Jk Rowling - Blog Posts

Fans when we get a pjo show: 🥰🥰🥰🥰😘

Fans when we get a Harry Potter show:

We (I) need more serious analysis and comparisons of Terry Pratchett and JK Rowling.

I'm talking:

Looking at their respective worldbuilding and writing styles.

Looking not only at the series they are best known for, but also their other works and what they entail.

Comparing their fan bases, known politics, and overall contributions to the world.

Obviously I am extremely bias, but I'm tired of seeing the surface level "Terry Pratchett > JK Rowling". I KNOW that, the real trouble is how do we convert others?

I wasn't on the internet when terfs tried to claim Sir Terry and were shut down hard by those who knew him. I'm thinking instead of always being on the defensive, now is a perfect time to to go on the offense.

20 harry potter questions with eris!

i reworked the one on the @aluxxxxxx page idk

1. do you think peter deserved to be a marauder? and if you do, why?

2. if it were to be in an era, in which would you be?

3. which wizarding school would you like to go to?

4. what do you think is the function of a rubber duck?

5. would you put your name in the goblet of fire? and if you would, do you think you would get picked? would you win?

6. who do you kin the most?

7. who do you think would be your bestie?

8. what's your opinion on the prank™?

9. are you working on any fics?

10. would you fight in the 1st/ 2nd wizarding war?

11. what do you think of jk rowling?

12. how many characters do you consider queer?

13. what's your opinion on dumbledore?

14. who do you think is the most underrated character in harry potter?

15. how canon compliant is your general au?

16. who do you think is the most overrated character?

17. which harry potter fanfic/au is your favorite?

18. what is your opinion on each marauder?

19. do you think the community is worthy of more or less attention? or do you think it's ok where it is now?

20. what do you think of snape?

you can always reblog this post and do it yourself!

if you want me to answer these questions, just give me the number in the asks! also, if you want to add anything related to the questions they're welcomed!

She fully didn't watch the segment because Jon did a very nuanced, thoughtful segment. He drilled down to kids just wanting to have a community and have fun.

What these TERFS are pissed off about is that he showed how disingenuous y'all are when you go "omg that trans athlete hit a ball really hard and it hurt a cis women" because when you look into it cis women even on their team hit harder then them. Because he pointed out that cis girls harm each other in sports all the damn time. He pointed out that when there was a bill to protect cis women athletes against sexual predators like coaches. Y'all decided not to pass that while passing an anti-trans bills all while claiming you just care about protecting women.

Oh no, what a shame—

Sike. That's asinine and I have no regrets on the reblog

btw the thing she couldn’t ignore was someone calling her out for saying anti-depressants/hormone therapy are only perscribed by lazy doctors

starting a collection #blackmold

Women celebrating a gov looking at them and saying “you are defined BY YOUR BIOLOGICAL FUNCTION LEGALLY” should terrify all women. It’s a patriarchal statement to dehumanize women into their purely “biological” position.

It’s the same argument used to force women into being the child wrangler and keeping them out of societal positions throughout history. Why are so many women and “feminists” celebrating this like it’s some mega dunk? You are being labeled and degraded to “womb” every time you let a gov dictate your place in the world based on your “biology” as a woman and it’s disgusting and will only lead to harm for all women.

So she is sitting on a yacht that costs more money than 99% of us will make in a lifetime, drinking alcohol more expensive than your car per bottle, using more fossil fuels than an entire tank Battalion during the Iraq war, celebrating a court decision while mocking LGBTQ people after openly calling ace people “not queer” and after ignoring mass rape and kidnapping of women in the US by the trump regime …

The Tankies are right we need to just shoot anyone who makes more than 80k a year they are the oppressor class and aren’t even hiding it anymore

I know wine sales in the UK are seeing a spike right now cause Joanne (jk rowling) is smugly being a a racist white lady who just saw a minority get shot by police on X. weird she still uses a misogynist and patriarchy supporting website run by a man who raped several women and threatened to rape many women btw

Like she attacks LGBTQ people, pretends to be this poor wittle baby when she gets dunked in for having a man face and a chest so flat aircraft could safely land on it and then does that? Really Ms millionaire you wanna act like the biggest bitch who ever bitched and then act like you are a victim?

