I just found myself thinking of LeGuin returning to and criticizing her own earlier work, for containing things she’d put in without thinking about them, or without thinking enough about them, at the time; and sometimes writing entire later books to work on such an issue, while letting the earlier ones stand in their original form.
LeGuin’s a damn high standard to hold others to, of course. But it can be done.
Yeah, she had issues with some of what she wrote in the earthsea books, iirc
Definitely a great point. Le Guin, IIRC, critiqued one of her novels (Left Hand of something or other) for using the masculine pronoun for her ambisexual people. If Rowling were able to go back and look unflinchingly at her own, far inferior, works, I’d have some respect for that. Instead, she’s determined to proceed on this “I’m just a poor misunderstood billionaire” train alongside Elon Musk. Not here for that.
Yes, I was thinking both of the Earthsea trilogy, in which she wound up writing additional books; and of the critiques – I believe there were two, at different dates, the second one disagreeing partially with the first – of Left Hand of Darkness; which was revolutionary for its time, but still had back-of-the-head assumptions which she thought better of eventually. And come to think of it there’s a later story set in that world as well which addressed some of those assumptions – Coming of Age in Karhide.
That wired review being a 1/10 had me curious. The writer is objectively wrong with her agenda disguised as a review. No way in the world would an original Xbox or PS3 be able to do these graphics. It’s hard to take her as a tech writer seriously if she’s just going to lie throughout a propaganda piece labeled as a review.
Question I have is do people like that actually think that they are making progress with that sort of bad faith effort? Seems like it’s nothing more than an exercise in virtue signaling.
The writer is really really open about her prejudice in even opening up the game, though. So you know what you are getting up front. I don’t see her saying it’s "original Xbox, though, just that the graphics “feel dated”. And some of the complaints… "how every character just feels like an animatronic Chuck-E-Cheese robot waiting for you to come by and put a quarter in so it can say its one line of dialog and perform a grim, herky-jerky facsimile of a living being. " Isn’t that true of almost every video game?
I do have one question, though. Is the plot really about “a global “cabal” is trying to end slavery but that’s bad because the slaves like being slaves”?
No, not remotely.
Once upon a time, a wizard found a way to use “ancient magic” to remove pain from people against the advice of her fellow wizards. Turned out that she was essentially lobotomizing them and then inhaling/absorbing the essence of their emotions to grow more powerful. But she was removing so much that she commissioned a goblin to build repositories for all that magic. Eventually she gets killed when the other wizards confront her and the four wizards who did so set themselves up as Keepers of these repositories to keep them secret/safe.
In the present day, there’s a goblin named Ranrok who has a grudge about how he once wanted to accompany some wizards on a dragon hunting mission. A wizard dropped his wand and Ranrok thought it’d be a great “in” to hand him his wand back. Instead, the wizard flipped his shit at seeing a goblin with a wand and gave young Ranrok a good thrashing. So Ranrok took it upon himself to decide that goblins need to rule over wizards and learned about these repositories and is tapping ancient magic himself. He has amassed a group of followers and allied with a human wizard named Rookwood. Rookwood also wants the repositories and has framed the goblins for cursing a child in one of the villages. Both Ranrok and Rookwood want YOU because it turns out that you can sense/use ancient magic and they figure they can use you to locate the repositories.
It’s worth mentioning that, while Ranrok has a bunch of followers, he’s also basically press-ganging any goblins he comes across and those who resist get the shit kicked out of them for being traitors to his cause.
Anyway, in typical villain fashion, Ranrok has some points about some wizards being dicks (though most people in the game are perfectly cool with goblins) but maybe trying to make himself a Super Goblin isn’t the answer. Sure enough, in the end he locates the big Ball o’ Magic, sucks it in and becomes a Giant Glowing Rage Dragon which probably isn’t the new government order his followers had envisioned. You fight him, beat him and yay you.
Remember the MCU and how Thanos maybe sorta had a point about population and resources but was going about fixing it in the worst way possible? Because his goal wasn’t REALLY to solve the universe’s resource issues but rather because everyone once said his ideas were fucked up and dumb and now Thanos mainly wanted to prove how right he was and have everyone say “Wow, Thanos, you sure were right all along”? Same deal here. Ranrok maybe has some ancillary point about some wizards being dicks and not liking the “wizards use wands, goblins make artifacts but not vice versa” thing. But he wasn’t actually out to better goblinkind, he just wanted to make himself super powerful so he could kick every wizard’s ass like a wizard once kicked his ass.
Setting aside the fact that Ranrok never mentions slavery (and the goblins aren’t slaves and Ranrok certainly wasn’t sparing a thought for house elves), he’s really only out for Ranrok and kills multiple goblins who get in his way. Any words he has about making goblin life better or how the wizards are keeping them down is largely rhetoric to get goblins on the payroll.
There is something of an implication there that anyone trying to improve the conditions of people who there’s prejudice about must just be out to aggrandize themselves personally, and will actively harm the group they’re claiming to want to help, isn’t there?
Because there must have been prejudice, and it must have been common; or the scene in his youth would never have happened.
So – not about slavery. But not a great implication about a lot of modern conditions.
No, not really. That doesn’t come across at all. I’d say it’s a serious stretch to try to make it that way.
Might as well say that the implication in the MCU is that anyone worried about the environment is a power-hungry tyrant who’ll murder their own children. I’d keep an eye out for that Greta woman.
If the bad guy didn’t have his “Why I’m acting this way” moment, there’s be complaints about how he’s just innately evil and terrible and this must mean that goblins are just evil and that’s basically racism (see D&D).
More to the point, however one might want to stretch and contort the plot to try to awkwardly force it into a condemnation, the author of the Wired article obviously didn’t play the game – either at all or for very long – since she got the plot and themes completely wrong.
