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Hundreds of changes made to latest editions of Roald Dahl's books

telegraph.co.uk

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Re: Hundreds of changes made to latest editions of Roald Dahl's books

#701

Post by jna_sh »

ominous wrote: post #696
TaylorAlexander wrote: post #680

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is a chasm between a desire to be around people that understand you, and the fear and ostracism of people who are different. I have spent my entire life around cisgender people. I am quite aware of what it is like. Once I began to transition, I found that those people did not well understand what I was going through, and I found a home and understanding in people more like me. To finally have space from a world…

[flagged]

> Once again, the poster behaves

Why are you writing this way? You’re in what is now an extended conversation with a person who is sharing their perspective with you, and you’re coming at it like you’re trying to humiliate them in front of an audience.

You’re not jousting in some epic debate chamber, you’re in the replies of a message board. Calm down.

Re: Hundreds of changes made to latest editions of Roald Dahl's books

#702

Post by Izkata »

josephg wrote: post #464
Gigachad wrote: post #390

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Surely the success of Hogwarts Legacy shows you can just completely ignore twitter and nothing happens.

Yeah; I don’t know why it’s taken people so long to realise this. I know it seems to people on Twitter that everyone is on twitter, but that’s really not true. About 10% of people in the USA use Twitter daily - which is a huge number of eyeballs. But that still leaves the remaining 90% of people choosing instead to enjoy our short time on this planet. If anything, I wouldn’t be surprised if the outrage over Hogwarts…

> If anything, I wouldn’t be surprised if the outrage over Hogwarts Legacy increased sales of the game. I don’t know if I would have heard about it at all if not for the outrage machine.

It wasn't in the file I have of upcoming games until that happened, so you can definitely also include me. It'll be on Switch later in the year, I'll be waiting for then.

Re: Hundreds of changes made to latest editions of Roald Dahl's books

#703

Post by wrp »

morbia wrote: post #657
double2helix wrote: post #606

I'm a gay man and I think we are going to far with this PC nonsense. I had a hard time growing up in the 90s knowing I was different and being tormented by my peers, so I'm happy to see gay "normalized" in current pop culture more because I think it teaches the younger generation to accept themselves and others. However I feel that it's going to far, for example I started reading a novel the other day but gave up a t…

Another gay man here. To me it seems like we have this paradoxical situation where the media want to simultaneously present inclusivity and diversity, but don't dare present any of the real diversity for fear of stereotyping. The end result is some token LGBTQ+ characters who are heteronormative, which is disingenuous. If it is a choice between no gay character and some gay character who is essentially 'straight acti…

> ...some gay character who is essentially 'straight acting'...

I often see (edit: readers) mention that a story has gay/straight characters, even when (to me) there is no opening in the plot for characters to express their romantic inclinations. What exactly are you looking at when you perceive a character as $orientation?

Re: Hundreds of changes made to latest editions of Roald Dahl's books

#704

Post by gsinclair »

bee_rider wrote: post #420
Gigachad wrote: post #399

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As a native English speaker, I find it hard to keep up and understand everything that’s now been deemed inappropriate. I can’t imagine how a non native would understand. Seems like there is an effort to intentionally keep making it more complex to show who really keeps up with twitter the most.

I don’t have a twitter account to get updates on this, so I just try to avoid nouning adjectives related to any hot button issues. I dunno, I’m not the Word Police, just interested in avoiding unnecessary conflict. I’d hope that most people would give the benefit of the doubt people who aren’t native English speakers, though.

Also give the benefit of the doubt to native speakers who are engaged in good-faith communication.

Re: Hundreds of changes made to latest editions of Roald Dahl's books

#705

Post by throw_5202 »

SamoyedFurFluff wrote: post #524
mensetmanusman wrote: post #443

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your decision may be contributing to the crisis of identity of women who do want to raise a family though, and who have been crushed by a culture who pushes college and helping capital owners as the meaning to life.

My understanding is that this crisis of identity is actually on men, because men aren’t now the sole breadwinners and also don’t have girlboss feminism to bolster them. Men attain less education and are more prone to crime, homelessness, and addiction. The traditional role of a man is an emotionally closed-off breadwinner, and this doesn’t work in a world where women can rival men in breadwinning but also don’t have…

Men may be have a crisis of identity but women still expect their husbands to be the main breadwinners and suffer from the mismatch of expectation and reality too. Women avoid marrying men who earn less and have no potential to earn more.