Why are feminists still supporting this person who 100% has a moldy vagina that smells of privilege and colonialism and is only mad cause her husband refuses to touch her anymore meaning she has nothing better to do then sit on her couch all day and cry victim about fucking trans and ace people (for some reason they trigger her now)

I don’t know maybe the constant attack upon women by the US and UK govs is more important Ms “feminism” and “woman’s rights”. I mean we saw a massive spike in women’s deaths due to roe v wade being murdered and she didn’t speak out or care at all from what I can find and she has yet to speak out against the mass kidnapping and rape if migrants in the US by the trump fascist regime

She is not a feminist and doesn’t care about women or girls she is a terf who just wants to scree and pretend she is a pleb being oppressed

1 am Thoughts:

Do Emo Wizards Wear Their Cloak-Hoods Up?

And additionally do they wear their cloaks closed. Like do 13 year old hogwarts students in their emo phase wear their cloaks the way muggle emos wear hoodies?

Oh man there's more

Replies to this post regarding Hogwarts Legacy

This is one of the most bad faith takes I've seen on this, and I've seen some pretty bad ones.

I'm not going to argue on this. I mean, that whole post is about how there really is no more arguing to be done here, you either value people's lives or you value personal entertainment. You've gone for the latter. You just don't want to admit it so you spew out this garbage to justify it to yourself.

If you want to play the game, just play the stupid game. It's not like anyone is going to physically stop you. But for goodness sake, shut up about it. You're all just making yourselves look even worse.

BTW your transmedicalism and antisemitism are showing. Thought you might want to know

I wonder what's next from streamers like the one I talked about in this post

A live reading of The Turner Diaries to raise money for the Holocaust Museum?

Or Elliot Rodger's manifesto with the promise to give some money to a DV shelter?

Oooh, what about a shot-for-shot remake of Birth of a Nation and donate to a Black charity?

After all, according to them, any amount of bigotry is canceled out by money.

Saw a streamer claiming that it's okay for them to stream Hogwarts Legacy because they're donating money from the stream to a trans charity.

How much? Don't know. They didn't clarify that.

It's pretty clear what they're doing, though. It's not really about wanting to raise money for trans charities. If it was, they could have picked any other popular game for their stream.

They just want to play the game and use the controversy to boost their channel. The only reason they included the charity thing is to use it as a shield against anyone who rightfully calls them out.

You can't claim to support the trans community while actively promoting and supporting transphobia.

Also pretty, uh, interesting how transphobia is the only issue they saw fit to address and ignored the racism altogether

I am so done arguing with people about Hogwarts Legacy. At this point, if you don't get why supporting the game is harmful, it's because you've chosen not to.

The reasoning has been laid out in the most hand-holding way possible by so many people. Many of whom have been extremely nice and calm about it. But that doesn't stop y'all from whining about how everyone against the game is a mean ole bully harassing you for no reason. (I am begging you to read the last part of that sentence in a highly condescending old-timey prospector voice)

I could go on all day about the bad faith arguments that keep popping up about why the game is good actually. Nevermind that it's about stopping a rebellion by Jewish stereotypes because it would be disadvantageous for the oppressors Wizards to not have them be subservient. They also really want to gloss over the game having an MtF character with a fully masculine voice and face named Sirona Ryan.

(Sorry, tangent, this is a world wherein people use magic to alter the appearance of themselves or others in literally every book, but it's not possible to fully transition????)

Anyway! I don't want to, and shouldn't have to, spend any more of my time explaining why capitalism isn't a free pass to buy a game that supports a racist, transphobic, and honestly just plain evil person. If you can't comprehend why using Twitter is different from spending $80 on a game, it's because you don't actually care. It's not because the Jewish and trans communities didn't spend months explaining it to you in ways that infants could understand. You just do not care about those communities.

And I wish you would just admit it.

Just say that you value your personal entertainment over other people's actual lives.

Stop pretending that it is anything else.

It isn't. And you know it.

Hogwarts Legacy is really bringing out all the fair-weather allies, ain't it? All the people who will totally say that they support the trans community, that they're willing to fight antisemitism, and talk about how important it is for the non-marginalized to stand up for the marginalized.

