[Hot Paper Comics] Well now I hate you for new reasons

Then she gets to meet the slave race they keep in the basement and said slaves explain that their enslavement is a fundamental part of magic society and the only reason Dobby in particular had to be freed was because his owners were a bit too mean to him. The message becomes "slavery is fine as long as slaves are treated well.". Then they drop that particular can of worms because addressing it would require societal change. It is one of few endeavours where the heroes of the story just fail to do what they want.

Yep, and she constantly gets made fun of for it.

Dumbledore is the single most powerful wizard know, and the most influential in magical Britian. He runs a school where he is beloved by nearly everyone. If he wanted to change things, he easily could have done more. Especially since Fudge wasn't very powerful and had to deal with an entire bureaucracy. Direct change at the school itself would have been feasible.

And while the parents might have threatened to remove their students, they weren't really. Where else are they going to send their kids to get educated? There are other schools but the culture difference was so stark that seems unlikely.

Tries and fails. It never goes anywhere, and she's mocked as a well-meaning fool for trying in the first place because "welp most elves just enjoy being slaves what can you do shrug emoji". Jkr sets up something with Hermione and the elves and then doesn't follow through with it in any meaningful way (and I don't count commentary from her outside the books as following through) so it's left to just sit there uncritically as "slavery is a thing in this universe and is seen as completely normal by most characters, and only one person ever tries to do anything about it and she's depicted as a cringey radical in the process". Jkr doesn't even show the beginnings of societal change like more elves coming to Dobby's side of things once they see it's an option and that Dobby's is happy that way, or other house elves being motivated to think differently about their situation and starting to unlearn their generations of indoctrination. We don't even see a glimpse of Winky starting to recover instead the last we see of her is as a depressed alcoholic whose life was ruined by her being freed from slavery. Jkr depicts it as "yeah slavery is bad but you can't change the way the world works so might as well not even try." the house elves' servitude is treated as something so fundamentally tied to their species that it seems to be biological and thus humans taking advantage of that is to some degree the natural way of things which, I shouldn't have to explain what the problem with that sort of depiction is. Maybe that wasn't what she intended, maybe she just added slavery because it's a common world building trope, but if that's the case she did so without considering the implications or how it would come across in the end product or the messages it would send.

Hermione tries to raise awareness about elf mistreatment.

For maybe two dozen paragraphs in one book, and then she gives up because literally no other wizard will support her.

Its just so funny that there's a scene in Book 5 where Voldemort blows up a statue dedicated to Wizard Supremacy and you're honestly not sure who the bad guy is anymore.

Grand old Farty?

https://web.archive.org/web/20170929062836/https://www.pottermore.com/features/to-spew-or-not-to-spew-hermione-granger-and-the-pitfalls-of-activism

But can I ask why that would put you off the series? The books are essentially a product of the society the author wrote them in, so it’s not as if they present an unbelievable social narrative, as it’s emblematic of British society as you said. Is it that you want/expect more of an engaged society from the magical world, or is it just boring to read of social attitudes that are so close to our own. Genuinely curious, as I’m not a massive fan of the series myself, but for other reasons :) I’ve never considered your point of view so it’d be good to understand

The problem is that the first four books are “monster of the week” children’s books. Everything operates on good guy/bad guy because the world building is a shallow pond - which is fine, they’re fun children’s books. Addressing the systemic issues would have required her to actually plan out her universe, and you can really see it start to fall apart by book 5.

Almost makes you wonder why he bothered. I mean the society seemed pretty accepting of fascism before he got involved. Casually the racism displayed by random characters not even villains shows through. The man could have probably easily gotten into office. Like everything he accomplished could have probably been done in the daylight with minimal opposition.

Almost nothing changed for house-elves. SPEW existed and literally only one person actually cared about it. The author also made her attempts laughably bad at raising awareness. Coupled this author sabotage with the author creating a race of slaves that want to be enslaved speaks volumes about the fact that there was never going to be real change. In the epilogue only Hermione really cares much still.

