So to address a few reoccurring responses: A lot of characters who are Black in the films are not distinctly Black in the text until significantly after their film appearances (if ever). Yes, The Worst Witch should have been mentioned. I misinterpreted the Rick Riordan article so I thought he was criticizing Palestine, not supporting it. I should have mentioned Nina's magical powers are basically emotional manipulation and later necromancy The only good Earthsea adaptation is the BBC Radio broadcast. There are a number of YA fantasy series published prior to Harry Potter, but I think Harry Potter's success helped elevate them to a more mainstream status. A rising tide lifts all ships. I'll update this as I notice more responses. Just wanted to clarify that now.
Also, Hagrid is mentioned as an example of a 'fat' character, but is he evil? That being said, it's just nitpicking - but please try to be correct when criticizing Rowling. It's necessary, to stop the wrong people who defend her from pointing out these tiny discrepancies.
@@darnbricks Well Hagrid is potentially a half giant. And faces plenty of discrimination for it. Also is he discribed as "fat" or just big? From my memory his discription is certainly more euphemistic than Dugleys. It does already reveal how hypocritical Rowling is thinking. I mean the story is about fighting discrimination aka "evil" but the slavery of sentinent beings is cool. Or if the discrimination happens to the "bad guys" like giving Dugley a pigtale. THATS "hilarious". But don't you dare to say the wrong word to one of the good guys! Calling Hermine a "mudblood" was treated like a crime against humanity. If the wizard society weren't racist hypocrites they wouldn't even care about this term. Rowling like several modern authors has really twisted moral sense and its alarming how popular this was.
Why capitalize the word “black”? I also wouldn’t encourage using screenshots of BuzzFeed articles to make your point. BuzzFeed may as well be The Onion at this point as far as their credibility goes.
I don't think HP being so UK-centric and focusing on Voldemort only being a threat to the UK and not really addressing the rest of the world is that unusual. A lot of American-centric stories do the same thing with their stories.
To be totally objective, Voldemort may be powerful and have horcruxes, but he is nothing more than a terrorist. A danger, sure, but it's not on the same level as a standard dark lord who is capable of commanding armies and assaulting various territorial entities... I mean, I don't see Voldemort waging war on the entire wizarding world (I mean, all communities scattered around the world), it would be too much of an effort for him. Furthermore, Harry Potter never intended to be such a wide-ranging story, having started out as a sort of "children's mystery", with slight hints of horror here and there.
@@Joaking91 He did yes. It's hard to say what he was planning to do after that because after that he mostly focused on cracking down and solidifying his rule and freaking out over losing Horcruxes.
@@Joaking91 TanukiTracks already answered the way I would have phrased the answer, however...yes. He takes possession of the Britain ministry, but then does not seem to move towards conquering the whole world (indeed, from what I understand he never even makes brief hints about this possible plan of domination).
No wonder there’s so much Harry Potter fanfiction. Half of the building blocks aren’t there, or most of them have such clear flaws that people can’t help but want to rebuild it into what they’d want.
that's an important part of it. Especially "side characters" are mostly sketched very shallowly, opening up all kinds of ideas for their life outside of the books (which focus mostly on what Harry knows and sees). And Rowlings slightly flawed decision for pairings based on her own self image (her intereviews basically say that hermione has a lot in common with how JK was in school, while Ginny represents what she WANTED to be... popular, effortlessly liked, sporty, "beautiful"...) But it's also due to the IDEA, the ambient feeling of the world having touched a side in people that other works, especially the ones mentioned as "better written" just could not touch. The Potterworld feels more inspiring than Harry Dresden or Percy Jackson and it's only with the advancing disassembly of her own universe in the Fantastic Beast movies that it is slowly ebbing away...
There's absolutely no way that Hogwarts would teach that Salazar Slytherin was a bad guy in real life. They'd try to gloss over his fascism, and when they do teach him, they'd call him a "polarizing" figure.
Name me a historical figure who isn't a polarizing figure, no matter how good/virtuous/genius they are (or you might think they are). MLK? Ben Franklin? Gandhi? Mother Theresa? Even Jesus Christ! If even the purest man who ever lived and hurt no one and preached peace and love can be polarizing, I think this is a useless discourse.
I want to clarify that there's two primary ideas of magic in fantasy: Hard Magic (explain the rules, keeps consistent) and Soft Magic (strange and unknown, story based). Harry Potter's issue is not that the magic is soft and we want a hard magic. Soft magic can be some of the best fantasy you read, because it relies on the writer's ability to inspire wonder and fear and confusion in you. It wields the confusion to its benefit to set magic aside from science. HP has neither. Her magic is soft when she doesn't want to explain, and harder when she decides to set an arbitrary limitation. She made it up as she went and only detailed the part that she cared about. Example: incantations seemed to be necessary to cast in earlier stories, you had to say the spell usually. But then she realized that she can't write gun-based action scenes off that, so later on people just hurl spells from wands like bullets. No strategy, no specific use of a spell, just blasts like it's fucking D&D and they only learned magic missile. The problem isn't that HP's magic is too soft. It's that it is straight up fucking stupid.
So you only watched the movies right? In the movies they have this stupid thing of casting spells with no incantations with the sound of a canonball, but in the books they are always pronouncing them. Only in the sixth book they learn Nonverbal Spells... which Harry is horrible and never really masters. Exemple still in the sixth book when Snape beats the hell out of Harry when he is chasing him after killing Dumbledore... if you are speaking the spell your opponent can block or repel it.
@@diegocardoso4231 She wrote the books with the movies and the later books with the movies in mind. She handpicked the actors and produced the later movies. Non-verbal spells only become a concept in the later books, there’s no mention of older students or Ron’s brothers being able to perform such spells in the earlier books because she makes stuff up as she goes along. If you don’t think non-verbal spells was a retcon or only a movie specific issue then what do you think about Dumbledore’s sexuality? Or Tom Riddles Diary? Or Harry’s invincibility cloak? She was making it all up as she went along and is still making up random stuff about her canon to this day. I’m sick to death of HP fans trying to defend their precious books because the movies were so bad. The source material is bad and no matter how faithful you make the adaptation it will still be shit because at the end of the day you’re still adapting harry potter novels. The book is usually always better than the film, that doesn’t make the book good. If anything the movies do a good job overall of toning down some of the worst characters like snape and outright removing problematic and done death parts of the story like SPEW regardless of how terrible they are as films in their own right.
@@MegaLokopotbf, that type of magic, in the first few books, is presented as something that only magical children can do when their magic first presents itself, like it's strong during that time, but it's uncontrollable. Harry making the glass disappear, Neville bouncing after his uncle(?) tossed him out a window. From the way they talk about it, that type of thing stops once you start learning to control it. If it didn't, it seems like a huge waste to not take advantage. It seems like it's effective in high emotion situations, and has the ability to cast spells that the user doesn't actually know. When Neville falls off the broom and breaks his wrist, why didn't he bounce then? That could have also caused a much more serious injury. Why, when the kids are angry at each other, just as angry as Harry was at Dudley, do things not happen? I think that the magic that caused the glass to disappear is different than the magic that everyone else uses, so using it as an example of wandless, incantationless magic doesn't seem equivalent, if that makes sense. On another note, the books set up the fact that magic is a fine art, that you need to be incredibly clear with your words and that the wand movements are very important. You might say that this only applies to younger students while they're still learning, but flitwick makes it very clear the type of things that happen to competent adult wizards when they don't cast carefully. All that being said, there's a reason the books were so popular. Sure, the technical aspects and world building aren't the best, and she isn't a consistent writer, but the books are *fun*. The first few especially are an escapist fantasy. The characters are endearing, the villains are insufferable in just the right way. The plot can be silly and character choices don't always make sense, but it also doesn't matter that much, because the result is something fun. The books aren't great, but that doesn't mean you can't enjoy it, doesn't mean that you can't look past the issues, both writing and problematic social issues, and just enjoy it. But critical analysis is another way people engage with the community, and pointing these things out can help people improve their own writing.
