JK Rowling mocked for writing novel about female celebrity hounded by children’s fantasy fans
JK Rowling’s latest crime novel reportedly follows a female fantasy cartoon creator hounded by self-righteous fans… sound familiar?
The Harry Potter author has taken the phrase “write what you know” to the next level in The Ink Black Heart as she spends more than 1,000 pages criticising online critics through the medium of a crime thriller.
The theme of the book seemingly parallels Rowling’s own experiences of backlash after repeatedly making comments viewed as transphobic about the lives of trans people, such as comparing trans women to predatory men, and supporting anti-trans right-wing bigots.
The novel follows Edie, who creates a YouTube cartoon series but is soon overwhelmed with online accusations of plagiarism, pathological lying as well as using racist and ableist tropes in their work.
When Edie is found dead the detectives try to get to the bottom of how everything unfolded including tracking down the chief suspect, Anomie.
Ironically the book has gone down badly with many online critics, for whom its theme has not sat right, coming from someone widely accused of transphobia but also of including racist and antisemitic tropes in her books.
“Finally somebody is speaking up about the plight of the poor multi-millionaires who get criticised for the things they write and say,” one person sarcastically wrote.
Goddamn, people usually try to say that Rowling isn't effected by people calling out her work for relying on bigoted stereotypes or just plain being insensitive, but she is genuinely pressed by it, no one who isn't would write something like this. https://t.co/oC34I4iSGr pic.twitter.com/WFnWm6QNF7— Tilly, Battle Maiden 🇵🇸 (@DESTINOOOOOOOO1) August 29, 2022
JK Rowling has turned winning old arguments while you're in the shower into a literary genre. https://t.co/MX9k18bRbY— Andy (@Truly_Defective) August 29, 2022
One of the supposedly ridiculous grievances raised against Edie from fans in JK Rowling’s new novel is that a talking worm character in her YouTube series is seen as a transphobic dig at “non-binary kids”.
The subject matter is particularly pertinent as it comes merely a week after author Joanne Harris was flooded with death threats from trolls in the wake of comments from Rowling.
Rowling accused Harris of not standing up for authors who have been called out for their gender-critical ideology, which Harris has denied, saying she supports both the “trans community” and “free speech”.
And it’s not the first time Rowling has written on a similar theme, with one user saying: “If I had a nickel for every time JK Rowling has written a book as a revenge fantasy about how she gets owned online I’d have two nickels, its not a lot but it’s weird how it happened twice.”
