this post was submitted on 31 Jul 2024
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[–] southsamurai@sh.itjust.works 242 points 3 months ago (9 children)

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.

[–] polonius-rex@kbin.run 82 points 3 months ago

And now everyone pokes at it like it was ever supposed to be literature, with any serious thought behind it.

terf lady doesn't help herself by incessantly insisting that everything was planned from the very start

[–] Donkter@lemmy.world 60 points 3 months ago (10 children)

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.

[–] pennomi@lemmy.world 54 points 3 months ago (1 children)

To be fair, Harry Potter is probably more logically consistent than the Bible is.

[–] Viking_Hippie@lemmy.world 28 points 3 months ago

That's like saying that an arthritic dog probably walks faster than one without legs.

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[–] bobs_monkey@lemm.ee 23 points 3 months ago (1 children)

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.

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[–] bassomitron@lemmy.world 15 points 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago)

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.

[–] CoCo_Goldstein@lemmy.world 14 points 3 months ago

"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."

"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.

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[–] amio@kbin.run 73 points 3 months ago (1 children)

What's wrong with it is that JKR is not smart enough to wing everything and have it make sense. As a result... it doesn't, much.

[–] brbposting@sh.itjust.works 38 points 3 months ago (18 children)

It makes enough sense for kids and adults who can suspend disbelief enough to keep turning the pages. And gives all of us reason to listen to some of the many podcasts exploring the plot holes.

Side note, now that I’ve commented a few times in this thread without mentioning it:

JKR is not smart enough to

refrain from using her global platform to attack trans people. Bad Rowling, bad! I’m thankful I can separate artists from art enough to still enjoy something I grew up enjoying but do have a duty to call out her grievously public stance on this so readers know we still fancy ourselves as allies even when stooping to discuss what the now-monster created.

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[–] dejected_warp_core@lemmy.world 71 points 3 months ago (3 children)

I mean, the whole thing is this big fever-dream written for kids; yanno, a fairy tale. At the same time, our author is someone whose internal moral compass is pretty twisted up. So, logical consistency left the building long before pen was put to paper.

Also, fledgling authors take note: this is what happens when you flagrantly defy thermodynamics over and over again. Nerds will rip your work to shreds.

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[–] Phegan@lemmy.world 58 points 3 months ago (1 children)

First of all, it's a kids book.

Second of all, it's a poorly written kids book.

[–] sugar_in_your_tea@sh.itjust.works 15 points 3 months ago

Eh, I think it's pretty well-written. It hits all the important parts of a good kids novel series:

  • fun to read
  • few immediately obvious plot holes (that a 10yo would notice)
  • easy for a child to imagine that they're in that world

We need more series like Harry Potter with high engagement that also promote creativity.

[–] Annoyed_Crabby@monyet.cc 57 points 3 months ago (5 children)

I think nothing beat the fact Slytherin still exist after the founder basically came out as a racist and want racist rule to be enacted, and also only accept student that's either a racist or speak parseltongue, and also the student literally live in a dungeon that's dark and gloomy. You'd think after a few years Salazar left the other founders will take note and change the way the house pick their student and the living condition of the student quarters, but nope.

And you'd think this is a story about the danger of tolerating the intolerant, then the writer became the intolerant lol.

[–] Dasus@lemmy.world 72 points 3 months ago (2 children)
[–] VindictiveJudge@lemmy.world 13 points 3 months ago

I'm pretty sure the reason they keep to themselves is that the last time magic was public knowledge they were killed en masse during medieval witch hunts, or something. Been a loooooong time since I read the books.

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[–] Skullgrid@lemmy.world 18 points 3 months ago

still exist after the founder basically came out as a racist and want racist rule to be enacted

let me know how the republican party does after novemeber. IF they lose

[–] Blue_Morpho@lemmy.world 15 points 3 months ago

I think nothing beat the fact Slytherin still exist after the founder basically came out as a racist

That was the most realistic part.

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[–] Shard@lemmy.world 57 points 3 months ago (4 children)

What about time travel? They had a pocket time travel device and they couldn't strangle baby Voldemort? Or was there some Avengers endgame multi dimension thing preventing that?

[–] Iheartcheese@lemmy.world 47 points 3 months ago

She realized she had made a mistake introducing time travel that's why she destroyed all the time turners in Order.

[–] brbposting@sh.itjust.works 25 points 3 months ago (1 children)

some Avengers endgame multi dimension thing

Some in-universe Harry Potter thing!

Officially, JK says she went too far with the time turners, so she destroyed all of them:

[–] Shard@lemmy.world 19 points 3 months ago (2 children)

Well at least she admitted to it.

I've not come across an in-universe explanation that made sense seeing as its always been "time travel dangerous."

Considering the numbers that have died directly and indirectly because of the whole Voldemort thing, a single person sacrifice doesn't seem all that bad.

[–] breakingcups@lemmy.world 20 points 3 months ago (1 children)

Also, if it's so dangerous, what adult in their right mind would give a time turner to a child so she can follow more classes? She'll still literally age the same, spend the same time in school. Just have her take more years at school of age wants to learn more, instead of giving one of the most dangerous items ever to a child so she can use it to literally be in the same building at the same time, something easily verifiable by her classmates.

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[–] SomethingBurger@jlai.lu 20 points 3 months ago (2 children)

IIRC Time Turners can't change the past. Whatever actions you do while in the past have already happened the first time around, you just didn't know it because you didn't travel to the past yet.

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[–] AngryishHumanoid@reddthat.com 49 points 3 months ago (2 children)

Also in the wizarding world they have a device that makes it incredibly easy to kill a baby. It's called a knife.