@@drake_diangelo Like you said they learn to control them, and buy control it is meant that they learn how to restrain them, which is far easier than to outright use them consciously. Neville didn't bounce because he wasn't confident or practiced enough to know that when he fell he would bounce, he probably thought if he tried to do something he would have made it worse, why didn't he use his want? I don't see how it counts as inconsistent world building. Anyways one of the first things we see at least in the movies is mc gonnagal transforming into a human from cat form, that is certainly magic, and it is certainly non verbal and wand less.
Pro writer here. The fact that kids can project themselves into the book is massive, but also Rowling’s real talent is the ability to write characters (especially bad guys) in such a way that it illicits a strong emotional reaction in the reader. I went to a boarding school and there was one teacher at this school that absolutely everyone was terrified of, even including kids like me who weren’t in his class-and for good reason. Dude was a total asshole who reprimanded me once for not saying “please” to someone *else* in such a traumatic way that I still have the memory of it to this day. When I read Harry Potter, Snape wasn’t Alan Rickman, Snape *was* that teacher. Fear of Snape and hatred for Umbrage and love for Hagrid and Dumbledore are something the reader feels on an emotional level with such intensity that it actually drives immersion with the series.
Yes! She wrote characters people could really empathize with or otherwise imagine and "feel" vividly. Credit where it's due, she even made us adore Dumbledore when he's objectively a bad guardian and kind of crappy dude in a number of respects that weren't lampshaded or critiqued enough in the text.
@@matttriano , she created a character who was besieged from all sides, then gave us a sprinkling of characters who were kind to him. Also, most passionate Potterites were kids when the books came out, and a lot of adults don't even get great training on how to spot toxicity, abuse, and manipulation!
@@dinosaysrawr Eh....Dumbledore isn`t a great guardian but not a bad one or well a crappy person. Again far from perfect but he clearly was a good person.
I think Rowling is a much much simpler woman than she believes herself to be, and the flaws in her approach as a storyteller become more and more clear the higher age demographic she tries to write for.
Well, that argument is also valid for the Brothers Grimm. So what? Confusing the marketing with the product does not define the writer. It defines the publishing sector and its customers. I believe she doesn't think of herself as some writer genius.
@@a.tevetoglu3366 With the difference that the Brothers Grimm did not write the fairy tales. They collected them and put them all in a book for people to read. Before that, those stories had already been around for centuries at least, but they were only passed on orally from one person to another. We do not know who 'wrote' Snow White or Sleeping Beauty or Little Red Riding Hood - most likely, nobody did. The stories were shaped by many, many people telling and retelling them. The other big accomplishment of the Brothers Grimm actually was to create the first German dictionary.
As an Argentinian, I remembered I was so confused when I found out that the southamerican school of magic was on Brazil, one of the few countries in Latinamerica where spanish is not the official language. Like, what are the spanish speaking people suppose to do??😂 learn portuguese just to go to school?? That's madness. That was the moment where i realized she didn't know a thing about the world outside England.
I am brazillian, and I thought that was one of the most ridiculous things ever, too. Of COURSE in JK's little head there would be at least 3 western-european schools, but only one school in an entire freaking CONTINENT like ours, and in one of the few countries that don't speak spanish, to add insult to injury. And the name!! It literally means "witch castle", for heaven's sake, she simply couldn't care less. That was when I completely lost interest in the so-called "expanded universe" (Edit for spelling mistakes)
@glauciamsq If you think about that, being a Brazilian school, It problable would get the name of the founder of the School or some famous política, like the big majority of the schools are named here.
She probably knew, she just didn’t care enough to do research on something that’s throw away for her. Edit, though I will say, when she wrote the books the internet was a lot less available, so research was harder… but far from impossible.
Just a small point to add to the discussion the why brazil for the location of the schools when it's official language is Portuguese and most of the rest speak Spanish is because of the following. The Bishop of Rome Alexander 6 split the so called new world in half in 1494 According to Harry Potter cannon the school was founded in 10th 11th century before an imposed rule and language, by the Catholic Church. Just think if that Bishop of Rome chose the other way around Argentina would speak Portuguese not Spanish. She also wrote the first Harry Potter book philosopher/sorcerer in Edinburgh the capital of Scotland outside England.
@@markreadsbo Just a small correction: when Alexander VI split the world, Brazil actually got excluded of the portuguese area. John II, king of Portugal contested this and him the queen of Castille and the king of Aragon, actual Spain, split again with the treaty of Tordesillas, this time including Brazilian east coast.
Her whole “the status quo is good, ambition is always a red flag” thing goes even further than villainizing people who want more that what they’re given or who don’t meet her beauty standards. Rather, she elevates social station itself into a universal truth. You’re either magic or a muggle (or squib). No muggle can become magic because they don’t have the magic genes. And all muggles we meet - even the sympathetic ones - are presented as stupid, shallow, shortsighted and incurious. GEE, SUBTLE ONE THERE, Granny Jojo. -_-
I've also always found it really peculiar, how nobody seems to really know how magic is fundamentally supposed to work within the universe of Harry Potter. From the picture that the narrative paints for us, magic is something that's been around and both studied and taught for at the very least give or take a millenia and over the course of time, people of the Wizarding World have come up both some extremely mundane and bizarrely extravagant things you could do with it, but nobody seemingly ever bothers to question as to what exactly magic is or where it comes from; it's something that happens to manifest through certain individuals and not others, just because. Not sure how much that would tie to your specific point about Rowling's attitude towards status quo, but it does seem somewhat indicative of her apparent narrow-mindness and lack of curiosity to question why things are the way they are.
@@neitiajatusrikos Well muggles are kinda by default extremely easy to relate to, on account that as it stands, we'd all be muggles in Harry Potter universe and from that lense it becomes notable how garbled and messy the series' attitude towards muggles comes across. Like it's bizarre how much the whole secret society angle hinges on in-built elitism of the denizens of the wizarding world thinking themselves better than muggles, who by and large aren't even privied to their existance and yet the wizarding world is completely reliant on muggle society to even exist, because at the end of the day their society only exists within the confines of the non-magical society and just about every aspect of their secret world is just concepts copied from muggles, but with a magical coat of paint, making the dynamic between the two worlds feel borderline paracitic in nature.
As a Brazilian guy, Castelobruxo completely baffles me. It's an Aztec-like pyramid hidden in the middle of the Amazon rainforest (where likely no Aztec ever stepped) as if anyone could properly get there, and the school houses Brazilian and other Latin American wizards. Now, what language are the classes in? Most students would speak Spanish. However, the school's name is in Portuguese and it's in Brazil, which would suggest Portuguese. Also caiporas, keep in mind that Caipora is a protector of nature, now protects this man-made building for some reason. All that in what I suppose is one of the lesser offenders.
Weather it's considered cannon or not, the game Hogwarts Mystery claims that part of being accepted into Castelobruxo is the ability to navigate through the jungle to get to the school- in a way, the first test to get into the school is to actually find the school. There's an exchange student in the game that comes from Castelobruxo and that's the explanation that she gives, she even says that she got lost in the jungle for 5 days one time and had to live off of rain water and ants. I have to assume that students in Castelobruxo are forced to learn Portuguese as the character, Alanza Alvez, speaks Portuguese and is from Brazil and I don't remember her mentioning if other languages other than Portuguese are spoken there.
@@antoniofernandesmarchetti1097 oh sorry, I always thought of them as one and the same! You may be right, as far as I knew both referred to curupira as different names, but now after some research it seems like the essence of the caipora itself may be wildly different depending on the region of Brazil where you ask, while curupira is more established country-wide. I guess I kinda took my version as everyone's haha
Animorphs should have been the popular youth series. Don't let the silly morphing covers fool you. Inside the pages of Animorphs you will find an epic war tragedy. The child heroes go through bloody combat, ptsd, psychotic breakdowns, moral failings, and meaningful sacrifices. There are consequences, character growth, and upsets to the status quo. Animorphs!
Animorphs is a surprisingly excellent examination of the horrors of guerilla warfare and invisible enemies. The core characters are amazing. also the way it subtly reworks characters preconceived notions on races
Well if in Cars 2 it is implemented that Gesus and Hitler existed as cars why can't people turning into seahorses and dogs experience the tragedies as war?
I've been aware of this for years now, but the real contribution I got from Harry Potter is all from fanfiction, from reading stories where people see the problems of the original books and come up with better ways to do things, to deal with problems, to ask questions, to change.
