Originally published at: Dobby is dead and does not need your socks | Boing Boing
…
5 Likes
I know we don’t wish for harm against others here, but for a second I genuinely thought this was your way of letting us know that Putin had died.
22 Likes
7 Likes
11 Likes
5 Likes
Save your socks for the Red Hot Chili Peppers.
9 Likes
well, i think it’s a sweet gesture. i was thinking maybe they could turn this into a positive somehow, by collecting clean pairs of socks somehow to give to local charities.
7 Likes
They should have a drop box where people can drop off NEW socks for homeless shelters.
13 Likes
The WNT could plant a sign at the site: Please, instead consider donating gently used or new socks to your local charity donation center and in Dobby’s name.
This ‘getting here before me thing’ is getting serious. Keeps happeniiiiiiiiiiing!
6 Likes
They should have a sign stating that Rowling thought Dobby being a slave was Okay. The only character opposing slavery was mocked.
12 Likes
Has Rowling said anything to indicate she thinks that? Because I always chalked this up to the Wizarding world having been mostly decoupled and isolated from the Muggle one since 1689, and it took us centuries after that to acknowledge that slavery, racism, and antisemitism are evil, even though they’ve been right in front of everyone for millennia.
I think her overall vibe as of late indicates that maybe she’s okay with it… and antisemitism and transphobia. She’s proving to be not a nice person, in fact.
6 Likes
I don’t think Rowling really deserves the benefit of the doubt on that kind of thing anymore.
And it’s very convenient how the Wizarding world is so far ahead of the Muggles in so many respects and yet still keeps the social mores of 1689 whenever it suits them. It’s especially convenient when an author makes those choices for them.
3 Likes
She created an entire wizarding world where that’s acceptable and criticizing it isn’t. And profited handsomely off those views.
4 Likes
Maybe ask Emma Watson if she’d be willing to pose for a sign asking people to support S.P.E.W. in Dobby’s name by donating clothes in a drop box provided for that purpose. People could have a photo op with the sign dropping their donation in the box.
1 Like
Don’t most of the house elves really prefer being slaves and resist emancipation, despite how cruel people are to them?
I mean, in theory a fantasy could explore the counterfactual of a people that were simply best suited to be slaves…except you don’t have to, because that’s always been what slavers pretended was happening. It’s not a stretch to think echoing that is excusing them.
Also, as others have said, Rowling is a vocal bigot out to hurt if not eliminate people. She can already go to hell, which doesn’t leave me with a lot of concern this might be an innocent mistake. If she wanted she had lots of chances to explain.
1 Like
It’s like all those alternate history fiction stories that were based on the idea that the nazis won or that the CFA won… Given we’re still dealing with their ideologies that dominated mainstream discourse for much of modern history and is still widely accepted among many white people, how much different would it be. There is some value to be had, but at some point you get diminishing returns from that. Why not the opposite take? Seems to me worth exploring more than “nazis won”…
1 Like
And also Dobby is a fictional character, so what the fuck, people.
2 Likes
That part of this I do get. It’s not like real corpses benefit from the flowers and things you leave them, you do it to honor your connection with them. And for all the writing problems mentioned, plainly people really connected with this character.
1 Like
