Isn’t ketchup pretty much just red sugar gel?

Isn’t that the point tho? The author created a purposefully imperfect world where the children could recognize the injustices and stand up against them. That’s role modeling the right behavior. Our world is certainly not perfect and we have to stand up against bigotry and injustice (like transphobia). And the heros in the hp stories make mistakes but they learn and improve themselves - Rowling could learn from her own books!

Right. The vague concept existed before in many different forms. She put hircruxes in her books and made them a thing that people understood. I’m not saying she’s a great writer, but she clearly appealed to a lot of people with her writing, and not just kids. Her stories at least had decent morals. I’m not defending any of her anti-trans crap, but her Harry Potter fiction is a separate thing.

Um, where else did you get your original definition of a horcrux?