Agreed! I've read some GREAT fanfiction stories set in that world, be it crossovers or standalone stories. Hell, I'm reading some new ones right now that are MILES better than the books themselves! The level of creativity found in them is AMAZING!
Yes, my mom and I love HP fanfics. They're usually so much better than the books and my favourite genre of fanfics is ship fics (I don't even care about the ship most of the time, because that's how much I love the stories), but I also love anything hurt/comfort and generally rewrites of the books (I'm working on my own rewrite, just gotta get a Jewish person, non-binary person, Shona person and Tamil person to work with me on this once I'm in the middle stages of this due to me wanting to get my representation right).
Honestly, I don't really like the Harry Potter books that much anymore, but I love the world as a mechanism for fanfiction authors to take and mold their own versions of it. The fandom and fanon around the world of Harry Potter is what I love.
The fandom and its creative gears are a machine for fantastic storytelling. But I think it has to be that way because the original works are so incomplete.
@@agramuglia But you wouldn’t like this pitch: Harry Potter gets adopted by Minerva Mcgnagall from birth, kills Voldemort again at a young age prompting Mcgnagall to give him a biscuit, and her brutal schooling turns him into the best Quidditch Seeker in the world and the smartest kid in school who showboats a lot. Even though Mcgnagall gets embarrassed by Harry showboating, she still loves him. Harry’s love interest is a Hufflepuff named Willow Birnbaum who Malfoy picks on for being fat but she doesn’t care what he thinks. Willow’s also got dreams of becoming a performer and she actually finds Harry cute when he’s beating up Dark wizards or showboating and is only nervous about meeting his mum.
Why wouldn't i like that pitch? That sounds pretty imaginative. I think the only thing i would say is that would make an interesting original story. @@jeffreygao3956
It is WILD that Rowling is now claiming that a key part of the whole "wizard Nazi" we thought was that main real-world-relevant parallels of the books was TOTALLY ACCIDENTAL! I'm not sure if I believe it, but at the same time, I totally can believe it. Because when I first read the books I assumed one of the reasons Hermione worked so hard is because she's Muggle-born and knows she's going to have to be twice as good to be respected...because that's what every real-world minority kid/child of immigrants/woman in a male field knows! But then I realized - no, she's an over-achiever just because, and Rowling doesn't seem to know there are stages of oppression in between rude names and genocide...
One wonders how many other profound points or brilliant bits of subtext were just purely accidental, and we're the ones projecting that additional meaning onto the books?
I think the other part that's so wild about the 'coincidence' is that it's the driving conflict in the Fantastic Beasts films. The protagonists are driven to try and stop Grindelwald by horrific visions of what will happen if they don't: World War 2.
@@raeoverhere923 Actually it's the other way around; Grindelwald has visions of WWII and sells his followers on the idea of subjugating muggles by offering the possibility of PREVENTING WWII. So the heroic forces trying to stop Grindelwald... are fighting to save WWII. It's like the ultimate status quo warrior move lol.
In the first book, you could see Slytherin house, and Snape’s bullying, from a kid’s perspective. It worked because you experience bullies and scary people as a child. But as the series goes, it turns out that Slytherin actually is evil. Draco Malfoy’s dad is just blatantly a Death Eater and nobody notices.
Indeed it make some sort of sense that to see Slytherin as evil in the first couple of books because Harry is a child but the the longer the series went that became more and more unreasenable and even adults hate Slytherin. And no Slughorn and Regulus Black are no defences because they do not chance anything about the bad name of the house.
I think in book one and two and maybe even three Harry's views on them being so black and white was okay, Harry was still a kid. But if house Slytherin is truly that evil and racist then it shouldn't exist anymore and if they are more nuanced that should have been a bigger plot point.
@@flutisticwonder Nope not true at all, It it was the Slytherins would be on his side in the battle but nah they all turned out to be scaredy cats. And Draco remained his horrible self as well. So you felt wrong.
Slytherin House's main trait is supposed to be "cunning" and "ambition", yet the trait mostly stressed by the house seems to be "conservativism" and "strict social stratification" (when it isn't straight up sociopathy and short-sighted selfishness). Ambitous people would not have sided with Umbrage when she had come to sabotage their magical education. They would not follow a guy who mostly fishes for followers within the top 1% of society and who threatens to arbitrarily curtail ambition with blood-purity nonsense. A Slytherin House functioning as advertised would have been a bastion of anti-Voldemort sentiment. Gryffindor would have actually been a more likely supporter for the Death Eaters as their "courage" seems to stop whenever societal change is threatened, so like when Hermione tried to help the House Elves and pretty much every other member of the house ridiculed her for it. It's funny how the Weasly Twins are pretty much what an ideal House Slytherin member would be like.
To be fair (though it is kinda bs in hindsight), if I remember correctly, a large majority of Slytherins are pure blood and the remainder are half blood (apparently during harry's time there was no muggle born slytherins which is bizarre to me). So it could be possible that those ones *could* be swindled into supporting him, but even then it's mostly out of questionable writing
It would have been better if it turned out it’s only a small minority in Slytherin were into the blood-supremacy stuff, while all the rest of the House roll their eyes at it. “But Slytherin said-“ “He was super old when he said all that nonsense. I don’t see why we should alienate 3/4 of the wizarding world because of what our founder ranted in his dotage.”
I mean, even in the books they go into how other factors than just whether someone is ambitious and cunning goes into slytherin. Slughorn was in slytherin and he us neither cunning or particularly ambitious. Cedric Diggary was courageous and ambitious and could have easily been in Griffindor. I think the fact that most people end up in the same house as their parents says a lot. Honestly, a bug trait that Slytherin seem to share is fear. They fear change, they fear loss of power, they fear defying the staus quo. They fear those things because they learn that to get a head they need those things. I doubt JK built the system originally for that, tho. I think she just wanted a rival house for the main characters.
Pls my heart can't take it 😭 I will always love Yuri!!! On Ice. Maybe one day, we'll get a season 2 or a short movie instead of a longer project. Honestly, screw studio MAPPA, though.
Even when I was a kid I though it was so dumb that Rowling got away with not explaining how magic works or the history of the magical world by just going “Harry was bored by it so he wasn’t listening”.
that was so obnoxious to me when i was a young child reading those books. What do you MEAN we can't learn about the history and the magic system in the magic school books. Harry was so uninterested in the majority of this new magical world he suddenly found himself immersed in!
It's especially annoying for me in the first couple books because Harry is being introduced to the world and generally seems to be pretty fascinated and transfixed by everything around him. So it's a bit odd that all of his fascination just kind of vanishes when Rowling would need to, you know, explain how things actually work. If anything, some of the most in-depth bits of exposition we got in terms of how things work was in the last couple of books (and mostly about them were kind of jarring since they were basically introduced in those books instead of building towards them from early on), when Harry would probably have the LEAST motive to learn about it due to being focused on the increasingly dire situation with Voldemort and his followers, the loss of Dumbledore, etc, etc. So...also kind of weird and jarring.
@@VenathTehN3RDAnd when things are getting increasingly dire we are still hearing about Quidditch practice and homework anxiety, even in book 6, as if these characters wouldn't rather be training to be child soldiers in the wizard war
The problem with slytherin is how in one hand rowling says is the house of ambition and cunning, not necessarily being a bad thing because wizards like merlin (that is why i liked being in that house).... but in the other hand, every character she mentions being in slytherin are not described, or described with weird malformations, unhealthy appaerance, or being too thin or too fat... or uf they are relevant, aleays plain evil
@@Venejan it's reflective of Rowling's view on the world. Shaun (the skull icon guy) has a great Harry Potter video that goes into how Rowling inserts her politics into her books.
The toilet thing is still something that gives me a headache. How did wizards didn't had toilets or bathrooms if one of it's founders literally built the entrance to a giant magic chamber of evil in a bathroom?
Actually,Slytherin used the bathroom as the entrance of the chambee out of hate for muggle potty systems,that was also the reason he fought Griffindor and left Hogwarts. I have no proof,yet no doubt.
