No, I don't hate the series or JK Rowling. Yes, I think it has some good parts and that she has talent. But this article is about the things in her books that bug me.
1. The apparently truncated timeline of wizarding youth.
So what, everyone's supposed to be married and having babies at like 21? No college? No real dating? Just couple up in childhood and call it a day? Seriously, why isn't college a bigger part of their universe? Is it because...
2. Hogwarts is a trade school.
They don't learn philosophy or English composition as far as I can tell. Physics? Bah, they don't need that, because magic trumps physics! OK, fair enough, but you'd still think they'd be able to appreciate its mathematical elegance. And really, to rob them of basic liberal arts training? That's deprivation! The education they're getting is incredibly insular. They're just trained in this one vocation: To be a wizard. Which leads to...
3. Most of the wizarding world seems to eschew all Muggle culture.
Even the music is wizard-oriented! Like what, Harry Potter can't appreciate the works of The Beatles because he's a wizard? It affects your aesthetic senses that much, apparently. The fact that Mr. Weasley is interested in Muggle technology is seen as this silly quirk. Quite frankly, he also has a fairly condescending attitude toward its primitiveness, as if he's Jane Goodall studying how the apes use batteries on their Game Boys. Um, does no one in the wizard world ever crave Shakespeare? How bleak! Speaking of cultural erasure...
4. Dumbledore didn't come out as gay: He was outed as gay by his author.
After the series was over. Worse, there are no overt references to anything but heterosexuality in the books. It's a big school and supposedly progressive; she couldn't have mentioned in passing a gay couple or two? I understand that trans issues might be extremely complicated to tackle—seeing as how wizard bodies have a kind of fluidity to them—and Rowling might not want to dilute the issue in a potentially distracting storyline. Sure. But say, Charlie Weasley couldn't have married a man? You know the Weasleys would have been fine with that (except maybe Percy). Clearly Rowling doesn't mind controversy. So why couldn't she have been just a bit bolder? How amazing would it have been for the closeted kid or the little boy with two mommies in a conservative town to read about wizards with proud gay wizard parents or a happy Ravenclaw-Hufflepuff same-sex coupling? Which reminds me...
5. Slytherins are basically depicted as sociopaths.
A good school shouldn't have a quarter of its inhabitants actively encouraged to be evil. Clever and ambitious, perhaps a bit manipulative, that's one thing. But that's not how that house is shown. The few times the school comes together as a unit, we're supposed to believe that all the wizards who pages ago were gleefully behaving as monsters without consciences are now on board with unity? I would have felt much better if we occasionally saw Slytherins acting--forgive the phrase--recognizably "human" even when the plot didn't directly call for it. Ahem, Snape. Your "heroism" doesn't change the fact that you maliciously bullied children for years who'd done nothing to you. Which brings me to...
6. The teachers have way too much power and no accountability or objectivity.
"A million points to Slytherin!" - Teacher who's in charge of Slytherin. "Half a point to Gryffindor, even though that half a point will break a crucial tie and is in no way earned, because I want to teach this one kid a specific lesson!" - Teacher trying to teach a kid a specific lesson, not caring how many others it affects. "Negative billion points to Hufflepuff, because I'm feeling spiteful and they're too damn nice. That'll keep them from smiling all the time!" - Someone at some point, presumably.
Anyway, these are a few of the things that annoy me profoundly about the series. There are more, but many words have already been written about how much Dolores Umbridge sucks, and I don't want to get myself all enraged.
It's not all bad, though. All hail Luna Lovegood!
