Anti Jk Rowling - Blog Posts

Oh, and by the way, that Supreme Court ruling is where that Harry Potter money goes.

Oh no, what a shame—

Sike. That's asinine and I have no regrets on the reblog

btw the thing she couldn’t ignore was someone calling her out for saying anti-depressants/hormone therapy are only perscribed by lazy doctors

What the Hogwarts house still in your bio/intro in the year 2025 says about YOU!

Gryffindor: You think TERFs are taking a bold stand against censorship by (checks notes) hating a vulnerable minority and allying with fascists.

Slytherin: You'll call yourself a freak who defies societal norms, but clutch your pearls when you see any queer weirder than a cis white twink with no kinks.

Ravenclaw: You've written essays claiming "no ethical consumption under capitalism" actually absolves you of all responsibility for what JKR does with your money.

Hufflepuff: You're deeply hurt that trans people would ask you to give up your comfort media over something as minor as their lives and civil rights.

Marauders: You know Harry Potter is tainted and want to *appear* to distance yourself from it without actually letting go of it in any meaningful way.

Fuck JKR: Her “Genius” Writing Style Is Very Simple & Easy To Replicate, Actually

An inevitable consequence of criticizing Harry Potter on the Internet is getting told by numerous people that, in essence, JK Rowling must be some kind of literary genius because her books are so popular and so there must be something really great to them. It's an understandable line of reasoning, if flawed.

See, there is something that makes her books pretty captivating, but it doesn't actually take any extraordinary level of skill or great genius. It's the way she builds a sense of atmosphere and environment with simple, yet high-impact prose, and the way she uses this type of prose to give you very vivid impressions of her characters. The effect is kind of like the literary equivalent of cartoon animation. Not everyone is into it, but it has a certain effect that arguably works fairly well for certain things. And you can learn to do it, too.

So how’s it done? Let’s look at some samples of her writing.

When Harry visits Gringotts, he sees a goblin weighing a pile of rubies as big as glowing coals. It’s a very evocative choice of words – first, the the mention of a pile of rubies has us imagining a tantalizing pile of gleaming red gems, but the words as big as glowing coals makes us imagine they’re actually glowing. It’s not a complicated image, but it is an appealing one.

At the bank, Hagrid pulls out a tiny golden key. Again, the description is very simple, but the mention of a little tiny golden object makes our monkey brains pay attention.

When Harry looks inside his own vault, he sees mounds of gold coins. Columns of silver. Heaps of little bronze Knuts.

The metal (and therefore color) of each coin is specified, and each type is described with different words – mounds, columns, heaps. The smallness of the Knuts is also mentioned here.

When Harry walks into the bookshop, he sees that the shelves were stacked to the ceiling with books as large as paving stones bound in leather; books the size of postage stamps in covers of silk; books full of peculiar symbols and a few books with nothing in them at all.

There are no colors mentioned here, but various sizes, shapes, materials, and contents are mentioned. Also, the small books aren’t just small – they’re absurdly tiny, which makes them even more attention-grabbing.

When Harry buys potion supplies, colors, textures, and scents come into play (also note how a number of things are shiny and glittering):

Hagrid wouldn’t let Harry buy a solid gold cauldron, either (‘It says pewter on yer list’), but they got a nice set of scales for weighing potion ingredients and a collapsible brass telescope. Then they visited the apothecary’s, which was fascinating enough to make up for its horrible smell, a mixture of bad eggs and rotted cabbages. Barrels of slimy stuff stood on the floor, jars of herbs, dried roots and bright powders lined the walls, bundles of feathers, strings of fangs and snarled claws hung from the ceiling. While Hagrid asked the man behind the counter for a supply of some basic potion ingredients for Harry, Harry himself examined silver unicorn horns at twenty-one Galleons each and minuscule, glittery black beetle eyes (five Knuts a scoop).

Now let’s look at how Harry gets his wand. After trying out several wands (where their sizes, materials, and textures are all specified!), Ollivander suggests the holly and phoenix feather wand, and:

Harry took the wand. He felt a sudden warmth in his fingers. He raised the wand above his head, brought it swishing down through the dusty air and a stream of red and gold sparks shot from the end like a firework, throwing dancing spots of light on to the walls.