It gets even worse. Kids don't learn magic until they're 11, which means up until then they'd always need their parents to magic away their poo. And assuming they don't learn that spell on the first day of school, I can only assume that the prefects have to go around vanishing the first-years' poop until they start to get a hang of the spell. And then even once they learn the spell, they can't perform magic outside of school, which means every kid below the age of 17 still needs their parents to vanish their turds for them during the summer breaks.
@@DTHains There's probably some low-level constant magic running throughout the place that magics away any 'stuff'. Like the magical lighting; it just exists and does it's thing without anyone thinking about it.
@@vintovkinPipes didn’t existed before the 18th century, and Hogwarts was built around the 12th century, this in my opinion is why it doesn’t make much sense, toilets did existed before pipes, but the fact that the entrance to Chamber is thought the handwasher, makes it weird for me.
As a Ukrainian I have to say that putting all post-Soviet countries together in one school is wrong for so many reasons. That school is permanently on fire. And, well, that's very much russian colonialism there;-;
honestly the whole grouping of countries in one school creates so many problems. even hogwarts being a school in the scottish highlands but being founded and primarily ran by the english would be a massive issue if uk relations in the hp universe are at all similar to real life edit: ive just gotten to the point in the video w the distribution map and hold tf up not only is hogwarts in scotland but run by the english but youve also got the irish in there?? the english and irish in the SAME SCHOOL???? and its RUN BY THE ENGLISH????? jesus fucking christ joanne
A dear friend of mine insisted I read 'A Wizard from Earthsea'. Every time I mentioned HP, he kept telling me it Earthsea was better and I'd love Ursula K. Le Guin. He was right. It was the best recommendation he gave me, and I'm very grateful for him being kind of an asshole because he didn't like HP 😂
While I find the comparison between The Earthsea Cycle and Harry Potter not that deep seeing as how the only things they share are "a wizard school" and even then Ged isn't even that much present at the school on roke in the first book, I agree it's vastly superior in every way.
I'm retroactively salty that no one handed me Earthsea when I was 12 and I didn't discover it until adulthood. I was fully living in Middle-earth at that age, but still.
I read these books right after immigrating to a different country as a disabled kid. I dropped them after the 2nd? book because, even if i couldnt express it at the time, i understood that, if i had anyone to identify with in those pages, it was the non magic humans, the ones who are made fun of, used, abused and powerless to do anything about it. JKR may like to say this is a world for everyone, but it didn't take me long to realise that she never believed it.
@@miwoj yeah because she was just cruel and a bully to anyone who didn't fit her agenda. I thought about writing a au/fanfic about the struggle and uprise of Squibs, which I found weirdly ostracised for being from the right families, probably even pure-blood, but just not able to do magic (the invisible disability of the wizarding world). Look at how they treated Neville, when he was just a late-bloomer and not that good or fast with magic as the others. His relatives threw him in a lake and out of a window! And if he would really had been a Squib he would not have bounced off the ground, but died. If you have no problem with that ideology and rhetoric being taught to millions of children, then you should really evaluate your morals.
@@mousethehuman7179 anyone who is this weirdly invested in social justice of fictional characters in a fictional world should really evaluate... something about themselves i don't know. to me nevile was just a cool character with a great story arc and that's it. somehow it never crossed my mind to over-analyze every detail of his fictional life trying to find some social ramifications to get offended by.
As a southamerican I am so used to being erased from media that I didnt see it. I was already alienated. Even now people swear pedro pascal is white. I dont know how in the fu... But they do 🤣🤣🤣🤣 (pedrito es pura, just so you know)
@@miwoj there's nothing wrong with taking a shallow approach to something, to read a book and not empathize with it at all, it might just mean you lack imagination, or that you were too young to actually delve into the world, but in the end it just means the book didn't lure you into its world. I wasn't into HP as a kid either, and liking or not liking it is up to each person, but it's not just "You're thinking too deep into it, you're a loser lol." Because this shallow, mean piece of work shaped an entire generation, it was the only popular book kids had to see themselves in it, which, if you watch the video at all, you can see it's what happened. It's not "Oh a kid was thrown out a window, whatever." It's "damn, in this world tossing a kid off a window because he can't do magic is seen as okay?" In the end, if you're not questioning what happens in the book, if you're not interested in the world you're reading, you're just skimming through pages mindlessly, you're not even truly reading anything. It might not even be your fault, but the book's for not being written in a way that can pull the reader in. Harry Potter was, and to some extent it still is, a titan of literature, and it's not wrong to take a moment to see what made it so or what are the lessons it imparts to its audience.
I think the central point of divergence between Harry Potter and Percy Jackson is the moment Sally uses Medusa's head to turn Gabe to stone and sell the resulting statue. Imagine Harry came home after the first book, burnt the Dursleys to a crisp, and sold their ashes to the highest bidder.
The difference is the Dursleys served a purpose of protection for harry throughout the whole series. Gabe was only partially useful in the first book to cover Percy but then there was no longer a need for him as that was eventually useless (it was only until Percy went to camp half blood which most of the time was like the Dursleys, a protective barrier). I still prefer the Percy Jackson series over harry potter.
@@jadbayram496 Honestly, i doubt that this entire thing was something JK Rowling had in mind from the beginning. Looking back, she very much didn't plan the story out. I mean, this entire bond of blood spell has ultra specific conditions. And even so, the Dursleys protected Harry specifically from Voldemort. What's stopping, say for example, Bellatrix from finishing the job? Really, the only thing stopping her is the fact that Voldemort insists he has to be the one to kill Harry. If, instead of insisting he has to kill Harry, Voldemort had just sent literally anyone else to kill him (seriously, what do you expect Vernon and Petunia to do against someone like Bellatrix, or even just Wormtail?), that would have worked. The Bond of Blood only protects you against the person who you were saved from.
I joke (as a former Hp kid) that Harry Potter was only big because Anime wasnt a thing in the West yet. But this video made me realize it was kinda our first real Otaku Culture with Fanfics and everything lol.
"The magic happened. And the magic is gone." That sums up the entire phenomenon of Harry Potter, because that's really what it was. A phenomenon. Something that hit hard culture-wise, and instead of remaining a fond memory is now tainted for a slew of reasons. We would look back at it with nostalgic glee, the way we think about Saturday morning cartoons and our childhood in general. There's nothing there that will endure. I mean, I might be wrong but I don't think so. Very good video!
Amari is very popular with children but unlike Harry Potter it is not gonna chance because it will be a huge universe a la Marvel Dc Star Wars. With lots of real life issues to teach children.
An utterly woke, infantile, and DEI driven interpretation. Literally no one cares. Making your JK hate sound sophisticated doesn't dilute what it really is, pure hate. Ridiculous.
I agree it’s super disappointing. And this isn’t the first time this has happened with a franchise or a book series. Or even any form of media. Wizard of Oz while a beloved movie and I still love it, we know now on what happen to Judy who played Dorthy and the heinous abuse she had to deal with just off screen. Just recently with Nickelodeon, I don’t think I need to say any that wasn’t already said. It’s hard to watch media knowing the really dark and horrible stuff that happened.
That was what I was thinking the whole time watching this, when is he going to mention Pratchett? He said back in the day her stuff was devoid. As a 12 years old I was exposed to (and met) TP, and I think that made me a better person than if I had been given HP instead.
@@FunkyLittlePoptart Shoot, Feet of Clay had an invisible poisoner (*), explored the concept of bucking a culture's engrained gender norms, and went into depth about the implications of having a magical slave race with an alien mindset in 1996, around two years before Chamber of Secrets introduced the magical slave race that Hermione is treated as a wet blanket for having any issues with for the rest of the series. And was, you know, just immaculately written. (*) SPOILERS: Who had a huge obsession with bloodlines.
The wizard poop disappearing thing stands out bc there’s not like a performative social justice reason for the retcon, it’s just the silliest thing you’ve ever heard
One of the biggest problems from a pure world building standpoint? The magic is boring. There's never an explanation of how it works or what makes somebody a powerful wizard. Magic is just a convenience in her world. After moving on to other fantasy books this only became more apparent
It’s not just that. It’s that they’re incredibly stupid with it. The Wizarding World is remarkably unimaginative and when you insert yourself into a world it’s an inherently imaginative act
@@RoadtoArkham EXACTLY! Like it's just "Unlock door" "petrify person" "disarm them" I know it's not everyone's favorite series, but just compare it to the magic in Eragon or The (incredibly underrated) Belgariad.
