[Azath Vitr (D'ivers]

Cause, on 12 March 2023 - 02:32 PM, said:

Goldstein is a very real not uncommon Jewish surname. I never batted an eye at it.

In that respect it's an improvement over 'Shacklebolt', but imagine this dialogue:

'The goblins are bankers because they like gold, they're not supposed to be Jewish! And I had no idea people would find names like "Shacklebolt" offensive. I'll do better. I'm even adding a human Jewish character.

- What's their name?

Goldstein of course....'

This post has been edited by Azath Vitr (D'ivers: 12 March 2023 - 03:29 PM

[the broken]

Kingsley Shacklebolt also makes his first appearance in Book 5, and he's not a kid, he is a top lever Auror who goes on to be Minister for Magic. So it can't have been in response to backlash to a character who also first appeared in book 5.

If the flavour text said something about Frankfurt, it might have a point, but if it's just 1612, well, European history being what it is, pick any given year, something anti-Semitic was probably happening somewhere. Given that the horn was found behind the Hog's Head, it appears to be referencing a British goblin rebellion in 1612, unless the cut off part of the description posted has some relevant. info.

Voldemort did need Harry's blood in the books in the ritual to revive himself at the end of 4.

The thing about this boycott is, it seems to only hurt innocent people. If you actually are a hateful/transphobic content creator, it just drives traffic to you. It's not even clear if it decreased sales of the game or Streisand Effected it. The only harm done to people affected are innocent streamers who genuinely didn't know or just wanted to a play a video game and weren't prepared for the wall of hate.

[Azath Vitr (D'ivers]

the broken, on 12 March 2023 - 07:26 PM, said:

Kingsley Shacklebolt also makes his first appearance in Book 5, and he's not a kid, he is a top lever Auror who goes on to be Minister for Magic. So it can't have been in response to backlash to a character who also first appeared in book 5.

Hmm, I'd assumed 'Shacklebolt' only made it past her editor(s) because they didn't expect the first book to sell much. By book 5, and after the complaints about Cho Chang (book 1), Seamus Finnegan, and the goblins, her editors should have been looking out for this. Seems highly unlikely that no one pointed out the issues with these names before book 5 was published. (Subtitle: 'You Want Diversity? I'll Show You "Diversity"! Hahahaha')

[the broken]

Wrong again, I'm afraid. Cho Chang first shows up in Book 3 as a cameo, and becomes more important in book 4.

I don't think the Seamus FInnegan thing is actually in the books, I think he blows up a bridge in one of the movies, but I've only seen the first 3.

Which leaves us with the goblins.

Book goblins are not explored very much, they are regarded as dangerous people to cross who stick rigidly to their contracts, but that cuts two ways, because if you leave the literal philosopher's stone in their vaults, the secret of immortality or a piece of your soul, they will do everything in their power to keep your possessions safe for you when you come back. It seems to draw on the mythology of the Fae more than anything else, who are dangerous to disrespect but stick rigidly to their word, and breaking your word to them is a very very bad idea. Whether that mythology is drawn from Anti Semitism to begin with I can't say.

They are not particularly evil or untrustworthy. Some of them are working with Voldemort, others are on the run from him. They have a cultural difference where the person who crafts an item is the one who owns it, which causes conflict with wizards. I'm not very familiar with anti -Semitic tropes, but the link seems tenuous.

[Azath Vitr (D'ivers]

the broken, on 12 March 2023 - 08:07 PM, said:

Wrong again, I'm afraid. Cho Chang first shows up in Book 3 as a cameo, and becomes more important in book 4.

Thanks for the correction, but again that just makes things worse: she only included 'Cho Chang' after being called out for lack of diversity, and still chose a name that sounds like a common racial slur. Again, by book 3 she should have had plenty of editorial attention and advance readers. And the backlash over 'Cho Chang' should have been fresher in their minds by book 5 when Rowling came up with 'Shacklebolt' (and, most likely while in the same headspace, 'Goldstein').

'Secretive cabal of hook-nosed bankers who control the financial system'... that is one of the most widely known anti-semitic tropes. IDK how well the education system in the UK covers the history of anti-semitism, but it's hard to believe JKR and her editors wouldn't know this. By book 5 they definitely knew it from the complaints.

This post has been edited by Azath Vitr (D'ivers: 12 March 2023 - 08:27 PM

[Tiste Simeon]

I'm not sure sure was called out for lack of diversity at the time book 3 came out. I've never seen anything that says that happened. Kind of moving goalposts here Azath.

[Imperial Historian]

For context when I started reading these books in the early 2000's, the fact that the book even slightly referenced that characters were non-white was pretty unusual.