But ask them to not buy one single game out of the hundreds that will be released this year? Then it's all "you can't tell me what to do; you're never satisfied with anything; this is why people don't support you; buying the game doesn't support rowling at all; no ethical consumption under capitalism"

Like, thanks I guess for letting us know that you don't actually care about marginalized people. Now we know who actually gave a shit and wanted to help and who just wanted a new space to dominate

Should Harry be an Obscurial? (theory)

I'm re-reading the Harry Potter saga, and I've realized that in the third book (Prisoner of Azkaban), there's a quote about the Dursleys having oppressed Harry's magic for a lifetime.

We know that an obscurial is created this way, as was the case with Aurelius Dumbledore (Credence Barebone) and, as far as we can tell, with Ariana Dumbledore.

So, following that logic, could Harry Potter have been an obscurial too, if the concept had already existed at the time of the books' release?

jk rowling: I want to write another book

the moss: tweet more about the trans

When you engage in discourse denial of the treatment of trans people in Hitler's Germany and lose George Takei.

Remove the Art from the Artist

YOU hate JK Rowling!

I want to say something

Harry Potter was my shelter. I used to read and re-read the series over and over again as a means to escape reality, to escape my thoughts. When I was about 12, I started having problems with my mental health. My anxiety, social anxiety in particular, was crippling. So I was reading Harry Potter on an endless loop, obsessing to the point where I couldn't let myself go to sleep without reading at least a page from whatever book I was re-reading at the moment (yeah, I know it's bad). So the series was my escape, and it will forever have a special place in my heart.

BUT

I'm grown up now, and J. K. Rowling spouting that shit causes so much pain. Seriously, can this woman own up to her shit and just... I don't know... Shut it? Like, permanently?

Also, the series is full of harmful things which are subtle enough you don't notice them as a kid and they settle down deep inside of you and influence your view of the world (a race BORN to be slaves, antisemitic stereotypes, lack of diversity, etc) and if anyone wants to trash-talk the books with me I'm always ready.

To conclude, fuck J. K.

Let's just collectively rewrite the series

Can somebody ban J. K. Rowling from tweeting? It's pride month for Christ's sake, can she simply not?

Oh god did JK Rowling R E A L L Y create a fictional race of slaves that actually liked being slaves and - oh my- took it as a personal attack when you tried to tell them about the unfairness of the situation?

Good god.

Do you ever wake up in the middle of the night and think to yourself: Jk Rowling really fucked up in the fourth book with the whole S. P. E. W. thing didn't she?

Like what did she even mean? It seams that all the characters in the book find Hermione's activism annoying and unnecessary,and we're never given another take on it, so we're supposed to think that it is in fact "sjw bullshit" and something to laugh at. And the argument all those characters use against what she stands for is that elves are supposed to be slaves and that they are actually happy to serve wizards, which sounds soooo sick, and nobody actually gives an argument against that?

And I know this part of the book can be served as a satire of the society's attitude towards activism but what it turns out to be in the end is mockery of said activism. The way the author decided to portray it is soo shallow and mean, like when Hermione "forced" elves to be free and made this fuss about her SPEW club...

Like hey JK, wtf did you want to say exactly??

What the Hogwarts house still in your bio/intro in the year 2025 says about YOU!

Gryffindor: You think TERFs are taking a bold stand against censorship by (checks notes) hating a vulnerable minority and allying with fascists.

Slytherin: You'll call yourself a freak who defies societal norms, but clutch your pearls when you see any queer weirder than a cis white twink with no kinks.

Ravenclaw: You've written essays claiming "no ethical consumption under capitalism" actually absolves you of all responsibility for what JKR does with your money.

Hufflepuff: You're deeply hurt that trans people would ask you to give up your comfort media over something as minor as their lives and civil rights.

Marauders: You know Harry Potter is tainted and want to *appear* to distance yourself from it without actually letting go of it in any meaningful way.

Fuck JKR: Her “Genius” Writing Style Is Very Simple & Easy To Replicate, Actually

An inevitable consequence of criticizing Harry Potter on the Internet is getting told by numerous people that, in essence, JK Rowling must be some kind of literary genius because her books are so popular and so there must be something really great to them. It's an understandable line of reasoning, if flawed.