It’s worldbuilding without my favourite part of worldbuilding - when I worldbuild, I start with a mundane thing, say to myself ‘what if it was like this’ and then go ‘what would that mean for everything else? How does this affect the world, and how does it fit into it? Why is it like this, and what does that mean?’. Rowling stops at the ‘what if it was like this’, and it makes her world incredibly flat, boring, one-dimensional and fractured
Exactly! The magic in HP doesn’t require the characters to be innovative and imaginative with magic, something that magic should be all about. There’s a spell for everything, even killing, so they never need to come up with their own ideas about how to do things. There’s nothing to discover about the magic, it loses all the mysteriousness magic should have.
I'd argue that what actually made the books page-turners is that the main characters were relatable and the stories themselves were actually mysteries.
I've only ever watched the first two movies. And I remember finding it weird that Slytherin was just inherently evil. At the end when Slytherin was supposed to win whatever, and then Dumbledoore kept giving points to Gryffindor until they'd beaten Slytherin, I remember think 'does JK Rowling just really hate Slytherin?'
If they weren't all the super privileged students, it could have been an interesting (but on the nose) look at the school-to-prison pipeline, since all the kids grew up to participate in generational crime with many losing their lives and their freedom
? The slytherin kids were nothing but jackasses the entire year and harry and co literally just saved the school, do you not see how children reading it would see it as a win for the heros and a "stick it to those snobs" sort of thing?
@@jayla3282 Look, it's been a while since I watched the movie, and it's not like I don't think Gryffindor deserved to win, the kids literally saved the school (though it's f*cked up that it was up to children to do that). But you've kind of said my point, the Slytherin kids are awful, but why? What about being Slytherin makes someone inherently bad.
It's weird that Harry is an outsider to the world of Wizards but never expresses any desire to change anything. He has an outside perspective and it never comes up.
Yeah, it feels like the author wanted a blank slate character for the audience to project on but forgot to put in like. Nuanced impressions. When she wants to show off a new thing the character becomes a ragdoll
@@ThelouwseFD yes, but he's also the main character. Which was my point. He could have been both a pov character and a person with his own opinions about the greater world aside from "this guy sucks" or "this magical version of that conventional thing is cool". The blind acceptance of the world makes it feel stagnant. It's completely fine if it doesn't to you. A lot of people just feel it's weird that a reader pov character who grew up in our world doesn't seem to act like he does aside from not knowing shit about the wizarding world.
@@szatan9717 Oh I never said it was a good thing ! I understand why it would bother you, I was just being factual sorry. Tbh I think Harry was maybe too happy to finally feel like he belonged somewhere to question anything.
@@ThelouwseFD Don't worry, i didn't take it like that! And it would actually be a great choice, to make it so that he's so excited and happy to belong somewhere thathe doesn't pay attention to the concerning stuff. It pretty clearly wasn't the author's intent, but it's really interesting and i would love to read something like that
I prefer to call it immersiveness. Yes, the school looks breathtaking, but it also appeals to the idea of going to a place where you can develop a hidden talent of magic, explore secrets, work together in a House, and embrace your quirks. A story can have an amazing plot, profound themes, and masterful writing, it won't catch on if you cannot imagine yourself wandering around in its world.
In its heyday, there WAS one other thing that allowed kids like us (Granted, I was in high-school when my maternal grandparents introduced me to these books) to immerse ourselves in the power-fantasy of "Higher Education As An Escape-Hatch From Your Normie-Dipshit Upbringing." "Hello. My name is Professor Charles Xavier. Welcome to my School For The Gifted."
“You’re a mutant, Scotty” 😂 But yeah, I got into that a couple weeks ago after ‘97 came out and the original cartoon absolutely holds up on that. Obviously, there was censorship, but they discussed real, relatable issues of diversity and acceptance in an age appropriate way, and the sequel absolutely does not pull punches (and I mean that quite literally in Rogue’s case lol)
@@Kate-ms2mn Wow, you must be a RIOT at parties... that you don't get invited to, because you're "The Creepy Weirdo-Loser Nobody Likes, Therefore MUST Be Evolved Beyond The Common Rabble."
Agree on this. I didn't read start reading Percy Jackson until I was in my early 20's. But somehow, Rick Riordan made wonderful characters that held up so good regardless of the age. My belief is that JK Rowling wanted a simple story with simple characters for a wide net of an audience. And wrote Harry Potter at the right time, with the right audience.
I read Percy Jackson when I was around 11-12 years old, and it was like lightning in a bottle for me. I didn't read HP until was a few years older. I still prefer Percy Jackson over HP anyday; I've never finished the book series (is it still ongoing? I can't remember),but I would love to set out and re-read then all over again
@kk00au The PJO series as a whole is done. The 3 main book series are great, I highly either reading them or listening to them. As of right now most of that comes out of Rick Riordian, are basic side plots and one offs.
I read The Lightning Thief when I was a kid and had just moved away from Long Island. It didn't take long to get attached, and I can say that it was every bit as magical but more meaningful, since I came away feeling empowered to disrespect any and every adult who treated me like I didn't deserve to be taken seriously.
From the first Percy Jackson book. Percy would reference old movies I thought was odd given his background. Read a Steven King book with a kid doing the same thing but with a convincing home life to make it believable. I could also tell that the author didn’t live on the west coast. Navigating water is extremely easy for Percy. He needed to get to California. He should have traveled along the Colorado river. Really bugged me because it wasn’t even addressed. I also didn’t like how they killed Gabe then just basically laughed about it.
One thing about Percy Jackson is also that at the end of the fifth book, Percy rejects what the Gods (the system) give him as a thanks for his service and instead change the system so that no other children should be ignore or rejected by there parents.
"It fails to understand that there exists a world outside of Britain." So like how most shows form the USA are about the USA. As someone from central Europe I got used to it. All the different planets in Star Trek and Stargate etc. are very very American. And in anime everyone behaves very Japanese, no matter where they come from/where the anime is supposed to take place. I gave up complaining about that.
Kinda hilarious seeing him complain that the one time when US wasnt the center of the universe in a fictional work. Also why would it, write whats familiar to you. She is British so of course she would write about British stuff. The point when she tried to write about international wizard communities is when she fumbled greatly.
@@Bionickpunk That's not at all the point he was making. He's pointing out that compared to other masterworks of fiction whose plots have a grander scope of effects and implications on their respective fictional worlds, Harry Potter ends up feeling pretty shallow because it's as if these things were never considered and the world begins and ends within a self contained bubble. The world of Middle Earth for instance feels infinitely more fleshed out, elaborate and dynamic because the immediate plot feels connected and influenced by all the realms and cultures that exist within the world. Same can be said about Game of Thrones. Harry Potter has none of that whatsoever.
@@dougiejones628 Most of Middle Earth wasn't written for kids. Lord of the Rings and Silmarillion were adult books. If you want to compare, only compare the Hobbit.
@@Bionickpunk That might be valid for the first couple Harry Potter books where it was far more whimsical and read like children's books... But by the end of the series, the books had taken on so many more adult themes with the core plot surrounding fascism, racism and eugenics, and it was clearly trying to be a more mature allegory on society and politics. I don't think it's fair to dismiss valid world-building criticisms because "it's just a kids story." It started as a kids book and tried to transition into the big leagues of these epic fantasy classics like LOTR.
@@tiagodasilva1124Yes, the commentor says so themselves. The point is that Brasil speaks portuguese not spanish so the population of all other countries must learn portuguese intead of only brazilian wizards having to learn spanish, it is really simple stuff if rowling did the bare minimum in that map.
I've been joking about a thing for years.. saying that if she ever wrote an Ilvermorny series there would be a character in it, a Mexican exchange student called Amigo Gonzales, but I stopped when I realized it felt more real than just a joke.
