Lindsay Ellis

She's kind of always been like that. When you look at how she describes characters in Harry Potter, you run into stuff like how Aunt Petunia was a thin woman with "nearly twice the usual amount of neck" and most of the fat characters in the books are either described in really unpleasant ways or are intended to be hated by the audience.

Most of her descriptions are really vague, but if there's something ugly about the character, you can bet that she zeroes in on that feature in way more detail than normal. It's legitimately really unsettling once you notice it.

Edited by Zendervai on Feb 24th 2021 at 1:00:51 PM

Not Three Laws compliant.

TBH, a lot of things are unsettling about Rowling's work upon a second reading.

Disgusted, but not surprised

Man if I ever read those books its gonna be a sight.

Also to be clear I'll buy em used to avoid giving money to Rowling.

Edited by slimcoder on Feb 24th 2021 at 10:09:47 AM

"I am Alpharius. This is a lie."

She only made it public recently with the terf stuff, but the closer you look at Rowling's work, the more obvious it is that she's an incredibly judgmental woman who hugely overfocuses on physical flaws.

Not Three Laws compliant.

I used to admire Rowling since outside the books she seemed to love fat people and hated fat shaming. She said she wouldnt care if her children were fat and that looks arent everything... Yeah right.

Discord: Waido X 255#1372 If you cant contact me on TV Tropes do it here.

That bit about Rita Skeeter and her "mannish" hands is particularly Harsher in Hindsight.

Disgusted, but not surprised

She basically knew the right things to say and do and dropped the façade when it came to a topic she thought she could get away with being super judgmental about.

Not Three Laws compliant.

And the thing is, in the UK at least, she could get away with being a TERF. Transphobia is disturbingly mainstream in the UK. Too bad for Rowling that she's international.

Edited by M84 on Feb 25th 2021 at 2:29:43 AM

Disgusted, but not surprised

And/or she went hard on it because it seemed like it was winning and she stood a chance at destroying the people she hates.

Edited by Adannor on Feb 24th 2021 at 10:21:50 PM

Another cringe worthy thing I noticed from the excerpts of Troubled Blood is that it seems obsessed with who is and isn't considered conventionally attractive. My mind immediately goes to thinking that Joanne is actually unsatisfied with her own appearance in a different way than Stephenie Meyer was with Twilight. AFAIK, in Twilight, there wasn't as much external negativity towards others for being "homely". Rather, Bella internalized the idea that she was horribly unattractive compared to her beloved vampires. Which turns out to be kind of a load of bollocks when Bella dresses up for certain occasions before she's turned into a vampire, she's surprised at how attractive she is!

Edited by BearyScary on Feb 24th 2021 at 10:06:44 AM

I liked it better when Questionable Casting was called WTH Casting Agency

Even aside from the issue of transphobia, being overly judgemental about people's physical appearance (and intentionally using attractive = good person, ugly = bad person) is still frustratingly common.

Part of why it makes me so annoyed when people insult the appearance of people who I nonetheless don't like. If you don't like someone, comment on the bad things they actually chose to do, not their appearance which they have little/no control over.

I think the emphasis on describing ugly people in more detail than pretty ones could also be a case of writers doing the literary version of Generic Cuteness, where characters are just assumed to be attractive or "normal" looking unless specified otherwise.

Optimism is a duty.

That's kind of a self-referential thing. If the writer hammers down the "this character is fat" button on only one or two characters, then it does paint a picture where no one else is.

Like all these bad "men writing women" posts that go "she boobed her boobs boobily when she glided down the stairs with her maidenly grace" or something, except instead its just an utter contempt to fat people at any given possability.

I meant more that characters who don't look particularly ugly tend to get very little description at all.

It's probably more common than we realize. The trope I linked to also mentions Pride and Prejudice, for example.

Optimism is a duty.

Finally finished Axiom’s End!

That’s, uuh, not the ending I expected exactly. Seriously, I didn’t think the romantic aspect would be pushed this far between Ampersand and Cora. I also expected Amper to at least try to save Obelus from the Similars after he made such a fuss about not letting him die and losing your symphyle being a terrible thing… He didn’t seem particularly devastated after the fact either (though I guess he had two weeks to grieve).

So yeah, that ending left me with some question marks, but I really liked the last part overall. It had some good twists and a palpable sense of urgency.

Also, fuck Nils, seriously.

edit: Having watch the spoiler part of her Q&A, I’m glad she promised to never kill dogs. In a book.

Edited by Lyendith on Feb 25th 2021 at 3:32:44 PM

Flippé de participer à ce grand souper, je veux juste m'occuper de taper mon propre tempo.

Yeah, but the thing was that it was a year-old thing. I wonder why algos gave me those when I was watching essay and trivia videos.

Death is a companion. We should cherish Death as we cherish Life.

Who knows? The youtube algorithm is a bit of an inscrutable black box for generating engagement.

Optimism is a duty.

Oops, wrong thread.

Edited by TotemicHero on Feb 25th 2021 at 1:29:43 PM

Expergiscēre cras, medior quam hodie. (Awaken tomorrow, better than today.)

My biggest complaint with Axiom's End was The Genome dying.

Mainly because the last several chapters imply that something major will happen involving that character, Cora goes through a bunch of shit to protect it, and then... it dies , and the book just kinda moves away from that.

So, althogether, that character was completely pointless.

Edited by Brandon on Feb 25th 2021 at 10:31:54 AM

If I had a nickel for every film where Emma Stone falls off a balcony... I'd only have two nickels, but weird that there's two of them.

Yeah, there was that too… though it might have partly helped Cora and Ampersand’s character development (none of the events in part 4 would have happened without the Genome after all). But there was probably better things to do with it, even if it’s made clear way before its death that the initial plan of using the Genome to repopulate the Fremdans had roughly zero chance of success.

Maybe it will play some kind of role in the sequels though.

Flippé de participer à ce grand souper, je veux juste m'occuper de taper mon propre tempo.

I feel we should probably have a separate thread for this book series to avoid spoilering it here.

Optimism is a duty.

Good idea. Start an Axiom's End thread in the Literature forum (I don't think there's one).

Regarding Rowling and fat people - there was one time when Rowling spoke up in defense of fat people, against fat-shaming; and I thought those words sounded hypocritical from the woman who created Vernon and Dudley Dursley, but maybe she got better in that regard since she wrote Philosopher's Stone. But no, it seems Troubled Blood is even worse in that regard, so I wonder - what was that all about?

Much more minor, but years back wasn't there a slight controversy over Harry's adopted parents being abusive?

Aside from it being a common cliche, I vaguely remember complaints about that (since it does kinda give off the vibe that all adopted parents are bad). Or perhaps I'm thinking of a different series.

If I had a nickel for every film where Emma Stone falls off a balcony... I'd only have two nickels, but weird that there's two of them.