Some people are just obsessed with it. I never got into it, I even tried to watch it on acid and it still didn’t interest me, btw don’t do acid and go to a movie theater. I almost walked out of watching Tropic Thunder because I was like wtf is this in the character intros, so yeah acid isn’t always great for public stuff.
Anyway the funny was my ex-fiance was really into HP, one day she asks if she can read the books for me. I said okay. Then ironically she decides the perfect time is when I’m gaming with my buddies online. I still get jokes about it to this day, they were all laughing their asses off and I’m trying to keep a straight face like this is fine.
Dojan@pawb.social 1 day ago
I enjoyed it as a kid. As an adult, the flaws are really hard to look past. From the goblins with massive noses that run the wizarding worlds economy, and is in kahoots with wizard Hitler, to the eugenics related hereditarianism views, etc. etc.
Every single woman character in her books are ridiculed, or plain evil, if they take up space at all. There are like three non-white women, two are basically clones. And every single character is good or evil based on genes. Harry is a mix of both his parents, having personality traits from both, despite never having met them. That’s not how things work.
It perfectly explains why Rowling pushes the politics she does. Her ideology is based on the long since discredited sciences of the early to mid 1900s, the stuff the Nazis were basing their ubermensch stuff on. Also explains why they so readily go hand in hand with neo-Nazis.
wonderingwanderer@sopuli.xyz 6 hours ago
Wasn’t it the evil people who held those views, and the good people found them abhorrent?
That’s like criticizing Tolkien because Sauron wanted to dominate the world…
(I’m not comparing Rowling to Tolkien. I think she’s an awful person and her writing is mid at best; the entire franchise surviving entirely on nostalgia and a huge marketing budget. But let’s not focus our criticism on stupid thing like “the bad guys had evil worldviews!”)
Dojan@pawb.social 3 hours ago
It would be worth discarding as a “just the evil guys” thing if only the evil guys employed it. Alas.
This is literally in the epilogue, I’ve cut down a paragraph describing the appearance of the group.
Given that Voldemort’s whole thing was “pureblood” you’d think the lesson of the story would be that your
breedingblood doesn’t matter, but alas. If this was a one-off thing then you could discard it, but it’s not. It’s all over the fictional world she’s created.Harry is frequently the target of “you have your mother’s/father’s X”, Hagrid is seen as lesser for being half-troll (not to mention how his brother is treated), “Loony” Luna Lovegood is seen as insane, coincidentally just like her father, and Argus Filch is what’s called a “squib”, someone who is born to magical parents, but is unable to perform magic. Ergo he has to be part of the wizarding world, but he cannot partake in it, and he cannot be a part of muggle society. He’s forever an outcast in the world, working at a magical school, manually cleaning a place where the students treat him like shit.
Those aspects are never resolved in the books. There’s never any reflection on “maybe we should be nice to Luna” or “perhaps your heritage doesn’t matter”, instead Voldemort is evil not because of his provably erroneous beliefs about purebloods, but because he’s… what, attacking the good guys?
Then… Gods. Rowling has talked about lycanthropy being a metaphor for AIDS.
As far as I can recall there are two primary examples of werewolves in the stories. Remus Lupin, a good guy, works as a teacher for a while, but eventually quits because he realises that he is a danger to the children due to his condition.
Then there’s Fenrir Greyback who is, and I quote from the Potter wiki
Now what subset of the population is primarily brought to mind when you think of HIV/AIDS? That’s right, homosexual men. I believe up until 2023-ish, I wasn’t able to donate blood in my country because I’m a gay man; my having a preference for men makes my blood dirty. Like mud, perhaps. Mudblood maybe? That’s entirely rooted in the HIV/AIDS hysteria, something which we are still facing the stigma of.
A stereotype we face fairly often, something trans-people also face, is that we’re specifically targeting children.
Out of the two
AIDS victimswerewolves that come to mind, both are dangerous to children, per her own words. Could this just be a massive middle-aged moment style fuck-up? Absolutely, but you’d think a billionaire would have the money to hire editors and whatnot to catch this sort of thing before they happen.Viceversa@lemmy.world 1 day ago
Hermione is a hero, professor McGonagall is loved by everyone, as well as Molly Weasley and so on.
Duamerthrax@lemmy.world 8 hours ago
Hermione was ridiculed for thinking House Elves shouldn’t be slaves. Even by her own friends.
Viceversa@lemmy.world 7 hours ago
To me, her cause seemed just.
Dojan@pawb.social 1 day ago
You’re right, that was hyperbole. What I should’ve written is “every character that expresses traditionally feminine interests”, save for of course, the tradwife, like Molly Weasley whose entire character is just being a mother. Does she have interests beyond being a mother? No, with seven children who has time to be a person?
Hermione doesn’t engage with anything traditionally feminine, she’s a “not-like-other-girls” type character, hell she doesn’t really have any friends that aren’t boys. Even so, she’s often not taken seriously. She’s mocked for studying hard, and she’s mocked for her anti-slavery coalition, which people only really join half-heartedly in order to placate her.
There’s obviously Dolores Umbridge. She’s into cute, frilly, fluffy, pink things. She’s also a sadist. Her punishment for being bad is to be carried off by centaurs to get raped in a forest.
Luna Lovegood was introduced as another character to be bullied, and she remains on the outskirts throughout the book, but Rowling softened up on her once she got extremely popular with the fans of the series.
Ah right, the massive genocide of Jews, disabled people, LGBTQ+ people, and other minorities back in the mid 1900s was okay because the Israeli state is now running a genocide of their own. Rowling was correct to be antisemitic actually!
kolmaskommentoija@sopuli.xyz 2 hours ago
She actually does, in the ballroom party thing - a beautiful dress and hair, taking a feminine role as a beautiful lady, and all that. That does not invalidate your point though, since there being a single instance (I could think of), just highlights what you said.
Viceversa@lemmy.world 1 day ago
Hermione doesn’t engage with anything traditionally feminine, she’s a “not-like-other-girls” type character, hell she doesn’t really have any friends that aren’t boys. Even so, she’s often not taken seriously. She’s mocked for studying hard, and she’s mocked for her anti-slavery coalition, which people only really join half-heartedly in order to placate her.
There’s obviously Dolores Umbridge. She’s into cute, frilly, fluffy, pink things. She’s also a sadist. Her punishment for being bad is to be carried off by centaurs to get raped in a forest.
Luna Lovegood was introduced as another character to be bullied, and she remains on the outskirts throughout the book, but Rowling softened up on her once she got extremely popular with the fans of the series.
Ah right, the massive genocide of Jews, disabled people, LGBTQ+ people, and other minorities back in the mid 1900s was okay because the Israeli state is now running a genocide of their own. Rowling was correct to be antisemitic actually!
Excuse me, but I can’t agree with your position here.
Is a woman not allowed to realize itself through motherhood?
Also Molly was smart and fierce (remember flight with Bellatrix Lestrange?
myyass@lemmy.world 1 day ago
I actually didn’t notice that, I mean I never really put much thought into it and never finished watching the movies. That’s kind of weird though when you explained the details.