JK Rowling’s New Protagonist Is Nothing Like JK Rowling, says JK Rowling

Instead of relaxing on a beach or squeezing in one last romcom in the morning room of your billionaire estate this week, Book & Film Globe favorite JK Rowling is back in the news for publishing some terf-y fanfiction. Her forthcoming book The Ink Black Heart, which she interestingly chooses to publish under the male pseudonym Robert Galbraith, chronicles the life of a female YouTuber who is persecuted and doxxed online for her transphobic opinions—before ending up murdered. And absolutely no one is having it.

✍️ JK Rowling's new thriller sees a female celebrity hounded by self-righteous children's fantasy fans.

Read the full review 👇 https://t.co/ewl7gNY3WG

— The Telegraph (@Telegraph) August 27, 2022

Rowling has been more famous in the last few years for her tweets than the Harry Potter series, and the new novel, out on August 30, 2022, keeps with this general theme. The content creator has photos of her home plastered on the internet and receives death and rape threats before being stabbed to death in a cemetary. Despite the similarities to her own life, Rowling appeared on The Graham Norton Show to call it all a coincidence:

“I had written the book before certain things happened to me online,” she said. “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.”

Generally, Rowling’s beliefs can be distilled down to this 2020 tweet: “If sex isn’t real, there’s no same-sex attraction. If sex isn’t real, the lived reality of women globally is erased. I know and love trans people, but erasing the concept of sex removes the ability of many to meaningfully discuss their lives. It isn’t hate to speak the truth.” Missing the distinction among biological sex, gender identity, and sexuality, she firmly supports “woman-only” spaces, citing her history of abuse. You can read more about her history here.

Her opponents, however, have been very vocal about The Ink Black Heart online—especially because it clocks in at more than 1,200 pages.

“JK Rowling released a new book today about a YouTube animator that gets stabbed to death for making racist and transphobic animations and it is 600 pages longer than Dune,” tweeted @pk_kenzie, before clarifying that this wasn’t a shitpost.

“That new JK Rowling novel about people getting mad at her online is 200 pages longer than Infinite Jest,” tweeted@exhaustdata.

“I hope at the end of the book the heroine deletes all of her social media accounts,” wrote critic Maris Kreizman. “I love a happy ending.”

As of this writing, The Ink Black Heart is already an Amazon #1 Best Seller in Mystery Action Fiction.