I think the accusation that J K Rowling was actively going around giving her characters racist names to express her secret racist views is extremely unlikely.

Is she a white person with limited association with those cultures making clumsy mistakes, yes probably.

Does she secretly hate jews, black people and the irish... I doubt it.

I don't at all agree with J K Rowlings views related to trans people, but just because she has old fashioned views on this (and in my opinion even 20 years ago JK's current views would be considered progressive, and am extremely thankful this is the case) does not make her a racist.

I find it surprising that so much attention and hate is focussed on J K Rowling as a successful white woman with generally left wing views, when there are so many clearly worse offenders out there. I guess it comes from the fact that she played such a prominent role in so many people's childhoods in a generally positive way and whilst I was growing up seemed very much an ally of progress that it is so disappointing that on this issue she is behind the times, and seems more of a betrayal.

[amphibian]

It's kind of surprising that this woman keeps making "mistakes" about the naming, culture, and believability of non white/ethnic minority characters and the whole TERF thing and people keep saying they're old fashioned views or mistakes etc.

They are what they are - a person trying to be cheeky about bigoted stuff and failing. She doesn't put in the work to not fail and she does it over and over again in her writing.

Her having certain views doesn't preclude her from screwing up repeatedly on these things.

And yes, people brought up the Cho and Shacklebolt thing back when the books first came out. The amplification of these statements wasn't as strong as it would be now.

[Maark Abbott]

amphibian, on 13 March 2023 - 01:01 AM, said:

It's kind of surprising that this woman keeps making "mistakes" about the naming, culture, and believability of non white/ethnic minority characters and the whole TERF thing and people keep saying they're old fashioned views or mistakes etc.

They are what they are - a person trying to be cheeky about bigoted stuff and failing. She doesn't put in the work to not fail and she does it over and over again in her writing.

Her having certain views doesn't preclude her from screwing up repeatedly on these things.

And yes, people brought up the Cho and Shacklebolt thing back when the books first came out. The amplification of these statements wasn't as strong as it would be now.

It's absolutely worth noting that minority voices concerning racism / problematic views are MUCH louder now than they were when the books were first releasing. Which means you have to look at it less as the goalposts being shifted and more that society has moved on; at the absolute kindest those issues can be seen as products of their time but like Amph says, she's had decades to learn, chooses not to and goes the Boris Johnson route of 'being cheeky' about it - and it works probably just as well as it did with Johnson.

It's one reason I'm not prepared to consider them as just mistakes; you learn from mistakes. JKR does not. There's a very good reason why members of certain marginalised communities will cut ties with folk who support her or her franchise, as we're seeing with the Terf Game.

[the broken]

Eh, Cho Chang appears to be hotly contested on the internet, if today's googling is to be trusted. The general view I got from looking into it today (I legitimately didn't know there was a problem with it before now) is that IF Cho is mainlander Chinese, then the name is odd, but if she is Taiwanese or from Hong Kong or something else entirely, it becomes a lot more murky, especially if Cho is an Anglicised version of something else, or if as is extremely common, she has two names, a Western one for speaking English and another one to use when speaking a different language. Or she's a native Brit and just has a Western name, or she's using the Wade-Giles translation system instead of Pinyin, or another long list of options.

Did JKR put this much thought into it? Probably not. She most likely just looked at Asian names and picked one at random or that she liked the sound of. But research was considerably more difficult in 1999 than it is now, before social media and much slower and rarer internet, etc. This kind of mistake is pretty common even today, there's Chinese reporter for CGTN who mistakenly translated her name as 'Deer Wang' in the last couple of years, and only recently changed it. The idea that it's some kind of deliberate diabolical racist joke seems much less likely than a simple mistake. She'd have to know that 'Chang' is pronounced closer to 'Chong' in Mandarin, for instance.

Quote

It's kind of surprising that this woman keeps making "mistakes" about the naming, culture, and believability of non white/ethnic minority characters and the whole TERF thing and people keep saying they're old fashioned views or mistakes etc.

Several of the things she's accused of are just blatantly wrong, though, like the Seamus Finnegan one, or just contain very basic mistakes or inaccuracies, or blaming JKR for things she had no actual involvement in, like the flavour text for that horn in the game.

This happens extremely frequently. Given how often the accusations lack basic knowledge of the thing they are complaining about, that invites skepticism towards the more valid accusations, making it harder for the people with legitimate complaints.

[amphibian]

I am not saying JKR directly put the antisemitic horn and context into the game. She didn't. She has little to do with the game beyond ok-ing general parameters and providing the setting + some characters.

