Swords, Sorcery, and Socialism - JK Rowling Sucks

Episode Date: April 12, 2022

As a writer and a person, JK Rowling sucks. Today Darius is joined by Nicole and Trevor to talk about a few of the reasons why, and what we should do with her legacy. We also talk about jacked toddlers.Follow Trevor @HistoryofPersia, and Nicole @gi66le_tits (if she ever unlocks again).patreon.com/swordsandsocialismFollow the show @SwordsNSocPodEmail us at [e-mail]: @Himbo_AnarchistKetho: @StupidPuma69 patreon.com/swordsandsocialismEmail: [e-mail] The Show: @SwordsNSocPodAsha: @Herbo_AnarchistKetho: @MusicalPuma69

Nicholas Lazard has written, Rowling can type, but Le Guin can write. What do you make of this comment in the light of the phenomenal success of the Potter books? I'd like to hear your opinion of J.K. Rowling's writing style. I have no great opinion of it. When so many adult critics were carrying on about the incredible originality of the first Harry Potter book, I read it to find out what the fuss was about, and remained somewhat puzzled. It seemed a lively kids' fantasy crossed with a school novel. Good and fair for its age group, but stylistically ordinary, imaginatively derivative, and ethically rather mean-spirited. Bro. bro are you fucking real man come on so welcome everyone to sorcery and socialism a podcast

about the politics and themes hiding in our genre fiction. As always, I'm Darius. Ketho is gone again because I still haven't let him out of jail. So instead, I have two guests again with me today. Joining us as returning guests, I have Nicole and Trevor. Welcome back, you two. Hello. Hello.

And today we are talking about Joanne K. Rowling. I don't know what her middle name is. I'm not going to look it up. The K is fake. The K is fake. Fantastic. So welcome to the podcast about Joanne fake K Rowling. This is going to be our first ever sort of player haters ball of an

episode. As I've said before, I typically try to keep our podcast pretty positive. When I talked about an author, we may criticize them for certain decisions they make, but I try not to be just a hater when it comes to certain authors and their books. But that's actually why I don't feel,

when it comes to certain authors and their books. That's actually why I don't feel, I feel a little relieved that we kind of lost the Dark Materials episode because I was kind of a hater for the first bit of that episode because I didn't know what I was about. And now when we redo it, I can be nicer. But today we're going to be haters.

We're here to talk about the Harry Potter books and why Joanne is a terrible person and all similar things. Obviously, a lot of this is pretty well trodden ground for a lot of us on the internet. Yeah, but today we're going to be really mean because I don't like Joanne. And I was saying this is pretty well trodden ground, especially on the internet, talking about her sort of failings as a public figure and a human being. But also this has given us time in retrospect to look back and figure out that her writing actually wasn't that good. It just happened to be good enough and hit a good zeitgeist to blow up.

So even though it's pretty well trodden ground, she's been back in the news lately because she always feels the need to put herself back in the news. I don't know. Maybe she has a new book coming out or something. But Kethel's gone and I don't like her. So we're going to be mean to her on a podcast. So I hope you guys like it. Anyway.

Hello, guests. Hello. Hello. Hello. Let's talk about Joanne. As I opened the episode with a quote from Le Guin, I think that pretty sums up pretty well how we kind of feel about this, this, this author. I'm sorry.

You've blown my mind with the fact that the K and JK Rowling is invented. That just, I'm short-circuiting already. It's like she just knew her writer name would sound better with like the double initial. Literally, I think that's the story. The publisher was like, well, you need to have two things so you can be more like Tolkien, which is actually kind of common.

Lots of authors have a fake middle initial. Wait, what about R.R. Martin? Are both of those real? I have idea now i'm curious i'm not gonna look it up it's not that's not the episode but now i'm worried about george rr martin it's actually stands for george really really is martin george george rolkin rolkin martin George, George Rolkin, Rolkin Martin. Uh, so we're going to talk about JK Rowling. So all of us, all three of us, I believe were spot on in the demographic to read these books as they were coming out. I don't remember what year the first one came out. Uh, but I know that I was pretty much on that train, like as soon as it started, you know what I mean? Like I was in the pocket for these as a demographic. I roughly guessed

that both of you were as well. I was in like my mid teens, I think early to mid teens when like they started kind of getting big. So I think think the third or fourth book had been coming out. I remember my mom coming back from Sam's Club or Costco with them when I was like 14 maybe and being like, oh, I bought these books. I was like, okay, I'm a nerd, whatever. They're kind of kids' books, but whatever. And yeah, reading them.

Yeah, I'm a bit younger than you guys, so I played catch up a little. But also they have a soft spot in my heart because they introduced me to media piracy because my dad got the audio books from LimeWire. So I have lots of fond memories of hearing the Jim Dale audio book version and watching the like Windows XP media player go through its spinning lights.

So you actually probably knew how to pronounce Hermione before I ever did. Because I only ever read it. And I was like, I don't, I don't. It was one of those things where I was reading it. I'm like, I have no idea how to pronounce that. So I'm just going to, I just sort of like put a blank space in my internal monologue whatever i got to her name and i'm just like yeah her and we'll just move on for me it was the opposite i reversed and had to figure out how it was spelled after hearing it and it's not spelled the way i thought yeah no i i i i read it and and didn't know how to actually pronounce her name until like the movies came out.

I was like, oh, her name isn't Hermione. Also, I'm discovering that the first book actually came out in 1997. It's a little bit earlier than I thought. But again, I was pretty much in the right in the demographic for these. I was reading them as they came out. I have fond memories of like my mom pre-ordering the book for me from Barnes and Noble and then like on release day, like, you know, going to the big city next, like nearby that had a Barnes and Noble and like the book and starting to read it in the car on the way home because I couldn't even wait

to get home to start reading it. I think this speaks more to my, as we've learned later in life, my general low level of brain capacity as to why I enjoyed these so much because in retrospect, they're not very good. For a lady writing books that include a whole race of slaves that totally like being slaves, a whole race of greedy, duplicitous bankers with giant noses that we're not going to talk, you know, that would totally don't mean anything.

Roses that we're not going to talk, you know, that would totally don't mean anything. The whole thing about being pure blooded, which at the beginning seems like she's on the right side of because, you know, she seems to be against Voldemort and his like pure blood ism. It kind of gets sketchy. wild tokenism in the books with like, hey, we've got the one Asian character. We have the two Indian girls. We have the one black guy whose name is Shacklebolt. Like, there's a lot of incredibly lazy and bad stuff going on. And so today we're going to have some criticisms for her, which I'm sure she will take to heart, about number one, just sort of the pros, number two, world building, and number three, I don't know, just being a generally horrible person to everyone. Possibly the first person,

famous person I know of to fall afoul of what I've seen online referred to as the, as the right as Riley's law, which is as soon as you begin posting about trans people, you will never post normally ever again. Like as soon as you see a public figure make like an anti-trans post, they're never going back. That's it. So yeah, it seems that seems, that seems to track. Yeah. Like it's a pretty good indicator. So let's start with like sort of her prose and world building. And I want to start, specifically start a little early.

Because as Nicole, you pointed out sort of before the recording started, some people may take issue with criticisms, particularly ones leveled at her writing in recent years as sort of saying that we're retroactively bashing her writing because of her political views or something. But I want to point out, I looked up some stuff. I did research, believe it or not. And I found people talking about her writing as early as 2005. I went to LiveJournal to find posts on the

Harry Potter essays section about people complaining about her writing. So don't tell me I don't do my research. I'm ever so happy that once LiveJournal got bought out by a russian company back in like the early 10s i was like you know what i'm deleting everything i have on here look because i don't want none of my early 20s to come back to bite me in the ass

there's a lot of bad boy stuff but still very cringe don't look my space is gone and uh and i'm glad no one can find my profile yes exactly nothing like objectionably offensive just just bad just teenage 20 something angst yeah believe it or not that was actually the only time i ever did any like programming because you could paste those like html codes and shit to make your MySpace profile like have pictures and stuff. You know what I mean? Like change the whole background. That was like the closest I've ever come to doing any computer programming. And I was like 15. Anyway, this 14th of December 2005.

