If you’re still having trouble with the ethical struggle of separating the art from the artist, fret no longer! J.K. Rowling has made it easy for whatever fans she has left by REMOVING THE LINE BETWEEN REAL LIFE AND FICTION.
Her sixth novel in the Cormoran Strike detective series, which she releases under the pseudonym Robert Galbraith, dropped on Tuesday, and it is a shocking departure from the imaginative world of Harry Potter. Not just because it takes place in a world devoid of magic but because it seems to be all about her personal experience as a celebrity being canceled!
Related: J.K. Addresses Why She Skipped Out On Harry Potter Reunion Special
The Ink Black Heart is all about a popular cartoon creator named Edie Ledwell who suddenly finds her audience turning on her when she gets accused of racism, ableism, and yes, transphobia. Her life gets ruined by “social justice warriors,” and she gets doxxed and eventually murdered.
Seriously?!
This is the most obvious self-insert character since Michael Scarn, FBI. This woman used to be able to create worlds, if nothing else. JFC.
Of course, in the world J.K. has created, her avatar’s persecutors were actually being spurred on by a shadowy figure who has an ulterior motive for siccing the woke mob on her. OK, we guess that is still pretty imaginative! LOLz!
Hilariously, the once beloved children’s author swears this was NOT inspired by her real life controversies, in which she has railed over and over against trans rights and been rebuked by fans en masse, as well as Harry Potter film stars like Daniel Radcliffe and Emma Watson. She told Graham Norton on his radio show over the weekend it was written before all of the controversy:
“I should make it really clear after some of the things that have happened the last year that this is not depicting… I had written the book before certain things happened to me online. I said to my husband, ‘I think everyone is going to see this as a response to what happened to me,’ but it genuinely wasn’t. The first draft of the book was finished at the point certain things happened.”
Well, the book just came out this week. But Rowling’s controversy and backlash has been going on since December 2019 when she publicly backed a woman who was fired for saying trans women were not women. It’s gotten signal boosted multiple times, specifically by J.K. herself, who infamously doubled down in an essay in June 2020.
Related: Oh, And Again Last Year…
So according to her, the first draft of this book was done way back before that? The previous Cormoran Strike book, the fifth, entitled Troubled Blood, was published in September 2020. She wants us to believe the first draft of this sixth one was done 10 months before that?? And it’s all just a shocking coincidence that she happens to also have been attacked online for transphobia? Right…
Just like it was a huge coincidence that her pseudonym, Robert Galbraith, just so happens to be the first and middle names of Robert Galbraith Heath, the 20th century psychiatrist and pioneer in gay conversion therapy, who claimed to have successfully turned a gay man heterosexual using electroshocks to the brain. A man who believed homosexuality and other sexualities were the result of physical defects that could be cured. Just a coincidence he happened to be the type of person whose backwards views might align with hers. After all, Galbraith is such a common name, could have happened to anyone.
For what it’s worth, she claims the pen name was inspired by her “hero” Robert Kennedy and Galbraith came from… well, she doesn’t have a good reason for that one.
“Galbraith came about for a slightly odd reason. When I was a child, I really wanted to be called ‘Ella Galbraith’, and I’ve no idea why. I don’t even know how I knew that the surname existed, because I can’t remember ever meeting anyone with it.”
Such a wild coincidence! Just like how similar Harry Potter’s description is to Tim Hunter in Neil Gaiman‘s The Books of Magic. Just so many coincidences surrounding this woman, huh?
[Image via MEGA/WENN/The Office/YouTube.]