See, there is something that makes her books pretty captivating, but it doesn't actually take any extraordinary level of skill or great genius. It's the way she builds a sense of atmosphere and environment with simple, yet high-impact prose, and the way she uses this type of prose to give you very vivid impressions of her characters. The effect is kind of like the literary equivalent of cartoon animation. Not everyone is into it, but it has a certain effect that arguably works fairly well for certain things. And you can learn to do it, too.

So how’s it done? Let’s look at some samples of her writing.

When Harry visits Gringotts, he sees a goblin weighing a pile of rubies as big as glowing coals. It’s a very evocative choice of words – first, the the mention of a pile of rubies has us imagining a tantalizing pile of gleaming red gems, but the words as big as glowing coals makes us imagine they’re actually glowing. It’s not a complicated image, but it is an appealing one.

At the bank, Hagrid pulls out a tiny golden key. Again, the description is very simple, but the mention of a little tiny golden object makes our monkey brains pay attention.

When Harry looks inside his own vault, he sees mounds of gold coins. Columns of silver. Heaps of little bronze Knuts.

The metal (and therefore color) of each coin is specified, and each type is described with different words – mounds, columns, heaps. The smallness of the Knuts is also mentioned here.

When Harry walks into the bookshop, he sees that the shelves were stacked to the ceiling with books as large as paving stones bound in leather; books the size of postage stamps in covers of silk; books full of peculiar symbols and a few books with nothing in them at all.

There are no colors mentioned here, but various sizes, shapes, materials, and contents are mentioned. Also, the small books aren’t just small – they’re absurdly tiny, which makes them even more attention-grabbing.

When Harry buys potion supplies, colors, textures, and scents come into play (also note how a number of things are shiny and glittering):

Hagrid wouldn’t let Harry buy a solid gold cauldron, either (‘It says pewter on yer list’), but they got a nice set of scales for weighing potion ingredients and a collapsible brass telescope. Then they visited the apothecary’s, which was fascinating enough to make up for its horrible smell, a mixture of bad eggs and rotted cabbages. Barrels of slimy stuff stood on the floor, jars of herbs, dried roots and bright powders lined the walls, bundles of feathers, strings of fangs and snarled claws hung from the ceiling. While Hagrid asked the man behind the counter for a supply of some basic potion ingredients for Harry, Harry himself examined silver unicorn horns at twenty-one Galleons each and minuscule, glittery black beetle eyes (five Knuts a scoop).

Now let’s look at how Harry gets his wand. After trying out several wands (where their sizes, materials, and textures are all specified!), Ollivander suggests the holly and phoenix feather wand, and:

Harry took the wand. He felt a sudden warmth in his fingers. He raised the wand above his head, brought it swishing down through the dusty air and a stream of red and gold sparks shot from the end like a firework, throwing dancing spots of light on to the walls.

Temperature, color, light, and movement all come into play here, and “red and gold sparks” shooting “like a firework” the kind of thing that grabs your attention.

Now let’s look at how the Great Hall is introduced:

It was lit by thousands and thousands of candles which were floating in mid-air over four long tables, where the rest of the students were sitting. These tables were laid with glittering golden plates and goblets. At the top of the Hall was another long table where the teachers were sitting. Professor McGonagall led the first-years up here, so that they came to a halt in a line facing the other students, with the teachers behind them. The hundreds of faces staring at them looked like pale lanterns in the flickering candlelight. Dotted here and there among the students, the ghosts shone misty silver. Mainly to avoid all the staring eyes, Harry looked upwards and saw a velvety black ceiling dotted with stars.

Thousands and thousands of candles. Glittering gold plates and goblets. Faces like pale lanterns. Ghosts shining misty silver. A velvety black ceiling dotted with stars. Nothing here is highly detailed, but it does paint a vivid outline with a lot of attention-grabbing details.

And then take a look at how a number of tantalizing foods are specified at the feast:

The dishes in front of him were now piled with food. He had never seen so many things he liked to eat on one table: roast beef, roast chicken, pork chops and lamb chops, sausages, bacon and steak, boiled potatoes, roast potatoes, chips, Yorkshire pudding, peas, carrots, gravy, ketchup and, for some strange reason, mint humbugs.