As a result I'd expect a lot of single men with below average income and a lot of single women with above average income who struggle to find worthy men. Statistically it is impossible meet two condition at once: 1. women on average earn at leas as much as men 2. In a family a husband has income higher than a wife.

Re: Hundreds of changes made to latest editions of Roald Dahl's books

#706

Post by Izkata »

hugh-avherald wrote: post #627
xupybd wrote: post #455

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As someone who is fat and unhealthy I don't think it is. You're not rejecting me to tell me I need to lose some weight, you're suggesting you care about my well being. I don't understand the modern idea that you must celebrate every part of a person to love them.

I suspect it went something like this: There were studies into shaming of overweight individuals concluded it was a poor method for weight loss. This mutated into the idea that anti-shaming must be good for health and the idea that we should not implicitly shame fat people in general. In general, I suspect these kinds of cultural phenomena generally begin by fairly mundane scientific observations being processed thro…

It combined with a corruption of HAES: Originally it was "Health At Every Size", as in, an encouraging message that you can always improve your health no matter how big you are (which a lot of people need because when you start exercising you can end up gaining weight before losing anything, because you're building muscle faster than you're losing fat). But at some point it became understood as "Healthy At Every Size" which people took to mean your size doesn't impact your health.

Re: Hundreds of changes made to latest editions of Roald Dahl's books

#707

Post by ominous »

jna_sh wrote: post #701
ominous wrote: post #696

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

> Once again, the poster behaves Why are you writing this way? You’re in what is now an extended conversation with a person who is sharing their perspective with you, and you’re coming at it like you’re trying to humiliate them in front of an audience. You’re not jousting in some epic debate chamber, you’re in the replies of a message board. Calm down.

Their thread started with:

> Sounds like a great book.

A great book because "every character was some form of LGBT or interracial or something". If you think it was a conversation to start with, you are simply wrong. It's closer to the delusions of someone who hypnotized themselves into their current worldview.

It amuses me to engage in this way. I am very calm.

Re: Hundreds of changes made to latest editions of Roald Dahl's books

#708

Post by unixgoddess »

bko wrote: post #15

Here's a good list of changes. Most are about removing any references to ugly or fat. But also other strange things like changing the author's Matilda likes to read to include Jane Austin and John Steinbeck, not calling people crazy, swapping screeching to annoying, removing brothers and sisters to favor "siblings" and using "folks" instead of "ladies and gentlemen" https://twitter.com/incunabula/status/1626860237104…

I wonder when will they start editing Harry Potter, what with the Dursleys being caricature fatsos = villains.

Re: Hundreds of changes made to latest editions of Roald Dahl's books

#709

Post by gsinclair »

webjunkie wrote: post #72
gedy wrote: post #37

> A most formidable female -> A most formidable woman What is the reasoning for this? Not following what is "wrong" in the original.

Using the term "female" to describe a woman can be perceived as reductive and dehumanizing because it reduces her to a biological category. By using the term "woman," the focus is shifted from her biological characteristics to her identity as a person, which is a more respectful and accurate way of addressing her. Worth noting is that there is no equivalent term to "female" when referring to men, who are almost alway…

I personally would not call someone “a female”, for the reductive reasons you mention.

I also would not change the words of a dead author to reflect modern usage because I enjoy stepping into a the past and seeing how people used to write. Plus there is the alliteration, which is really the clincher here: those who edited this are philistines.

(Not throwing anything at you, webjunkie. You merely explained the change without opining on it. Just commenting in general.)

Re: Hundreds of changes made to latest editions of Roald Dahl's books

#710

Post by RobinL »

bko wrote: post #15

Here's a good list of changes. Most are about removing any references to ugly or fat. But also other strange things like changing the author's Matilda likes to read to include Jane Austin and John Steinbeck, not calling people crazy, swapping screeching to annoying, removing brothers and sisters to favor "siblings" and using "folks" instead of "ladies and gentlemen" https://twitter.com/incunabula/status/1626860237104…

25 years ago my secondary school English teacher told us that he didn't read Dahl to his kids because of how it equated ugly and fat with bad. Every time I see this trope it reminds me: I think he was right. The books are wonderful in other ways. This makes me more likely to read the them to my kids
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