Harry Potter exists in such a wild space these days because like... everyone's divorced it. People just ignore the author's entire existence because she's just gotten more unhinged in the last two decades plus change, she destroyed the fandom to the point that people who grew up with it just kinda... pretend it doesn't exist.
I started reading Harry Potter fanfiction, I haven't even looked at or written Potter related fanfic in a hot minute (excepting my mulitiverse AU with a shit ton of characters not created by Rowling because I giggle at the Fourth Doctor being an absolute Menace in any universe. Potions class is where he would absolutely annoy the professor and anyone not Sarah Jane Smith or Harry Sullivan, and even then, they're both kinda annoyed.) The books just sit on my shelf, untouched for years, silent sentinels in those stretchy book covers to all the other stories I have read and written.
And yet... They still exist as an important part of many childhoods. Because they literally had the main character's fighting back against a corrupt government. A generation was unsatisfied by 'All was well.' because all hasn't been well our entire LIVES. A whole cast of actors played these characters so well, brought so many interesting things to these characters....
I dunno, it's just like.... they exist and Rowling's issues make the problems in the books MORE obvious now than twenty years ago, but also they were formulative in numberous ways. I still want to reread them and take the time to examine the time in which they were being written (which is through the 90s and early 00s) and the time they're set in as well as the place (the books are pretty much 90s Britian... that means by the time the events of book seven are happening so are the things that lead to the Good Friday Agreement. In a way, perhaps that book was influenced by that moment even though the book itself was published in 2007.... like I dunno, it just feels worth exploring the time in which they came into being and the world that absolutely influenced the author, even though Jesus Christ lady, get off effing Twitter.
I feel like having literary analyses of the books takes away her power, because maybe what she intended and wrote are different than what we got out of it, but ignorance doesn't do any favors. People should be able to read and form their own opinions... I hate Lord of the Flies passionately. I think it's dry and totally off base to how kids behave, but that's my opinion of the book. Someone else got something else out of it.... I want to know what people get out of Harry friggin Potter that Rowling didn't intend, but happened anyway. Because for her 'All was well.' meant something WILDLY different than what it meant to the generation who read and eventually divorced themselves from those books.
I think they're worth the re-read from the perspective of someone who Knows more about the kind of person Rowling actually is, the person she's shown herself to be, than what we knew about her in the pre-social media days. Before she brain-rotted herself so hard that most of the cast of the films divorced from her brain-rot. In that respect, the actor who got himself arrested and couldn't continue acting in the films got lucky... he jumped ship before everyone Knew what a jackass she was. And it was only because Warner Bros was like 'Ehh... that's Not Great'.
Plus like, knowing what I know now... a certain part of the fourth book looks way different because when I was a kid, it was a little odd but just whatever. But to Rowling, clearly it was Major. She needed people to KNOW she found it UNNATURAL, even though literal children were just gonna read it and go 'Oh okay, whatever'. For reference, it's when they go to the Quidditch World Cup and there's an entire like scene dedicated to Harry overhearing two guys arguing over one wearing a dress. It's kind of wild the scene exists at all, and if you've never read the book, the movie skips this because it's not plot-relevant at all. And that's fine, but the movie also drops some other things that were marginally relevant to the plot, but if they'd wanted an adaptation that kept closer to the books than a film can do, they'd have made a Percy Jackson style show years ago.
Anyways, I think the books are worth rereading to catch the things that were not obvious to me as a child, because there were things I did not know twenty years ago that I know now. And because I really need to reread them to be able to dive into my Death Eaters = Nazis argument. Because Tom Riddle aka Voldemort was ABSOUFUCKINLUTLY a Nazi Sympathizer. And I need to find those nuggets to write about it, because goddamn if I can't punch a real Nazi, imma punch a fictional wizard Nazi. Also, Umbridge is Kristi Noem and fucking KKKaroline. The same fucking energy oozes, and I respect the actress for playing the kind of scum I didn't know existed until I had to bear witness to those two fucking idiots. I thought Umbridge was just the horrible, awful teacher everyone had, I was so wrong.
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