#how come the dursleys are so affluent to have late-era milk bottle delivery at the doorstep

[badoccultadvice]

So like, I have been having this weird experience analyzing the Harry Potter books lately, and please indulge me while I talk about J.K. Rowling's weird writing.

My goal was simple: read the Harry Potter books to find which parts were influenced/inspired by actual magic that people do in real life. My theory was that there was a lot more magic in the earlier drafts of the books, and that she took a lot out due to fear of backlash from America's ongoing reenactment of the Satanic Panic. For instance it's quite obvious some of their magic lessons got dumbed down so that very little of what's in the books could actually be tried in real life, and I think she took out a lot of astrology.

I also wanted to do a couple errands along the way, one of which was to check and see if it's explicitly written in the books that Harry is a cis man. I'm a trans man, SO I'D KNOW. (I'm a slow reader so all I can say for now is: the FIRST book does not explicitly state Harry is cis, but if he's trans, there's some implied worldbuilding with items like the Sorting Hat that comes into play. Also I'm fairly sure the Dursleys would have gone along with him being trans because that meant Petunia could reuse Dudley's old clothes instead of having to get girl stuff. I'mma save any other explanations on the topic for a video on it.) The reason I'm doing this read-through is because I think J.K. doesn't know anything about trans people and didn't think to make sure her wizard world was trans exclusionary. AND IT TURNS OUT THAT WE TRANS MAGIC USERS HAVE A WAY OF WIGGLING INTO MOST PLACES UNDETECTED BY NORMAL MEANS.

While I was doing the re-read I encountered two sort of broad revelations:

There's a lot of old stuff in there like Latin and Greek and tradcraft stuff, but also modern magic of the more recent era... but the incorporation of modern magic cuts off somewhere before the 80s. These books read like they were written by a early 70s magician. Like they honestly read like J.K. is a magical practicioner who just didn't read any magic books written after 1972 and never discovered what Chaos Magic is, (and also, never heard of most of what happened in the Cold War). I have never found a writer, in fiction or non-fiction, more dedicated to referencing magical stuff that most magicians alive today just don't care about anymore.

J.K. Rowling's knowledge of child abuse laws and general social mores regarding treatment of children also ceased to update itself by about the 80s. I keep getting distracted by this and having to make more side-notes about corporal punishment and researching stuff like when caning was banned in England. (HInt: it was banned before Harry went to school, so in Book 1 it's fuckin weird that he assumes that Wood is the name of a cane he's about to be whipped with.) Like, this woman raised children in the modern era, she should know when canes stopped being used.

So like, when I mention that I'm doing some research in this area, this is the sort of stuff I'm reading for and the sort of stuff I'm encountering. I haven't been talking much about this journey because it seems like any time anyone brings up anything Harry Potter up whatsoever, we've got to talk about how J.K. is a terf in every other sentence. But like, y'all: I hope you slow down and re-read the books, because J.K. Rowling is a terf who is also a child abuse apologist and normalizer. She is a terf who is also a horrible fat-shamer. She is a terf who is also an ableist with a huge problem writing about mental illness. And she's a terf who's also a sexist who undermines feminism with her actual writing of female characters.

And I honestly think she double and triples down on the terf stuff so that people will only talk about that. I think it's worth talking about the fact that not only is she an awful person in the terf way, but like, every other way imaginable too. I think it's worth talking about the fact that with all the obvious biases she has, the group she CHOOSES to publicly marginaiize is trans women, and I think she makes that choice because she thinks that she'll get more allies that way. That if she wore all of her issues on her sleeve like she wears the terfness, that she'd lose a lot of allies, that a lot of prestigious charities would stop having anything to do with her. That she uses the identity of "terf" as a shield because she knows that certain people will protect a terf, and she does this specifically so people won't notice how much of a sexist, abuse apologist, ableist, fatphobe etc she ALSO is. Opinions that could lose her a lot of money and clout if people remember them enough.

She's trying to pick on who she thinks is the most unpopular kid in the class out of the hopes that the bullies in class will be her friends instead of pile up on her, but if the bullies knew what she really thought of them, THEY wouldn't even be her friends.

Also like... I just want someone else to read the actual words in these books and see what fucked-up choices she made as a writer. I think a LOT of people remembering these books are actually remembering the movies, which are way more different from the books than you might expect.

#this got long and rambly #every time i try to read the books i find a new thing that is weird #i had to look up when milk bottle delivery stopped in england #i know so many things about knickerbockers now #it seems like the only reason platform 9 3/4 is used is for the parking and that's so weird #why would you name something futuristic a 2000 when that's only 9 years from when the first book is set #who leaves a one year old on a doorstep #how come the dursleys are so affluent to have late-era milk bottle delivery at the doorstep #yet no 4AM joggers in the neighborhood who would have seen Harry before Petunia did #these books are an assault upon all logic and I am mad and angry that there is a theme park based on them that fails the ADA #you're telling me wizards can hide an entire castle yet they can't add a ramp to a shop's doorway #oh gods i'm never going to stop get me out of these tags I need a snack and a hug