Rowling Tweets Ukrainian Ironbelly as Her Support Animal Choice (with Flag)

May 12, 2022 by

Three Quick Notes Below the Jump! [Read more…]

Filed Under: Twitter

Rowling Tweets Support for Abortion and Gay Marriage In Response to Challenge

May 10, 2022 by

Three quick thoughts after the jump! [Read more…]

Filed Under: Twitter

Rowling May Day Twitter Drop

May 2, 2022 by Leave a Comment

J. K. Rowling yesterday re-tweeted fifteen ‘May Day’ tweets from around the UK and Commonwealth, all of which were from admirers attending ‘Ladies Who Lunch’ celebrations in imitation of the gathering Rowling sponsored at the River Cafe last month. Three examples:

Rowling has written that she departed regular tweeting largely to protect her mental health. It was by tweeting her opinions about transgender overreach that caused the WOKE tsunami to break over her and it seemed that she had decided to abandon her remarkable social media platform except to promote book launches and the like, e.g., the Ickabog pictures from young fans and the Troubled Blood roll-out.

Recent tweeting activity, though, suggests The Presence has elected to reverse the usual “just business, no politics” policy of prudence for a “no business, all politics” policy of creating and making visible the community of people who support her views vis a vis #RespectMySex. She has not tweeted once, for example, about the opening of Secrets of Dumbledore while twice creating long drop-sets about “Ladies Who Lunch.”

One of her writing signatures is turning genre tropes on their head before delivering an equivalent or greater experience of the genre in question. It looks to me like Rowling has decided that, having been victimized on this platform by the profesional twitterati, she can now turn it to her own use, not to victimize but to celebrate and encourage others who feel isolated by the Zeitgeist. De gustibus!

Filed Under: Twitter

New Rowling Forest Twitter Header: Beasts 4, Strike 7, or Project X?

April 23, 2022 by 3 Comments

Could be Newt Scamander’s view as he studies a magical bird living in the treetops of a winter forest.

Maybe Rowling tripped and fell and wanted to record the moment with an artsy sky shot.

I’m guessing someone — Boy Cormy? — tried to run away from the Norfolk Commune and was shot. This might just be the Cormoran Strike equivalent of wounded Prince Andrei’s epiphany looking up at the sky on his back during the Battle of Austerlitz:

And really another French soldier, trailing his musket, ran up to the struggling men, and the fate of the red-haired gunner, who had triumphantly secured the mop and still did not realize what awaited him, was about to be decided. But Prince Andrew did not see how it ended. It seemed to him as though one of the soldiers near him hit him on the head with the full swing of a bludgeon. It hurt a little, but the worst of it was that the pain distracted him and prevented his seeing what he had been looking at.

“What’s this? Am I falling? My legs are giving way,” thought he, and fell on his back. He opened his eyes, hoping to see how the struggle of the Frenchmen with the gunners ended, whether the red-haired gunner had been killed or not and whether the cannon had been captured or saved. But he saw nothing.

Above him there was now nothing but the sky—the lofty sky, not clear yet still immeasurably lofty, with gray clouds gliding slowly across it. “How quiet, peaceful, and solemn; not at all as I ran,” thought Prince Andrew—“not as we ran, shouting and fighting, not at all as the gunner and the Frenchman with frightened and angry faces struggled for the mop: how differently do those clouds glide across that lofty infinite sky! How was it I did not see that lofty sky before? And how happy I am to have found it at last! Yes! All is vanity, all falsehood, except that infinite sky. There is nothing, nothing, but that. But even it does not exist, there is nothing but quiet and peace. Thank God!…” (Book I, Part 3, Chapter 16).

That’s my best guess, lame as it is. Anyone care to do an actual web search to find out where this picture was taken?

Filed Under: Twitter

Rowling Tweets Havel Thread Contra Ideology the Week of ‘Secrets’ Opening

April 22, 2022 by

Rowling earlier this week posted a twelve part twitter thread which went out to her 14 million followers. It was a selection from Václav Havel’s The Power of the Powerless (1978), the first time I can remember her quoting one author at such length from her Twitter platform.

After the jump, a copy of the thread for you to read and three thoughts about the timing, about one possible origin of her exposure to Havel, and the profound irony of Rowling quoting him. [Read more…]

Filed Under: Hog Pro Notes, Twitter