And also, the countries have way bigger populations than Uk, to combine them all in just one school is nonsensical, even with the magic factor. Not to mention that uniting chileans with argentinians in one place sounds like hell lmao
@@zoerebon3127 Or chileans with peruvians (pisco). Or chileans and bolivians (Antofagasta). Or argentinians and uruguayans (football+Liga Federal). argentinians and paraguayans (Chaco). Or-
The problem is not really the fact that nothing changes. The problem is that the "nothing changes" is not planned and not trying to say anything. There are many good creations that have an ending where the characters and world stay the same (I have several examples off of my head, but they're mostly theater because I'm a theater magor), but they are criticizing the world and characters, and through them, criticizing the world we live in. My favorite example is the play "Mother Courage and Her Children" by Bertolt Brecht and Margarete Steffin. In the beginning and the end of the play, Mother Courage (the main character) stays practically the same, and the same war is going on all throughout the play, and nothing changes although (spoiler) all of Mother Courage's children die throughout the play. But the whole point of this play is to criticize the capitalistic world that is full of wars. This is on purpose, and has a reason. And this is done really well. So my point is, I agree with you in general, but I think this is important to note
This is such a specious criticism passed around by the echo chamber crowd. A work is not poorly written merely because it doesn’t offer the explicitly revolutionary leftist narrative you seem to demand from practically everything.
Growing up, I went to a church that hated Harry Potter. And often times I was verbally bullied by the adults for this. Harry Potter was my own escapism at the time. And reading how these kids stood up to these evil people who were opposing them made me realize that my church was.. gross... They didn't like anyone that didn't fit their mold. They bullied people who were different. So I got out of there. Growing up, the world of Harry Potter, and JK herself, made me realize that the very thing that helped me escape my bullies were... No different... It's strange to think about. But it makes a strange amount of sense.
I once came across someone who have a idea that Harry could be the Auror after a war but because of his untrieted Ptsd he quite and become DA teacher to make sure the next generations gonna be more prepared for all Wizarding World dangers. And honestly I love it
Probably not? Back when the books came out, there weren't TH-cam book reviewers who could read the books and say "well it's alright, but it's not great" or ask questions about the content of the books to mass audiences. When she released the books, the market for young adult fantasy novels was still largely untapped. You didn't have twilight or house of night or divergent or vampire diaries or stuff like that to saturate the market and make you look really critically at the writing.
If it was written by a different writer…probably. TOH is basically the modern day HP and it did big on numbers but that was because that series had a good writing team. High fantasy is still pretty popular these days.
I disagree with your take the Harry Potter's use of a soft magic system is detrimental, because it's partially responsible for the series' broad appeal. A lot of folks don't like having to wrap their heads around hard fictional systems. It's the same reason why Star Wars was so initially successful, where rules around things like "The Force" are never explained mechanically, only emotionally. For all her flaws, Rowling was extremely good at having her plots make emotional sense, allowing most readers to suspend disbelief and follow along. Soft magic itself really isn't the problem. Look at all the stuff in Lord of The Rings that's never explained outside "a wizard did it." The problem is Rowling failed to integrate her soft magic system into the wider world, something she DID build hard rules for, forcing audiences to see the soft magic more critically. Things like every adult wizard being able to teleport wherever they wished, for example. That only works if the world accounts for it, which it very much doesn't.
I really would not compare magic in Harry Potter to Lord of the Rings, because aside from minor stuff like moments of premonition and what not, in the Lord of the Rings the ins and outs of using magic would be privied to a few exceptionally powerful individuals, none of whom are our point of view characters into the world (while Gandalf is one of the heroes of the story, we never experience it from his perspective), whereas in Harry Potter the titular main character and our direct pov into the narrative is someone who actively uses magic and thus should presumably be able to comprehend its intricacies in some level of detail. With that frame of mind, it does make the writing of the magic system come across as pretty poor, when outside Expecto Patronum (the only spell in the entire series I can think of, which has specific requirements to be used and which we see Harry have any kind of extensive struggles to learn it) we can only really tell the difference between simple and advanced magic via the story explicitely spelling out which is supposed to be which and I really can't think of a single other spell, that would be established to have any tangible way in which it would be difficult or taxing for the caster, beyond needing them to focus on what they'd want the spell to do and even that is hardly all that consistent.
@@jondoe7036 | Again, it all comes down to personal preference. Rowling considers spells only as plot devices as opposed to a deeper part of the world, and for many people that's all they needed to be. Harry struggling with one spell but not others doesn't make logical sense, but it DOES make emotional sense, because that one specific spell represents him grappling with his childhood trauma and whatnot. Now, a BETTER writer that actually paused to think about things for a bit could EASILY have made the spells work from both logical AND emotional standpoints, but it's best to judge art for what it is and not what it isn't, eh?
@@PotatoPatatoVonSpudsworth Still find in terms of execution Harry Potter's magic system is servicable at best, for how being so vague and simplistic, yet also hyperspecific and broad in terms of utility, it ends up feeling messy, logically inconsistent and weirdly underwhelming after a certain point. Something Star Wars and Lord of the Rings don't suffer from, due to keeping the use of magic as more limited and simple, while assigning a greater sense of importance to it; nobody uses the Force to do their laundry.
I agree with you. I think only RPG fans know the difference between hard magic and soft magic. I don't think the general public knows the difference nor they care.
One thing I do really like about books is the way that Rowling writes grief. It’s something she personally understands and something that was really central to my childhood and i think a big part of why the books resonated emotionally for me so much
"The magic happened, and the magic is gone." That's a great way to sum up how I feel about the series now. It was great while I thought it was great, but I've moved on and find magic in other stories now!
As someone who started reading HP in their twenties, I never had much illusions about the series. It was a cute school series with some random magical elements sprinkled in top. To me, it was pretty clear from the start that there was little underneath the surface. I mean, look at Quiddich, a game so ridiculously designed to give the male protagonist a big hero moment, single-handedly winning what was ostensibly a team sport. The one redeeming quality the author had was her ability to write a good plot twist. The biggest strength of the first few books were the endings that subverted expectations and surprised us. But as the serious dragged on, the lack of vision became cleared and clearer. You can see it in the Quiddich matches as much as everything else. The loopholes the story has to go through to make the games interesting beyond catching the Snitch is telling. And then the world got increasingly darker, lost it's initial charm, while more and more bad world-building was stacked upon upon each other. By the time the last books rolled around, reading them felt more like a chore, and the best thing about the ending was that it gave me enough closure to put the series down and ultimately stop caring about it. Looking back, it feels like a mix of traditional boarding school fiction, a sprinkle of barely understood magic and a good sense of pace and suspense that caught on fire at the exact right time and snowballed into this huge phenomenon. Lucky break.
Ugh, I wouldn't even call the "plot twists" good. As a kid, I couldn't follow the ending of the 3rd book, all these random characters I've never met or formed an attachment to popping up like it's some big reveal. And that 4th book ending, WOAH was that bad. As a kid, I was thinking "who tf is Crouch??" And on top of that, learning Harry hadn't actually formed any relationship with Moody was such a rug pull. A twist for the sake of a twist; nothing thematically added to the story. M Night Shamaylan-level writing.
@@GoeTeeksReally makes the sorting even worse. You get designated as one thing and that’s what you stay as for your entire school career. No matter how much you change.
I think the most common trait in Slytherin was people who feared things like change, or loss of power. Some feared them so much they would do horrible things to keep things as they were. Tom Riddle feared his muggle side, feared not having the power over others, and feared death. This makes sense why Slytherin kids tended to side with the non progressive side. It also makes sense why someone like Slughorn was slytherin, or Snape.
@@bencheevers6693 I think we're making the same point. The video is titled "Was Harry Potter Ever Good?" and the answer is "no". So thousands of writers say "how did it become one of the best selling series of all time?" and the answer is that it was fun. Not just for children, but for adults. They became emotionally invested in the entire world, as well as the characters in it. It's similar to the different between watching TV one episode per week, versus binging an entire series in one sitting. What made so many shows enjoyable was the speculation and fan interaction between episodes. Wondering about the most major to minor plot aspects. That element is entirely gone once the show is over, unless you find group of people willing to watch it one episode at a time, avoid the wiki, and discuss it. But even then it doesn't replicate the experience of going to work and all your coworkers discussing the most recent episode of Fringe over lunch. Harry Potter is the same. When it's all done and behind us, it's both mediocre and troubled. But if you were there for the ride, it was incredibly fun.