Temperature, color, light, and movement all come into play here, and “red and gold sparks” shooting “like a firework” the kind of thing that grabs your attention.

Now let’s look at how the Great Hall is introduced:

It was lit by thousands and thousands of candles which were floating in mid-air over four long tables, where the rest of the students were sitting. These tables were laid with glittering golden plates and goblets. At the top of the Hall was another long table where the teachers were sitting. Professor McGonagall led the first-years up here, so that they came to a halt in a line facing the other students, with the teachers behind them. The hundreds of faces staring at them looked like pale lanterns in the flickering candlelight. Dotted here and there among the students, the ghosts shone misty silver. Mainly to avoid all the staring eyes, Harry looked upwards and saw a velvety black ceiling dotted with stars.

Thousands and thousands of candles. Glittering gold plates and goblets. Faces like pale lanterns. Ghosts shining misty silver. A velvety black ceiling dotted with stars. Nothing here is highly detailed, but it does paint a vivid outline with a lot of attention-grabbing details.

And then take a look at how a number of tantalizing foods are specified at the feast:

The dishes in front of him were now piled with food. He had never seen so many things he liked to eat on one table: roast beef, roast chicken, pork chops and lamb chops, sausages, bacon and steak, boiled potatoes, roast potatoes, chips, Yorkshire pudding, peas, carrots, gravy, ketchup and, for some strange reason, mint humbugs.

…

When everyone had eaten as much as they could, the remains of the food faded from the plates, leaving them sparkling clean as before. A moment later the puddings appeared. Blocks of ice-cream in every flavour you could think of, apple pies, treacle tarts, chocolate éclairs and jam doughnuts, trifle, strawberries, jelly, rice pudding.

At Transfiguration, when students are attempting to turn matches into needles, Hermione’s needle had gone all silver and pointy. Simple, specific words that paint a simple, yet vivid picture.

And here’s how the potions classroom is introduced. Note all of the details here – location, temperature, and objects that add interest to the scene:

Potions lessons took place down in one of the dungeons. It was colder here than up in the main castle and would have been quite creepy enough without the pickled animals floating in glass jars all around the walls.

A here’s how Hagrid’s hut is introduced. Note the details – objects, materials, size, locations, etc:

There was only one room inside. Hams and pheasants were hanging from the ceiling, a copper kettle was boiling on the open fire and in a corner stood a massive bed with a patchwork quilt over it.

The Weasleys’ garden is full of interest with all of the specific details described:

...there were plenty of weeds, and the grass needed cutting – but there were gnarled trees all around the walls, plants Harry had never seen spilling from every flowerbed and a big green pond full of frogs.

And here’s how the Slytherin common room is described. Note how dimensions, colors, textures, and sound all come into play:

The Slytherin common room was a long, low underground room with rough stone walls and ceiling, from which round, greenish lamps were hanging on chains. A fire was crackling under an elaborately carved mantelpiece ahead of them, and several Slytherins were silhouetted around it in carved chairs.

Take a look at this description of Magical Menagerie:

A pair of enormous purple toads sat gulping wetly and feasting on dead blowflies. A gigantic tortoise with a jewel-encrusted shell was glittering near the window. Poisonous orange snails were oozing slowly up the side of their glass tank, and a fat white rabbit kept changing into a silk top hat and back again with a loud popping noise. Then there were cats of every colour, a noisy cage of ravens, a basket of funny custard coloured furballs that were humming loudly, and, on the counter, a vast cage of sleek black rats which were playing some sort of skipping game using their long bald tails.

Setting the fact that this is definitely not an ethical petshop aside, there’s a wealth of evocative descriptions here. There’s color, sound, movement, shiny things. “Gulping wetly” and “oozing slowly” also create very specific images.

Now look at how the Great Hall’s Halloween decorations are described in PoA, and note how color and movement comes into play:

It had been decorated with hundreds and hundreds of candle-filled pumpkins, a cloud of fluttering live bats and many flaming orange streamers, which were swimming lazily across the stormy ceiling like brilliant watersnakes.

