Harry watches the government get taken over by fascists and then decides to go be a cop.

Not every police force is the ultra-militarised right wing type you see in North America. I must admit I’m quite tired of people thinking US culture applies worldwide. There’s a whole world outside of the USA. You need to accept that just because something is one way in the US, doesn’t mean it’s that way everywhere.

I’m currently living in the UK and despite their police force often being useless due to 14 years of Conservatives underfunding them, I’ll give them credit for not being violent and being extremely adept at de-escalation, and for regularly and overwhelmingly saying no when they are surveyed and offered more lethal weapons. They adamantly do not want more power. Police in the UK, as a general rule, lean left, not right.

Of course you do occasionally hear about a police officer doing something dodgy, but it’s pretty rare and makes national or even international news when it happens.

There’s very much a culture of them working for the public as opposed to being a military force that terrorises the public.

Plus the government previously being fascist doesn’t mean people working for them are fascist, particularly not after a change in government. Harry became an Auror when Hermione became Minister of Magic. It wasn’t a fascist government then. Is every public sector employee in Spain, Italy, Germany, etc a fascist just because they had a fascist government in the past?

I don’t like the art, it’s poorly written.

Poorly written, sure, I’d say a lot of it is too (so time-turners canonically exist but nobody goes back to stop Voldemort or stop victims from being killed by him? Ok lol), but so are lots of things. Not everybody is a Tolkien-level world-builder.

Regardless, it doesn’t change the point, you can think JKR is a transphobic twat and still like a book. Rudyard Kipling has some great poems and books, despite being racist. Roald Dahl wrote brilliant childrens books despite being a raving antisemite. As an Indian, I have great respect for Ghandi, despite him being racist, enormously antisemitic, and likely even paedophilic. The Smiths made great music despite Morrissey being a cunt. Etc.

If you want to discard work on account of the artist’s personalities, then fair enough, more power to you, it’s a personal thing what your boundaries are. I’m just saying it’s fine to like the art but not the artist too.

Did you consider the audience?

How many kids transitioning to young adults have enough grasp of historical literature or other media to say “what bollocks! This is super derivative! Let’s do some high Arthurian fantasy instead!”? It got popular because it is approachable, entertaining, and knew it’s audience.

Now, jkr might have picked this kind of audience because she new as an aspiring author the quality wasn’t going to be tip top, but that’s a different discussion altogether.

typecast to play much older than he was. He was only 63 when he first played Gandalf

Isn’t Gandalf a multi-thousand-year-old immortal angel of sorts? Seems like a bit of a strange concern in that context…