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• Dojan@pawb.social ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ 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.

  Draco Malfoy was standing there with his wife and son […]

  “So that’s little Scorpius,” said Ron under his breath. “Make sure you beat him in every test, Rosie. Thank God you inherited your mother’s brains.”

  “Ron, for heaven’s sake,” said Hermione, half stern, half amused. “Don’t try to turn them against each other before they’ve even started school!”

  “You’re right, sorry,” said Ron, but unable to help himself, he added, “Don’t get too friendly with him, though, Rosie. Granddad Weasley would never forgive you if you married a pureblood.”

  Given that Voldemort’s whole thing was “pureblood” you’d think the lesson of the story would be that your breeding blood 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

  infamous for his general savagery and preference for attacking children

  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 victims werewolves 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.

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  • wonderingwanderer@sopuli.xyz ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago

    Jeez, that’s bad. What a ghoul. Apparently the producers of the movie adaptation put a lot of work into removing the worst of it.

    I had no clue from never reading the books. Also, that excerpt you included is just really shitty writing. Like what a 10th grade creative writing teacher would have to suffer through.

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    • Dojan@pawb.social ⁨23⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

      Yeah, I can believe the film producers cutting down a lot. Partially since they are books and adapting that into a film requires some cutting, but also partially because some of the stuff she wrote was really out there.

      I don’t think the new adaptation has the same sense though. I cringed a little when I heard that they decided to cast a black guy as Snape, because the scene that immediately came to my mind is the one where he’s being bullied and hung off a tree by Harry’s father back when they were kids. When you make the target of that a black guy… it kind of paints a different picture.

      In a vacuum it shouldn’t matter, you don’t do that to people. But there’s this historic precedent with white people hanging black people from trees. I’m not against gender-bending or race-bending characters at all, but you have to think of the context in which it happens. Dumbledore or McGonagall would’ve made more sense. Or Hermione, which Rowling herself has previously said could be black, why not put that money where her mouth is?

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