Read all about it here: J.K. Rowling slammed for defending concept of biological sex: ‘It isn’t hate to speak the truth.’
The short version: Rowling in a series of tweets has repeated and doubled-down on her #IStandWithMaya position from last December that it is not bigotry or hate-speech to insist that transgender women are not biological women.
The twitter-verse predictably has exploded with calls for her beheading mixed in with celebrations of her courage in speaking the truth.
I have three thoughts about what this means that I offer here in haste for your comment and correction:
(1) Another Rowling Vacation from Twitter? After the explosion in December about her insufficient woke-ness, Rowling disappeared for several months. She re-surfaced during the Covid-19 lockdown, it seems in retrospect in order to do what she could in the cause of “saving the NHS.” Her posts took the turn of hyper-political scolding with the Dominic Cummings controversy so perhaps it should be no surprise that the issue of transgender rights has resurfaced as well. Maybe this second doxxing and deep-dipping in the mercurial baths of social media will remind her why she left Twitter in the first place and why she should resume her silence.
(2) The End of the Goodwill Campaign? Rowling re-entered the social media world with a bang; she gave a million pounds sterling to two Covid-19 charities and created a website that is posting in daily chapters her political fairy tale, The Ickabog, all for free. Children everywhere have been reading it and creating drawings to accompany the eventual printed text. Rowling’s tweets the last two weeks have almost exclusively been in admiration of drawings sent to her by proud parents and excited children. If she leaves Twitter, of course, it will mean the end of that wonderful experience for author and illustrators alike.
(3) Goodbye, Fantastic Beasts? It’s hard to imagine Rowling being kept on in any front line capacity with her Newt Scamander film series. The Super Politically Correct actors involved, the ones playing Credence Barebones (Ezra Miller) and Jacob Kowalski (Dan Fogler) most obviously, however much they have revered Rowling in the past, will have a very hard time reconciling their public personae with Rowling’s statements about transgender women. Warner Brothers, frankly, might be just as pleased to have Rowling give them a novel to adapt rather than have her continue as screenwriter and executive producer.
If this situation leads to Rowling reverting to novelist and giving up the screen-writing, there will be no complaints from this corner.
What are your thoughts about what the latest twitter storm will mean for Rowling’s future as a writer? A gentle warning, in advance; I’m not interested in and will not approve any comments that discuss the transgender issue per se. Please share those opinions on the thousands of fan sites and twitter feeds devoted to that subject.
The Predictions of Tycho Dodonus play an outsize role in the understory beneath the confusing surface action of the Fantastic Beasts film franchise. In a nutshell, the wizards of the age seem to believe that the poetic predictions made by Tycho point to the identity of Credence as something of a deliverer. What we haven’t been told is who this Tycho was (is?) and why his cryptic utterances carry such weight with witches and wizards between the two great World Wars. Tyler Brown has found a real-world model that may be an important clue in grasping what the Tycho prophetic sub-plot means in Beasts. Enjoy!
In 
Being aware of this, I was surprised the other day to come across a real-world name very similar to Tycho Dodonus: Tyconius the Donatist (try saying them aloud!). It turns out that Tyconius the Donatist wrote a 
Variety says the only thing that will save the Fantastic Beasts film franchise is a return to Hogwarts. Yes, fine, send the fantastic foursome and Grindelwald to Brazil, but make sure at least half the movie is with Jude Law at our favorite school of witchcraft and wizardry.
“The Crimes of Grindelwald” wasn’t exactly an embarrassment with $650 million in worldwide ticket sales, but it fell short of expectations and earned over $150 million less than its predecessor. What did become clear, however, was that just two films in, the “Fantastic Beasts” franchise was already starting to show signs of fatigue.
Part three is expected to put more of a spotlight on Jude Law’s young Albus Dumbledore and set more action at Hogwarts, with series stars Eddie Redmayne, Ezra Miller, Katherine Waterston and Dan Fogler also returning. While taking the series back to its Hogwarts roots, the third movie will also show how magic is explored in an entirely new location: Rio de Janeiro….
Analyst Bock is excited about Steve Kloves’ return to screenwriting, albeit as an assistant to Rowling or partner rather than a writer who adapts her novels. I expect this means that the director wants the cuts made in the shooting script and rewrites for blockbuster formula all done before he gets to the shooting and retreats to the cutting room. From this view, Kloves will be adapting Rowling’s screenplays rather than her novel — and we’re even less likely to know the story as she conceived it.
Deadline.com in an “EXCLUSIVE” article not much longer than its title,
All of which we knew. The Rio setting was made clear more than a year ago 
My hope is this announcement means that Rowling will be writing the story and that Kloves will turn that story into a screenplay and shooting script that David Yates won’t have to butcher “to fit the woman to the dress,” as Kloves called re-writing Rowling’s scripts so they conformed to Warner Brothers formula. We’ll know in two years if that is the case and whether or not it worked. If Rowling’s picture that was used as a cameo in a recent Letters to Europe article in The Guardian (left) is any sign, the process is not rejuvenating her.
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