Toriyama should follow the Harry Potter movies' example and continue DB in a spin off

[JulieYBM]

Too bad my personal disdain for Rowling can't get her canceled while hers can get me killed.

[ABED]

I'm not ignoring them. I have a different interpretation of them (good lord),

Your "interpretation" has mostly been finding ways to direct the conversation away from engaging with anything I've said. I would call that ignoring them. Here, see if you do it again in this next one:

while I think it's valuable to read the Marxist critique, Marxism has been proven to be a horseshit destructive ideology. It's very determinist in its outlook and choice never plays in anything. It ultimately amounts to "X comes from money, ergo privileged and thus bad". Choice and free will don't come into play.

That's somewhere between "overly simplified" and "Ben Shapiro soundbyte", but what's important is that your actual rhetorical device was just comparing a reading you didn't like to some other thing you consider invalid.

I can only take someone's view of something so seriously when they haven't actually engaged with it.

But again, I don't give a shit with what you "take seriously", I'm just not a fan of you twisting people's words.

As we see in this very thread, some people claim her work is too christian, some say it's not christian enough. The issue is also not whether anyone condones Toriyama's problematic writings, it's whether someone can look past its incredibly problematic elements because it has enough virtues.

Do you think people aren't doing that? For either of these??? Do you need your hand held to know that everyone saying JK's bad beliefs influenced the bad beliefs in her story ALSO treat Toriyama in the exact same way, or else Joe Pedantic over here is gonna call them a hypocrite?

All this tells me is that her beliefs influenced her writing which is the case for all art but in this case it's more implicit.

Well, at this point, I'm obviously not making myself much clearer than you anyway, so maybe we should just leave it off here.

Because I said they are not Christian propaganda books doesn’t mean I think they are atheist books. I never thought when writing a book you have to choose between it being an atheist book or a religious propaganda book

I brought up CS Lewis as comparison because his Christianity is very apparent in the text of his writings. You can’t analyze his works without understanding it.

I never said those were the only two options, but you said religion was not present in the books, which is just wrong. Again, 'propaganda' was obviously the wrong word for me to use, but frankly I don't think Deathly Hallows is much less-explicit than Narnia, if at all.

maybe we should steer clear if you think I’m not engaging with what you said and compared my statement to Shapiro. I guess what I’m asking is what is so much worse about her work than his that we can look past his faults?

You’ve said her bad ideas are essentially baked into the core of her story where the faults in DB aren’t. I don’t think that is altogether true

[Polyphase Avatron]

Too bad my personal disdain for Rowling can't get her canceled while hers can get me killed.

I can understand if you mean her attitude in general as anyone you meet might have similar ideas, but do you really think that your life is in danger specifically because of something J. K. Rowling said or did?

[Soppa Saia People]

i mean feeding pretty heavy transphobic rhetoric is a little dangerous for trans people in the U.K, which is already a very transphobic country. it doesn't directly get them killed obviously (barring some cases), but it can lead to stuff like people being more openly transphobic and going out of their way to bully, out, or just generally be even more shitty to trans people.

also if you think marxism is a failed ideology or whatever, i don't think you know what marxism is lol.

[JulieYBM]

Too bad my personal disdain for Rowling can't get her canceled while hers can get me killed.

I can understand if you mean her attitude in general as anyone you meet might have similar ideas, but do you really think that your life is in danger specifically because of something J. K. Rowling said or did?

She uses her platform to spread hate and misinformation. Actions like this have a cumulative effect. Transgender people are actively being harmed both directly from her words and from the actions her words inspire in others. So, yes, people like Rowling are why I'm afraid to go out in public or take a piss in public restrooms.

This while transgender people--chief among them children--are now being targeted both in the US and UK--from which Rowling hails--leads me to be extra worried for my trans siblings. They want to define us out of existence, they want to strip us of our live-saving medicine and healthcare and they want to torture us until we conform to their crooked societal expectations. TERFs like Rowling, with their thinly veiled bile that flips to poor attempts at sounding 'reasonable' and 'misunderstood' the second they're caught red-handed, are incredibly insidious and to have Rowling with her massive platform that cannot be silenced inevitably means that she will be able to continue spreading her bullshit for the rest of her life without repercussions.