…

When everyone had eaten as much as they could, the remains of the food faded from the plates, leaving them sparkling clean as before. A moment later the puddings appeared. Blocks of ice-cream in every flavour you could think of, apple pies, treacle tarts, chocolate éclairs and jam doughnuts, trifle, strawberries, jelly, rice pudding.

At Transfiguration, when students are attempting to turn matches into needles, Hermione’s needle had gone all silver and pointy. Simple, specific words that paint a simple, yet vivid picture.

And here’s how the potions classroom is introduced. Note all of the details here – location, temperature, and objects that add interest to the scene:

Potions lessons took place down in one of the dungeons. It was colder here than up in the main castle and would have been quite creepy enough without the pickled animals floating in glass jars all around the walls.

A here’s how Hagrid’s hut is introduced. Note the details – objects, materials, size, locations, etc:

There was only one room inside. Hams and pheasants were hanging from the ceiling, a copper kettle was boiling on the open fire and in a corner stood a massive bed with a patchwork quilt over it.

The Weasleys’ garden is full of interest with all of the specific details described:

...there were plenty of weeds, and the grass needed cutting – but there were gnarled trees all around the walls, plants Harry had never seen spilling from every flowerbed and a big green pond full of frogs.

And here’s how the Slytherin common room is described. Note how dimensions, colors, textures, and sound all come into play:

The Slytherin common room was a long, low underground room with rough stone walls and ceiling, from which round, greenish lamps were hanging on chains. A fire was crackling under an elaborately carved mantelpiece ahead of them, and several Slytherins were silhouetted around it in carved chairs.

Take a look at this description of Magical Menagerie:

A pair of enormous purple toads sat gulping wetly and feasting on dead blowflies. A gigantic tortoise with a jewel-encrusted shell was glittering near the window. Poisonous orange snails were oozing slowly up the side of their glass tank, and a fat white rabbit kept changing into a silk top hat and back again with a loud popping noise. Then there were cats of every colour, a noisy cage of ravens, a basket of funny custard coloured furballs that were humming loudly, and, on the counter, a vast cage of sleek black rats which were playing some sort of skipping game using their long bald tails.

Setting the fact that this is definitely not an ethical petshop aside, there’s a wealth of evocative descriptions here. There’s color, sound, movement, shiny things. “Gulping wetly” and “oozing slowly” also create very specific images.

Now look at how the Great Hall’s Halloween decorations are described in PoA, and note how color and movement comes into play:

It had been decorated with hundreds and hundreds of candle-filled pumpkins, a cloud of fluttering live bats and many flaming orange streamers, which were swimming lazily across the stormy ceiling like brilliant watersnakes.

Now let’s look at what Harry sees when he goes into Honeydukes. Color, flavor, and whimsical magical effects come into play here:

There were shelves upon shelves of the most succulent-looking sweets imaginable. Creamy chunks of nougat, shimmering pink squares of coconut ice, fat, honey-coloured toffees; hundreds of different kinds of chocolate in neat rows; there was a large barrel of Every Flavour Beans, and another of Fizzing Whizzbees, the levitating sherbet balls that Ron had mentioned; along yet another wall were ‘Special Effects’ sweets: Drooble’s Best Blowing Gum (which filled a room with bluebell-coloured bubbles that refused to pop for days), the strange, splintery Toothflossing Stringmints, tiny black Pepper Imps (‘breathe fire for your friends!’), Ice Mice (‘hear your teeth chatter and squeak!’), peppermint creams shaped like toads (‘hop realistically in the stomach!’), fragile sugar-spun quills and exploding bonbons.

When Hagrid blows his nose in a handkerchief in GoF, the text describes it as a large, spotted silk handkerchief, specifying its material and pattern.

Now let’s look at how the house that Horace Slughorn stayed in is described. We see the overall impression of the house described, followed up by some specific items that give us a few specifics:

It was stuffy and cluttered, yet nobody could say it was uncomfortable; there were soft chairs and footstools, drinks and books, boxes of chocolates and plump cushions.

