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Message: <blockquote data-quote="BookTenTiger" data-source="post: 9736229" data-attributes="member: 6685541">Yeah, there are a lot of mean assumptions in Harry Potter that are often handwaved because it's a fantasy book. The more that the writing became "serious," the more problems I had with some of the choices, like...Only one house being the good one, and one house being made up of evil characters. It smacks of classism and the idea that you as a person are set based on your intrinsic morality instead of the choices you make.The chosen one narrative. Harry is an orphan, which sucks, but he's also a rich popular gifted wizard with a famous family name. It's a boring story choice.The goblins. I clocked the anti-Semitic tropes the first time I read it, and often when I brought it up in conversation folks did not want to acknowledge it. I don't know if the author sat down and purposefully used anti-Semitic tropes to describe the goblins, but she did, and it matches the overall laziness of how she used stereotypes and archetypes without thought.I think HP is popular because of this use of tropes and the ways it subconsciously confirms a lot of biases people have: that some people are intrinsically good or bad, that boys are more worthy than girls, that people should be fit into hierarchical classes, and that we can safely claim some intelligent people as inhuman and treat them as slaves or monsters.I don't think HP should be banned or anything but there are a lot of other examples of fantasy and YA books that don't just lazily throw tropes together.</blockquote>

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