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grundyscribblingIf you're just here for the Tolkien, skip this one. I'm not sure if it's an essay or a rant, but it's about the ridiculousness of one JK Rowling. I had managed to forget about this, but since Ms. Rowling will insist on saying foolish things on the internet, it has resurfaced, and I am irritated all over again.
Long long ago, before the plague, in the run-up to the release of the movies "Fantastic Beasts and Where To Find Them", JK Rowling released some material on her website meant to get everyone excited about seeing magical North America. (Well, magical USA, really. I don't think Canada or Mexico got a look-in.) It did quite the opposite for a number of people, me included. Because it turned out the Rowling Did Not Do The Research. At least, not beyond watching A Charlie Brown Thanksgiving. Her account of the early colonization of what eventually became the US matched Linus Van Pelt pretty much point for point. Then she threw in some incoherent crap about Natives who were grateful to get English witches and wizards instructing them, and seasoned it all with a dose of 'the Magical Congress waited out the Revolution in Washington DC'.
Leaving aside the stunning ignorance of American history evident in that last bit*, let's focus on the Native part. (There's still stunning ignorance here, by the way. Not even some basic Google searches.) Because this is really where my train of HP-related enjoyment not only came to a screeching halt, but derailed catastrophically, to the point where I will accept the 7 published books, the Red Nose day books (Quidditch, Fantastic Beasts) and Babbitty Rabitty, but nothing else, up to and including anything else JKR has to say or release on the internets about the magical world of Harry Potter.
In her established canon, JK Rowling has told or shown us several things that have a bearing on the way events play out in magical North America. To wit:
1. It is possible to magically enchant an area to keep unwanted persons out. (In fact, there are multiple methods to achieve this.) More than that, it is possible to enchant an area such that the unwanted persons will not even know it exists. (Fidelius Charm.)
2. It is possible to magically arrest the motion of objects, rendering projectile weapons (such as 17th century firearms) largely useless.
3. Magical persons have highly resilient bodies and are largely immune to 'Muggle' diseases.
On her website, Rowling stated there were magic users among the Native Americans.
Combining these facts, how does Rowling expect that the colonization of North America would proceed exactly the same in her magical world as it did in our non-magical history? Because to me that sounds like the most arrant nonsense ever uttered, even with her attempt to excuse it with 'Natives didn't have wands'**. Why on earth would the Native populations not have been protected by their magic users? Why would they not have enchanted their territories to make it difficult to impossible for the colonizers to take over?
More to the point, why would the governance of magical North America correspond in any way to the geographical map of current North America? Hundreds of Native nations, and she thinks one unicameral body that seems to be dominated by Europeans would be it? (And that's just for the US. I suspect in a magical timeline, the Natives were on a stronger footing vs the Europeans, so the Natives would have had the upper hand. The Magical Council of Turtle Island thus likely skews Native, deals with an area that crosses real-world geographic borders as it was established before the borders were, and speaks many languages.)
And the thing I find most outrageous about all this is not the Did Not Do The Reading part. (Although that certainly doesn't help.) It's the complete and utter failure of imagination. You can't posit a world with magic, then handwave away the magic to make everything look exactly the same anyway and expect that to be compelling.
*Really, if you want proof she didn't crack a book at all, this is it. Yes, why wouldn't the wizarding governing body take refuge in a swampy area not yet named for the man who was at the time nothing more than a rebel officer?
**Yeah, so what? We've seen magic without wands before. No reason the Natives can't be badass wandless magic users.
Long long ago, before the plague, in the run-up to the release of the movies "Fantastic Beasts and Where To Find Them", JK Rowling released some material on her website meant to get everyone excited about seeing magical North America. (Well, magical USA, really. I don't think Canada or Mexico got a look-in.) It did quite the opposite for a number of people, me included. Because it turned out the Rowling Did Not Do The Research. At least, not beyond watching A Charlie Brown Thanksgiving. Her account of the early colonization of what eventually became the US matched Linus Van Pelt pretty much point for point. Then she threw in some incoherent crap about Natives who were grateful to get English witches and wizards instructing them, and seasoned it all with a dose of 'the Magical Congress waited out the Revolution in Washington DC'.