Now let’s examine a few character descriptions. Notice where colors, shapes, etc. come in, and how they use simple, yet vivid descriptions overall:

First, Albus Dumbledore’s introduction:

He was tall, thin and very old, judging by the silver of his hair and beard, which were both long enough to tuck into his belt. He was wearing long robes, a purple cloak which swept the ground and high heeled, buckled boots. His blue eyes were light, bright and sparkling behind half-moon spectacles and his nose was very long and crooked, as though it had been broken at least twice.

Next, McGonagall’s:

Instead he was smiling at a rather severe-looking woman who was wearing square glasses exactly the shape of the markings the cat had had around its eyes. She, too, was wearing a cloak, an emerald one. Her black hair was drawn into a tight bun.

Now Remus Lupin’s:

The stranger was wearing an extremely shabby set of wizard’s robes which had been darned in several places. He looked ill and exhausted. Though he seemed quite young, his light-brown hair was flecked with grey.

And let’s look at Sirius Black’s introduction:

A mass of filthy, matted hair hung to his elbows. If eyes hadn’t been shining out of the deep, dark sockets, he might have been a corpse. The waxy skin was stretched so tightly over the bones of his face, it looked like a skull. His yellow teeth were bared in a grin.

Now let’s look at how Madame Maxime is introduced:

A boy in pale blue robes jumped down from the carriage, bent forwards, fumbled for a moment with something on the carriage floor and unfolded a set of golden steps. He sprang back respectfully. Then Harry saw a shining, high-heeled black shoe emerging from the inside of the carriage – a shoe the size of a child’s sled – followed, almost immediately, by the largest woman he had ever seen in his life. The size of the carriage, and of the horses, was immediately explained. A few people gasped.

Harry had only ever seen one person as large as this woman in his life, and that was Hagrid; he doubted whether there was an inch difference in their heights. Yet somehow – maybe simply because he was used to Hagrid – this woman (now at the foot of the steps, and looking around at the waiting, wide-eyed crowd) seemed even more unnaturally large. As she stepped into the light flooding from the Entrance Hall, she was revealed to have a handsome, olive-skinned face, large, black, liquid-looking eyes and a rather beaky nose. Her hair was drawn back in a shining knob at the base of her neck. She was dressed from head to foot in black satin, and many magnificent opals gleamed at her throat and on her thick fingers.

And Fleur Delacour:

A long sheet of silvery blonde hair fell almost to her waist. She had large, deep blue eyes, and very white, even teeth.

Rowling’s character descriptions are cartoonish, in that they emphasize a few key details in vivid language rather than describe a fine-detailed picture. As long as you’re not creating a hateful or degrading caricature, it’s generally fine. Not everybody’s going to be into it in the same way not everyone’s going to be into cartoons, but there’s nothing wrong with cartoons.

All right, so let’s recap: Rowling’s writing doesn’t go into a lot of descriptive detail, but it frequently mentions colors, materials, patterns, shapes, sizes, textures, sounds, temperatures, smells locations – anything that would immediately stand out to the senses if you were there. It uses evocative words that call up vivid mental images.

She’s not some kind of genius for doing this; it’s extremely easy to do and plenty of other writers have done it. The main thing is just getting into the habit of giving attention to your characters’ surroundings. I suggest that when you begin writing a passage, take a moment to think of a few things that can be seen, a few things that can be heard, a few things that can be felt, a few things that can be smelled, and a few things that can be tasted. Also, think about what you could mention to create the kind of atmosphere you want or to create interest.

Here are some examples:

The old-fashioned kitchen had been done up in cream and yellow, and the smell of cinnamon from the French toast sizzling on the stove filled the air.

She was thin, and wore a bright pink knee-length dress and a pair of neon green sunglasses. Her hair was in tight blond curls, and when she grinned she revealed a mouth full of gleaming shark teeth.

The temperature inside the old house felt ten degrees colder than outside, and he could hear what sounded like the moans of the dead coming from beneath the dust-covered floorboards.

Just play around and experiment with this for awhile, and you’ll find that it doesn’t take a huge amount of effort to write prose like this – which means you can basically give yourself the same mood you got from the books with literally anything you want.

For whatever reason, I found myself thinking about the theme of heritage/inheritance in Harry Potter and how it's, like, catastrophically broken in the text.