Now let’s look at what Harry sees when he goes into Honeydukes. Color, flavor, and whimsical magical effects come into play here:

There were shelves upon shelves of the most succulent-looking sweets imaginable. Creamy chunks of nougat, shimmering pink squares of coconut ice, fat, honey-coloured toffees; hundreds of different kinds of chocolate in neat rows; there was a large barrel of Every Flavour Beans, and another of Fizzing Whizzbees, the levitating sherbet balls that Ron had mentioned; along yet another wall were ‘Special Effects’ sweets: Drooble’s Best Blowing Gum (which filled a room with bluebell-coloured bubbles that refused to pop for days), the strange, splintery Toothflossing Stringmints, tiny black Pepper Imps (‘breathe fire for your friends!’), Ice Mice (‘hear your teeth chatter and squeak!’), peppermint creams shaped like toads (‘hop realistically in the stomach!’), fragile sugar-spun quills and exploding bonbons.

When Hagrid blows his nose in a handkerchief in GoF, the text describes it as a large, spotted silk handkerchief, specifying its material and pattern.

Now let’s look at how the house that Horace Slughorn stayed in is described. We see the overall impression of the house described, followed up by some specific items that give us a few specifics:

It was stuffy and cluttered, yet nobody could say it was uncomfortable; there were soft chairs and footstools, drinks and books, boxes of chocolates and plump cushions.

Now let’s examine a few character descriptions. Notice where colors, shapes, etc. come in, and how they use simple, yet vivid descriptions overall:

First, Albus Dumbledore’s introduction:

He was tall, thin and very old, judging by the silver of his hair and beard, which were both long enough to tuck into his belt. He was wearing long robes, a purple cloak which swept the ground and high heeled, buckled boots. His blue eyes were light, bright and sparkling behind half-moon spectacles and his nose was very long and crooked, as though it had been broken at least twice.

Next, McGonagall’s:

Instead he was smiling at a rather severe-looking woman who was wearing square glasses exactly the shape of the markings the cat had had around its eyes. She, too, was wearing a cloak, an emerald one. Her black hair was drawn into a tight bun.

Now Remus Lupin’s:

The stranger was wearing an extremely shabby set of wizard’s robes which had been darned in several places. He looked ill and exhausted. Though he seemed quite young, his light-brown hair was flecked with grey.

And let’s look at Sirius Black’s introduction:

A mass of filthy, matted hair hung to his elbows. If eyes hadn’t been shining out of the deep, dark sockets, he might have been a corpse. The waxy skin was stretched so tightly over the bones of his face, it looked like a skull. His yellow teeth were bared in a grin.

Now let’s look at how Madame Maxime is introduced:

A boy in pale blue robes jumped down from the carriage, bent forwards, fumbled for a moment with something on the carriage floor and unfolded a set of golden steps. He sprang back respectfully. Then Harry saw a shining, high-heeled black shoe emerging from the inside of the carriage – a shoe the size of a child’s sled – followed, almost immediately, by the largest woman he had ever seen in his life. The size of the carriage, and of the horses, was immediately explained. A few people gasped.

Harry had only ever seen one person as large as this woman in his life, and that was Hagrid; he doubted whether there was an inch difference in their heights. Yet somehow – maybe simply because he was used to Hagrid – this woman (now at the foot of the steps, and looking around at the waiting, wide-eyed crowd) seemed even more unnaturally large. As she stepped into the light flooding from the Entrance Hall, she was revealed to have a handsome, olive-skinned face, large, black, liquid-looking eyes and a rather beaky nose. Her hair was drawn back in a shining knob at the base of her neck. She was dressed from head to foot in black satin, and many magnificent opals gleamed at her throat and on her thick fingers.

And Fleur Delacour:

A long sheet of silvery blonde hair fell almost to her waist. She had large, deep blue eyes, and very white, even teeth.

Rowling’s character descriptions are cartoonish, in that they emphasize a few key details in vivid language rather than describe a fine-detailed picture. As long as you’re not creating a hateful or degrading caricature, it’s generally fine. Not everybody’s going to be into it in the same way not everyone’s going to be into cartoons, but there’s nothing wrong with cartoons.

