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Culture War Roundup for the week of August 10, 2026

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Uhhhh... what? Outplanning each other is a contest of wits, not wills. Yes, absolutely, will is determination.

I specifically used contest of heroes like Achilles and Hector. Their will is not about some specific scene where Achilles and Hector bash their shields in contest of who pushes harder - until Hector gets distracted and slips on a banana peel proving his inferior will. It is everything that surrounds it, how their motivations and actions brought them in front of the walls of Troy, how their preparations pan out and what impact it will have on the war.

Harry Potter is nowhere near that, he was dragged there literally against his agency, with no preparation and no plan - in fact he was the one manipulated throughout everything like a puppet by shadowy play of Voldermort's spies against Dumbledore and his allies from behind. From Voldemort gathering intelligence from ministry employee, through mysterious evasion of age restriction to activation of portkey; it was all orchestrated play. Potter could have been a wooden puppet that exploded in Voldemort face when he used a flawed wand. I am not sure if you get what I want to say.

his... seems like a non sequitur? Running logistics is the quartermaster's job, not the leader's. The leader's job is to get everyone pointed in the same direction and giving 110%. Harry is hilariously better at that than Hermione.

It was not just logistics. Hermione identified the threat. She strategized and came up with a plan of DA. She selected and vetted its members. On top of that she handled logistics, OpSec and everything. She even hired local celebrity as Brand ambassador and mascot in form of Potter. When there is any decision to be made about what to do next, Potter immediately defers to Hermione ranging from where to meet, what are supposed to be terms in contract - he literally just signs on the dotted line without even knowing that it is hexed. He lacks any knowledge about anything, because he ultimately does not matter as he is not the one making decisions - Hermione is.

This lack of decision making goes even beyond that. As an example, when the ministry falls, Potter does not strategize, select best course of action or anything like that. Hermione just grabs him and Ron without asking, and teleports them into pre-prepared backup base she arranged and of which Potter did not even have a clue about. What a masterful Leader of Men. And by the way, Hermione could do that, because of course she is apparition genius and knows the spell to such a level that she is certified teleporter.

Moreover Potter himself agrees with me here, he explicitly says that he is just an instructor and even gets aggressive if praised, admitting that he only lives thanks to dumb luck and immense help. Of course his bursts of rage, self-pitying etc. have to be managed by Hermione before impacting morale. Hermione shows excellent interpersonal and conflict resolution skills of true leader, managing such an unstable asset in her team by reframing his behavior as modesty. We have access to his internal monologue and we know exactly what happened, why it happened, who made decision and everything. There is no leadership mystery to uncover here.

As much as I like Harry Potter, your observations are largely correct and point to something I have observed in all of Rowling's writing, including her adult novels, which is that she is a woman and she writes men, well, like a woman. Which means she has a theoretical understanding of manly virtues and an abstract appreciation of manhood, but only through a feminist lens. She loves Harry, but she loves him like a son. Hermione is basically her alter ego on the page. She would not have noticed all the tensions you point out, in which she makes her girl supporting character be not just smart, but basically the planner and decision maker while Harry is just sort of there to show up and play hero. Because in her conception, you don't really need (or necessarily want) men to be in charge, you just want them to do the brave heavy lifting. Certainly Harry taking command and Hermione deferring to him would have been... uncomfortable for her.

This is apparent in her Cormoran Strike novels as well. Cormoran is a big tough former special forces soldier, but over the course of the series he's increasingly there to be protective muscle while Robin makes decisions.

Sure, there is a lot of that. Just compare how Harry's mother Lily and her love is key to everything and protects him and the whole Hogwarts up until the end, while his father is idolized, then portrayed as arrogant bully in some memories never to have any other impact on the story, being replaced by stepfathers such as Dumbledore, Black etc. Also Voldemort is turned villain of course because of his father, the same for Malfoy, Barty Crouch. The same for Snape, he also is turned to Death Eaters due to his abusive father.

So if mother is bad, father is even worse and probably the reason everything turns to shit. If father is good, it has to be reflection of his wife who tamed him or somehow corrected him, be it Harry's father or even Arthur Weasley. I agree, it is fundamentally feminist telling of a story, it has nothing to do with ancient sagas of male heroes, not to even talk about modern 20th century counterparts I mentioned before, be it Tolkiens heroes, Conan or even comic book heroes such as Batman or Superman who all had phenomenal fathers.

Also I do not want to put it just on Rowling being a woman. Men as authors are as prone to this type of characterization, need to introduce these themes as women are. In fact, reading some pure women stories is sometimes even liberating, as it at least makes sense in terms of virtues and the whole story.

his father is idolized, then portrayed as arrogant bully in some memories never to have any other impact on the story

Did you miss the bit where they explicitly say that he was a bit of a prat, but very charismatic, and then he matured a bit and was admired by all?

replaced by stepfathers

Harry is an orphan. It's hard to parent from beyond the grave.

Voldemort is turned villain of course because of his father

Voldemort is turned villain by his mother, with it implied that her using magical rape on her lover combined with her weak abandonment of her child caused Voldemort to be born without the ability to love. Voldemort murdered his father out of disappointment with his legacy, not because his father was a bad man (he wasn't very nice but that's because Rowling has trouble with aristocrats, not men).

I'm deeply non-feminist but even then you seem to me to have this very shallow idea of what men are allowed to be and do, and what constitutes character and virtue. That might be a feminist trope but even broken clocks are right twice a day.