"I know JK Rowing is a terrible person but her books are so good-"
You sure about that?
I mean, just for a start, have you taken a good look at her fantasy creatures lately? A whole bunch of them are straight-up based on malicious and dehumanizing stereotypes about actual people.
Remember the werewolves? And being a werewolf was made into a kind of metaphor for having AIDS?
And you know how AIDS was first associated with gay men? And how conservatives back in the day were claiming gay men were preying on children in order to convert them to gayness?
Remember how Fenrir Greyback preyed on children in particular? Yeah, she put that subtext in there. She was an adult in the 90's. She knew damn well what she was doing.
Remember the house elves? Remember how most of them loved to serve and needed to have a home and a master or else they just wouldn't know what to do with themselves?
Did you know that's literally what slavers in the American South said about the Black people they kept enslaved? Go look up the happy slave myth.
Do I even need to get into the goblins and the antisemitic tropes they're based on? No, folkloric goblins were not gold-hoarding bankers waiting for their chance to stab humanity in the back.
"But the characters are so good!"
Are you kidding me?
Most of her characters are pretty one-dimensional, including Harry. Her idea of making a morally complicated character is giving a tragic past to a bully. Numerous characters are little more than stereotypes. (Looking at Fleur right now.) Literally anybody, including you, can easily make dozens of characters just as good, if not better. (It doesn't exactly take a lot of character designing skill to go, "hey, actually, having a sad backstory doesn't make it okay to bully children" or "hey, maybe I should not base a character on the first stereotype that pops into my head.")
"But the rest of the worldbuilding!"
Sorry, but her worldbuilding is just as basic as her characters. Magical castles and secret passages are stock tropes. Magical people who keep their true nature secret from humanity is the premise of pretty much every White Wolf TTRPG. Most of her fantasy creatures are just common European fairy tale and folklore creatures with shitty stereotypes projected onto them.
I'm not saying "basic worldbuilding bad." I'm saying, you could do just as good, if not better, with minimal effort.
Also there's her magical bioessentialism, where only Harry's abusive blood relatives could provide him with supernatural protection from Voldemort. Rowling thus effectively declared that non-biological family isn't quite real family, and that abusive biofamily can give you some essential thing that a loving, supportive family that isn't related to you just can't.
The Hogwarts houses are one of the most insidious elements of her worldbuilding. The idea of being sorted gives you a little dopamine hit because wow now you have a li'l niche where you belong!
But the actual function of the houses and sorting system and the House Cup is teaching children to see each other as rivals, and ensure that the most toxic views of the upper class get passed on to every new batch of kids sorted into Slytherin.
Hogwarts effectively prepares children for a dystopia where magic serves to distract its citizens from how nightmarishly awful it is. Economic inequality is so bad that people like Arthur and Molly Weasley can barely afford to put their kids through school, casual sadism is just an accepted norm in everyday society, and non-humans are second class citizens. Rowling sorta acts like she thinks this is a bad thing with certain lines she gave to Dumbledore, but in the end, her special boy protagonist becomes an auror; IE, a defender of the status quo. So.
If you've never seen it, Lily Simpson's video goes into even more detail on how the worldbuilding of Harry Potter is actually incredibly fucked up, and how it betrays small-minded attitudes on Rowling's part. There's no separating the art from this artist, because Rowling's rotten values pour out of nearly every page.
Yes, there are many things in Harry Potter that evoke feelings and inspire people, but there's absolutely nothing in it that this series has a monopoly on. You can find those same experiences in much, much better media.
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TOP 10
Past Lives
Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse
How to Blow Up a Pipeline
Poor Things
Oppenheimer
Barbie
BlackBerry
The Holdovers
The Iron Claw
Killers of the Flower Moon
MY LETTERBOXD
Grade A
11. The Killer
12. Beau Is Afraid
13. Dream Scenario
14. Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3
15. Godzilla Minus One
16. American Fiction
17. They Cloned Tyrone
18. Evil Dead Rise
19. Eileen
20. The Artifice Girl
21. Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Mutant Mayhem
22. Talk to Me
23. Reality
24. Leave the World Behind
25. A Thousand and One
26. Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part One
27. Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret.