That setting and certain specific characters have elements that are her trying and failing to be a shitty Rocky Gervais about some really awful stuff. They've led to people accumulating around her work, related works by others, and her public speech that are very comfortable being bigots and calling for repression and violence specifically towards minorities and trans people. She's embraced big portions of this agglomeration directly.

The actual game makers are a combination of welcoming, progressive people and bigots who sneak in hateful stuff. They already got paid for their work. The game became a tension point before the Jewish uprising stuff was discovered and even though it's not my chosen field, I do in general support the trans people who are trying to live their lives without harassment and TERFs directing violence their way as a result of the writer lady who can't let stuff go.

This post has been edited by amphibian: 14 March 2023 - 03:21 PM

[polishgenius]

the broken, on 13 March 2023 - 11:48 PM, said:

But research was considerably more difficult in 1999 than it is now, before social media and much slower and rarer internet, etc.

It was, however, a lot easier in 2013, when she wrote a Polish character whose name wasn't even real. And spoke English so badly that she didn't understand a word that's basically the same in Polish. Quite literally 30 seconds of googling combined would have solved both problems.

And that's the cruz of my issue. If you make one mistake, have it called out, and learn from it, you're good. But she long passed the stage where she could claim she didn't know she was falling into these traps, and she keeps doing it. Unlike amph I'm not convinced she is doing it on purpose, but the best case is she's willfully avoiding being better about it, and that's poor. And when you combine it with the terfism, she doesn't come across like a good person. Like, at all. Regardless of what's deliberate and what's not.

[Mezla PigDog]

Is she definitely the RF in TERF?

[Maark Abbott]

polishgenius, on 15 March 2023 - 06:54 AM, said:

the broken, on 13 March 2023 - 11:48 PM, said:

But research was considerably more difficult in 1999 than it is now, before social media and much slower and rarer internet, etc.

It was, however, a lot easier in 2013, when she wrote a Polish character whose name wasn't even real.

Grzegorz Brzęczyszczykiewicz.

[QuickTidal]

polishgenius, on 15 March 2023 - 06:54 AM, said:

the broken, on 13 March 2023 - 11:48 PM, said:

But research was considerably more difficult in 1999 than it is now, before social media and much slower and rarer internet, etc.

It was, however, a lot easier in 2013, when she wrote a Polish character whose name wasn't even real.

I'm unsure why this is an issue in a fictional book. Is there a list of Polish names that are used and ONLY used....and that MAYBE it's plausible that some narcissistic Polish guy named his daughter after himself, plus a diminutive ('inka')...but seriously, I don't see the issue.

polishgenius, on 15 March 2023 - 06:54 AM, said:

And spoke English so badly that she didn't understand a word that's basically the same in Polish.

This is THE CUCKOO'S CALLING I assume yes? I recall her accented English, but I definitely do not recall her not being able to understand an English word that is the same in Polish. Do you have a page number? I'd be curious to see it.

polishgenius, on 15 March 2023 - 06:54 AM, said:

And that's the cruz of my issue. If you make one mistake, have it called out, and learn from it, you're good. But she long passed the stage where she could claim she didn't know she was falling into these traps, and she keeps doing it. Unlike amph I'm not convinced she is doing it on purpose, but the best case is she's willfully avoiding being better about it, and that's poor.

It's fiction.

Like I don't know how much plainer I can make that statement.

Even the Strike novels are wildly exaggerated detective fiction.

Hell, people like Michael Crichton or James Rollins who work(ed) in more global fiction thrillers who do TONNES of research, get stuff wrong and in some books it's more than a few things. Talk to a Costa Rican about JURASSIC PARK for example...

The thrust I'm making is that yes, authors can do said research and still fuck up, quite often from colloquialisms and regional differences (example: find a book that talks about a character getting off a plane in Toronto, they ALL act like the person is IN Toronto at that point....Pearson airport is in Mississauga and is AT least 30min-1hour from Toronto on a good day)....or maybe it made sense to them to make the change anyways for the story or the character in their head...it's their story.

I'm fine with people being annoyed by whatever TERFism they see in her responses and actions...but when the nitpicks come out about her globally named or cadenced fictional characters, I oppose the strictness with which people want to apply those things to her as an author because they are mad about other things...a yardstick that is INFREQUENTLY held up to many other authors who fall victim to the same things.

This post has been edited by QuickTidal: 15 March 2023 - 12:51 PM

[amphibian]

Mezla PigDog, on 15 March 2023 - 07:25 AM, said:

Is she definitely the RF in TERF?

Tricky question - JKR is firmly in favor of women having increased rights socially and politically. Yet she appears to be against Corbyn/Starmer style political approach and keeps saying things like trans women erode the protection of women as a whole and so on.