Leaving aside the stunning ignorance of American history evident in that last bit*, let's focus on the Native part. (There's still stunning ignorance here, by the way. Not even some basic Google searches.) Because this is really where my train of HP-related enjoyment not only came to a screeching halt, but derailed catastrophically, to the point where I will accept the 7 published books, the Red Nose day books (Quidditch, Fantastic Beasts) and Babbitty Rabitty, but nothing else, up to and including anything else JKR has to say or release on the internets about the magical world of Harry Potter.
In her established canon, JK Rowling has told or shown us several things that have a bearing on the way events play out in magical North America. To wit:
1. It is possible to magically enchant an area to keep unwanted persons out. (In fact, there are multiple methods to achieve this.) More than that, it is possible to enchant an area such that the unwanted persons will not even know it exists. (Fidelius Charm.)
2. It is possible to magically arrest the motion of objects, rendering projectile weapons (such as 17th century firearms) largely useless.
3. Magical persons have highly resilient bodies and are largely immune to 'Muggle' diseases.
On her website, Rowling stated there were magic users among the Native Americans.
Combining these facts, how does Rowling expect that the colonization of North America would proceed exactly the same in her magical world as it did in our non-magical history? Because to me that sounds like the most arrant nonsense ever uttered, even with her attempt to excuse it with 'Natives didn't have wands'**. Why on earth would the Native populations not have been protected by their magic users? Why would they not have enchanted their territories to make it difficult to impossible for the colonizers to take over?
More to the point, why would the governance of magical North America correspond in any way to the geographical map of current North America? Hundreds of Native nations, and she thinks one unicameral body that seems to be dominated by Europeans would be it? (And that's just for the US. I suspect in a magical timeline, the Natives were on a stronger footing vs the Europeans, so the Natives would have had the upper hand. The Magical Council of Turtle Island thus likely skews Native, deals with an area that crosses real-world geographic borders as it was established before the borders were, and speaks many languages.)
And the thing I find most outrageous about all this is not the Did Not Do The Reading part. (Although that certainly doesn't help.) It's the complete and utter failure of imagination. You can't posit a world with magic, then handwave away the magic to make everything look exactly the same anyway and expect that to be compelling.
*Really, if you want proof she didn't crack a book at all, this is it. Yes, why wouldn't the wizarding governing body take refuge in a swampy area not yet named for the man who was at the time nothing more than a rebel officer?
**Yeah, so what? We've seen magic without wands before. No reason the Natives can't be badass wandless magic users.
no subject
Date: 2020-06-07 10:10 pm (UTC)Speculative fiction/fantasy is always better when it is grounded in a solid foundation of logical world building and internally consistent history and physical science/magic.
no subject
Date: 2020-06-07 10:19 pm (UTC)Logical worldbuilding and internal consistency are not really Rowling's thing.
no subject
Date: 2020-06-07 11:40 pm (UTC)One of several reasons I wasn't nearly as jazzed about the Potter books as most folks I know. Tolkien was the first fantasy I ever read (well, after Dunsany's "The Bride of the Man-Horse") and I was ruined for lesser authors ever after.
no subject
Date: 2020-06-08 01:15 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2020-06-11 06:46 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2020-06-12 01:13 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2020-06-12 03:27 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2020-06-11 05:24 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2020-06-11 06:50 pm (UTC)"...was put off by the extreme hype surrounding it."
Exactlly! That was why I didn't read Tolkien until the late '70's. Everyone was pushing me to read them from the late '60's on and I loathed all of the hype, so I only picked up the Hobbit because it was on sale at my college's book store. I'm glad I did, because I've been a devoted Tolkien fan since.