fat people lmao
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Mar 18, 2022 19:54
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Here's a YouTuber who did a deep read of the Harry Potter books in the modern context if you want a refresh. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-1iaJWSwUZs
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Mar 18, 2022 19:58
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a two hour YouTube video conducting a deep read of child wizard books? allow me to limber up my clicking finger because I shall be watching the Heck out of this one 
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Mar 18, 2022 20:09
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Queer Salutations posted:Here's a YouTuber who did a deep read of the Harry Potter books in the modern context if you want a refresh. I had been mildly regretting dumping my HP books in my big book purge. That regret is gone now. Hearkening back to the Dread Empire discussion, here's another Dread Empire that's completely different: https://www.amazon.com/Praxis-Dread...oks%2C85&sr=1-4 Basically this is set in a future were humanity, along with a bunch of non-human species, have long since been conquered and absorbed to become part of the Shaa empire. Now the very last Shaa is dying and at that point leadership of the empire will be up for grabs. The thing I remember most about this series is that the Empire had a near-total monopoly on force. If an area revolted the Shaa would send ships to "rain down bombs on helpless populations." Yep that phrase shows up a lot. The point being that nobody in the Shaa empire really knows how to do ship to ship fighting in space anymore, so they all have to try to figure it out from scratch.
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Mar 18, 2022 20:27
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Lockdown Tales by Neal Asher - $1.99 https://www.amazon.com/dp/B08MQ94QHH/
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Mar 18, 2022 22:28
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Gnoman posted:Except for the TERF part (which may not have been a factor when she did most of her writing, a lot of people got radicalized into that stance after it became a culture war issue) go read the descriptions of rita skeeter sometime
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Mar 18, 2022 23:18
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PeterWeller posted:To be fair, a return to the status-quo is a common part of fantasy fiction. There is some evil or corrupting force, and once it has been dealt with, things can return to a happy timeless normal. The Harry Potter books are basically a fantasy version of the English boarding school stories like the Greyfriars pulp stuff from the early 20th century, which is itself a deeply conservative genre in a particularly British kind of way. There was simply no way that a Brit of Rowling's generation - even a working class woman - was going to write about any sort of challenge to the status quo. Mocking Hermione for her SPEW activism is a good encapsulated example of that: she may be morally right, Rowling may be sympathetic to her beliefs in general, but all this running around and protesting is rather unseemly and we should actually just trust the grown-ups to make slow and incremental change without upsetting anybody. Pure Blairite. I also remember reading George Orwell's deep dive on the pulp fiction of the boarding school genre and finding a lot of it strikingly familiar with Potter fandom, especially American Potter fandom which I think is so akin to the sort of reflexive nostalgic Anglophilia that made e.g. Downton Abbey such a success: quote:With all this, the supposed ‘glamour’ of public-school life is played for all it is worth. There is all the usual paraphernalia — lock-up, roll-call, house matches, fagging, prefects, cosy teas round the study fire, etc. etc.— and constant reference to the ‘old school’, the ‘old grey stones’ (both schools were founded in the early sixteenth century), the ‘team spirit’ of the ‘Greyfriars men’. As for the snob-appeal, it is completely shameless. Each school has a titled boy or two whose titles are constantly thrust in the reader’s face; other boys have the names of well-known aristocratic families, Talbot, Manners, Lowther. We are for ever being reminded that Gussy is the Honourable Arthur A. D’Arcy, son of Lord Eastwood, that Jack Blake is heir to ‘broad acres’, that Hurree Jamset Ram Singh (nicknamed Inky) is the Nabob of Bhanipur, that Vernon-Smith’s father is a millionaire. Till recently the illustrations in both papers always depicted the boys in clothes imitated from those of Eton; in the last few years Greyfriars has changed over to blazers and flannel trousers, but St. Jim’s still sticks to the Eton jacket, and Gussy sticks to his top-hat. In the school magazine which appears every week as part of the Magnet, Harry Wharton writes an article discussing the pocket-money received by the ‘fellows in the Remove’, and reveals that some of them get as much as five pounds a week! This kind of thing is a perfectly deliberate incitement to wealth-fantasy. And here it is worth noticing a rather curious fact, and that is that the school story is a thing peculiar to England. So far as I know, there are extremely few school stories in foreign languages. The reason, obviously, is that in England education is mainly a matter of status. The most definite dividing line between the petite-bourgeoisie and the working class is that the former pay for their education, and within the bourgeoisie there is another unbridgeable gulf between the ‘public’ school and the ‘private’ school. It is quite clear that there are tens and scores of thousands of people to whom every detail of life at a ‘posh’ public school is wildly thrilling and romantic. They happen to be outside that mystic world of quadrangles and house-colours, but they can yearn after it, day-dream about it, live mentally in it for hours at a stretch. The question is, Who are these people? Who reads the Gem and Magnet? quote:The mental world of the Gem and Magnet, therefore, is something like this: https://www.orwellfoundation.com/the-orwell-foundation/orwell/essays-and-other-works/boys-weeklies/
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Mar 19, 2022 00:33
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freebooter posted:The Harry Potter books are basically a fantasy version of the English boarding school stories like the Greyfriars pulp stuff from the early 20th century, which is itself a deeply conservative genre in a particularly British kind of way. There was simply no way that a Brit of Rowling's generation - even a working class woman - was going to write about any sort of challenge to the status quo. Mocking Hermione for her SPEW activism is a good encapsulated example of that: she may be morally right, Rowling may be sympathetic to her beliefs in general, but all this running around and protesting is rather unseemly and we should actually just trust the grown-ups to make slow and incremental change without upsetting anybody. Pure Blairite. I think George Orwell would have greatly appreciated Another Brick in the Wall
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Mar 19, 2022 00:59
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freebooter posted:The Harry Potter books are basically a fantasy version of the English boarding school stories like the Greyfriars pulp stuff from the early 20th century, which is itself a deeply conservative genre in a particularly British kind of way. That's a good point. They're also drawing from young detective fiction, which is another generally conservative genre. I think it's Seth Lerer who argues that HP is so successful because it combines three of the most popular children's lit genres: portal fantasy, the boarding school book, and young detective fiction.
