It’s always interesting whether people consider getting offended vs allowing offense as being a strong-man attribute depending on the situation. Like, he’s defending JK for being offended at other people living their lives, but people standing up for the oppressed makes them weak.

Maybe defending people is strong and getting offended by other people existing is weak.

Thanks, at least he admits he’s an old grumpy man.

It’s worth mentioning that article is from 2020, around the time she had started pivoting from TERF-lite to TERF-MAX. It was…reasonably possible to assume at the time, for someone who wasn’t paying close attention, that her opinions were still rooted in misguided concern rather than open bigotry.

She had only just posted her manifesto a few months earlier, according to Vox’s helpful timeline, which reads reasonably if you’re unaware of the multitude of false and misleading claims she parrots.

But that nuance exists in the books, there are family ties that cut across faction allegiances, double agents, traitors, misunderstood people, ambiguous characters

So there’s nuance in everything but the plot?

So there is a grounded sense of black and white, unless you consider elitism, classism, racism and gratuitous violence to subjugate others as something that can be seen in a good light, somehow.

Theres nothing grounded about magic Hitler. Hitler himself and the rise of nazi German had more nuance other than they were all just _pure evvviiiillll _. Works of fiction that have these black and white struggles between the knight in shining armor and the devil incarnate who wants to destroy the world lack depth. It’s easy to make yourself the good guys in Harry Potter when all you have to do is not be the devil. It’s like the old school Disney formula of pretty white and charming is good. Ugly, vaguely ethnic, and awkward is bad.

I’m not going out in cloaks and masks killing minorities so I can’t be the bad guy. Making it harder for them to vote is no big deal. The death eaters go around killing unwarranted. There’s no way they’re pro-life like me. Clearly they’d love abortions! The Trans community is trying to corrupt and covert our kids just like voldemort! It’s literally that easy

She invented a world with race based slavery and only addressed it by normalizing the slavery whenever an outside took issue with it. It would have been easy to have the Weasleys be opposed to House Elves, but they also wanted one and the reader is suppose to feel pity that our poor, loving, relatable family can’t have a house slave.

This discussion is the kind of stuff I really don’t care about. I read the book when I was a kid and I remember clearly feeling for the injustice of elves being slave, cheering when Dobby was freed and for Hermione and her movement (she started one, I believe). So I am not sure what’s the point to discuss what the author “could have written” or what you think she meant you to feel when writing. These are both assumptions that I can’t even relate to, so they fit perfectly into what I was talking about: starting from “she is racist” and then trying to find bits and pieces in the books that can be used to support the claim.

but the thesis of a story is going to reflect the writer’s beliefs and morals.

Assuming this is true in every case, which is debatable, none of the stuff mentioned is the thesis of the book. In fact, I answered to a comment that was claiming she was a white suprematist based on character names and stuff like this. On the other hand, a HUGE role in the story is taken by the opposition to the “pure blood” movement (embodied by the main villain), and basically every positive character is or supports mixed-bloods (in English they are called mud-bloods? Not sure). To me this in complete anthitesis with white suprematism, but I would use neither to try to infer what JKR views are on race/society.

My point is that in 7 books and thousands of pages you will find details that you can use to suggest her views are anything you want. The main plot of HP is generally a positive story, nothing that can be linked to racism, white suprematism etc. and so are the main characters. So why picking minor details or creative interpretations of the books instead of her actual words as JKR? Like yes, a transphobic, racist, whatever wrote a nice book series, possibly before becoming transphobia, racist etc.

So there is no need to make triple jumps to infer her political stance based on elements in her books.

I am glad we agree.

I specifically suggested to use her actual opinions (like the shit she tweets) instead of making stuff up from the books.

So I guess we agree…?