Because I'm petty, I'm going to gather you all around and tell you about that time JK Rowling was extremely wrong about something and, by being wrong about it, poisoned Google search results for it for years afterwards and generally made the world ignorant about it
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We all know that the spell names in Harry Potter are bad Because JK Rowling doesn't actually know any Latin and doesn't look it up, even when she was getting million-dollar advances to look it up So you get stuff like "Imperio!" ("To the empire!")
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Replying to @arthur_affect
She wasn't, though. She was being paid many-million dollar advances to write entertaining books. If she wants to claim Latin is a corrupted form of the Sorceror's Tongue, similar in some ways but not identical, then she's not a mile from Tolkien's handling of Elvish.
3 replies 0 retweets 11 likes -
Replying to @BofingerDavid
Okay, fine I think her use of "Alohomora", to anyone who actually knows what it means and where it comes from (which is a regrettably small minority), is cringey and awkward as hell I think that that's a generally shitty thing to do to minority cultures from other countries
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Replying to @arthur_affect @BofingerDavid
Dog-Latin, whatever, you're riffing on stuff all the bored posh white kids were forced to learn in school It doesn't cost that much effort to make it more correct, and there will be people who will be pleased by you doing so -- but sure, you don't have to, it's just a book
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Replying to @arthur_affect @BofingerDavid
But it's the careless and sloppy appropriation from other cultures that looks really bad I mean, look, this is *actual misinformation* that has spread like wildfire all over the Internet -- it's actively *impeding* people learning about real-life Sikidy who want to learn
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Replying to @arthur_affect @BofingerDavid
Like, if she'd just put the word in her book because it sounded cool, and then in interviews owned up to it and said "I didn't know what it meant, I put it in my book because it sounded cool", that'd be one thing But she LIED Not in the book, in real life, she lied to people
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Replying to @arthur_affect @BofingerDavid
She said that bullshit about borrowing from "the West African dialect of Sidiki a word that means 'friendly to thieves'" in a court case, in the specific context of proving how much research she'd done in order to shore up her IP rights to the Harry Potter universe
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Replying to @arthur_affect @BofingerDavid
It was a shitty thing to do It was a *minor* shitty thing to do, but it makes her look bad, and it very much ties in to her cavalier treatment of facts throughout the history of the Harry Potter franchise and in her attempts at being a Twitter public intellectual
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Replying to @arthur_affect @BofingerDavid
Again, I have to point out how much of a slap in the face it is when something like Harry Potter takes over the Google search results for a real thing from your own culture
5 replies 3 retweets 57 likes
I'm not from Madagascar and I didn't grow up studying Sikidy but I'd be pissed at seeing that paragraph "It means 'friendly to thieves' in the West African dialect of Sidiki" over and over and over again just googling the word "Alohomora", a real word from my real religion
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Replying to @arthur_affect @BofingerDavid
I legit wanted to know if cats could have a little salami once and it was impossible to google.
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Replying to @arthur_affect @BofingerDavid
I’m from Madagascar. It IS irritating, because so much of our culture has been carefully dismantled by colonial rule that we’re still trying to piece it back together. It’s bad enough having to rely on external sources, having to deal with disinformation makes it SO much worse.
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