Harry Potter essays section of LiveJournal. J.K. Rowling and Lazy Writing. Incoherency in four parts. This is one of these posts I found, and it gets to the heart right from the start of one of my main,

always been one of my main criticisms, going back in retrospect to the Harry Potter franchise, is that the thesis statement here is, submit ladies and gentlemen that dear beloved citation needed Joanne does not know what the fuck she's doing the entire beginning of this post is talking about her will building and the fact that she is essentially nothing more than like a Looney Tunes character laying the tracks in front of her train as she goes, building the world around the character of Harry and the things she wants him to do, which leads to wild inconsistencies, massive plot holes and whole things that she brings up and then just forgets about. And let's let's start with their either one of you. What's your favorite weird world building problem with our friend joanne

okay so not to do the stereotypical young white person thing of bringing up their year abroad but during my year abroad uh i don't think this gives me any innate understanding of British culture, but I don't think you need it. You just need some experience with the UK to understand that so much of what she wrote is just kind of English boarding school parody. And just kind of as the series goes on and gets a little bit more political just parody of the united kingdom things that i think a lot of american kids reading it thought were invented foods and invented concepts like school houses or sorting ceremonies or

you know the way the ministry of magic is structured. None of that is invented. It's all just kind of a parody version of Britain, which, you know, it's not bad. It's fine to have a fantasy parody setting. That can be kind of amusing if you know that's what it is. But I think part of the reason this series took off is because a lot of the kids reading it didn't realize that's what they were reading. The other thing about her world building that really stands out in light of how I spent my time abroad was I went to the University of Exeter for a semester, which is Joan's alma mater. And once you get there, this doesn't seem to be super well known outside of exeter but there is at least a claim that basically every major setting in the story is based on something in the city of exeter england and some of it i think is kind of subconscious influences

or like doesn't super track like there's a lot of the cathedral is the inspiration for the great hall and i'm like well sure but like also it's just a big room in a castle whatever then there's other things um i don't think i can share screens right now but there is a bar a gay bar at the end of an alley called The Vault. And if you read the description of Gringotts Bank, it is describing this building. Amazing. It is a slightly straighter walled

version of Gringotts Bank. And this, I double checked, it was built in the 80s. It was absolutely there when she was going to school. So, and there's a ton of locations all through the town like that. Oh my God. That are direct, obvious inspirations for things in the books. So the bank full of anti-Semitic caricatures is based on a gay bar.

I don't know for a fact that it was a gay bar when she was there, but that's absolutely what it is now. Amazing. Thanks, Joanne. John, if it was a gay bar, it may be, if it was a gay bar when she was there, it may be the most like queer thing in the entire series. wasn't a you know afterthought oh i i want to up my liberal creds and all it's like oh yeah yeah it'd be the most off sorry i was gonna say

it'd be the most authentically queer thing in that entire book of course if it was a gay bar and she did set the the bank with the anti-semitic you know characters of you know you know bankers and stuff like that in there that also i has the mouthfeel of something both anti-semitic and also incredibly queer phobic just i i'm feeling the edges of it I can't put my finger on it. Well, I think in, I think with another author, there'd probably a lot of back.

It's just a room. It's just a building. You know what I mean? And she wanted to use it with anyone else with anyone else. I would be like, it's a coincidence. It's a weird building, but we are talking about Joanne.

This bar is called the vault. It's a weird building, but we are talking about Joanne. This bar is called the vault. It's, it doesn't get more explicitly a reference than a place that looks like a place called the vault being your bank. That one is probably the most obvious homage, like intentional in the book. I think. Looking it up now just because i want to like my brain wants to know like why are you like the vault because it's apparently

the vaults and all and god yeah it does look like green guts and what you really have to understand is that it's at the end of a really narrow alley. So even the setting of where the building is in relation to other buildings is very direct. So that's a good one. Nicole, what's your favorite little quirk about Rowling's world building? I have to stop myself. I keep wanting to sarcastically call her

like our dear friend joanne like i keep wanting to say that and i feel like i shouldn't do it the whole episode but i i think i have this urge to do so um i'm gonna i'm not gonna do it i'm not gonna do it so yeah oh sorry nicole are you still looking at the oh yeah i'm still i'm still i'm still diving into the deep lore of the vaults nicole nicole knows where she's going next time she goes on vacation to the uk oh i mean i've been to the uk like i i can maybe it's either for off the recording or another episode i can tell you about the saddest strip club i've ever been in just the saddest saddest at all because i went in like 2009 like on a very long weekend because i i grew up a long weekend right after the recession fantastic well i i like i'd saved up money and stuff like that and like i had a my first real job after college so i had money and stuff like that and i was like i have

a couple friends who who were like doing uh schooling in england and all want the university of london one at the university of canterbury and all and so i was like oh yeah i always wanted to go to england i grew up kind of an anglophile like watching um um uh money python and stuff like that and all um you know grew up on like time bandits and that kind of shit and so i wanted to go there and i i think i'm not i'm not sure if you were in the the the thread on twitter where i mentioned this i think to ava or something like that but but like I went, I went, I went, so I go, I get to England and, uh, and I'm at customs and the customs agent,

who's just very nondescript white British dude and all, uh, is this like, and so why are you, why are you coming to our country? I was like vacation. And he he just paused for a second, a good beat, and just blinked. And he was like, why? Like, man, this was in March. I was expecting it to be rainier. It wasn't and all. I was expecting it to be a little bit colder.

It wasn't, I think, because of the North Atlantic current and all that jazz and all. Because I think it was warmer than Columbus Columbus where I was living at the time. And yeah, no, like I spent, you know, I went up to Canterbury, got to see Canterbury Cathedral, bummed around London for a little bit. And like on a Sunday night, I was just wandering around Soho. And I was like, well, there's not a lot open. There's not a lot to do. Like I remember.

Let's go to the strip club. Well, no, I was like, I was like, okay, I'm just going to the the tube back to you know the other side of london where my my hotel room was and i was like well there's a strip club and it's open fuck it i'll look at some boobs and uh you know paid like five pounds to get in and i was like okay and they like you know went down this long hall a set of stairs and emerged in this uh this room that was very reminiscent of like have you ever been in like a a a church or school uh like basement uh kitchen like cafeteria area very much those strong vibes this cage which was not far from the door was a velvet roped off section of linoleum flooring with a stripper pole there was a smattering of tables a section near the back where like you know like the like the food and stuff like you know like the actual kitchen area like pass through actually

using the kitchen to make the buffet at the strip club yeah yeah and uh so i walk in and there's this one there's a woman uh quote unquote dancing it was more just a very unenthusiastic shimmying back and forth with some like hip movements and stuff like that in uh all white lingerie like bra panties uh like uh garter belt stockings stuff like that and a cowboy hat like a fucking cheap ass cowboy hat i forget what song was playing but there's like there was like maybe six other people like customers in there there was a man and a woman at a table, not far from the quote unquote stage. There was like a couple other single people. There was a guy sitting on a couch off in a corner watching by himself.

And so I walk in and one of the workers there like leads me over into like a little staging area where it's like okay well here's like you know there's the menu there's like a two drink minimum or somewhere like one drink minimum whatever yada yada yada and i'm like okay whatever like in for a penny in for a pound so like i bought like this really piss poor lager and like you know grab you know sat at a table by myself and like you know just nursed the the lager and i think that song ended and maybe another song played where she continued to dance and then she like left the stage and not nothing happened after that until like a group of like very rowdy irish young men and like maybe their late teens or 20s came down the stairs just just very thick irish brogues talking very loudly very very happy when they walked in got one you know uh walked over to like the little staging area where like there was couches and like

here's the menu blah blah blah and the the one worker starts like explaining like what they have to like pay to be there first and there's just a whole ton of fuck this fuck that fall fuck you and they all storm out and i'm like okay well i'm gonna see if someone else goes on stage by the time i'm done with my logger give like five ten minutes no one there's only the one dancer i was like well this was an experience i'm gonna remember this for a while. The church basement part really sells it. It was, again, the saddest strip club I've ever been in.

And it wasn't even just bad, horrible, unsafe. It was just sad. It was mournful. Would you like to know... I appreciate that. Would you like to know I appreciate that would you like to know something else I've found

that is incredibly sad and mournful what? while you were talking I was looking at this essay that I found on LiveJournal down the side there's a bunch of topics you can click on to go to other topics relatedly it's a whole section for pairings these are all essays about shipping

oh Jesus Christ in Harry Potter would you like to know So whole section four pairings. These are all essays about shipping. Oh, Jesus Christ in Harry Potter. Would you like to know some of the shipping options that are available on live journal? Oh God. I'm just going to read them in order. We've got Draco and Hermione, Harry and Bellatrix.

What? Harry and Cho, Harry and Drione. Uh-huh. Harry and Bellatrix. What? Harry and Cho. Harry and Draco. Harry and Ginny. Harry and Amorni. Harry and Luna. Harry and Ron. Harry, Ron, Hermione. Ooh. Lucius and Hermione.

