like if you were a kid who was abused or different or lonely the idea of being whisked away to a magical world was immensely compelling. the idea of having friends and finding out you were special and there was a reason you were being mistreated was immensely compelling.
on top of that the worldbuilding is genuinely immersive. it really felt to me like there was a world beyond the main characters and that’s something i rarely find in other books.
and yeah as an adult i can look at the goblins and rita skeeter and see how it’s all problematic but as a kid it all truly flew over my head. the goblins didn’t give me internalized antisemitism cause i did not realize they were pulling from jewish stereotypes. rita skeeter did not make me transphobic cause i straight up did not notice the parts about her physical body being “manly” until people pointed that out two years ago.
yeah as an adult i can read it and see a whole boatload of problematic stuff but it wasn’t actually always obvious and like. it could have gone differently. if jkr was a different person she could have apologized for all of this. or explained she hadn’t known better but now she does and that she’s sorry to the communities she hurt. there was a moment when i thought that was possible. now it’s obvious that it’s not, and i think i’m allowed to mourn that.
and i’m allowed to mourn that something that was incredibly important to me as a child and that i really loved is now irrevocably tainted. we all are. we don’t have to pretend it retroactively sucked and that we were all idiots for being nine-year-olds who wanted to escape our lives and found a means to do it vicariously. fuck, it’s sad enough that nine-year-olds wanted to escape their lives. but anyways we weren’t idiots, the books were good for their time and what they were. we genuinely lost something of value and it’s okay to mourn that.
blakekathryn
germansingergirl
origamiaround
stormborns
kaledo-art
titsay