[Polyphase Avatron]

Too bad my personal disdain for Rowling can't get her canceled while hers can get me killed.

I can understand if you mean her attitude in general as anyone you meet might have similar ideas, but do you really think that your life is in danger specifically because of something J. K. Rowling said or did?

She uses her platform to spread hate and misinformation. Actions like this have a cumulative effect. Transgender people are actively being harmed both directly from her words and from the actions her words inspire in others. So, yes, people like Rowling are why I'm afraid to go out in public or take a piss in public restrooms.

This while transgender people--chief among them children--are now being targeted both in the US and UK--from which Rowling hails--leads me to be extra worried for my trans siblings. They want to define us out of existence, they want to strip us of our live-saving medicine and healthcare and they want to torture us until we conform to their crooked societal expectations. TERFs like Rowling, with their thinly veiled bile that flips to poor attempts at sounding 'reasonable' and 'misunderstood' the second they're caught red-handed, are incredibly insidious and to have Rowling with her massive platform that cannot be silenced inevitably means that she will be able to continue spreading her bullshit for the rest of her life without repercussions.

Like I said, I understand the danger of the attitude in general, but is just Rowling specifically such a threat? If she had never said any transphobic stuff, would you personally be in less danger today than you are now?

[JulieYBM]

I can understand if you mean her attitude in general as anyone you meet might have similar ideas, but do you really think that your life is in danger specifically because of something J. K. Rowling said or did?

She uses her platform to spread hate and misinformation. Actions like this have a cumulative effect. Transgender people are actively being harmed both directly from her words and from the actions her words inspire in others. So, yes, people like Rowling are why I'm afraid to go out in public or take a piss in public restrooms.

This while transgender people--chief among them children--are now being targeted both in the US and UK--from which Rowling hails--leads me to be extra worried for my trans siblings. They want to define us out of existence, they want to strip us of our live-saving medicine and healthcare and they want to torture us until we conform to their crooked societal expectations. TERFs like Rowling, with their thinly veiled bile that flips to poor attempts at sounding 'reasonable' and 'misunderstood' the second they're caught red-handed, are incredibly insidious and to have Rowling with her massive platform that cannot be silenced inevitably means that she will be able to continue spreading her bullshit for the rest of her life without repercussions.

Like I said, I understand the danger of the attitude in general, but is just Rowling specifically such a threat? If she had never said any transphobic stuff, would you personally be in less danger today than you are now?

Using her platform in the way she does adds fuel to the fire. Rowling's lies about trans people will spread. She is actively using her platform to spread hate and lies. What part of "this is dangerous for marginalized people" does that miss?

Trans people--especially those of us who don't pass for cis--must always take our lives into our hands when we go out in public. Someone like Rowling, whose influence can help create more people like her and increase the number of hostile people, is a danger to trans lives, whether it's because she influenced someone to hate trans people enough to attack them on the street, in a public restroom or through legislature and the media.

Trans issues are so poorly understood as it is since so few cis people know a trans person, to then have people checking out what she said without having an actual relationship or knowledge with/of trans people one is going to think Rowling is being unfairly persecuted. This is why representation in media as well as creating a safe environment for more trans people to come out of the closet is so important. Rowling wants to destroy those safe spaces because of her terrible conservative views.

[Polyphase Avatron]

She uses her platform to spread hate and misinformation. Actions like this have a cumulative effect. Transgender people are actively being harmed both directly from her words and from the actions her words inspire in others. So, yes, people like Rowling are why I'm afraid to go out in public or take a piss in public restrooms.