Ooh. I opened that one because I wish to scar myself there are two separate essays under the Lucius and Hermione shipping category the names of those two essays

are Opposites Attack, The Storm-Tossed Ship of Evil Genius or Sex and Supremacy, The War Games of Lucius Malfoy and Sirius Black cost chip of evil genius or sex and supremacy. The war games of Lucius Malfoy and Sirius black motherfucker. The only thing that may be more cursed than Harry Potter is Harry Potter fan fic.

Oh God. Yeah. No. Um, Lucius, Lucius and serious Remus and serious Remus and talks Ron and Hermione, Ron Luna, Snape and Draco,

Snape and Harry, Snape and Hermaco, Snape and Harry, Snape and Hermione, Snape and Lucius. There you go. If you want to link these in the show notes. Oh God, I'm sorry. That is, I'm now in a cursed figure. Yeah. Thanks to having found this.

Getting back on topic. So, Nicole, do you have a specific bit of, like, of Joanne's world building or, like, that, you know, sort of the world building bit that you find particularly offensive? Well, I'll get to that in just a second. I did find something about the vaults and all. And so it's an article from 2019 from devin live and all about like exeter pride and stuff like that and apparently like around 94 is when it became the gay bar and all because apparently it was a biker bar before becoming quote queen's vaults and being established as an lgbt bar uh queen has now been dropped from the name. So it was just a biker bar when she was there? Apparently.

Apparently. It makes it more likely that she went in there than if it was a gay bar. Yeah, but I mean it also being a biker bar could be a gray area because that could be like more leather daddy-ish. I don't know. It's not

impossible. I cannot for my life imagine oh i can't imagine going in i can't imagine a motorcycle in exeter let alone like a biker scene so it was still a queer bar just likely more than likely a leather bar wow at least we know what joanne's into which well thanks for that i sincerely doubt she is into any of that stuff considering any of her lgbtq support seems to be very very pointed and self-interested and all like lib and lib and nominal. Yeah. Yeah. Like she's obviously does it because she feels like she can get something

out of it and all. And yeah, we'll get to that. We'll get to, we'll get to that when we talk about, but I guess like, uh, the,

the, the part of the world building I think is probably like some of the names and all that really gets into it. Especially fucking Seamus Finnegan or whatever his fucking name is and all. The one Irish kid. The one Irish kid who accidentally blows up everything during a book series that was written during the Troubles and all. That's the one thing that really sticks out in my mind like there's a lot of like not not to go community meme territory but it's like i can kind of understand her like being dumb and white and kind of like middle class libby and like just be

like oh cho chang whatever that sounds asian- and all. Just like not doing research and being lazy and all. But it's like, bitch, you're British living during the troubles. And this is what you do with an Irish, the one Irish kid. What the fuck is wrong with you? So on that, like referencing Cho Chang, again, with any other author, you might be like, okay, maybe. However, she does have a history of specifically going to other cultures and just like yoinking little bits that she likes without any context. Culturalism. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Yeah, without any context and using them. So the fact that Cho Chang is supposed to be a Chinese character, both names are historically Korean. Both Cho and Chang are historicallyorean names from what i understand which i've done more what i went wanted to say was like i guess when i was becoming aware of like how just the lazy and truly offensive in its laziness of the the naming conventions she would use and all like there was part of me i was like okay you know could you know i mean kind of like king what kingsley shacklebolt yeah the one black guy part of me is like is i can see that as potentially just like her being like he's a cop and being a complete fucking idiot and not realizing the way that

that can also be interpreted as like, you know, chattel slavery. But I guess, I guess my major contention with her specifically is any of these instances alone would be like, yeah, maybe.

Yeah. Yeah. On their own. Yeah. No, I agree. But it's, it's one of those science things where like,

if you have evidence that outlines a perfect circle. Yeah. No. Then there must be a circle there. You know what I mean? Oh, no. It's if it walks like a duck and quacks like a duck and shits like a duck. Then, you know.

But it was really more like the Seamus thing really sort of just like drove it home for me. Because like up until that point, I was like, oh, maybe she's just dumb and not thinking about stuff. It's like, oh, this bitch knows what she's doing. She really does. Because it's like you couldn't be a British person growing up during that time period and not realize what you're doing,

naming the one Irish character, you know, that and having them that be their defining characteristic. They accidentally blow shit up all the time. And it's just like, yeah, no, no, there's no real way to like, you know, kind of excuse some of this stuff because she obviously has some idea. There's some conscious level of like, oh, I'm being naughty oh i'm just gonna name him this it's gonna be funny well that's kind of where i think some of it falls is that i very much get the sense that like seamus finnegan is supposed to be in a joke like isn't it funny the irish kid always blows things up but it's like it's 1997 like they they almost killed margaret thatcher not that long ago which which if jk rowling writing it at that time was like oh yeah fucking irish independence

you know the ira was not uh not wrong in some of their stances. I would be like, okay, uh, a little bit of respect there, you know, that's not how she meant it. No, no, it's not. No, no. Um, talking about this sort of pulling from cultures that thinking about it, we're jumping much later in time now. There's an article written about Harry Potter and the Cursed Child. Or is it Cursed? I never know when it's cursed and when it's cursed.

It is some of the worst written anything I've ever had the pleasure to encounter, so I don't think it matters. Did you read it? I tried. Okay. And gave up when I realized what the plot was going to be. Yeah, I didn't, but I have read stuff about it.

I have an article here. It is a one from BuzzFeed from 2016. It's called What the Hell is a Panju? And other questions I have for J.K. Rowling. You're going to have to spell that word. It's P-A-N-J-U. Ah, okay. So the crux of this article is that that name in the,

so the cursed child is like an alternative future of what happened in the world of Harry Potter. I think, because in this one, Ron apparently ends up with Padma Patil, one of the Indian girls, and they have a son or child who they named Panju. Oh,

Jesus. And this person is like, what the hell is a Panju? This person is Indian and looked at Panju was Oh, Jesus. And this person is like, what the hell is a Panju? This person is Indian and looked at... Panju is just the name of an island. That's it. It's literally just... And it doesn't even mean anything. It's just like the name of an island. So it means nothing.

It's just a word. This article then goes into how she sort of did the same thing for one of her later essays or whatever when she was talking about magic in the Americas. She essentially

dipped her little toesies into Native American and Navajo culture, completely decontextualized some of it, and just threw it in her new work in a way that was patently offensive to all like Navajo people that looked at it. So she has a history of just being like, I'm going to look at this culture. What's this mean? I don't know. And I think the, um, the sort of quote from this article, uh, that I think sort of sums it up is the author says, let me see, I'm finding the article here.

So let me come out and say it. What the hell is a Panju? If you haven't read Harry Potter and the Cursed Child and don't want spoilers, stop here. I don't care. Panju is an island in Versailles. That's all you need to know. If you've read the play, you know Panju is the name Rowling gave to the son of Ron and Padme Patil have together an alternative reality. A two minute Google search would have told her that Panju isn't a boy's

name or an Indian name. It's not even a realistic name unless the latest was, well, Weasley kid is an Island in Vassal, Versailles, which probably not. Panju is further evidence that Rowling would rather pander to pander to non-white audiences than to put in the work it takes to represent us fairly in her writing. If you don't believe me, ask everyone around you to name their

favorite Harry Potter character. Go ahead. Go quick. You too. Who's your favorite? I'm just kidding. Don't tell me. You'll hear more names of imaginary creatures than you will of people of color. I did it right now. Snape, Fred, Tonks, Dobby. Not Kingsley Shacklebolt, not Cho Chang,

and understandably not the Patil sisters. There's not enough material. There's nothing there. So I thought it was a pretty good quote. Again, it's pointing out that even when she does attempt to do minority representation in her world building and in her work, it's the most like pandering nonsense that doesn't actually even mean anything in the cultures that she's attempting to pander to. Yeah, no, like there's a part of me that like could forgive like the early books and all with some of that stuff. I'm just like, you know, no Google, like it might be a little bit harder and all uh with some of that stuff i'm just like you know no google like it

might be a little bit harder and all but it's also just like you live in fucking britain and all which does kind of have a bit of a diverse population at this point in time it would be real easy to find good representations of like indian people yeah it really in the uk it'd be pretty easy fucking easy and all. But I could kind of forgive it a little bit in the mid to late 90s when she's writing some of the first books.

