this post was submitted on 31 Jul 2024
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Let's be real.
Rowling started out making a fairly bog standard magical kids book. It was all about the fantasy of being a wizard, and relied on tropes so old they get found in La Brea.
This isn't a bad thing. There's nothing wrong with that kind of kid lit.
But she wasn't a good writer. She was mid tier at best. So the eventual success of the series got beyond her abilities. While the last book was much better overall than the first few, it still relied on shoddy world building because she had chased sales.
She tried to turn a kid's light fantasy into a YA fatasy-adventure. To an extent, it worked. And I don't mean that it wasn't successful, she had a hit on her hands because the idea behind it all was brilliant. It pulled from a long history of British youth fiction, and added in fantasy and magic and a ton of tropes.
But from the perspective of a coherent story in a coherent world, ignoring the success in terms of sales, it was cobbled together without a plan, and it shows. It wasn't until maybe order of the phoenix that she had a plan for how the story would end, and she had to do a lot of hand waving to make it happen.
Again, that's okay. Nothing wrong with a bit of light fiction. But, it had cultural impact way beyond its original scope. So it draws the same kind of analysis that something like LOTR does, and it just can't compare. It barely holds up to comparisons with Narnia, and Narnia at least kept things vague and mystical without trying to get into the mechanisms under the hood.
For whatever reasons, Harry, in the books, long before the movies, resonated with kids. So the series exploded. And now everyone pokes at it like it was ever supposed to be literature, with any serious thought behind it. It was all broad brush strokes on construction paper from the beginning, expecting anything in it to hold up to scrutiny is like expecting politicians to be honest and up front. It is what it is.
terf lady doesn't help herself by incessantly insisting that everything was planned from the very start
I always say - to defend the series (which doesn't need too much defending, it's the most successful book series after the old testament > new testament > Quran trilogy). The magic of Harry Potter is that all of the fantasy magic works exactly as well as it needs to right at the moment that it's directly in front of the readers eyes. As you mention, as soon as it leaves the view of the characters in the story, it literally blows up into nonsense. However, as the story is being told the magic used is awesome and just what the plot needs at that exact moment to move along.
To be fair, Harry Potter is probably more logically consistent than the Bible is.
That's like saying that an arthritic dog probably walks faster than one without legs.
That's bad writing.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deus_ex_machina
Michael Bay movies aren't fun to watch because they have airtight plots and intelligent writing. They're fun to watch because there are sparkly things going boom and it looks pretty.
The Harry Potter series is effectively the same thing. A spectacular story that's fun to experience the first time through.
In both cases, if you think too hard about it, the thin veneer giving the appearance of coherence disappears and you're left with a logically inconsistent mess.
It's not going to stop me from watching Independence Day or reading Prisoner of Azkaban again though.
Eddie Valiant: You mean you could've taken your hand out of that [hand]cuff at any time?
Roger Rabbit: No, not at any time! Only when it was funny!
Kind of a terrible example. WFRR has good world building that holds up. Roger is a toon, and therefore must obey Toon Law. He literally, physically, could not remove the cuffs unless it would be (objectively) funny to do so. Eddie being humorless us why he's an effective foil and investigator; the toons have trouble working him because he doesn't find them funny.
Toons also aren't supposed to be able to kill or die, which is why they need a detective in the first place: the world has well-defined rules which have apparently been violated.
The HP world has flimsy rules that depend on the character and the story. The rules of magic are only enforced until an exception is needed, when one is justified to let a character do what the plot demands.
Great point about Toon Law. I guess the HP is more about the Plot Demands This tropes. tbh I don't know HP that well, I found the movies to be kind of boring and I never got past a couple chapters of the first book.
As the person before me mentioned, scrutinizing the magic expecting it to be high literature is self-defeating. I never said I would defend the story on the merits of its writing, it's a book series written for young adults.
Deus ex machina is egregious when a story that has otherwise been consistent pulls the rug out from under you with a twist that makes no sense. The magic in Harry Potter is consistently inconsistent, as I mentioned it only makes sense when it's directly in front of the readers eyes. It doesn't just show up as deus ex machina that saves the characters life at the end of the book and leaves the reader feeling betrayed, the reader expects magic to save the day because since page 1 magic has been doing whatever has been conveniently cool to move the plot along in the main character's favor.
It's not less egregious because they do it in every chapter. It's just a bad story. No one is attacking you or your favorite books; but the fact is they're not that good.
You said you wanted to "defend the series" (the books). With books, what else is there to defend except the writing? As other people have mentioned, there are good consistent stories for children and fantasy authors who know what consistency means. It won't affect your life in any way to admit that JK Rowling is not good at writing.
"But she always does this." Lol.
As I mentioned before, I don't really have to work too hard to defend one of the most sold non-religious books of all time.
I suppose, yes, pedantically there's nothing in a book but writing. But that's an issue of semantics, in my view writing can be bad and there's still things like characterization, plot, world building, and character conflict, writing is how you put it together. I can see that that can all be classified as writing, but again, semantics, often people separate writing from those aspects, often they don't. If the word writing bothers you, please, when you read it replace it with the word you think I mean I don't mind.
As I said in the post you responded to, I don't defend her writing, nor did I say it was my favorite book, makes sense that you have to strawman me to try and attack me.
I was about to comment- Harry Potter and the Deus Ex Machina thanks for beating me to it.
I might add Harry Potter and the Order of the Pipe Layers
Let's be real here, she started off just writing a fun story, think nothing of it, and it became a cult. There's two ways to go about this; 1) milk it for everything it's worth, or 2) let the fans go apeshit on fanfic without providing anything more. She chose option 1. Cause money.
Arguably I think all the flaws combined with its popularity is why there are so many HP fanfics out there and they are at least part of the popularity of the work.
It's like confidently posting a wrong answer on the Internet, people can't help but want to correct you. Same with her story, which fuels a good chunk of the dialogue and discussions about it.
If it was bad or unpopular no one would care. If it was extremely well written, with little to no plot holes, people would like it, but that's kind of it. Harry Potter just seems to have the right mix of good ideas and poor execution while remaining popular enough to be relevant to generate seemingly endless efforts to fix or improve it.
Agreed on all points. I view fiction like this the same way I view junkfood TV shows/movies/music/etc. Yeah, it's often brainless, but if you shut your brain off and go with the flow, it can be enjoyable. Just don't consume too much of it, because then you'll start to actually think it's something more than it really is.
"But she wasn’t a good writer. She was mid tier at best. So the eventual success of the series got beyond her abilities. While the last book was much better overall than the first few, it still relied on shoddy world building"
Excellent explanation. The first HP book is excellent. It really sucks you in. After book 4, the quality declines and they become slogs to get through.
You open the hood and it's just C.S. Lewis crouched in the engine bay, smiling gently and saying "the lion is Jesus."
To say it more bluntly: That whole story ark was cobbled together by an amateur and is barely hobbling on crumbling crutches. In regards of storytelling and consistency it's one of the most shitty dilettantic book series I've ever encountered. And the characters aren't coming alive, they are just bland and boring.
Really bad books.
She's a billionaire.
We have a saying in Germany: Eat shit - millions of flys can't be wrong.