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Mar 19, 2022 02:01
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I'd forgot about the detective aspect. That was always one of the best parts of it for me, and one of the reasons the first three books are among the best - it sort of goes by the wayside by the fourth book (though a lot of other problems crop up at the same time).
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Mar 19, 2022 02:43
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Now I want to read the Flashman version of Harry Potter.
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Mar 19, 2022 03:03
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Fivemarks posted:Don't forget Liu Cixin's racism, or his "If you're a chinese- american and not loyal to the PRC you're a race traitor" stance, or his "Of course the Uighurs need to be in Camps, or else they'll stab more people" stance. This is pretty much standard government opinion. If he said the opposite, chances are he would have vanished for a couple of months then said it anyway. Fivemarks posted:Or his multiple Heinlein style polemics about how, in the CAMPS, humanity will realize that Democracy is useless and how PRC style governance is the best. If this is a reference to the dark forest, in this particular case, all humanity had been squashed into Australia at the time. You can argue that adopting totalitarianism in such an overpopulated and under resourced environment is making metaphorical excuses for China, but it is at least an SFnal exploration of it. Not every writer is going to be George Orwell.
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Mar 19, 2022 03:33
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Finished a couple of sci-fi books in the last week. One was a unfortunately a disappointment, the other was great. I'd had high hopes for Dead Silence by S.A. Barnes. The pitch I remembered initially seeing that got my interest was something like: Titanic + Event Horizon. There's even a cover blurb by Alma Katsu, whose historical horror novels I've enjoyed. Some deep space, satellite internet technicians discover a lost luxury cruise ship and find out something horrible happened to all the passengers and it quickly starts happening to them too. There's also an evil space megacorporation involved. The whole thing almost reads like a screenplay. The main character constantly has flashbacks to the same Big Traumatic Childhood Event (which got pretty tedious after a while). None of her crewmates really have much depth for as much as they're featured. There's a divorced, nice-guy love interest who has a daughter back home, a shy nerd who spends all his time on the internet, the horny jackass, and the one other woman who is sensitive and drinks tea sometimes. That's pretty much all you ever get from any of them. There's a double-twist, maybe a triple-twist/reveal at the end that is partly predictable, and partly kinda goofy and just took the all the wind out of the mystery of what happened to the ship. It probably would have worked a lot better if had had been a screenplay, honestly. I was very happy to have finally read The Sparrow by Mary Doria Russell, though! It's hard to give a plot synopsis that really gets across the depth of the book, but it's about a combined Jesuit/scientific first contact mission to the first planet with extra-terrestrial life discovered by the SETI project. Things don't go well! It's not an overly depressing book on the whole(I didn't think at least), but plenty of bad things do happen to the characters along the way. I'm pretty sure I picked it up after seeing it mentioned here a few times, and I'm so glad I did. I think religion and faith are things that have so much potential for use and interrogation in a sci-fi setting, but it seems uncommon to see it in the first place, and even rarer to see it used so well as it is here. The characters felt deeply human, flawed, and wonderful. Even the peripheral characters obviously had a lot of thought put into them. There's a really interesting balance at play of having the Rakhat denizens be both understandable and alien. Definitely cried a couple times. This one's going to stick with me for a while.
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Mar 19, 2022 04:02
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Fumblemouse posted:This is pretty much standard government opinion. If he said the opposite, chances are he would have vanished for a couple of months then said it anyway. For me the bigger issue with his writing is the gender dynamic, which he tried to deal with better in the third book but still fell pretty short
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Mar 19, 2022 05:44
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The thing about Harry Potter, at heart, is that Rowling isn't really capable of imagining that problems are systemic and not just the result of bad actors. As a result, she recognizes that house-elves can be mistreated and that wizards abuse non-human magical creatures and Muggles, but she doesn't really see that this actually requires any serious changes to the status quo. If you get rid of all the Death Eaters and replace the Minister of Magic with Hermione, everything that was bad will instead become good. Anybody who wants to make any changes broader than replacing bad people with good people, therefore, is either overzealous or has a sinister agender. Sorry, I meant "agenda". "Cannot imagine the existence of systemic problems" is honestly such a common thing these days that it really needs some kind of snappy name. In more positive news, the people who said to read The Curse of Chalion were correct.
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Mar 19, 2022 09:25
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Rand Brittain posted:. Luckily the rest of the books in the series are just as good!
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