By the time the fucking Cursed Child comes out, and especially the Fantastic Beasts stuff is coming out, it's like, you have I'm not sure if she was a billionaire at that point, but you have i'm not sure if she was a billionaire at that point but you i have more than enough resources both monetarily and in non-monetary resources to like reach out and be like hey can i talk with people or can you do research for me so that i am you know

not pulling shit out of my ass we actually had that this conversation slightly in the last episode in one of the last episodes about uh the wheel of time where that you could tell at the beginning robert jordan was trying to set up this sort of dualistic you know what i mean sort of like manichean or like buddhist world with like the separate halves and everything but you can also tell at first he'd never talked to anyone that actually held those kind of faiths. But like, as the books go on, he gets better at representing how that actually is believed by people.

And they said, we attributed that largely to the fact that as he got for famous, he got to talk to more people and actually got to talk to people who hold dualistic faiths. And he actually learned how to represent them better. And that is a thing that Rowling, on the other hand, seemed to have gotten more famous and become more isolated from any sort of like input on her on her work. I don't think I don't think isolated is the right word, because a lot of the ways that her work got worse as it developed are doubling down you know it's a lot of digging her heels in to be like no no no i when i created a slave race it was mostly okay like so i think a lot of it is saying no no what i said i meant what i said in the first place and here's why that's fine

which i think is a lot of like her turf arc is also like i had an opinion and now i'm doubling and tripling and quadrupling down on it until i'm even if she wasn't thinking that hard about it in the first place when maybe a lot of these were just sort of, you know, lazy writing when she first started. But I think you're right, Trevor, in that when people like asked her about it or called her out on it, she just got like reflexively defensive of it and then justified why it was cool and good actually, instead of being like, you're right. That was kind of fucked up.

For a few more specific critiques here, I, I, I found a critique, uh, the name of which is Harry Potter and the not very good writing. Uh, it goes, is there a writer and it's actually dealing with people saying that the early books were, you know, were rough, but as she went on, you know, she developed as a writer. This, this essay is actually making the argument that she got, as you actually said, Trevor, she got worse as time went on. And some of the arguments it's making here is sort of the basic one that her work is pretty simple. Like it's not very, you know, linguistically complex, which is fine when you're writing a book for nine-year-olds yeah it's not when you're trying to like expand that upwards into like young adult and more expensive stuff which is supposedly what she was doing with the

later ones um second point is that there's a lot of pointless characters and subplots that go nowhere uh like the entire existence of quidditch really doesn't actually affect the story at all it's just usually thrown in there as a page filler to stall for time until the plot catches up it's just to fill space until more plot happens. Another example is Dobby, the house elf, is introduced and then does nothing for like a series of books until she's like, oh, right. By the way, we have Dobby. He's going to be important. He's going to be there. The critique here is that she'll introduce a character and then a few books later be like, well, I guess we should have this character do something.

And then just sort of throws them in out of the blue as like the person that knows the fact where like good writing, you foreshadow that sort of thing. Like you can usually tell in a book, this character will be important later. You know what I mean? Like there's a way to write where, you know,

the character will be impactful later. Next critique what I mean? Like there's a way to write where you know the character will be impactful later. Next critique is that she does a lot of descriptions simply for the sake of describing things. We're like, the quote here is that Rowling takes a tea break during action scenes to describe what's happening in the background. Someone casts a spell and we hear about its flash, how it lights the room,

how the people react to it being cast. On occasions, she even invents a lake during one of these action scenes that wasn't there before. And then sometimes we only find out what the spell did or the after effects till like another chapter or maybe another book. And so it's like she's her writing on top of being sort of simple, just has a lot of extra in it that doesn't just doesn't need to be there. It's not plot important. It's not even character building. It's just like also it looked like this, which, again, is a criticism that I personally leveled at Robert Jordan and his books at times where you're like. That's an interesting description i i didn't need that it actually doesn't affect any of this i mean rr martin has that to a degree steven king is

definitely you know a lot of them to a degree but doesn't in a way at the very least that's a lot of them to a degree but doesn't in a way at the very least that's interesting and generally you know has some bearing to one degree or another so i think that's the big difference because it's not even like even tolkien is guilty of spending enormous amounts of time just describing stuff you know here here is a chapter about a flower. Yeah, exactly. But that's the kind of book it is. Because the whole thing is like that in Tolkien or in The Song of Ice and Fire, you expect from page one that a whole page will be devoted to describing coats of arms. And that's just part of the writing style. But with this, it is a break from what you've been doing. Yeah, a lot of it is, again, you know, like a kid's story where we're going to do some magic.

We're going to go to class. Also, here's a four paragraph description of something. And you're like, where'd that come from? Where did that come from? Well, and I'll defend the length of the Quidditch things as one of those, a lot of people aren't reading it as the genre that it's supposed to be. Because you're trying to read it as epic fantasy, and it's actually a school book. So, of course it has the team sports in it. That's part of going to school.

That's part of the point, which is why it features so heavily in the early books and kind of vanishes as that element of the story drops out and i think whether or not like the length of those descriptions is a problem for you is kind of the same people who go back and forth on whether or not fight scenes should be super detailed yeah well i think one of the that one i was just reading pulling from actually was did a short comparison between her and r.a salvatore who writes like the pulpiest dnd pulp books to ever be but like they're they're pulp but they know they're pulp and they're good at being pulp and he specifically was talking about the fight scenes that you know ari salvator's fight scenes are like like he's going to do some description to sort of set the scene and reassure you that the people that that dritz is about to murder are bad but then after that it's just like the sword cuts you know dritz parries and shoots an arrow you know what i mean it's very

like it is what it intends to be, which is like the fight scenes are like clipped and descriptive and move on. Like you said, I think the problem with the Harry Potter books is it seems to like

sort of shift genres, like depending on where in the chapter she is. Like, is this a fantasy book? Is it just a school kid book? You know what I mean? And I think that's where sort of that disconnect comes

is not exactly knowing what it is as it's You know what I mean? And I think that's where some of that disconnect comes is not exactly knowing what it is as it's writing. Yeah, which is why I think those problems are the worst in the middle of the series, because I think kind of intentionally and kind of because she realizes what people wanted

once she has access to like the movies and the Internet. That it's trying to transition from being a really like school kid novel to a fantasy novel um but it doesn't work because all of a sudden your series blooms from you know a half inch thick to two inches thick per book. I don't want to mention that too. Like the first book is what it is. Like it's short, it's 13 chapters.

You get in there and like, you know what I mean? It does its story. By the time we're getting to like the goblet of fire, you know what I mean? The fourth book, you're suddenly like, how much could happen in one year of school?

Like how much can you possibly be doing? Like obviously Harry's the chosen one and all, but he has more happened to him in like a week than I had in like four years of high school put together. It's because these characters never fucking sleep. Every night they're, they're up and they're invisible and they're doing shit. And it's like,

well, and they keep passing their classes and I'm like wait wait a minute like I can't stay up for 12 hours without feeling exhausted. Like Per is struggling in potions class well maybe it's because he sleeps on average three hours a night because he's up scheming

yeah I was gonna say you should try brewing some stimulants can they I was like are you. You should try brewing some stimulants. Can they... I was like, are you up? I'm brewing Wizard Red Bull in my dorm. What is this? It's liquid cocaine.

Don't worry about it. I think here we need to at least, obviously, address a couple of the other sort of big, what are called problematic world-building elements. We've referenced them before. address a couple of the other sort of big what are called problematic world building elements with references before the fact that like the let's talk about the goblins and the elves so the goblins as much as hardcore fans want to change it in retrospect or very very clearly like just anti-Semitic stereotypes. They just are. And they've actually doubled again, doubled down.

If anyone has seen the promotional material from the new game. Oh boy. I'm sorry. That was too high pitched. I woke up the dog. I'm sorry. Literally just one ear just went. Hey,

you know what that is? It's a dog whistle. Hey, um, so the new Harry Potter, like, so first off in the Lord, the,

the goblins are like the, the greedy little big hook nose guys that control all the money. Um, that's bad enough. Uh, nose guys that control all the money. That's bad enough. Number two in the first Harry Potter book, the bank they use has like a star of David on the floor that they don't bother to get rid of until the later movies. On top of that, when we're talking about the fact that what's so bad about it is that she

doubles down on it. There's a new Harry Potter MMO or something coming out. It's a video game and all. And I would say arguably how much input she had in there is, I mean, unknown to me. Unknown, however. One of the developers did run a anti-SDW YouTube channel for another years.

