JK Rowling, or better known by her pen name J. K. Rowling, is a British author, screenwriter, producer, and philanthropist.
Best known as the writer of the Harry Potter fantasy series, Rowling has won many awards. With Harry Potter becoming the best-selling book series in history, Rowling was named as the first person to become a U.S.-dollar billionaire by writing books by Forbes, and the "Most Influential Woman in Britain" by leading magazine editors.
Following the success of Harry Potter, Rowling, under a new pen name Robert Galbraith, has then written the crime fiction Cormoran Strike series.
Since 2013 to this date, Rowling under the name Robert Galbraith has written five novels, telling the story of cases of private detective Cormoran Strike and his assistant Robin Ellacott.
But then on September 14, the hashtag RIPJKRowling was trending on Twitter.
The author is not dead, but fans are angry after they realized that Troubled Blood, which is the fifth book in the Cormoran Strike series, features a cisgender male serial killer who wears a dress to trick and murder his female victims.
The hashtag became a trend a day before the book’s release.
Fans quickly connected this storyline to Rowling's history of saying some controversial statements about transgender people.
In the past, the famous writer has made strings of comments about transgender people, either by making fun on gender-inclusive terms, or calling for an end to gender-affirming care for young transgenders.
While the review of the book is mostly positive, with reviewers pointing out that its plot is full of "simmering emotional tension", reviewer Jake Kerridgeand from The Daily Telegraph observed that the book's "moral seems to be: never trust a man in a dress".
Media outlets started to ran stories to connect that storyline, with the author's history regarding her harsh comments on women and transgender issues.
“In memory of jk rowling. she ain’t dead, but she killed her own career by proudly hating trans people & no one would really miss her that much anyway,” wrote one Twitter user.
“#RIPJKRowling she [ain’t] dead but her career is,” added another user.
“Imagine getting cancelled so hard, we have to pretend that you died,” wrote another.
While many fans of Rowling were angered, others were initially confused as to why the RIP hashtag was trending, while in fact Rowling is still alive. Others however, seemed to have believed it.
The hashtag was so popular in the U.S., that Twitter had to clarify Rowling is not dead. by putting a statement that reads: "No, JK Rowling is not dead" under the trending hashtag.
It should be noted that kind of storyline isn't the first.
For example, it has been previously used in films like Silence of the Lambs, which tells a story about an FBI agent who seeks help from Hannibal Lecter, a psychopathic serial killer and former psychiatrist, in order to apprehend another serial killer who has been claiming female victims.
The most similar, if not the most famous one, would be on Psycho from Alfred Hitchcock.
The psychological horror thriller has a character suffering from dissociative identity disorder, who dresses in his mother's clothes. The murder scene in the shower by the antagonist, is considered one of the best-known scenes of all time in all of cinema.
In The Silkworm, which is the second novel in the Cormoran Strike series, Rowling has also portrayed a transgender character as being “unstable and aggressive.”
The transgender character is Pippa Midgley, which was undergoing therapy ahead of her gender reassignment surgery.