This while transgender people--chief among them children--are now being targeted both in the US and UK--from which Rowling hails--leads me to be extra worried for my trans siblings. They want to define us out of existence, they want to strip us of our live-saving medicine and healthcare and they want to torture us until we conform to their crooked societal expectations. TERFs like Rowling, with their thinly veiled bile that flips to poor attempts at sounding 'reasonable' and 'misunderstood' the second they're caught red-handed, are incredibly insidious and to have Rowling with her massive platform that cannot be silenced inevitably means that she will be able to continue spreading her bullshit for the rest of her life without repercussions.

Like I said, I understand the danger of the attitude in general, but is just Rowling specifically such a threat? If she had never said any transphobic stuff, would you personally be in less danger today than you are now?

Using her platform in the way she does adds fuel to the fire. Rowling's lies about trans people will spread. She is actively using her platform to spread hate and lies. What part of "this is dangerous for marginalized people" does that miss?

Trans people--especially those of us who don't pass for cis--must always take our lives into our hands when we go out in public. Someone like Rowling, whose influence can help create more people like her and increase the number of hostile people, is a danger to trans lives, whether it's because she influenced someone to hate trans people enough to attack them on the street, in a public restroom or through legislature and the media.

Trans issues are so poorly understood as it is since so few cis people know a trans person, to then have people checking out what she said without having an actual relationship or knowledge with/of trans people one is going to think Rowling is being unfairly persecuted. This is why representation in media as well as creating a safe environment for more trans people to come out of the closet is so important. Rowling wants to destroy those safe spaces because of her terrible conservative views.

I don't think she's being persecuted. I agree she has said some pretty awful stuff. And I agree that the kinds of ideas she is espousing can lead to increased danger. I'm just skeptical that her words, by themselves, could mean the difference between life and death for someone living on the opposite side of the world. It's like saying that one person voting for Trump means the difference between him getting elected or not. If that's not what you were saying, though, then I just misinterpreted it.

[JulieYBM]

One person voting for Trump is voting for someone who was a blatant rapists, sexist and racist billionaire before his first term and was a all those things plus a committer of geocide afterward.

Rowling using her platform to inspire others to dehumanize trans people will inevitably lead to someone murdering a trans person. Leaders of dehumanizing movements are terrible, too.

[Polyphase Avatron]

One person voting for Trump is voting for someone who was a blatant rapists, sexist and racist billionaire before his first term and was a all those things plus a committer of geocide afterward.

Rowling using her platform to inspire others to dehumanize trans people will inevitably lead to someone murdering a trans person. Leaders of dehumanizing movements are terrible, too.

Like I said, the cumulative effect is undeniable, but I was just speaking about the individual effect. Lots of people in my family voted for him in 2016, but we live in a blue state so it didn't really make a difference.

[Planetnamek]

That's an awful lot of compartmentalizing with Dragon Ball because that misogyny is littered throughout and the story doesn't seem to have much of a problem with genocide. It does until it doesn't because a character became so popular the author decided to keep him around and doesn't even attempt to justify why anyone would trust him. DB's world view is very twisted in inescapable ways.

It doesn't matter exactly how we get into the details of the way Toriyama and Rowling's politics intersect with their writing so long as we acknowledge that they do so differently. Once you have that, it's only natural that maybe Julie would have perceived things more strongly with one than the other, and so would have something to say about Rowling specifically in a thread about Rowling. That doesn't take anything away from talk about Toriyama, so saying "what about this other person" doesn't really work when nobody is condoning his bad stuff either.

As I recall, he was willed to Sirius but Harry doesn't take on that role as his master. I can see why some read it the way you say, but then again I see an awful lot of those some people make all sorts of ridiculous claims about the politics of the book that sounds practically Marxist. So much BS talk about class and not enough about the issue of free will. Therefor I take a lot of those criticisms with a grain of salt.

Well, if you're just going to ignore certain readings as you see fit, there's not much room for me to say much of anything you don't already agree with. I just thought you were characterizing Julie's post unfairly.

Also, Marxist critique of Harry Potter is good, actually. That's a thing more people should do.