And I was like, hmm. Yes, one of them ran a Gamergate-like YouTube channel for another few years. And I was like, hmm. Yes, one of them ran a GamerGate YouTube channel. One of the lead developers. The plot of this new video game is that the goblins are, this is in the, you know,

back in time before the Harry era or whatever. The goblins are tired of being an oppressed people and are fomenting a revolution. And your job is to put it down. That is the plot is that the goblins who are upset with the fact that they are second-class citizens and upset with the fact that they're not allowed to have wands because the wizards banned them from having wands

and forced them to be second-class citizens. They're mad about this, and they're going to have a revolution in order to get better rights for goblins. And the plot of the game is that you have to put them back in their place. That's not weird at all. That's not weird at all. There's also the house elves who are an enslaved race who are totally cool with being enslaved. It's fine. Don't ask about it. It's just that one elf who doesn't like it, who's also a main kind of a character we care about, but he's also the only one that cares that they're enslaved. Hermione has a weird like neoliberal spell where she creates an acronym

organization to advocate for more equitable treatment of them, but eventually drops it because she gets tired of it, which, you know, pretty typical for the liberal establishment and the rights of underrepresented people. But the house elves are totally fine being slaves. You don't even have to see them. They hide in the basement and they magic the food up there. So your slave labor isn't even directly addressed by any of the students because they never have to see it. So that's pretty neat. Yeah, sorry, either of you have comments on that?

I was rambling a bit. They make me mad. I have one thought for each of the ultra problematic races in Harry Potter. The goblins, they're the only thing she does real lore building for. Because she writes into the story this perfect world building thing with the history of magic class, and then makes it,

haha, history class is so boring. What if the main characters just ignore it except for the stupid nerd? Which is irritating in and of itself because it's kind of a wasted opportunity. But the one thing she talks about in that class recurrently is the goblin wars. They've had like three of them. There's like three or four. And what they really come down to is like this, these uprisings happen and the wizards put them down because the goblins are ever so slightly more magical,

I guess, and can't have sticks to do magic. Cause then something, I don't know. Well, cause if you give the goblins wands, they're going to use them to murder wizards, obviously.

Yeah. Wonder why. Well, they're just naturally evil but then goblin characters also reference like pogroms like that gets she writes that into the story that there have been pogroms against goblins like she acknowledges all of these things about them where it's like then why why is this okay and that it's kind of the same thing with the elves where i think what she intended with them originally was to see them as like the servant class of the traditional British nobility who weren't slaves. They just kind of had a hereditary relationship

with the family they worked for. They got paid, they got off time, they could leave, but like there's that very strong, my father did it and I will do it and my son will do it sort of thing. So it did it for a really long time. And I think that was what it was supposed to be.

But then she made them slaves. Which to be fair, Lord of the Rings also has that in it too, because they're also English. Because that's what the Gamjis are to the Bagginses. Sure. But if the Gamjis want to move to another part of the Shire and stop doing that. They can.

There's not magical law preventing it. Yeah. Yeah, I forgot that in the lore there are directly referenced pogroms against goblins. So this... And goblins rebellions and stuff like that. So this minority race that's had pogroms

against them, which will then cause them to rebel, which then get put down. These are the enemies in the new Harry Potter video game. You're putting down the next insurrection of them. But I mean, it, it, it tracks with the, the, the criticism of the Harry Potter series in general, where it's like, there there's obvious obvious issues with the wizarding society and all which can be typified by even voldemort's you know fascistic you know neo-nazi sort of resurgence and stuff like that and all um but like there's no like the entire thrust of the

series is the neoliberal-esque let let's just maintain the status quo. I mean, it's good for us. Let's ignore the obvious problems and issues on a societal, systemic level and just keep things nice and polite and the way they should be and not you know peek under the hood too much because then we might have to get rid of the the natural slaves and you know give the goblins their wands and maybe stop being so uh weird about not letting muggles know that hey there are you know essentially a race of godlike beings living in your midst that are really just hermity and don't like interacting with you

and yada yada yada well there's a line I think in the first book where Hagrid explains to Harry that the wizards have to live in secret because if the muggles knew that there were wizards well then they'd want to use magic to fix all their problems.

Yes! You know, that thing that the wizards do fucking constantly. They use magic to fix everything except for blindness if you have shitty eyes, too bad. But all other problems. Like, well, if we gave them money, then they'd want to use money for every problem they have. Food? You can make it appear. Broken bones? Fixed. All with a little of your wine. We wouldn't want the muggles to become dependent on that.

No. You wouldn't want them to get used to to accustomed to the welfare of the wizarding world which is bizarre for like a race superiority driven culture because like they'd you'd make everybody your serf because you'd be invincibly powerful except for the what if harry had a glock fallacy which is just one of the funnier things to bring up. I think Kathleen and I brought that up in one of our last episodes together, was that a whole bunch of fantasy stories can simply be solved by giving the protagonist a gun. Yeah, and I forgive that plot element, because obviously you're not going to do that because it's way too easy a one trick thing yeah it's true i think that we brought that up it was the bonus episode about star wars because

it at one point was canon in star wars that the mandalorians started using regular guns because jedi can't when they deflect the bullets just turn into shrapnel and so that's how they killed jedi was based by shooting them with shotguns instead of like laser beams because they can't deflect shotguns which i think is great by the way yeah but yeah you're right well ignoring like you said that solves every problem they just don't have a story that's like saying why didn't the eagles just fly them to mordor or something like well because then we don't have a story like that's why um i i would argue that a good writer a good writer could take that conceit and go how can i build off of that especially at this point in time like nowadays

going okay so the standard trope is this well what if i just gave him a gun and how does that evolve the story what story comes out of that it's not like the dresden files or something kind of which is you know pulpy and you know not bad yeah so she i think she tried to address some of that like wouldn't modern technology solve all the problems by having electronics stop working at hogwarts but you know there's a lot of modern technology that doesn't have any wires, you know, like guns. We've had the, you know, even if you were like, bullet casings don't work for whatever reason. Like we've had guns since the 1300s. Bringing an arquebus to Hogwarts. Oh God, what was it i saw on twitter like the last week or so there's like i think

in poland or czechoslovakia some some medieval castle and all that has a collection of like early guns that's just like a gun barrel and setup built into other things like there's a gun axe and gun swords and gun pull arms it's just like it's final fantasy i've got my gun sword yes yes um it took until like the 1880s for people to give up on the idea of a sword with a gun attached to it like you know why we really wanted that because it's rad as hell that's why even then they didn't give up. They just put the sword on the end of the gun instead and called it a bayonet. Darius is not wrong.

So give Voldemort a gun to kill. I'm sorry. I know it's a stupid world-building thing that bothers me, but Voldemort failed in his original plot because he couldn't kill a baby. You can kill babies on accident by just not looking at them for too long. He killed Harry's parents. You could just leave. Leave the baby in the crib and just fuck off.

The baby dies all on his own. It doesn't require your help at all. Drop him out a window. Get outside, let it starve to death. Bim bam boom. Oh, are we becoming super villains? Just drop kick the baby out a window. It's not that hard. Like, but I mean, that plays into like the wizards are so dependent on magic that without it, they're just literally

completely useless. Just can't even think to shake it. Well, holding a baby Harry Potter, like, their skulls are still soft then. Holding up baby Harry Potter like, ah! That's horrible. Their skulls are still soft then.

It also ties into one of my least favorite things about, like the only, actually the only hard rule she ever really ties to how magic works in this universe. That as a not pacifist, I think is real dumb. That the most evil thing in this universe that as a not pacifist i think is real dumb that the most evil thing in this world is being able to kill somebody with magic except it's not it's being able to use

something explicitly designed for killing with magic if you want to blow something up if you want to explode a person any 13 year oldyear-old can get away with that. You can literally inflate your aunt. True evil. Or your uncle. Like, the most evil thing is not the torture the hell out of people spell because the main character gets away with that one

a couple of times. It's not the mind control and remove the ability to consent spell because they sell that i'm sorry side note date rape has to be such a huge problem in the wizarding world i don't even think we can get into it oh god god we may have to like come back and do an episode of like it's gonna be a bonus episode that's just trying to look at the the various obvious issues like they have with like rape culture the polyjuice potion yeah yeah anyways go ahead the polyjuice potion is in there for people with kinks and for rape culture. Like, and it goes both ways. Well, like all tools,

they can be used for many different purposes. So, but you were saying, Trevor, yeah, that like the one hard rule is that the most evil thing you can do is the spell that's only purpose is to kill. And I think she tries to like, the way she tries to parallel that is literally the only spell her magical hero ever uses is the disarm spell.

That's all Harry ever uses is the Expelliarmus, which is like to disarm your opponent. That's the only spell he ever casts in any fight. And you're like. You know other spells. I've seen you use other spells in this book. But anytime you face against Wizard Hitler, the only thing you can think of is, well, I'll just take his gun. That seems almost like a panic

response to me. It's like, shit, I don't remember anything else. Yeah, I mean, to me, it was always, yeah, as a kid, I always thought it was more of a fact that just Harry was kind of an incompetent wizard because any time he was stressed out, the only thing he could think of was Expelliarmus.

