re: HBO Max announces upcoming Harry Potter series

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This is where I would get upset about the casting situation. The "mudblood" theme was big in Chamber of Secrets. Can't just cut that out.

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Correct. And that's a problem.

If you're being tempted to literally change the story in order to accommodate an arbitrarily race-swapped main character, that should be a warning sign that it's a dumb idea.

What's sad is that I always thought a white Hermione was a great thing. I always thought the purpose of her character was to get the U.K.'s children (mostly white kids) to sympathize with her and understand how it must feel to be demeaned, mocked, and persecuted because of something you have no control over. Hermione was meant to "flip the script" and illustrate why it's evil to treat people as second-class citizens because of who they are or what their hereditary status is.

Oh well. At least black kids will have a character who "looks like them"

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Or they could just not use the term mudblood if people think it's racist.

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This would be a fundamental change of the story, to the point of making it unrecognizable as Harry Potter.

The failure of the Fantastic Beasts movies has very little to do with Dumbledore being gay

The first Fantastic Beasts is a good movie, btw

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Correct. And that's a problem.

If you're being tempted to literally change the story in order to accommodate an arbitrarily race-swapped main character, that should be a warning sign that it's a dumb idea.

What's sad is that I always thought a white Hermione was a great thing. I always thought the purpose of her character was to get the U.K.'s children (mostly white kids) to sympathize with her and understand how it must feel to be demeaned, mocked, and persecuted because of something you have no control over. Hermione was meant to "flip the script" and illustrate why it's evil to treat people as second-class citizens because of who they are or what their hereditary status is.

Oh well. At least black kids will have a character who "looks like them"

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We're also assuming Hogwarts as it stands has no half wizard half muggle black students. In which case it doesn't even matter if Hermione is white, black, or asian.

oh wait, Dean Thomas is a mudblood who happens to be black.

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Given the era of the books and the location of the school, this would make sense.

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Except i just proved this as false.

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Except i just proved this as false.

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No you didn't. You highlighted something that doesn't make sense.

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We're also assuming Hogwarts as it stands has no half wizard half muggle black students. In which case it doesn't even matter if Hermione is white, black, or asian.

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I'm not sure where you're trying to go with this. Hermione was a main character throughout the entire saga. Clearly, her character was intended to portray some major themes as told through her character specifically. We barely even knew who Dean Thomas was as a person.

And as someone who read the books before seeing the movies, I had honestly had no idea that Dean Thomas was black. If it was mentioned in the books, I didn't recall. I assumed he was made black in the movies because he was a secondary character who didn't matter as much and they were just like "whatever."

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I'm not sure where you're trying to go with this. Hermione was a main character throughout the entire saga. Clearly, her character was intended to portray some major themes as told through her character specifically. We barely even knew who Dean Thomas was as a person.

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This is another Rowling Retcon. LINK

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Anybody who has read both the American and British versions of 'Philosopher's Stone' will notice that Dean Thomas's appearance is not mentioned in the British book, whereas in the American one there is a line describing him (in the chapter 'The Sorting Hat').

This was an editorial cut in the British version; my editor thought that chapter was too long and pruned everything that he thought was surplus to requirements. When it came to the casting on the film version of 'Philosopher's Stone', however, I told the director, Chris, that Dean was a black Londoner. In fact, I think Chris was slightly taken aback by the amount of information I had on this peripheral character. I had a lot of background on Dean, though I had never found the right place to use it. His story was included in an early draft of 'Chamber of Secrets' but then cut by me, because it felt like an unnecessary digression. Now I don't think his history will ever make it into the books.

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The melts will come when the show is canceled. The rest of us just won't watch.