I'm definitely gonna disagree on the HP books being Christian propaganda, i'm really not seeing any evidence whatsoever to back up that claim. Religious overtones are not something that was ever really present in that franchise and Rowling never really brought up religion that I can tell(in general brits are WAY less religious then Americans are, they don't try to aggressively shove religion in your face so christian symbolism in a British-fantasy series would look a bit out of place).

Well, uh...dunno what to tell ya. Have you read the last book? The first few are more subtle, which I did say before, but it's pretty obvious in the last book. Maybe I'm more keen on this due to growing up in a Christian household, but I feel like the Jesus parallels at the very end should be pretty clear to most people.

As for the house-elf slavery stuff, I always just saw that as Rowling making fun of self-proclaimed activists that insert themselves into social issues without having any real understanding of them.

That would require a couple things of Rowling though. She'd first need to be smarter about social issues than whatever this caricature of political activism is, and then create a story where Hermione is convincingly wrong about the issue at-hand.

Neither of these things happened. Hermione says "slavery bad", other characters say "no", and then she's forced to back down, despite being very obviously right.

Given that Goblet of Fire was supposedly heavily edited late in development and some plot points were outright written out of the story, I will grant that it's entirely possible that this wasn't the course JK intended for the story to take, but it's not like she didn't have three more books to correct it, and, well, she didn't do that.

I also think it’s funny to say Harry Potter was Christian propaganda when back in the day very religious Christian groups wanted the book banned for promoting witchcraft

Does that preclude it from being a Christian narrative? A certain sect of people getting up-in-arms about the iconography of witchcraft does not an atheist tale make. Rowling herself certainly seems to believe it's Christian, especially the last book.

I already said I was probably exaggerating a bit by calling it "propaganda", but from where I'm sitting, the influence of religion on the text is undeniable.

Considering how much money she made from those books, I doubt she gave a rat's ass what a group of religious wackjobs thought about them so I highly doubt she was pandering to them. Hell she wasn't happy when WB tried to Americanize the characters and setting in their film adaptation of the first book and fought for the film to be authentically British with filming locations and the cast, so there's no chance she put in religious stuff in the later books to appeal to American fundamentalists.

I thought the reason she did that was because a lot of fundamentalist Christians were saying the books were Satanic and she wanted to prove them wrong.

JK Rowling is ABSOLUTELY petty enough to make changes to her novels just because of one group of people, especially one she hates. But I think it doesn't make sense to consider it this way. The symbolism in Deathly Hallows is played completely straight, which isn't what MOST writers do when they resent a group of critics, but ESPECIALLY not Rowling. Her style is more to represent those people as unlikable strawmen that get EPIC OWNED by Hermione or Dumbledore. Think Rita Skeeter or Cornelius Fudge. Those characters aren't exactly subtle in how they represent media or governments (and the former a transphobic metaphor, depending on how you read into Goblet of Fire).

I've read every single book in the series and I too grew up in a Christian household and I have to say I didn't see any christian symbolism whatsoever in the last book. I think you're overanalyzing the book honestly and I don't see Rowling caring about pleasing religious fundamentalists in America, so I think this is a major stretch honestly. I've never seen a single quote from Rowling claiming that she was in any way religious so i'm not buying the whole Jesus parallel thing at all.

[ABED]

I now have a hard time believing the original poster didn't know this thread would devolve into this. Sorry for contributing to the off topic part of this discussion. While I think it is important to talk about them, the question was about whether Toriyama should make a story set in DB world but not about the core DB characters. I'm not the biggest fan of spin offs. Like any story, it's all about lightning in a bottle and that's hard to recapture. Frasier is one of my favorite spin offs and with the exception of a few guest appearances from Cheers characters, you'd never know Frasier started off on another series. If that's how this hypothetical spin off did it, then maybe. Wings is another good example. Not exactly a Cheers spinoff but it's set in the same world as there are a few crossovers.

What are your favorite spin offs?

[Shaddy]

maybe we should steer clear if you think I’m not engaging with what you said and compared my statement to Shapiro. I guess what I’m asking is what is so much worse about her work than his that we can look past his faults?