And I'm like, yeah, like you said, you know other spells, guy. I watched you use one last chapter to torture someone. Oh, wait, we're good with that now? Okay, that's right. Because we're torched. You can torture a bumbling henchman for information, but not the main bad guy. Yeah. for information, but not the main bad guy.

Yeah. Also, I want to point out that these books in which the torture spell is described as being bad, but the good guys get away with using it, came out fairly early on in the war in Iraq. Just saying. Might have been some cultural things going on there in Blairite, Britain, about the use of torture against your enemies. The enhanced interrogation spell.

Yeah. Yeah, where the fucking Neville's parents got enhanced interrogated so well that they eventually forgot who they were. It's okay. Harry gets to use it, though. It's fine.

Don't worry. Jack Bauer can do it, and it's fine. Exactly. When use it though it's fine don't worry jack bauer can do it and it's fine exactly when you give power to the right people again blairite britain oh god we haven't even talked about her fucking other uh her other writer name her adult books oh where she publishes under a male pseudonym the male pseudonym of the guy who invented, like, conversion therapy? You fucking kidding? Look up Robert Galbraith. Oh my god. What the fuck?

It has been suggested that this work was financed in part by the CIA? What the hell? Heath was experimenting in 1950 throughout introducing paroxysms through brain stimulation. During the course of experiments, deep brain simulation, he experimented with gay conversion therapy, claimed to have successfully converted a homosexual patient. Jesus. Why'd you make me learn that? Jesus, why'd you make me learn that? I gotta say, I've now read snippets of her writing from those books.

It's not good. Oh, I'm not surprised in any way, shape or form. Her like adult murder mystery books, which by the way, her like new one she's working on is basically like a trans panic murder mystery. I mean, from my understanding, they're, they're all like all, all the, the Galbraith ones are basically focusing on in some way, shape or form, like basically trans panics, whether it's like the, the murder, I think in the first one is a trans woman or something like that. Or like one of the suspects is a violent trans woman and all. And then like the killer in the second one is basically just dressing up as women pulling a not even a Buffalo Bob.

To like get in women's spaces to attack them. Yeah, exactly. Or at least like just throw off the scent. So like no one's looking for a man they're looking for a woman and all yada yada yada and all that's some like ace ventura level of like yeah and again i don't think we can emphasize enough her pseudo pen name for her adult murder mystery books, Robert Galbraith, is taken from a man named Robert Galbraith Heath, who was a psychiatrist who specialized in electrocuting people's brains and spent a significant portion of that time claiming that he could do gay conversion therapy

by electrocuting people's brains. His research was done at the Louisiana State Penitentiary on inmates and was partially funded by the CIA. Fun. This is who she's chosen to name herself after. Jesus. There's also just so much weird baggage around her going by a masculine pen name and like tied in with like her like quick kind of admission in her her long screed from like what two three years ago now and all about like you know trying to defend her transphobia

where she was like well if if i if i had grown up during this time then i might have been pressured because i felt you know attracted you know towards like being more masculine and blah blah blah and all it's like oh okay like i'm not a huge person to be like oh obviously you, you're an egg because being trans is a very complex thing and all. And there's a lot of gray areas regarding gender nonconformity, gender roles, stuff like that and all. But just the fact that she drops that and then has this masculine pen name and also that pen name is the you know a reference to the guy who basically pioneered gay conversion therapy is just like there's that's a gordian knot of issues you got there joan uh yeah i'm i'm still staring at the the phrase on wikipedia using prisoners in the louisiana state penitentiary as experimental subjects

and just wondering why I ended up on an episode of Behind the Bastards. Bad people, we're talking about them. That bad person, J.K. Rowling. Yeah, yeah. I mean, even if you want to try and tie things back into the Harry Potter series, like, what, by book three, we've had these naughty, naughty children are transforming themselves in the women's bathroom. And, oh, you can't go visit the girls' dormitory because medieval wizards made it so boys couldn't go up there.

Because medieval wizards made it so boys couldn't go up there. Yeah, medieval wizards put a spell on the dormitory so men can't get into the women's dorm. But it's perfectly fine for women to come up to the boys' dorms because they won't do anything. Because fucking Hermione's in there all the goddamn time. Because girls don't take advantage of those kinds of spaces, but boys do. Like, it's, there's, like, those are the two things that I think are really, like, big tells in the Harry Potter series for where she ended up. It's like, well, clearly she had thoughts about exactly this early on. You're right.

It's not that she, it would actually be less bad if she had said there were spells to keep boys from going in the girls or girls from going in the boys, right? Sure, that's rote standard school shit. That's rote standard school shit. Or if she just not referenced it at all and just never had them go to either one

because it wasn't important. That would be fine as well. But you're right. She took the time to be like, the boys can't go there, but the girls can go here. Because the girls are fine and safe. Even if you're worried about the safety of women, wouldn't it be more upsetting for the girl to be going alone into the boys dorm? Which, yeah, you're already setting up that apparently this

would be the lion's den for her so because boys are so bad yeah like i to me that's just confusing because it seems like that would be the less safe place if you're worried about predatory behavior but i mean at the same time during this entire, there's an adult man transformed into a rat sleeping in Ron's bed. So I don't know if she's made, maybe not the, I think we've come to the conclusion. She might not be the best arbiter for what's safe and appropriate. Well,

yeah, no, she's, she's really not. Um, considering was it, uh, in the last week or so during the last couple of weeks of her just

continual tripling quadrupling down on bullshit and all like talking i guess pulled up that uh she was like tweeting out in support of uh david bell the uh the one doctor at the Tavistock Clinic and all that, back in, I think, 2018, started being like, oh, they're just letting these young women take testosterone. And oh, I question the legitimacy of this. They're hurting these girls and all that that you know bullshit that yeah just god forbid in a world with joe rogan and the rock someone take testosterone that's what i was about to say is that like even though that's not like the whole point of this

episode it's wild that like i could go to my doctor now and be like, I don't feel like as much of me as I used to. I just get testosterone. Like Joe Rogan is just in the rocker, just taking it like recreationally to continue being the buffest dudes alive. Like I could just go to my doctor and be like, ah, you know, I'm having trouble getting it up. And, uh, I just don't feel as strong as I used to. He'll just give me testosterone. If someone is like, I wish to take testosterone for gender reasons, they're like, absolutely not. Oh, yeah.

I'm also doing it for gender reasons. It's just the gender is the one I'm currently at, I guess. It's that you're not transitioning. Yeah, it's that I'm stopping at, I guess. It's that you're not transitioning. Yeah, it's that I'm stopping my transitioning. Just becoming the world's perfect non-binary person by injecting

estrogen and testosterone at the same time. Just like one in each side. Well, that's not how that works, Darius. Clearly. Number two, well that's not how that works darius uh clearly number two yeah no like the at the heart of especially all this stuff because it does touch on her more recent stances in the last few years and the shittiness of her positioning and platforming and stuff like that is the whole

question of like medical transition is none of this stuff, aside from maybe penile inversion vaginoplasty, would exist as options for trans people if there was not a broad enough market for cis people to use these things. A lot of vaginoplasty procedures and all are applicable to cis women who need like vaginal reconstruction and stuff like that. The the synthesizing of even estrogen was initially for cis women and all the use of puberty blockers is for mostly cis kids who start entering puberty at like seven or eight years old. Stuff like that. Just all these things that like they are making that like J.K. Rowling and her cohort of bigots and all around the world, but especially in the U.S. and in Canada and in the U.K. are making such a big deal about for trans kids and all are used on cis people all the goddamn time. That's the reason why just from an economic standpoint, they are in even any way, shape or form economically available for trans people. Well, it needs to be available so I

can give my seven-year-old toddler a testosterone so he can be the most yoked kid at kindergarten oh god yeah you want him jacked you want his veins popping out i want him rolling into third grade like picking up a desk to throw at the teacher when she tries to you know tell him where to sit yeah i try and make him like that um that uh that one toddler from like a decade or so ago that was uh in the papers about having like a weird uh gene variant that like overdeveloped their muscles oh yeah hold out like a five pound weight for like 10 minutes without like moving their arm i need gene therapy so i can have a yoked toddler in three and a half years this is going to be on a conservative talk show.

God, I hope so. It's audio clip. I want a yoked toddler, goddammit. Yeah, they're gene editing their children. Have you ever seen one of those just absolutely jacked little pit bulls? I want my five-year-old Mac. absolutely jacked little pit bulls. I want my five-year-old Mac.