You might be right. I haven’t played the game and am not going to do so (for multiple reasons, among which is that I’m not a gamer); so I’m pretty limited in how much I can comment on something I haven’t seen. Including that I can’t comment on whether the author of the article misinterpreted it.
There IS a bit of a dissonance in the latter HP books, where Harry starts seeing evidence for a lot of systemic injustice in the Wizarding world - the treatment of house elfs (who are slaves), of centaurs and goblins (who have magical potential but are forbidden from using wands, and who are classified as having “near human intelligence” by the Ministry of Magic despite, by every indication, being equal to any wizard) and of “mudbloods” and “squibs” is horrible. Both in terms of how the wizarding world’s systems are set up, and with specific individuals who treat these creatures badly.
Being racist to centaurs or goblins, or mistreating house elves, is often used as a shorthand way to paint a character as a bad person. But none of the good characters (aside from Hermione, who is portrayed as foolish and misguided in this respect) ever seek to address these systemic issues.
Harry is supposedly a hero, who spends seven books fighting evil to protect his friends, and then becomes an auror because he can’t imagine doing anything else. He enlists to fight for the regime that persecuted him as a 15 year old kid because it was so rotten and corrupted, without ever bothering to reform it.
I mean, the giants side with Voldemort because the wizards basically genocided them out of existence, and Voldemort promised them a place of honor in his new society whereas all the good guys could muster were a couple of half giant outcasts. Hagrid himself seems incredibly frustrated with how little the wizards were willing to do to recruit the giants (with the opposing narrative being that giants are brutish and violent, and so of course they would side with the person asking them to do violence). And so, eventually Voldemort is defeated at Hogwarts, where IIRC he had like one giant. What happened to the rest of them? Did the wizards learn from their mistakes and find a place for them in magical society to prevent the next wannabe Dark Lord from recruiting them? Somehow, based on how everyone except for Hagrid and Dumbledore talked about giants, I highly doubt it.
That includes Hermione, BTW. She is quite “woke” to house elf problems; not so much to the plight of giantkind.
There very much IS prejudice, at least in the world 100 years later as shown in Harry Potter’s series. Goblins are very much third class citizens (perhaps more residents) of the wizarding worlds, below wizards but above squibs (people of magical lineage with no magical powers).
This is perhaps/likely true in the novels but isn’t presented as such in the game. I’m not saying it’s not true according to the Potter Wiki or whatever but the game portrays the goblins as basically neighboring citizens, in that the towns mention doing trade with them and you come across a few goblins hanging out in human towns. The “No wands” thing is depicted more as an equal trade – wizards don’t craft magical artifacts and wizards don’t wield magical wands.
Again, it might be much more pronounced and much worse in the books/film and the game developers perhaps made a conscious effort to not make that such a strong part of the game world. The only person I came across with a real “All Goblins Are Bad” attitude is a kid who is convinced that goblins cursed his sister.
There IS a reference to how the Ministry of Magic made the centaurs and… goblins, I think… prove their sentience to be considered intelligent races and the implication that this was fucked up. It’s in the context of a girl wanting to one day be the Liaison to the Merfolk and she says that the Merfolk rightfully flipped the Ministry the bird and went back underwater rather than take their IQ test so there’s no official diplomatic relations between them.
Are the wizards secret in the game? Or do they deal with muggles sometimes?
In the books, part of the oppression of these species is justified by the wizards as being necessary to keep the existence of magic hidden from muggles. But the game is set in the past, and I’m not sure when the wizards implemented this policy.
Otherwise, it may very well be a retcon. It has been pointed out that there are a number of things in the game that don’t match the portrayal of the wizarding world in the Harry Potter novels - for example, there are apparently shops in Hogsmead that are owned by families from British colonies such as India, but we never see any sign of such a thing in the novels or movies.
There’s scant little mention of muggles or the “real” world aside from a few “field guide” entries you can find (essentially collectible trivia). The world in the game is very multicultural with mention of wizard schools in Africa and Asia and various shopkeepers & your instructors being African, Asian, Indian and other nationalities. Also some married lesbian women and a trans person who is likely there as a “See? Not Rowling!” figure (but also isn’t in your face or anything).
Yeah, that’s what I saw pointed out - that this is pretty incongruous with the way Hogwarts is portrayed in the 90s.
Personally, that sort of thing doesn’t really bother me. The game is a new continuity, a soft reboot. HP lore is pretty thin outside of things Harry comes into direct contact with, so fleshing out the wider world is just fine if this franchise is to continue.
I know YWTF is no longer in this thread, but just following up on this point for those who are:
ISTM that transgender people expressing viewpoints tolerant of transphobia nowadays is somewhat comparable to black people expressing viewpoints tolerant of racism and segregation back in King’s day. King explicitly referenced this in the Birmingham letter:
The social mass movement for transgender rights is still very new, even newer than the Civil Rights movement was when King wrote that. It doesn’t surprise me in the least that many transgender people have, in King’s words, “adjusted to” systemic transphobia. They regard the “extremism” of combating it as more objectionable than the “complacent” alternative of working around it and accommodating it.
There aren’t so many black Americans similarly “adjusted to” accommodating overt racism and willing to defend its promoters any more, because overt anti-black racism has now become substantially less acceptable in mainstream society. Over time, as overt transphobia similarly becomes less acceptable, I think we’ll see fewer transgender people willing to tolerate and excuse stuff like Rowling’s support for transphobic activism.
Well…
Meh, they’re complete stories that were previously published, so not the same as unfinished work.
No, but enough different that I may have to rescind my ultimatum.
They may have already been published, but that doesn’t mean that I’ve read them. From the obscurity that they seem to originating, I’m guessing you haven’t either.