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Comment on The worst pick-up line I've ever gotten

LaLuzDelSol@lemmy.world ⁨4⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

I feel like most of those things are not accurate, or are not good faith criticism. It’s worth remembering that until the whole trans thing, the Harry Potter series was seen as very liberal to the point where some conservatives boycotted it.

-Harry isn’t a “cop”, like hes not walking the beat arresting people, hes a dark wizard catcher. Which is perfectly rational given dark wizards killed his parents and they’re pretty explicitly fascists.

-a pretty huge part of the books is devoted to how good people can do bad things and bad people can do good things. Barty Crouch Sr is a whole character who is there to show how the good guys can end up being nearly as bad and brutal as the bad guys because they think the ends justify the means and in times of crisis people are willing to compromise their morals.

-Hermione is ridiculed for sticking up for house elves but she’s also right, as Harry starts to realize by the end of the books. It’s worth noting that the two most steadfast supporters of house elves are Hermione and dumbledore, aka Rowlings “always right about everything” characters

-Seamus is pretty yikesy in the movies but 90% of the stuff isn’t in the books. Idk I thought he was a little racist, although still ultimately a good guy. Cho Chang has a stereotypical name but so what? I don’t think it’s racist in itself. I literally work with a guy named Ying Yang.

-I don’t think obesity is used as a failing, gluttony is used as a failing, as in a favorite expression among leftists, the “fat cat”. There are plenty of other overweight characters that are good and righteous like Ms Weasly, Slughorn (kinda), and Hagrid.

-I’m not sure who you’re referring to with regards to describing teenage females as unattractive but that seems kinda cherry picked. Harry ends up with Ginny who in the books is described as a tomboy. The biggest female villain is arguably Umbridge who is very stereotypically feminine

I’m not defending Rowling as a person at all, or her statements about trans people, but the criticism of Harry potter feels very much like going back and reexamining them with an agenda. You can do the same uncharitable thing with any fantasy series. Hell, off the top of my head I can think of much worse criticisms of lord of the rings or game of thrones but people don’t seem to want to nitpick those the same way.

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Maven@lemmy.zip ⁨4⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
Id recommend watching the video that was linked in that comment. The points they gave were very much just summaries that don’t include the evidence to back them up.

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- LaLuzDelSol@lemmy.world ⁨4⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
  Fair enough, I will check it out when I get the chance.
  
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Schadrach@lemmy.sdf.org ⁨4⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

Harry isn’t a “cop”, like hes not walking the beat arresting people, hes a dark wizard catcher. Which is perfectly rational given dark wizards killed his parents and they’re pretty explicitly fascists.

He’s part of the Department of Magical Law Enforcement, the closest thing to his job IRL would be something like a cop in a gang task force.

I literally work with a guy named Ying Yang.

I had two professors in college named Bing Yang and Chingmin Yang. Both math professors. Had one for probability and statistics and the other for discrete math.

I’m not defending Rowling as a person at all, or her statements about trans people, but the criticism of Harry potter feels very much like going back and reexamining them with an agenda.

Because that’s exactly what it is. It’s mostly people that were huge fans that know the books well enough for those kinds of analyses, and they mostly didn’t start these kinds of positions on them until JK said things about trans people.

And TERFy stuff was still common enough just 15 years ago that when Mary Daly died all the big feminist sites wrote these glowing memorials about how she was so influential to their feminist beliefs and then most issued an apology, retraction or the like when they realized the size of their trans audience.

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uis@lemm.ee ⁨4⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

and Hagrid

I don’t think Hagrid is obese. At least in books.

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- LaLuzDelSol@lemmy.world ⁨4⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
  Well, based off the little illustrations in each chapter he’s pretty similar to how he was portrayed in the movies. You can look up Mary grandpré hagrid to see what I would guess is Rowlings original vision.
  
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