Just walk it out. Just like, like so, so ripped that he kind of actually has to walk on all fours. You're right. This in like three years, they're going to be playing this clip on like, like,

like the Steven Crowder show or something so she's a horrible lady with horrible politics who writes actually not that good books i did what i wanted to bring up earlier but i just refound it because i had like seven tabs open and then my brain can only like remember three of them at any given time so i found one of them that's slightly older and is actually talking about specifically her prose again, not her world building, not even the stories, just the way she writes.

And this is from the, the UK's preeminent publication, the guardian from 2007. It's called Harry Potter's big con is the pros. A nine year old might feel quite pleased with the writing in the Harry Potter books. It's pretty embarrassing coming from an adult. It's a subtitle there.

Uh, it goes into here a little bit. The author admits that they're just going to get crucified for writing this article, but they're going to do it anyway, which they probably did. I'm not going to read the comments. Um, until then we have to swallow hers. And for all she is gifted enough in devising popular scenarios, the words on the page are flat. I think it was Verlaine who said that he would never write a novel because to write one at some

point you had to write something like the count walked into the drawing room. Not a scruple that must have bothered J.K. Rowling, who was happy enough to write the most pedantic descriptive prose. Here, from page 324 of the Order of the Phoenix, to give you a typical example, are six consecutive descriptions of the way people speak. Said Stitt maliciously. Said Harry furiously. He said glumly. Hermione sat severely said Ron indignantly said Hermione loftily. Do I need to explain further why this is second rate writing? Pretty strong words from this guardian columnist. I'm not going to look up what else they've read because since 2007,

they've probably also started to write transphobia because it's the guardian. But back then, I think they were making a good point is that, as we mentioned before, it's just that the writing is just not even clever or good. The prose is basic. It's a basic level of writing. It just happened to be a story that hit the zeitgeist at the right time. There are countless other authors out there who are writing similar stories that were better, more well-written, had less hidden bigoted messages in them. They just didn't hit the zeitgeist at the right time. And I think that's really her biggest success was the fact that she happened to hit the zeitgeist properly.

Yeah. I think that's all you need to know to know about her is why is she popular? Is it because her books are that good? No, it's because she put them out at the right time. I do wonder as a franchise where it would be if it hadn't got the attention of a film producer when it did. Because now it's easy to say, well, it was a popular young adult fiction series, so it got a movie series. But it was the first one to really do that in 2001. Yeah, it's the one that laid the groundwork for

all those other young adult books to get series we wouldn't have had a hunger games or uh i can't remember the other ones all the other ones that have come out runner and maze runner or whatever or yeah like without harry potter and i just you know if, you know, if it would have hit the zeitgeist in quite the same way had it not gotten the film series when it did. You're right. Actually, I don't remember now. The first movie, the movie came out in 2001. Yeah, right after the fourth book. Yeah, right after the fourth book. So I didn't start reading those books until fairly shortly before the movie came out, I would imagine, because I was 10. And I remember, I'm pretty sure I remember getting Goblet of Fire, but like, I don't know, did I get that before or after I saw the movie?

I have no idea. I feel like I read some of the books before I saw the movie. I'm pretty confident. But, you know, this many years afterwards, it's hard for me to be sure. You know what I mean? I literally have to call my mother and ask her. She might not even remember. But you're right. Like, what would this have become without a studio attached?

And I think they would have stuck more to the flavor of the first book. You know what I mean? More of the style of the first book you know what i mean more of the style of this is just for kids yeah like the 8 to 11 year old bracket and she wouldn't have gone through the whole like i need to age it up and grow it up for the people who are now aging up with it you know what i mean yeah again like there's an entire series of books um uh the worst witch that i think i previously mentioned that is essentially that that's like from the 70s and the 80s yeah i just wonder

like i don't think people would cape for it so much if it hadn't gotten that additional hollywood escalation yeah there wouldn't be so much like yeah like the whole potter verse and all that and like such hard fan culture if you didn't have attached to it like daniel radcliffe and like you know and emma watson like they're behind it um i think one thing that should be pointed out as well is like as we're recording this, the last couple weeks to almost a month, I think, time is fluid at this point in pandemic. to people like mocking uh a tweet from a lgbtq unit public relations unit for like a local constabulary there in britain that was like trying to actually i think like help or bring awareness to a a gay man who had been murdered in a park in their locale and all and they they tweeted something that uh i think had a typo in it and like fucking homophobes and transphobes started like you know

uh making fun of them and she was like oh yes it's virtual signaling ha ha ha ha you know stuff like that over the last few weeks and all like the supporting david bell stuff like that and all it should be noted that apparently she has another robert galbraith book i believe coming out uh in like august and so it's like oh oh she's got a book coming out that's why she's whipping this shit up and so she's yeah she has a pattern of the cynical, you know, making an edgelord splash for herself. And then, oh, my book came out. Yeah, well, her book and like Trevor said, the newest whatever Dumbledore and Grindelwald are totally gay, but not really crimes of whoever wants it. Also, if we're going to talk about world like plot holes and world building problems and be pedantic about it, which I am, the wizards clearly did nothing to stop the Holocaust, which is actually kind of a point in, I think, the upcoming movie. The weirdest fucking thing. Grindelwald, who in the books is set up as like the wizard counterpart to Hitler.

You know, he's defeated in 1945. He's from Germany. Like, it's a thinly veiled Hitler reference. In the movies, it is revealed that Grindelwald wants to bring the wizards into public knowledge because he has had visions of world war ii and he shows this he takes a rip off of like a skull-shaped bong or something it's a weird scene and projects this image of you know the blitz and the atomic bomb and he's building up this following of wizards who want to prevent world war ii and come out in public and that's the bad guy at the end of the most recent movie and it just seems like the whole plot is at best her trying to be like well you asked and this is why it's like, yeah, this is why they didn't.

Yeah, they didn't. So they didn't stop the crimes of world war two because the good guys beat Grindelwald to stop him from outing the entire wizarding world. My head hurts. The bad guy is the one trying to stop the Holocaust. Cool. That's all I think about. All I'm going to take from that.

All that really needs to be taken from that. And like, I mean, like we've said, you can just watch over, over the course of time. All she does whenever she's criticized is become even shittier that's basically her entire personality is getting shittier every time someone's like hey you know

that thing you did was shitty and she's like you think that was shitty i'll show you shitty and she like just goes one step further into being absolutely a her excuse me, an absolutely horrendous person. All of this, all this fracas, all of this debate, excuse me, all of this controversy, all over a series of books that really aren't that good in retrospect. I've openly admitted a lot of times, specifically when it comes to music more often, but books too. There are things I liked in my childhood that objectively as an adult aren't great. I call those things like bad good, right? Like they're not great,

but I still enjoy them now, mostly because of my connection to them for time and that sort of thing. And I think so many people have made that decision about Harry Potter. Well, either one, they won't even admit that they're not that great, or two, are so committed to this idea of the connection they have to these books as a child that any criticism of the content of the books or of the author is just simply unacceptable even when it's pretty easy to recognize that a lot of it is bad like there are bands i liked in middle school that i

would listen to a song from now back that's great but if you came out and were like oh by the way the lead singer of that band was like you know a child mol child molester, I'd be like, I'm probably going to drop that one from the rotation. You know, I think one point in time, you know, dropped lost profits from my rotation of bands because you should, that's the thing you should do. I just don't think sort of what Trevor pointed out with like now, like the movie studio gleam and like all the money that's behind it. I don't think our culture is ever going to have that reckoning you know what i mean like they're just never going to have that debate about whether it's something that's worth dropping

or not because too many people have made it too integral to their personalities. Like, you know, you just have Disney adults for Potter. I think there's going to be like a section of the millennial generation that is definitely like that and all. I think. Because I'm trying to think of like the variety of adults in my age range that i know that were like big harry potter nerds and stuff like that and all in the last decade or more and all and a lot of them well at least the ones i know you know have queer friends of one stripe or another and especially in the last few years when it's become very mask off and it's basically been like during the time frame that like i've been transitioning

uh that she became mask off and all uh i think a lot of them have just been like oh yeah no fuck this like i think early on there was consternation of like oh well can i still enjoy this without supporting her and all and i think even at that even that sort of perspective at this point is really dropping by the wayside at least with within the the folks that i see and all there's like yeah no i can't i can't enjoy this you know knowing that she is like supporting conversion therapy people and shit like that and you know or basically like giving tacit support at the very least um now of course like i i think i've you know kind of talked personally to you darius online about how like one of the things that like even though i have

a girlfriend it's an open relationship and i'm on dating apps and stuff like that and all uh one of the things that definitely is an immediate swipe left for me is seeing you know adult women who are like oh i'm a harry potter nerd or oh i'm i'm you know a hufflepuff or whatever it's like yeah no and that's the tenor that i've found with a lot of the other lesbians that I know is that a lot of them are like yeah no the lesbians that are like uncritical or critically supportive of JK Rowling and stuff like that are just insufferable and I think there's going to be a part of that the millennial generation that is reckoning with it I think as it happens i think it's going to be less with like gen z and all just because i think they have less of their own childhoods invested in this narrative space and yeah i think it's going to be kind of like you know with uh

boomers and like the dukes of hazard and stuff like that it was like oh i really enjoyed this when i was like you know in my 20s or like in my teens or you know like some gen xers are like that and all it's like oh wait what why is there a confederate flag on the car is that shitty oh so like i think every generation especially in the last like century or so has had waves of that especially in the last like post-war has had waves of that especially in the last like post-war period and all since world war ii uh just like you know popular media properties of one kind or another where it's like oh yeah no this is definitely a thing of its era and we need to reckon with it yeah and you know i think they're to be people who this was a big part of their childhood growing up because it was a big part of culture when they were growing up that can't get through divorce, entirely divorcing themselves from it.

