Like... if it's "just a kids' fantasy book" and therefore doesn't matter, then JKR's opinions on anything else don't matter either. Except that they clearly do, because she has a huge platform. So interrogating the logical endpoints of the series is necessary
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Especially since she KEEPS WRITING IT like we can't call "death of the author" when the series is still alive and going through Pottermore and the Fantastic Beasts movies and the Cursed Child
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Kate's response was specifically to this thread where Arthur is talking about kids imagining what house they'd be sorted into, when of course they never question that they'd be one of the wizardshttps://twitter.com/arthur_affect/status/1312688815186739201?s=19 …
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She was saying that pretty much every fantasy is like that, because the nature of fantasy is it's a *fantasy.* Of course every kid wants the cool magical abilities
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But like notice how JKR goes to very great lengths to make Harry the bullied kid, before giving him the magic abilities - so that we sympathize with him. If only she could have extended that same sympathy, as an author, to squibs, or house-elves
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And making herself out to be the unfairly bullied person while at the same time bullying others without even thinking about it is, of course, what JKR does when she spouts transphobia and TERF talking points
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I think a lot about a time I saw Scott Westerfeld speak at a bookstore talking about his two series at the time, MIDNIGHTERS and UGLIES. He said MIDNIGHTERS was his fantasy series because it's about who you are - each of the protagonists was born at exactly midnight, and has
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special abilities because of that. And UGLIES is science fiction because it doesn't matter who you are, anyone can use the technology in that futuristic world. I've thought about those two definitions a lot
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Especially when I think about the core conflict at the heart of Harry Potter, the moral question JKR never let herself fully reckon with: Dumbledore's statement that it is our choices that make us who we are, more than our abilities
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It's fine to say that, but she spends the rest of the series undermining that statement in weird ways, especially when it comes to Voldemort's backstory
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Like... So obviously Voldemort made bad choices and that's why he's bad. Right? Well, no, he's pretty much evil from the time he's a little kid. You can tell because he's mean to the other kids at the orphanage, and does something bad to an animal (a rabbit?)
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And then JKR comes out and says that Voldemort can't feel love because he was conceived under the effects of a love potion. Which she might have walked back, but was obviously what she was working with as her theory when writing book six
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And that just has all sorts of Unfortunate Implications - anyone conceived as a result of rape can't feel love? Excuse me??
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Turns out the way we were conceived doesn't actually affect the way we turn out as people, JOANNE
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Anyway, that has nothing to do with her views on trans people I'm sure
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My point is she doesn't seem to give Voldemort much of a choice in becoming the most evil wizard to ever evil. Imagine if she made him someone we sympathized with as a child, instead, like Harry
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She likes to draw parallels between Harry and Voldemort a lot to emphasize that they're similar, but then it turns out that, like, Harry is a parselmouth because Voldemort is one.
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Harry is a good and caring child despite the fact that he's treated like shit. Voldemort is an evil demon child from hell
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End of conversation
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