All right, so let’s recap: Rowling’s writing doesn’t go into a lot of descriptive detail, but it frequently mentions colors, materials, patterns, shapes, sizes, textures, sounds, temperatures, smells locations – anything that would immediately stand out to the senses if you were there. It uses evocative words that call up vivid mental images.

She’s not some kind of genius for doing this; it’s extremely easy to do and plenty of other writers have done it. The main thing is just getting into the habit of giving attention to your characters’ surroundings. I suggest that when you begin writing a passage, take a moment to think of a few things that can be seen, a few things that can be heard, a few things that can be felt, a few things that can be smelled, and a few things that can be tasted. Also, think about what you could mention to create the kind of atmosphere you want or to create interest.

Here are some examples:

The old-fashioned kitchen had been done up in cream and yellow, and the smell of cinnamon from the French toast sizzling on the stove filled the air.

She was thin, and wore a bright pink knee-length dress and a pair of neon green sunglasses. Her hair was in tight blond curls, and when she grinned she revealed a mouth full of gleaming shark teeth.

The temperature inside the old house felt ten degrees colder than outside, and he could hear what sounded like the moans of the dead coming from beneath the dust-covered floorboards.

Just play around and experiment with this for awhile, and you’ll find that it doesn’t take a huge amount of effort to write prose like this – which means you can basically give yourself the same mood you got from the books with literally anything you want.

There is no good reason to stay in the HP fandom. There is no way to "ethically" keep the fandom alive.

"Just pirate it!" Nope! Piracy still helps JK Rowling!

"But I'm autistic and it's my fixation!" I'm also autistic and once upon a time it was also my fixation. I have some advice for that here and over here.

"I like the aesthetic!" Go watch the works of Guillermo del Toro, or go read my post on copying HP's aesthetic.

"I just want to play in a wizard-themed setting and I'm not good at worldbuilding!" Neither was JK Rowling! In fact, her worldbuilding is so bad that you can probably do better than her without too much trouble! Also I made some random tables to help develop ideas.

I hate the “houseelves are a metaphor for British housewives you just don’t understand because you’re a dumb american” thing so much it makes me want to break things.

Even if we ignore the fact that the narrative of HP uses arguments actual slaveowners did to justify themselves, the metaphor would be shitty, at best choice feminism, at worst endorsement of the statue quo disguised as wanting to support women(very in character for jk rowling btw).

British women aren’t a special kind of women whose decisions aren’t influenced by being subconsciously told a devoted wife and mother is the best thing a woman can be from early childhood omg.

Just a reminder that if you say anything along the lines of "support the content, not the creator" (there's an actual saying but my 12 am brain can't remembered it) only works if the creator is not making any money off of the content

You can say that about Homer and Greek mythology, bc Homer is dead and all related works are public domain

You can say that about Tolkein and Lewis, bc they're both dead and any products go towards their estate, obviously not the person

You CANNOT say that about JKR, bc she's still very much alive and involved with everything HP related. Even buying a butterbeer at Universal Studios gives her money (I'm not kidding. She gets a cut of anything HP)

You CANNOT say that about Neil Gaiman, bc not only is he alive, but he still makes money on anything he was ever a part of. Yes, he's no longer involved with the production of Good Omens and most companies have cut ties with him, but if you buy a copy of Coraline, or Sandman, or anything he has ever written, he is getting that money

Is that clear?

they didn’t even fucking apologize you dipshit

This is fascinating for two reasons.

1. They haven’t actually apologised for anything. She’s pre-emptively rejecting an apology that they have no intention of giving.

2. Daniel Radcliffe and Emma Watson are extremely well-liked. A lot of people are more attached to them in their roles as they are to the actual characters in the books.

What does JK Rowling gain by coming out with this?

i hate the harry potter series reboot, but i also hate the predominant reason why most people hate it. 'i won't support it bc daniel, emma and rupert will always be the trio for me', 'i won't support it bc i want a show about the marauders'. thats cool but i thought we weren't gonna support it bc she's transphobic.

The Onion’s journalism is the only journalism that matters. Holy fuck.