Probably an unpopular opinion, but the stories don’t hold up under scrutiny, and that’s apparent even from the first book. Then again, that’s not how one enjoys children’s books.
Probably an unpopular opinion
Not really. Even big potter fans acknowledge that the books have giant plotholes
Huge potter fan here (that won’t consume any potter media because JKR is a self-owning ass clown that deserves to watch her empire crumble), and yeah, even well before the Twitter nonsense she started spouting, it wasn’t like a secret or anything that the books weren’t perfect. I still stood on like at midnight for prisoner of Azkaban as a kid, though. But I remember thinking the Voldemort/death eaters thing was a pretty clear WWII/Hitler/Nazi analogy and googling it only to find an interview with her stating it absolutely was not, and people who thought it was were “reading politics” into a children’s story. She’s always been a dumbass, and she’s wrong about her own work. Also, the whole house elf thing was… Really, really rough to read as a kid. I could never understand why no one was on Hermione’s side, and how no one could see that elves didn’t want to be free because their condition would be that of an outcast, and in a world where only wizard’s were allowed wands, nonhuman humanoids were veru clearly subjugated to the point of delusionality.
Which is to say, yeah, the books got problems, even if you love em. I love those books, because the world felt real, even when it was shitty, it felt real. But there are major problems in them, both in the plothole sense, and in the politics (or lack thereof) of the author shining through the cracks
Nobody is on the side of the house elves because Hermione is the pet leftist. Ever watch Downton Abbey? Pretty good show tbh, but if you have, then Tom Felton is the Downton Abbey Hermione. Why is Downton Abbey, of all things, relevant? Because it’s conservative apologia for the way things were, just as HP is conservative apologia; these types of media will often include a zany leftist that they can soften and win over to show how their conservative agenda is good actually. Think about it, HP isn’t left vs right, it’s old conservatism (Dumbledore and his muggle-loving ways) vs batshit insane ultra conservatism (the Death Eaters). If you swap wizarding blood for noble blood, being a wizard for being a noble, etc. it works almost perfectly. Hermione is new nobility that the old nobility doesn’t respect; Harry is from a good pedigree, but was raised by his peasant aunt and uncle and doesn’t know how to act the part, etc etc. The left (Hermione) wasn’t supposed to win (and didn’t), that W was meant for the old conservatives all along.
HP and Rowling have always been conservative, it was just that we misread the struggle being portrayed there.
I got sort of an inverse impression of Downton Abbey. For me, it was about inevitable change, since practically every single truth held by the most conservative characters is at some point bent or entirely overturned, often by themselves. Literally all of the gentry are huge hypocrites.
It also spends a good amount of time creating parallels in the lives of the different classes that, for me, underscored how there was nothing fundamentally special about the aristocracy besides their wealth. Wealth that they never earned and only held onto because a peasant Irish driver who banged their daughter forcibly removed their heads from their assess.
It just doesn’t seek to accomplish all this by making the upper class into Disney villains, since that’s rarely how people actually are. But I never got the impression the show was trying to say this is how things should have or had to have been.
This is a great counterpoint, thanks for taking the time to write this thoughtful response. Imo, Downton paints a rosy picture of the gentry, one of kind, intelligent people who are willing to change with the times if only they understood the need; one where there’s a healthy mutualism between the gentry and those under them (house servants, tenants, etc). Maybe that really is how it was, idk, I’m American and all of our gentry equivalent seem to feel little responsibility to those upon whom they depend.
That’s fair. The rosiness I always attributed to the fact it’s basically a fancy soap opera with a huge budget.
The Crowleys are definitely depicted as kind lords, though the show contrasts them several times with other less humane counterparts. I don’t have the education to rate its historical accuracy, however.
She’s a classic neolib. Pretending to be progressive while actually pushing regressive, conservative bullshit.
batshit insane ultra conservatism (the Death Eaters)
Death Eaters are revolutionary wizard supremacists.
Also, the whole house elf thing was… Really, really rough to read as a kid. I could never understand why no one was on Hermione’s side, and how no one could see that elves didn’t want to be free because their condition would be that of an outcast, and in a world where only wizard’s were allowed wands, nonhuman humanoids were veru clearly subjugated to the point of delusionality.
The motivation behind the idea was a good one, the execution of the idea was absolute cringe.
