So I've been thinking about villains due to a recent poll a mutual posted, and uh...

Y'all?

Have we ever talked about the fact that Voldemort - a boy from a broken home & a neglectful upbringing - is sort of a pretty big red flag from JK Rowling we all just collectively missed?

Like, follow me for a second.

Rowling's liberalism has come under rightful critique in recent years, especially in light of her horrifically transphobic comments & support.

And we've looked at the way she treats portions of the world.

But have we really examined the villains?

Like Tom Marvolo Riddle didn't HAVE to become Lord Voldemort.

Sure he was born in an orphanage to a dying mother & didn't receive a great upbringing.

And yes, he exhibited the dark triad behaviors of a disturbed individual.

But not everyone like him becomes an Evil Dark Lord.

But in Harry Potter world, Voldemort did.

Rowling intentionally wrote Dumbledore as someone who KNEW Voldemort would likely turn out to be who he would and he did like NOTHING to stop it.

That was a choice in framing that JK Rowling made & he was never held accountable either!

Like at no point in the book is anyone really like "Hey Dumbledore, if you had a pretty good sense that Tom Riddle was going to become a dark lord, why the FUCK didn't you like do anything about it? What the fuck was wrong with you? You could've prevented this from happening!"

And it's telling that JK Rowling didn't write it like that.

Tom Riddle is just shown as an evil person born to a partially tainted bloodline (that's a whole other topic) who just becomes evil & is stopped by nobody on his rise because his birth makes him evil.

That's... fucked.

And if you look at the other Death Eaters, it's kinda like... yeah. They're all sort of destined to do that.

Even the entirety of House Slytherin is just escorted out during the Battle of Hogwarts because THE WHOLE HOUSE is written off as untrustworthy.

That's very messed up.

JK Rowling made Slytherin the house of cunning, where people use whatever means to achieve their ends.

So like... if Slytherin is about cunning people, why didn't any of them consider that maybe the best thing for them was to fight alongside the people not attacking the castle?

There's a lot of problems with the Houses & how they're framed vs. how they act, but Slytherin is supposed to be clever. Ravenclaw is booksmart, Slytherin is streetsmart. It's Intelligence vs. Wisdom.

Except no one in Slytherin is actually very wise.

They're all just evil.

AND

They're all either ridiculously upper class like the Malfoys... or in the lower classes.

And yeah, that's kinda how fascism somewhat works, but it ignores the very real reality that the middle class plays in that.

But it really doesn't feel like that in the Potterverse.

The fact of the matter that I'm trying to hit at is that JK Rowling made the central antagonist of her series an orphan from a broken home who nobody cared about even though there were chances they could have.

And... god that's so problematic on so many levels. That just sucks.

Because it plays into this longstanding trope of orphans being inherently messed up people. And yeah, that isn't always easy to deal with, but Rowling plays HEAVILY into the trope.

And no one is held accountable for the systems which are supposed to help those folks failing.

Like, again, Dumbledore.

Who instead of trying to reach out & do anything in any way to help Tom just... kinda ignores him.

Whereas he's all up in Harry's business from like day 1 in the books, he writes Tom off harder than the US government write's off Jeff Bezos' taxes.

And Slytherin House is just wholly condemned. All of them. There is not a single one of them shown to be an exemption.

Even though an opportunity was given for Slytherins to remain & fight, Rowling made it a point to say that none of them did.

Not a single one who was of age.

Just... that's unbelievable.

Not one of the Slytherin's was like "hey, the smart thing to do right now would probably to be on the side of the person WHO'D KILLED VOLDEMORT WHEN HE WAS A LITERAL BABY."

Like Rowling really was just like "yup, whole house is evil, nobody stayed."

The whole point of this thread is that: when we think of the problematic things in media, when we examine & critique & analyze, it's just as important to look at how the villains are portrayed as how the heroes are.

Who we call evil is often more telling than who we call a hero.