The villains in Harry Potter are almost unanimously racist and classist - they believe they are entitled to behave however they wish and live at the top of the social hierarchy because they were born to rich, pureblooded families, and anyone who wasn't is filth to be exploited and/or purged. That's the philosophy of evil in the book - "I deserve everything because I was born in the right family with the right genes and the right social standing. My heritage makes me better than you."

All the injustice and evil in the books is rooted in this belief in entitlement by way of heritage. People are abused and die because of it. Inherited wealth and status, and more specifically the unfair priveleges it affords, is the root of evil in Harry Potter.

So you'd think the protagonist would present some sort of strong contrast to it, right? That they'd be born poor, or mixed race, etc. But no, Harry is from a rich pureblood family, with the vast wealth and social status that affords.

Well, that's OK, we can still make a contrast. Maybe Harry differs in how he acts with wealth - perhaps, realizing his inheritance is an unfair privilege, he gives it away? Maybe he works to give the underprivileged their due? Again, no, not really. He sometimes buys stuff for his poor friend Ron, and defends his "mudblood" friend Hermione from racist criticism, but he sees no reason to change the system that dehumanizes them in the first place, and by the end of the tale is pleased to exploit his privilege for his own gain.

The whole house elf subplot illustrates this failing well - we have a race of slaves who are frequently shown to suffer from abuse. One of them, the property of a rich racist, risks his life to save Harry, and Harry frees him in return. Oh, nice, finally fighting the system, eh? Except no, not really - while Harry frees that specific slave, he's content to leave the others in bondage, especially when he inherits a slave of his own.

The contrast Harry Potter puts up against its rich, racist, privileged villains is "Hey, being rich and higher in the hierarchy is awesome and just, but you can't be a dick about it." That slaves belong in the dirt, but masters should be polite while putting them in their place.

Voldemort posits himself as the heir of Slytherin - claiming his inheritance is vital to his rise to power and villainy. And Harry opposes him by... also claiming inheritance from a rich old dead guy. Hell, the final battle comes down to who rightfully inherits a specific rare Wand!

The fact that Harry and Voldemort have shit in common is not a flaw on its own - villains and heroes are often foils for each other. But in this specific tale, the relationship the villain has with inherited power is so central to the conflict that the hero having the exact same relationship is a major failing. The story is just shy of saying "Voldemort was basically right, but he shouldn't have been rude about it." It's bad from both a moral and a writing skill perspective.

(The only inheritance Harry fully rejects is parseltongue, i.e. the ability to talk to snakes, which was accidentally given to him by Voldemort, and could be argued to be a symbol of trauma rather than inherited wealth. Also I'm still salty about how that series turned on snakes so cruelly, but that's a whole other rant.)

My thoughts on the whole JK Rowling thing

So, personally I have always been a fan of the Harry Potter Books and Movies because they were very hyped when I was a child. I spent a lot of time reading the books and daydreaming myself into the HP world. Sadly enough, JK Rowling has made it harder for me to enjoy her media, because of her internalized misogyny and transphobia, that keeps popping up in her works. For example: Ginny, Molly Weasley and Hermione being mean to Fleur for no reason (Misogyny) and the description of Rita Skeeter hinting at her being trans (Transphobia obviously). I am still kind of a fan of the Harry Potter Universe but I do not agree with any of the disgusting and transphobic tweets she keeps writing. In my opinion, it’s very sad that she had to ruin her story with her stupid opinions and it’s also sad, that in order to make her shut up, we would need to make her (and in turn also her franchise) irrelevant. I might or might not watch the new Harry Potter series, but if I do I will do so illegally. One thing everybody can do is to not buy any Harry Potter merch and to not stream the movies on streaming services that earn money through that. Because these things end up earning money for JK Rowling. I just hope that people stop listening / paying attention to her bullshit and that trans people know they’re great the way they are.

People keep searching for ways to argue that JK Rowling has always been a horrible person deep down as a way of explaining her recent behaviour.

But here’s the thing: that’s probably not true at all.

Pretending it is discounts the harsher, scarier truth: that even decent, well-meaning people can be radicalised by dangerous, hateful, predatory groups, and given enough time they can become truly hideous versions of their former selves.

It can happen to me. It can happen to you. It can happen to any of us, given the right mix of circumstances. And over the past few years, we’ve seen it happen to one of the most famous children’s authors of our age.

Nobody is immune.