@@PsRohrbaugh I disagree, but you explained your point well. Harry Potter isn't bad or even mediocre, it's fine, there's nothing wrong with it and it is very good in some areas. When you look at it through the lens of it's target audience, it's got good characterization with relatable although fantastical struggles and excellent world building. I mean it's not LotR or Wheel of Time but it is entirely comprehensible by children and I would bet statistically wishing to be a wizard and part of the harry potter world was the number one fantasy of western kids. The cultural storm was created by those factors I mentioned that got kids and their parents into the series, you can start harry potter with an 8 year old or a 14 year old can pick it up and get started, that's another aspect that's great about the series, it's perfectly targeted. I'm not saying it's equivalent to lotr or even The Hobbit but i just convinced myself, for a childrens book I'd say it's quite good. Obviously there are tons of plot points to criticize and I do, it could be better in that aspect but overall it's at least a B and probably a B+ Edit: And that's kind of what I was saying in my original comment on what makes a children's book good, I would criticize plot points in HP but the characters and world and adventure aren't hampered in a child;s mind by that. Since Rowling became a hated figure I've seen valid criticisms of the plot but I've also seen a lot of reaching and a lot of revisionist history, that's what got me to click on this video, people hate her now and want to discredit her, that's such motivated reasoning. For what it is, it's quite good and only not great because medium level plot issues though nothing egregious, it's a lot harder to write yourself into a corner when you've got magic and contrivance also isn't as bad when you're dealing with prophecy and chosen ones.
@@bencheevers6693 My point was simply that with hindsight, you can compare HP to many contemporary works and realize that they were almost as good, equivalent, or even superior. I'm not a literature expert. But I read many books during that time which were at least as captivating, but never gained the same level of popular appeal. From Animorphs to Endymoin Spring there was a lot of good contemporary literature out there. But they never quite got that mass appeal fun factor. And yes I spent hours trying Harry Potter spells hoping they'd work. The innocence of youth.
@@PsRohrbaugh I would say HP is significantly better than Animorphs, i mean Animorphs is ok, it's basically power rangers, alien good guy gives team powers to fight alien bad guys, I don't remember a single character from animorphs and even with that criticism, Animorphs has good world building and neat powers and fighting but it doesn't nearly have that mass, genre escaping appeal that HP did. I'm not familiar with the second one but the question is "was HP ever good" and the answer to that, I think, is obviously, and it still is. Animorphs was quite successful, on my scale I'd give it a B-. Another good series was Artemis Fowl which I'd give a B, it's not as good as HP, it's a little silly but I think it's aimed at the ages as HP. It's got a cool magical world and a ridiculous mundane world, it has some good magical characters and some quite silly ones, and some very silly conventions. I would say it's not a mistake that HP became a juggernaut while these other properties didn't, the only one I'd put on the same level of it is His Dark Materials but that's just a couple years older. HP didn't do expired kids till 4. Edit: I don't know if any As exist in children's books, like maybe the Hobbit, I put LoTR down after Rivendell and picked up the hobbit and loved it, probably around 13. HDM is probably an A-, it's really really hard to straddle that line of complexity and depth while also being for children and adolescents. Also The giver books are As, especially Gathering Blue, I read that in 6th grade and it was the first book I loved from outside fantasy. I also read The Book of Three that year and couldn't understand the place names or keep the character names straight. That's the challenge with writing for dumb kids, you need to make things really accessible and that's the strength in HP, it's super accessible while also being surprisingly complex. Also I read her-minion every time.
I think the aesthetic and John Williams score really carried the series for me which is probably why I've only enjoyed the first 3 movies and the Universal Theme park. It was an escape but once you actually think about the stuff in these books/ movies its kinda just stories and characters that have all been done better somewhere else
Same, actually? I've barely touched any HP media in...a while, the only things I revisit CONSTANTLY are John Williams' scores, which I used to listen to while reading the books as a teenager but now I often put them on to listen to as...well, concert music on MP3s or some kind of magic-themed ballet. Maybe it's for the better that when Williams was brought in to conduct for the opening of the Universal park he did a suite of music from the scores rather than writing a whole original piece based on it like he did with Star Wars: Galaxy's Edge (though tbf the Galaxy's Edge theme kicks ass)
It would be one thing if the characters eventually realized they were being awful and apologized, but they never do. The universe shows that she was wrong, and the others were right to humiliate her. The one time Hermione actually tried to change things and do good but inconvenient to humans, she was the butt of a joke. SPEW? Really, Rowling? You'd openly mock an earnest attempt at doing right. Who DOES that??
It is a reflection on the writer who can raise topics like Civil Rights, Personal Agency and Freedom and then cast VICIOUS MOCKERY on them with NO Educational subtext on the greater morality. Hermione is trying to help people out of slavery = Hermoine's so smart and yet such an idiot. How insufferable are people that care so much for others that she extends that beyond the MC. smh
@@tomfoolery-4444 JK Rowling is a centrist. Hermione’s character flaw in that storyline is being an annoying progressive social activist. What she should have done in the moral universe of Harry Potter is to become a politician who gets some tiny incremental change to the treatment of elves rather than just making everyone uncomfortable with a full throated protest movement
@@TheJadedJames I think some of the HP fanfics that I read (don't remember the titles off the top of my head) have painted the ministry as starkly incompetent, on top of already being described in the books as horribly corrupt. What I'm trying to say is that even if Hermione were to join the ministry and try fighting for the lives of the downtrodden, she would realize how pointless it is just as quickly as her stunt with SPEW went south.
Already subscribed after the mention of Six of Crows and PJO but anyone who brings up Fullmetal Alchemist in a discussion about literary merit is automatically one of my favorite people. As far as I am concerned, Fullmetal Alchemist (the manga, in its og form) is as close to perfect as a story can get :)
Oh the grief people (adults, not kids!) gave me like 10-15 years ago when I *dared* to say that I don't think the Harry Potter books are such amazing literature! The way people would call me and other people who criticized them elitist and worse.
I think a good counterpoint to Rowling is Terry Pratchetts' discworld, because even though the tone is different, that of satire, paraody, and comedy. The world is better explained and better built. Also, Pratchetts writing is also very British, but all of the various characters have nuances, different perspectives, and the ability to grow. Pratchett also questions the status que a lot as is sorta the point in satire.The series also has a wizard university, which is just fun and daft
Another point I'd like to add: The morality is pretty much not based on action, but on association. To make it simple: There are no bad actions, only bad factions. Harry and his friends do obviously horrible stuff, much worse than some things that supposed "bad guys" do. Let's take chamber of secrets as an example. What's the worst thing that Malfoy has done at the end apart from being the son of a slave-owner (which is excused in book 4)? He has stolen something from Nevil for a mean prank, and he said mean things. Now what about the protagonist trio? They have drugged, stripped, and locked up people to investigate a hunch that turned out to be false. But that's okay because these were bad guys. They were innocent, but they belonged to the bad group. The protagonists don't suffer any consequences and don't even have to apologize.
I find it a little sad how the main appeal of the Harry Potter series isn't mentioned at all. In simple terms, the dialouge in Harry Potter is very much like how children would and do behave at this age, though with a bit more polish. And with her background as a teacher this is her main strength as a writer. Rowling is extremely good at depicting the thoughts and actions of adolecents that the entire series is carried on this idea. This includes the childlike wonder of magic, which shouldn't be a strictly defined system of spells to begin with, as it would be less immersive for the intended audience. All in all Harry potter isn't meant for adults, and more complicated fantasy books like Game of Thrones, and Mistborn just simply aren't for children. It would be come a homework assignment instead of something fun. And that's ok. The important bit is to what extent a work appeals to its intended audience, and Harry Potter is incredible at it. In short, falling put of love with something doesn't make that something bad, just that your tastes have changed, and that's ok.
That was the initial appeal yes and it works for first half of the series. Thing is Harry doesn’t stay a child for long, everyone witnessed Harry grow up in realtime, Rowling had many opportunities to gradually add depth & nuance to her world via Harry maturing; have his initial outlook of the world questioned or whatnot cause that’s a fundamental experience of growing up. Something i think especially matters when setting up a War plot. But it seemed the simplicity that was its charm became detrimental as the story gets darker & darker. I don’t think Rowling was prepared nor knowledgeable enough to write something that serious and complex.