Wrong. In the books Neville knocks over the shelf with all the time travel gadgets and they are all destroyed. I am not joking.

Kinda, not really. You can't undo anything that's already been done, and what you decide to do to change things already happened, so there's not a lot of major change you can do. You're throwing pebbles into a river and attempting to change its course. Maybe if all the wizards used the time turners at once they might be able to change what a day max? I don't remember what the limit of the time turners was, but either way, she didn't implement them well, which is why I think she destroyed all of them in book 5

Holy fuck!

Edit: I mean that in a, “That’s extremely specific, and one I haven’t heard before!” kind of way. Just to clarify. Rowling can EABOD.

Well, people are still giving her money so I assume they don't know.

Plenty of people don’t know either. Writing it on Lemmy is kind of preaching to the choir, but try asking random people in a Fantastic Beasts screening if they know. Guarantee at least half won’t.

Don't forget how women you're supposed to dislike naturally have masculine features about them, too. If I have to read about a high school girl's "mannish hands" or square jawline one more time, I think I might blow a blood vessel...

Do you think it's because more people seem to defend or put stock in the elf slave stuff as being ok?

Now you're reminding me of those literary analysis classes. "The author used the colour blue to express their hidden and deep sadness over the loss of a burrito to a seagull..."

While we might be able to extract her point of view at the time of writing and we might assume its evolution based on her later public interactions, logic only suggests a probable conclusion based on those components, not a definite one.

Rowling also integrated parts of her own experiences into her stories. How do we know Hermione wasn't a jab at herself or some other girl she knew? Must it absolutely be a broad perception of real life? Why can't it be a particular and individual event to have given it inspiration to grow into something bigger?

Logic is only sound when it covers all the angles, not just the ones favorable to a set conclusion.

The less said about the bank goblins, the better.

Ron literally makes fun of Hermione for wanting to free the slaves. But it's all good cause the slaves like being slaves. Imagine writing this into your children's book.

In political party terms, a liberal is someone who supports the economic system of capitalism but wants to give concessions to the general population (free healthcare, cheap public transportation, etc) to placate the people from changing the system. The idea is if people are making a somewhat decent living then they will be less disgusted with the ludicrous amount of money the actual wealthy make and won't revolt. Messaging from conservative parties has purposely conflated liberals with leftist (socialism/communism) ideology in order to tie it to the Red Scare and convince lower income people that the idea is meant to take more from working class people.

Here it means "Someone who is loyal to the status quo"

As far as I can tell, it seems to be a catch all for "people I don't like". There's no real meaning and often times the same commentor describes conflicting idealogies as liberal.

He is not a cop, he becomes a cop after he graduates, despite a heavily recurring theme of the books being how corrupt, incompetent, and unjust the Wizarding government and judicial system is.

Rowling never really seems to connect the dots and think, "Hmm, maybe the Aurors are part of the problem," very much a "cops good no notes" mindset for some reason.

If you want to give her the benefit of the doubt you can assume she thinks Harry will be a reformer, but, also, in the books she never really seems to think anything but the status quo is good so probably not.

Because in the epilogue it's said that Harry ended up joining the Aurors (wizard cops) after Voldemort was defeated.

So the books early on hype up the idea that Harry Potter will grow up, defeat Voldemort, change the Wizarding world for the better, and fix the corruption in the Ministry of Magic that lead to Voldemort's Return...

In the actual ending, Harry grows up to become an Auror, which is basically the Wizarding World's version of a cop, and they answer directly to... The Ministry of Magic, which hasn't changed leadership... and is still ran by the people who didn't want the masses to know Voldemort existed even whilst literal children were dropping like flies because of his douchebaggery because "That would make us look bad!"

Imagine if George Washington's story ended up with him, having just won the Revolutionary War, becoming a soldier in the British Navy instead of becoming US Present... It's that kind of vibe

Welcome to the internet

Starts blasting spells indiscriminately