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JK Rowling slammed for asking if she can be Black if she likes “Motown & fancy myself in cornrows” (www.lgbtqnation.com)

submitted 4 months ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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[–] [email protected] 1 points 4 months ago* (last edited 4 months ago) (3 children)

Here's a Neil Gaiman thing to balance things out

[–] [email protected] 1 points 4 months ago* (last edited 4 months ago)

This quote always goes hand in hand with that one for me.

Since it is so likely that (children) will meet cruel enemies, let them at least have heard of brave knights and heroic courage. Otherwise you are making their destiny not brighter but darker.

C.S. Lewis

[–] [email protected] 1 points 4 months ago (1 children)

How can I use Lemmy in such a way that I see more Neil Gaiman than JK Rowling? Any tips?

[–] [email protected] 1 points 4 months ago

Start [email protected]

Block [email protected]

[–] [email protected] 0 points 4 months ago (1 children)

I was going to say that's actually a G K Chesterton quote, but it turns out it's more complicated than that. Neil Gaiman himself said it was from Chesterton (when quoting it at the start of Coraline), but he wrote it from memory and didn't double check, so the original is worded differently. At least, that's how my quick googling claims the paraphrase happened. The misquote is pithier than the original so... is it now a Gaiman quote, even though it originates as an attempted Chesterton quote?

As far as I can tell, the passage he was thinking of was:

Fairy tales do not give the child his first idea of bogey. What fairy tales give the child is his first clear idea of the possible defeat of bogey. The baby has known the dragon intimately ever since he had an imagination. What the fairy tale provides for him is a St. George to kill the dragon.

G K Chesterton, Tremendous Trifles (1909)

[–] [email protected] 1 points 4 months ago

Interestingly, on Gaiman and attribution, he came out with a graphic novel, The Books of Magic, with a main character very similar to Harry Potter. This was 7 years prior to Rowlings publishing the first book. His response to that similarity was equally charitable, chalking it to creators tapping into the same unconscious material. Dude seems to have integrity. I could see another person grousing at the parallels between the two.