And, you know, that's fine. Death of the author is fine. But death of the author doesn't excuse you from continuing to pay the author exactly consuming all the new properties so if you can't give up on it whatever go to you know a goodwill or something and buy all the dvds for a dollar now you have them you don't have to stream them you don't have to pump them onto the internet into the zeitgeist anymore go to half price books get the books used if you you know if you're this type of person you have them already anyway so it doesn't matter like get get them get them in an offline way stick them in a corner for your own enjoyment you can still watch them at christmas and also think that jk rowling's a piece of shit like i have my used set of orson scott card books he's a huge piece of shit craft stuff

yeah but like i don't go around on twitter telling people how great ender's game is because i don't want i don't need people to know where to find it. It's fine. I read it before I knew, and now I don't have to address it anymore. But like you said, because this franchise is still clearly ongoing, that's what's not happening to a lot of people right they're

gonna go see you know grindelwald five i didn't stop the holocaust or like go to potter verse the amusement park i don't remember what it's called but they built a whole amusement park for it like was that orlando studios or something yeah universal the universal you go like universal and you can go and like get your wand and wear your robes like you said there's a way to like like okay this is important to me and i enjoyed the stories but you don't have to continue to give her money pirate them exactly steal them from her that's fine we only get five listeners i can say that no one's going to report me i just steal her books who cares even if you want the newest one you want that new movie just like wait three weeks it'll be on the internet you can pirate it i

promise i got an angry email from at&T the other day telling me not to do that because I forgot to turn my VPN on. Okay. Learn your lesson children, use your VPN. But like, like you said, it can be done. Right. I mean, people have been having this discussion for a lot longer with people like Michael Jackson, right. Or, or HP Lovecraft. Right. Like there's someone you definitely shouldn't be standing as a person and whose views definitely impacted their work. Like you can't read HP Lovecraft book and not. Um, like you can't not see where he's getting a lot of his, a lot of his information for terror, for things that are terrifying are just people that aren't English. Like Italians and like his, his, you know, his idealized version of the English. Yeah. The English.

Right. So, but the difference is Lovecraft's dead. He's been dead for a long time. And like me getting his books for free from the library doesn't help him. No, in any way, but like going to the newest movie release helps Joanne. Right. Like, and you don't have to do that, but I just think there's going to be an uncomfortable number of people who never have to reckon with it because her toxic views don't impact them

personally but they can safely maintain the cognitive dissonance of like well i'm an lgbtq ally and all but also this which like if you again talking about dating apps i literally saw that this morning was like lgbtq ally i'm a huge nerd about harry potter it's like oh sweetie what's it like living in your world if you have children and you want them to read fun books for fantasy that are meant for kids but are like more you know aren't hateful like get them to read like rick riordan or someone i think diane duane i think has a series that's kind of like kind of like that older than harry potter to a degree if i remember correctly like a little a few years earlier but also just the similar conceit of like young magic children and blah blah blah i'm just saying even if it's not in school but like

if you want like fantasy for children with authors that don't suck like percy jackson's better yeah and to you know if you got if your parents listening to this for some reason there's going to be a disney plus show for that soon for percy jackson yeah you're all set just to just watch that over like hand over your percy jackson books they're better rick riordan's actually a good person as far as i'm aware from what i've seen from him everything i've seen do that do that instead honestly you're better off have there's so many better options for like children's fantasy than the Joanne, like pick books with better pros, better plots, and authors that don't actively make the world a worse place for you and,

or your neighbors. And one of the things that I've like, especially since I've been transitioning almost four years now, four years now four years this coming Wednesday um uh one thing like when it's come up is that I've I've always this is one of my spiels about like one of the rants I'll go on about like canon especially when it comes to storytelling in modern culture and all uh and the fucking legacy of rome um is just like fan fiction is essentially the oldest human storytelling you know tradition like one of the reasons why we have like

like especially like look at like greek mythology talking about like rick riordan and the percy jackson series and all one of the reasons why like we have so many different versions of like greek myth and all is partially because they were very literate culture from you know you know almost like what 2500 years ago something like that yada yada yada but also just the so we we can see that a lot of the different varying myths got written down as opposed to like the norse who didn't become literate until like well into christianity and on so good for them they should have stayed that way what those what illiterate like my yeah those are my people yes i know the himbo the himbo is uh fully on the illiterate campaign those are my people we should have stayed that way it was better off but it also contributes to the idea in modern culture that you see popping up in like

especially like neo-nazi spaces and white supremacist spaces and all of like there's there's one set of like true norse myths and it's like no there wasn't like those are the ones that survived and all and you see that uh in like greek mythology and that there's like at least like 10 different versions of like baseline myths because different people in different areas of the hellenic world were telling slightly different versions with slightly different emphases stuff like that and all it's like what we call fan fiction nowadays is essentially the oldest of human activities, which is taking a story and characters that you love and reworking them into something that you like. Like, yeah.

So go out there. If you want to continue joining Harry Potter, do fanfic where it's not hateful. Go in there and write your Harry Beatrix slash fic. Do it. Do your Harry Ron Empreg fan fan fiction that's on you yeah you can do it if you want yeah exactly and so that's one like the baseline things is like if if this is such a part of your your identity of you know your the the child inside you etc it's like there are ways to still indulge in that that are the jailbreaking of like narrative engagement that human beings have been doing since we first started telling stories around fires you know probably a million years back which is just make the story your own who the fuck cares like we we like you know put emphasis on like figures like homer and all with like the

iliad and the odyssey and stuff like that there was likely no individual homer it was a narrative tradition within like the greek world etc let let jk rowling's name become a fucking placeholder mask for you know a thousand different individuals telling stories that they like you know whatever if it has to continue but like just don't fucking platform her my only my only piece of my only hope for people if you're writing fanfic to to change it to make it better when first thing you can do just don't have harry potter end up turning into a cop exactly i think we didn't even mention that earlier when we're talking about the slave you know the elves and the goblins and all this other shit our main character literally grows up to become a wizard cop. I mean, it's more like wizard FBI than

just cop. So it's even worse. Become the wizard CIA. It's even worse. All right. Any other final thoughts on our dearest friend, Joanne? Not a K Rowling. If not, we will

submit her to hopefully the dustbin of history. I've got nothing. With any luck. Praise be. Send her to the dustbin of history along with no offense British listeners, but your country. Ooh, boy.

Yeah, all of your famous people. Yeah, I'm sorry. I'm sorry, UK. Aside from Matt Berry. Sorry, UK. Most of your famous people are objectively horrible. Yeah, kind of. You should do something about that. Alright, that's it. Thank you all for listening to are objectively horrible. Yeah. You should do something about that. All right. That's it.

Thank you all for listening to this episode about JK Rowling. She's a terrible person. Wrote bad books. Do better. We will be back next time with something different. I think Kath will be back by then, but I'm not sure. Apparently he has a life and things to do.

Can't spend his time just recording episodes anyway thank you to my guests again thank you nicole thank you trevor for being here everyone uh you know follow nicole on twitter if you want to listen to trevor's uh podcast if you want to it's called the history of persia he talks about persia i think that's it yeah yeah i talk about darius a lot yeah you get to talk you get to talk about my guy a lot coming up uh but listen to those uh thank you so much and we will see you next time goodbye bye see ya bro Bro. Are you fucking real, man? Come on. time.