Let me explain. The intention was to highlight that the wizarding world has its own logic, and trying to apply the morality and philosophy of the mundane will end in failure, but Hermonie can’t see that being too smart for her own good in this area…
Unfortunately JK picked FUCKING SLAVERY as the way to make this point, because she is a dumbass. No, that’s underselling it: She’s a fascist who only had Voldemort be evil because the book needed a villain. JK Rowling legitimately believes that some groups of people are perpetually below “The normals”
Like take the concept of Royalty (Some people are better than others because they are of Noble Blood) and turn it onto its head, that there are people who are lesser than others because they are of dirty blood. (To JK these include the Irish, transgender people, and anyone who isn’t white)
“Mudblood” being a slur in the HP Universe is just JK’s way of projecting her worldview onto perceived enemies.
Oh and one last thing. JK did the “Wizard morality is different because it’s wacky and whimsical” a second time, in the Fantastic Beasts movies, where the worst crime in Wizard History was… drumroll Trying to stop the Nazis from coming into power… (You see why Harry Potter just doesn’t work with serious stories?: JK herself is impossible to take seriously, and infact is outright dangerous because there are those who attempt to do just that.)
This is actually addressed in the books. There’s a part when Harry is whining how nobody believed him when he said Voldemort was back and Hermione basically goes “Dude, you convinced Cedric to touch the cup at the same time you did, then you both disappeared and you came back with his dead body screaming about an evil wizard who has been dead for more than a decade. I only believed you because I’m your friend.”
It’s a huge plot point in the fifth book/film as well. Lots of people including the ministry don’t want to believe him.
Yeah but the movies specifically frame it more as “the ministry has been infiltrated” and less as “Harry, your story is shady af”
I only like the first three Harry Potter books, when Scabbers goes, so does the book having any credibility it seems.
People don’t like Harry Potter for the story, so when it tries too be serious it falls apart. The part of Harry Potter people enjoy is the whimsy of the wizarding world, that’s it.
You don’t speak for all people. No doubt what you said is true for some. My favorite books were 4 and 5.
Same with Fantastic Beasts, first one was just a whimsical adventure of Newt, second one tried to be serious and was a steaming pile of 💩
For me it’s always the unexplained power nerfing that authors do just to advance the plot.
Harry Potter in the first 3 books was fearless, he literally took on voldemort with his bare hands.
Then when the dumbass plan with the port key cup happens, he just stands there like an idiot as the rat dude kills Cedric and revives Voldemort as if both he and Cedric don’t have wands that allow them to cast spells.
I mean they could have maybe had like 20 wizards camping the graveyard to make escaping impossible, but nah they really tried to make the coward rat guy seem like he was now somehow more capable than all of voldemort’s previously defeated plans combined.
Flashes back to Tails being scared of Chaos Zero despite having defeated Chaos 4 before
Love it
If magic interferes and influences electricity, which means it can be measured, analyzed and manipulated as a new form of energy.
To cover up magic on all “fronts” would be impossible by today’s standards. Harry Potter would never be as successful nower days as it was. Simply because the smartphone enters the life’s of humans as essential device very early in life.
Kind of hard to switch off all those thoughts.
Sounds like someone needs to read “Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality”.
Easiest explanation is: there is no electricity in hogwarts and wizards don’t have electricians nor electricity generation, so “electricity doesn’t work in hogwarts”.
If magic was electromagnetic or at least can be measured by effects that it has wizards would have been found during 20th century by general populace.
There are multiple mentions that electronics ALLWAYS malfunctions in presence of magic. So that is a new physical law in disguise. An especially interesting one that interacts with certain intelligence (like mind reading of the user, by the user of other users, memory extraction and manifestation in sentient beings).
Sentient Electromagimagnetic field confirmed?
Magic could operate differently from electromagnetism, but still interfere, such as with quantum effects. Inference doesn’t need to go both ways.
I thought about writing a magic setting with fairly hard justification for magic, and in my world, you’d control individual atoms and combine them to get the effects you want. You’d do this by gaining the respect of or instilling fear into atoms so they’d do your bidding. Spoken spells are more like tricks taught to dogs than having any power of their own, and the power derives from the respect or fear the atoms have for the caster. This explains why some wizards/witches are more powerful than others, and why learning isn’t necessarily the best way to get more powerful. The strongest magic users in my world spend a lot of time meditating, meaning communing with the target group of atoms.
The inner workings of atoms is poorly understood, so I think there’s room to insert some form of sentience.
The easiest explanation is that it’s magic and we’re all muggles and therefore incapable of understanding it.
Something, something, magi-chlorians