[–] Saledovil@sh.itjust.works 50 points 3 months ago (3 children)

The mother's love protecting Harry caught Voldemort off guard. It's not like he got to try using the killing curse on Harry several times. Imagine you want to kill a baby, and you have a gun, and literally no reason to conserve ammo. You wouldn't pull out your knife in the off chance that the baby is bulletproof.

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[–] Maalus@lemmy.world 35 points 3 months ago (1 children)

Technically with the mother's love protecting him, nothing would've worked. Also you are ignoring pride in all of this. Voldemort had a way to kill anyone he hated with barely any effort on his part, using magical abilities. He also hated muggles and all they stood for. Of course he won't be using a way muggles kill one another if he has magic that is in his mind "better".

[–] polonius-rex@kbin.run 37 points 3 months ago (3 children)

shame none of the other characters were loved by their mothers

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[–] AnUnusualRelic@lemmy.world 48 points 3 months ago (3 children)

Plot holes? In Harry Potter? Why I never!

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[–] superduperpirate@lemmy.world 35 points 3 months ago (5 children)

As someone who has read an absurd amount of fanfiction, I’m willing to bet that this (adults holding the idiot ball) was done on purpose because if the adults aren’t morons then there’s no plot tension for our protagonists to resolve.

[–] radix@lemmy.world 41 points 3 months ago

https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/AdultsAreUseless

I don't know if this is quite the correct trope, but it's close, at least. It's common in any kid/teen story that the adults are complete screw-ups, and it's up to the brave child heroes to do anything about it. I always think of it as the Goonies plot (my first obvious exposure to the trope) but I'm sure it goes back way further than that.

[–] Gullible@sh.itjust.works 37 points 3 months ago

“Why is everyone so dumb?”

Inbreeding. The answer is inbreeding. It makes sense of Hermione being the smartest person at hogwarts.

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[–] ShinkanTrain@lemmy.ml 33 points 3 months ago

I am one again asking you to read a different book

[–] BowtiesAreCool@lemmy.world 24 points 3 months ago (1 children)

Well the person who wrote it thinks “Lolita” is a touching love story so…

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[–] ThatWeirdGuy1001@lemmy.world 23 points 3 months ago (1 children)

It was written for kids who don't think that deep

[–] NoSpiritAnimal@lemmy.world 32 points 3 months ago

By a lady who don't think that deep

[–] MudMan@fedia.io 20 points 3 months ago (3 children)

Wait, the reason they don't use this potion is that it's hard to make?

Wouldn't you make it once and use it to make more by just dumping random ingredients in a pot to get an infinite supply? It seems like the wishing for more wishes situation pretty straight up.

This is what I get for letting you trick me into thinking about this dumb thing, I suppose.

[–] brbposting@sh.itjust.works 19 points 3 months ago (7 children)

Naw

Would crack you all out

But it makes no sense it’s not consistently used as much as possible, exactly below the threshold for negative side effects. Anytime the good guys are fighting the bad guys. Anytime the bad guys are searching for good guys or trying to evade them. Whoever managed their liquid luck use better should’ve won.

[–] MudMan@fedia.io 20 points 3 months ago (1 children)

Wait, so it gets you high on top of everything else? People would be using this even if it did nothing else, what the heck?

Stop it. Stop making me think about the stupid wizard thing. Not worth it. So dumb.

[–] brbposting@sh.itjust.works 14 points 3 months ago (1 children)

Indeed alcohol is a global best seller in our own world and for it to make you lucky someone else has to drink it too

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[–] Cowbee@lemmy.ml 19 points 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago) (6 children)

JKR is a TERF with terrible writing skills and worldbuilding. The idea of a comfy, cozy british castle where you could fulfill your magical dreams and get sorted into a house is an incredibly fun self-insert universe, just like Pokemon, Star Trek, etc.

[–] umbrella@lemmy.ml 19 points 3 months ago (1 children)

wait until you look into the time travel stuff

[–] UnderpantsWeevil@lemmy.world 15 points 3 months ago (4 children)

The time travel stuff functionally doesn't change anything. It's there to let you observe, not meddle, and ultimately results in a closed loop of causality.

Some of her better writing, tbf. If every book had been as good as Prisoner of Azkaban, I wouldn't feel like I wasted time finishing the last three in the series.

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[–] Chriseindt@lemmy.world 17 points 3 months ago

The SuperCarlinBrothers made a convincing case that Felix Felicias is just a placebo on steroids.

[–] morphballganon@lemmy.world 16 points 3 months ago (3 children)

One might say this is one of the reasons Dumbledore wanted Slughorn on his side.

Though, I'm sure Snape could have made it too, and if Voldemort ordered him to make some, I don't see him getting out of it.

The in-story reason why Voldemort doesn't seek help in this way is pride. He believes he is superior, and thus, should be capable of killing Harry unassisted.

"Listen, Severus, I want you to brew me a cauldron of Felix Felicis, but I can't have the other Death Eaters finding out about it..." No, he could never admit to anyone, neither Snape nor himself, that he needed such a handicap to kill a teenager.

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[–] Maggoty@lemmy.world 15 points 3 months ago (1 children)

It's not meant to be a well sewn up world building project. It's literally two different worlds smashed together on a bunch of napkin notes. None of us read it for its intricate political maneuvering or realistic magic system.

[–] sugar_in_your_tea@sh.itjust.works 14 points 3 months ago (10 children)

And that's why I bailed around book 5. Around that point I decided I wanted more realism, so I switched to Tom Clancy and JRR Tolkien, and I have been reading more "realistic" fiction ever since.

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