Its kind of wild (though I suppose makes some kind of sense) that a lot of the residual Harry Potter fandom post-JKRgate seems to be made up of people who are militaristic, gleefully violence endorsing, and in denial.
There was a fascinating thread on reddit's r/harrypotter today that really emphasised this.
Somebody had quoted the scene where Harry uses Crucio, the torture curse that causes the victim unbearable pain and can cause brain damage due to the severity... as something not that they thought was morally questionable or a talking point, but as a heroic winning moment that they were upset wasn't adapted into the movies, and they hoped the tv show would include!
Up and down the thread around 2000 people agreed!
Those few people that pointed out that Harry's use of torture being okayed because he believed it was for the good of society retroactively also legitimised its use by any of their enemies who believed the same were pilloried by the group. Ah, you see, but Harry is the hero. Its fine for him to use literal torture as long as its for the greater good. So what if he causes so much pain his victim passes out? It's the greater good, man!
It kind of struck me that by retaining - and encouraging - this side of fandom, its making HP quite a good recruiting ground for general zealotry and extremism. If X is fine when Harry does it for the greater good, then is it also fine when Rowling does it? Or when the political candidate that Rowling endorses does it?
These people are being carefully shielded from the fact that just because a story has a first person perspective and a character is called a hero by others around him, that does not mean that everything they unilaterally do is objectively right. If you fight fire with the fire in the pursuit of your defeat of fire as a concept, haven't you become... exactly what you seek to extinguish?