You’ve said her bad ideas are essentially baked into the core of her story where the faults in DB aren’t. I don’t think that is altogether true

I didn't say DB's faults weren't a part of the story, just that the way they integrate is different, and people might react to them differently.

And I don't want to split hairs about JK's problematic writing compared to Toriyama, I never said one was worse, it's just not what we were talking about. Again, we don't need to do a flight check every time we talk about one bad thing in writing to disavow every other bad thing in other people's writing.

I've read every single book in the series and I too grew up in a Christian household and I have to say I didn't see any christian symbolism whatsoever in the last book. I think you're overanalyzing the book honestly and I don't see Rowling caring about pleasing religious fundamentalists in America, so I think this is a major stretch honestly. I've never seen a single quote from Rowling claiming that she was in any way religious so i'm not buying the whole Jesus parallel thing at all.

Here's three different articles that I found in five seconds. They also literally go to a Muggle Church for Christmas in Godrick's Hollow, if you want an obvious in-universe example. If you can't see the Christ analogue in the death and rebirth that the author says is a Christ analogue, I'm not sure there's anything I can do to convince you.

I didn't say anything of the kind. I said specifically it wasn't a Christian propaganda book.

But yeah CS Lewis works are way more explicit than anything in Harry Potter

Sorry, I got you mixed up with the other person.

[ABED]

And I don't want to split hairs about JK's problematic writing compared to Toriyama, I never said one was worse, it's just not what we were talking about. Again, we don't need to do a flight check every time we talk about one bad thing in writing to disavow every other bad thing in other people's writing.

I think I see what you're getting at, but given that it's a DB forum and both have problematic writing, I was wondering why one has issues that are damning and the other you can look past to the point where you join a forum.

I didn't say DB's faults weren't a part of the story, just that the way they integrate is different, and people might react to them differently.

That's what I was getting at. Sorry, I'm not great at articulating my point, at least not on an internet forum.

[Shaddy]

]I think I see what you're getting at, but given that it's a DB forum and both have problematic writing, I was wondering why one has issues that are damning and the other you can look past to the point where you join a forum.

Being on a forum for things doesn't preclude you from thinking they have inexcusable issues.

[MasenkoHA]

And I don't want to split hairs about JK's problematic writing compared to Toriyama, I never said one was worse, it's just not what we were talking about. Again, we don't need to do a flight check every time we talk about one bad thing in writing to disavow every other bad thing in other people's writing.

I think it’s the fact that Rowling has been using her platform for transphobic rhetoric that makes all the inherent problematic issues with Harry Potter just the icing on the cake.

Of course Dragon Ball has racism, misogyny, and homophobia but as far as I know Toriyama had never made public statements to disparage any minority group. Like I get the feeling he’s a bit....of a product of his time but he’s not straight up promoting any harmful idealogy.

[ABED]

Then it's not really about the work itself.

[JulieYBM]

People with shitty beliefs make pretty shitty stories. It's not really possible to separate the two.

[Polyphase Avatron]

People with shitty beliefs make pretty shitty stories. It's not really possible to separate the two.

I'd tend to disagree, as I am a fan of the works of H. P. Lovecraft, even though he was a really terrible person in real life. Some of his stories have some very cringeworthy elements because of his views, but others don't seem to reflect that influence much, if at all.

[Kataphrut]

People with shitty beliefs make pretty shitty stories. It's not really possible to separate the two.

I'd tend to disagree, as I am a fan of the works of H. P. Lovecraft, even though he was a really terrible person in real life. Some of his stories have some very cringeworthy elements because of his views, but others don't seem to reflect that influence much, if at all.

The problem with Lovecraft is once you realise that basically everything he ever wrote was a metaphor for his racism, fear of miscegenation, fear of basically everything outside his comfortable WASP bubble...it's impossible to separate it. It's like putting on the glasses in They Live. The best you can say about him is that he inspired plenty of great works.

With situations like this, I'm glad Toriyama generally keeps quiet and doesn't feel the need to spread his political beliefs. Because...they're probably not great.