28. Theater Camp
29. Carmen
30. Merry Little Batman
31. Priscilla
32. Society of the Snow
33. Infinity Pool
34. Enys Men
35. Sanctuary
36. Rye Lane
37. Skinamarink
38. Monster
39. Anatomy of a Fall
40. Landscape with Invisible Hand
41. Reptile
42. Sisu
43. Pinball: The Man Who Saved the Game
44. No One Will Save You
45. Tetris
46. May December
47. The Zone of Interest
48. V/H/S/85
49. Dumb Money
50. El Conde
51. Arnold
52. Maestro
53. Napoleon
54. 20 Days in Mariupol
55. Influencer
56. The Creator
57. Origin
58. Thanksgiving
59. Next Goal Wins
60. The Boy and the Heron
61. Bottoms
62. Wonka
[Press Keep Reading For The Full Graded List]
Grade B
63. God Is a Bullet
64. No Hard Feelings
65. Joy Ride
66. Fair Play
67. Cocaine Bear
68. NYAD
69. Asteroid City
70. Nowhere
71. The Angry Black Girl and Her Monster
72. Divinity
73. The Equalizer 3
74. The Last Voyage of the Demeter
75. Venus
76. Butcher’s Crossing
77. Somewhere in Queens
78. The Persian Version
79. Boston Strangler
80. Polite Society
81. Miguel Wants to Fight
82. The Color Purple
83. The Royal Hotel
84. Saw X
85. All of Us Strangers
86. Fallen Leaves
87. Ferrari
88. Elemental
89. Peter Pan & Wendy
90. Renfield
91. Cat Person
92. Scream VI
93. The Hunger Games: The Ballad of Songbirds & Snakes
94. BS High
95. Blue Beetle
96. Huesera: The Bone Woman
97. When Evil Lurks
98. Dark Harvest
99. A Good Person
100. Final Cut
101. Knock at the Cabin
102. Quiz Lady
103. Leo
104. Air
105. The Super Mario Bros. Movie
106. Batman: The Doom That Came to Gotham
107. John Wick: Chapter 4
108. Beaten to Death
109. The Wrath of Becky
110. Passages
111. Transformers: Rise of the Beasts
112. Gran Turismo
113. 65
114. Sick
115. Sister Death
116. The Blackening
117. Please Don’t Destroy: The Treasure of Foggy Mountain
118. Flamin’ Hot
119. Nimona
120. Cobweb
121. Totally Killer
122. What’s Love Got to Do with It?
123. Sharper
124. Unseen
125. Dunki
126. Bird Box Barcelona
127. The Marvels
128. Shazam! Fury of the Gods
Grade C
129. Wildflower
130. Freelance
131. M3GAN
132. Strays
133. Sympathy for the Devil
134. Creed III
135. Chevalier
136. The Marsh King’s Daughter
137. A Haunting in Venice
138. The Little Mermaid
139. Silent Night
140. Master Gardener
141. The Flash
142. Fast X
143. The Pope’s Exorcist
144. Saltburn
145. Kandahar
146. Stand
147. Plane
148. Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny
149. Fingernails
150. Quicksand
151. Fool’s Paradise
152. Migration
153. Rustin
154. The Covenant
155. Good Burger 2
156. The Pod Generation
157. Alice, Darling
158. Insidious: The Red Door
159. Missing
160. Shotgun Wedding
161. You Hurt My Feelings
162. The Boogeyman
163. Showing Up
164. Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom
165. Champions
166. Consecration
167. The Nun II
168. Biosphere
169. House Party
170. The Exorcist: Believer
171. Big George Foreman
172. Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves
173. Children of the Corn
174. The Beanie Bubble
175. Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania
Grade F
176. Anyone But You
177. Marlowe
178. Paint
179. Extraction 2
180. It Lives Inside
181. Deliver Us
182. Trolls Band Together
183. Finestkind
184. Corner Office
185. Wish
186. Prisoner’s Daughter
187. Pain Hustlers
188. Foe
189. The Mother
190. Old Dads
191. Ghosted
192. Ruby Gillman, Teenage Kraken
193. Haunted Mansion
194. Mafia Mamma
195. Five Nights at Freddy’s
196. The Machine
197. Justice League: Warworld
198. We Have a Ghost
199. What Comes Around
200. Legion of Super-Heroes
201. The Boys in the Boat
202. Attachment
203. Operation Fortune: Ruse de Guerre
204. About My Father
205. You People
206. Meg 2: The Trench
207. Pathaan
208. Rebel Moon - Part One: A Child of Fire
209. Assassin
210. Dalíland
211. Vacation Friends 2
Bottom 10
212. Sound of Freedom
213. Winnie the Pooh: Blood and Honey
214. When You Finish Saving The World
215. Heart of Stone
216. Family Switch
217. Expend4bles
218. Sweetwater
219. Hypnotic
220. 80 for Brady
221. Spinning Gold
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