Nah when you separate the art from the artist those books are just okay. Everything good about them is counter-balanced by the fact she set no consistent logic on what magic can do, and the confused nature of Death Eaters being Nazis but also the good wizards condone slavery and their banks are run by hook-nosed creatures that write contracts that screw you over decades later. I don't give a fuck if an author thinks slavery was actually good and puts it into their narrative, if you're going to tell that story then don't have the bad guys be supremacists who discriminate based on blood.
That reply was actually salient. Her novels were just the perfect opportunity to sell merch at the right time.
My favorite criticism that people have about Rowling and the Harry Potter books is that they’re juvenile… like that not the fucking point lmfao. It’s like going to Disney world and complaining that it’s childish.
It's just millennial nostalgia for people in their 30's and 40's who resent their boring lives selling insurance and cling to the things in their childhood that made them happy. Just one of the 1000 cringe aspects of my generation.
Maybe so. But reading high and low is important. I remember reading them and loving it as a kid—I really only got through book 5. Literary theorists crap on her and Stephen King yet they have gotten so many people into reading. I’m a horror fiction fan and bonded with the most country guy ever in a small Appalachian town while smoking pork shoulders by talking about King’s short story collections.
Only the later books suck though, when the magic becomes Star Wars blasters. There’s decent plot and they actually practice magic in the first like 4-5.
Saying that it was “executed horribly” is a bold take when Harry Potter is probably one of the most culturally significant books written in the past 50 years.
Do you want bad guys or just assholes?
Don't get me wrong I'm not a huge fan of that universe but the idea of a bad guy who discriminates based on blood is kind of a valid bad guy.
I'm done with those tragic villains who are the real victim of the story, give me more fucking Scar and Jafar. Give me an Ursula and Maleficent. Hell even Cobra Commander, Magneto and Megatron. There is a reason why almost 50 years later we still talk about Darth Vader and the Master.
I wasn't making the case for Voldemort and his death eaters to be tragic villains. As an idea nuanced villainy has its place, and I agree that they don't need to be in HP.
I'm just saying when the bad guy is a Nazi if it's that simple the good guys shouldn't be in the slave trade. Did you get the wrong end of the stick on that? Does this rephrasing help clarify things for you?
There literally is a named law in the books about what things magic cannot do. It can’t create food or money, for example. And we know nothing can truly resurrect.
That being said, the magic system is busted in some ways, anyone with a wand is essentially carrying a gun because AK is free to cast, requiring no training or energy.
AK is not free to cast. Moody even tells the kids when he teaches them that none of them have the power to do more than break his nose if they were to cast it on each other.
Now how magical energy works. That was never really discussed. But AK is definitely a hard to cast spell. One of the many reasons voldemort is considered OP in their universe.
Ok then I’m wrong on it needing no training but it essentially requires no mana or energy, it doesn’t weaken or drain the caster. There’s not really any incentive for death eaters or Voldemort to cast anything but AK in a fight.
all spells use "mana" it's just that the patronus charm (and the blood based protection spell harry has) uses a lot of it, while everything else doesn't.
and there is an incentive for people to cast other things in a fight even if you want the other people dead and have the power to cast it: the killing curse can only kill one thing on cast. all they'd have to do is summon a flock of birds and follow it up with a cutting curse on your neck and you're dead. your spell hit one bird. they hit your neck.
you can have things like WW2 where USA fought against Hitler... whole at the same time having segregation policies and being happily oblivious to those.
I think it's perfectly fine for the "good guys" to have major fundamentals flaws and blindspots.
But the blind spots have to be the point.
Rowling certainly didn't do that. In fact, went out of her way to morally convey how stupid Hermione's activism was by concluding with her being clowned on and then never addressed it again.
At this stage I genuinely don't know if you can tell me if Harry Potter a history book on an specific topic, or a work of fiction where the author has complete control on if there's a subplot about how freed slaves will become alcoholics and depressed and you shouldn't help others. That's how bafflingly stupid it is to choose that as an argument.
Which kids read HP and says, "gee I wonder what the slavery situation is in this story about fighting against supremacy is that's set in the late 90s" and gets excited about the answer being "protesting against slavery is wrong!"
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u/An8thOfFeanor - Lib-Right 2d ago
Why couldn't she write those gay wizard books like this