I think maybe not Radical Feminist, but definitely Trans Exclusionary in her personal views and many public statements.

So TEF?

[polishgenius]

QuickTidal, on 15 March 2023 - 12:51 PM, said:

I'm unsure why this is an issue in a fictional book. Is there a list of Polish names that are used and ONLY used....and that MAYBE it's plausible that some narcissistic Polish guy named his daughter after himself, plus a diminutive ('inka')...but seriously, I don't see the issue.

It's implausble because even if someone did that (I actually know someone who has a name where pretty much exactly that happened, though I dunno if it was narcissism or the parents just liked the name) it wouldn't look like that.


But like even if you could find a plausible way to make it work you're never gonna convince me that's what she was thinking.

Quote

This is THE CUCKOO'S CALLING I assume yes? I recall her accented English, but I definitely do not recall her not being able to understand an English word that is the same in Polish. Do you have a page number? I'd be curious to see it.

I haven't got a page number to hand but it's when he has to clarify that 'detective' means 'like police'.

Quote

a yardstick that is INFREQUENTLY held up to many other authors who fall victim to the same things.

Let's be fair here, I complained about Naomi Novik's little Polnifications ringing false in Uprooted, and I love that book. You may well think me too nitpicky- it's not as if we've not disagreed for that reason before - but I'm not picking on Rowling extra.


But also: Rowling gets picked up more because she's more famous. Like, you mentioned Chrichton, I know he got called up for stuff because he wrote one of his critics into his next book as a pedophile. Going back to Novik, she had that controversy about some stuff in her HP-inspired magical schoolbooks. But she held her hands up, said 'my bad', and corrected it. But Rowling's in a different stratosphere even to Crichton, everyone has read her books.

And yes, people are now judging everything in a harsher light because of the trans stuff. I think that's a natural consequence tbh. Like I said before, imo she gave up any expectation to unbiased treatment when she shouted out a fascist.

[the broken]

I don't have the book to hand, so I'm having to rely on those ever reliable sources, reddit and twitter. Even in the snip that was posted, Cormoran says 'detective' and corrects it to policeman without prompting, because he doesn't speak Polish. Her name is also pronounced by a British policeman, not herself.

30 seconds of googling is enough now, because people are complaining about JKR's screw up on twitter. Before then, it would have taken longer.


That is reaching. But JKR is not an expert on every culture in the world, there will be slip ups. One of the notable things about the Cormoran Strike novels is how inclusive they are, across race, gender, disability, orientation, and survivor trauma. If you try to do that, sooner or later there will be a mistake. Lots of other people avoid this by just writing about straight white people.

There seems to be a very scattershot approach to all this, where people are finding as many accusations to throw at JKR as possible. So everything is getting unpacked for the purposes of slinging mud, and people are not fact checking first, which is why so many of them turn out to be false. Because the point is not to make true accusations, but to blacken her name, and anything that can be found is just thrown at her with no regard for whether they are true or not.

End result is, JKR is actually gaining traction, because her critics have been caught lying or mistaken too many times

This post has been edited by the broken: 15 March 2023 - 11:49 PM

[polishgenius]

the broken, on 15 March 2023 - 11:48 PM, said:

30 seconds of googling is enough now, because people are complaining about JKR's screw up on twitter. Before then, it would have taken longer.

'Lechsinka Polish name'


google translate > English to Polish > Detective



Neither of those things was impossible, or would have taken any longer, before 2013. Come on now.


The rest of your answer is an exercise in reaching. You can find ways to justify it if you really try, but the way she wrote it she clearly intended (1) that to be her actual name and (2) that she didn't understand what Strike was saying.

But again, it's not this single instance that's really the problem. I just brought it up to highlight that she hasn't changed since the earlier instances, and that's people's problem. And, again again, people wouldn't be looking for insiduous or problematic motive in it if she hadn't shown herself so indisduous and problematic with the trans stuff.

[QuickTidal]

polishgenius, on 16 March 2023 - 06:05 AM, said:

And, again again, people wouldn't be looking for insiduous or problematic motive in it if she hadn't shown herself so indisduous and problematic with the trans stuff.

See but I take issue with this concept. The idea that someone does something people don't like, means it's open season to nitpick the hell out of their entire career and basically bury them under it? Like come on. That's GishGalloping. Just move from thing you deem a problem to thing you deem a problem so there's enough to basically write them off forever. I get that people are annoyed by the Trans issue with her, but everything else is an attempt to help justify the level of unbelievable toxicity aimed at her by saying "See, she ALSO did all this, she's evil!"

I can see the trans issue with her, and I get why people are upset about that....but everything else to me is social media dog piling.