@@astrinymris9953 yeah, it's on her wikipedia page. She finished the philosophers stone right before earning a teachers degree, and taught students for while until she earned enough from her writing on its own.
I agree, reading now the books, some of the characters for me come as obnoxious but they mature through the books and as an adult yourself you start to question things from another point of view. Still I will always like Harry Potter for its simplicity and world building I guess
the house elves status quo and how the main characters just accept it, particularly Harry, just shows how weak and bland of a character Harry actually is. he stands for nothing, except that he wants to stop Voldemort. he just wants to be a cop to reinforce the clearly problematic status quo.
@@himbourbanist He stands for bravery, vigilance, and camaraderie as far as I remember. But I guess those aren't taught at liberal arts colleges, so it's not something zoomer idiots can yap about.
I myself found it quite fascinating how Lord Vetinari changed throughout Pratchett's books- and how some of his character reverted as the illness took more and more of poor Mr. Pratchett
One of the red flags that I noticed even as a kid when reading the books was that in "The Order of the Phoenix" Harry is not capable of committing torture, even when he clearly wants it. That's when I realized that Rownling's characters are not real characters, they are just rag dolls.
Well, the example of Frodo is exactly my point. Frodo ultimately fell to the power of the ring, showing how powerful the power of the ring is and that Frodo is not an incorruptible character. But Harry was not able to torture Bellatrix because he was not sadist enough for the Crucio curse to work or whatever. It is very lazy writing to keep the hands of your protagonist clean when he clearly wants them dirty. It would have been also thematically more complex, as Harry would have discovered he is also capable of committing horrible things, just like Voldemort. But in Rowling's simplistic worldview the good are good and the bad are bad, and that’s it.
I used to be a Potterhead. I read the first book when I was Harry's age and there were no sequels out yet; I was a fan from the start and grew up with the series. I was obsessed. But, luckily... HP wasn't my first literary love. My enjoyment of the series started to decline as the films were coming out, and when book 5 was published, I already didn't GAF. Why? I started feeling that the books were mediocre as hell. When I was 10, I didn't notice this at all. An idea came to me WAY before JK became an outspoken bigot; the idea that HP was manipulative. That it drew me in so bad because it offered the perfect fantasy (another world where you're rich, famous, and accepted) rather than because of any narrative merits. Has anybody else felt like that early on?
@@egg_bun_ when I was in love with HP it was a dumb book for unpopular nerds. When I stopped caring about it, it was a trendy international phenomenon. FML x)
I wasn't an HP kid. I was an adult reading them to my kids. And I really enjoyed the first three books. I still do. They were simple, clear themes and plotlines, and made effective use of kid's lit and fantasy tropes. I understood the craze. But you are right that by the fourth, things started downhill. Steeply. The greatest thing HP has to offer is that it opened the literature world up for kid and young adult fantasy and SF. Basically showed it could be massively profitable for publishers, opening the door for many better writers.
@@dubitataugustinus yes! So accurate for me as well. Except I was a few years behind you, since I started reading it in 2004, but (in my personal experience anyways) I experienced the same phenomenon. Like it was cool for the people who liked it, and there was stuff like idk? Bookmarks? Posters? Small things for the nerds, but nothing like how it started getting all totally nutty a few years after that.
Something I just realised is in the comparison between Harry Potter and Percy Jackson. One is a series that has been unable to grow past it's initial run. The other is a series which has continued well into the present day and has an infinite number of stories that could be told
Except Percy Jackson is far more boring, with lack of interesting characters and with nothing to actually say Harry Potter came in and left on a high note
Kingsley is the only black character and he doesn't appear till the fifth book... Assuming you ignore Dean Thomas who appears in let me check... Every single book.
@@krishmajumder1411Were any of the characters described as black, though? I remember with Blaise how even his gender wasn’t nailed down from the start.
@@animeotaku307i havent read the books but i think so because the producers of the films(dont remember his name)and the first director Chris columnis really wantes to cast actors that looks similar to the characters of the books
I first fell out of love with the series, strangely enough, due to RL Stine. He had a collection that had a Bram Stoker story in it, leading me down a road of Bloch, Matheson, Sloane, and King, and leading me to realize how shallow the Potter books were. That said, I still enjoy some content that is admittedly not the best (oh Warriors, my beloved), so I don't know how much I can say about this without being slightly hypocritical.
I have a lot of respect for Stine. He wrote a lot of silly, light books for kids, but those silly, light books drew from a massive wealth of horror literature to be effective and memorable. He knew the assignment.
This doesn’t help their argument. However, even if there wasn’t a lot of diversity…I don’t see the issue. The book is set in the 90s…at a British boarding school…in Scotland. I’m very confused on the issue. Also, how far does “representation” go? Do we need one blind person, a deaf person, a neurodivergent person etc? Like does every box need to be ticked
@@davidfairweather3301it’s a fantasy book, if diversity is the one thing that makes you complain about realism then you have something else going on there. And no, you do not need to tick every box. But I don’t see what’s wrong with making a children’s story that provides a sense of immersion and belonging and choosing to incorporate different types of people in order to succeed further with that, hence the Percy Jackson series.
@@davidfairweather3301 So like if you actually watch the video you would be able to understand how that could be detrimental. In Harry Potter’s instance, it’s clear that JKR has a bias towards a specific group of people-white, heteronormative, British, goes with the status quo, so on and so forth. When we acknowledge this it becomes acceptable to question her intentions of having only those group of people heavily involved in the story, while those who aren’t apart of those groups are often side characters with no actual depth, made a spectacle, or are ostracized based on the characteristics she deems to be deserving of those treatments. You see what kind of message that sends to children, especially one, as I mentioned before, provided immersion and belonging? But I’m not sure why I’m typing this all out anyways, because I’m sure you’re just asking that as an attempted “gotcha.”
@@char932 you’re crying about a lack of diversity in a book series set in Britain in the 1990s…with the school being in Scotland. Diversity for diversity sake isn’t progressive it’s pandering.
I remember feeling something off, as a teenager, Hermione was constantly advocating for elves and everyone around her was upset and rolling eyes at her. At one point, I think I even remember Ron had an argument with her and Harry kind of sided with him that Hermione was doing too much. It also bothered me a lot that I remember Harry having a massive amount of money at Gringotts but couldn’t be bothered to help more to the Weasleys. And the excuse was always the same. That they would be offended and had too much pride to accept his money. Apparently, the Weasleys were poor but too centered economically to accept social welfare or something that could’ve helped them without being exploited.
28:02 That was actually a point I brought up to one of my friends when I said that Hogwarts itself makes no sense. The way their spells work, it would be like going to school and learning what a math problem's answer is, but not learning to work the problem or apply the method to other problems. Harry Potter magic is like learning a language from a phrase book, they give you specific words and pronunciation and tell you what they translate into, but don't teach you the grammar, sentence structure, or phonetics. Hogwarts, as a school focused on teaching magic, should have classes on magic theory, spell development, etc.... The closest it gets is potions, but even there everythjng is rote formula, with the closest we get to potion theory being Snape taunting students with various ways it can go wrong, without explaining why that happens. Sorry, for the slight rant, anyone who happens to be reading, but even when I was first reading the books in middle school that bothered me. I couldn't express what was wrong in the way I can now, but the magic system seemed poorly thought out.
Strong points here. I was one of those kids who escaped into the Harry Potter world. I would read them obsessively and part of me wants to give credit to the series for helping me to enjoy reading as much as I do today. But the truth is that I liked to read even before Harry Potter and now I wish that I had latched onto a different series. I think its house-system was actually a little damaging because it suggested that people were best when they box themselves into destined identities that played to their strengths. I don't want to just blame Harry Potter, but I think it made me rigid in my pre-teen and teenage years, where I had to maintain some image of who I was supposed to be and of those around me. At the same time, I was grappling (or more accurately avoiding) with discovering that my sexuality was gay. So there's a ton of stuff from that which isn't really fair to put on these books, but I guess I'm looking at it as an opportunity cost. I wish I had had escaped into a world that would have actually helped my development in real life, rather than Harry Potter which reinforced the idea that the system was right, that I needed to conform to it, and in my case, that meant that my sexuality was a bad thing. It seems odd to say all this when Harry Potter had such a big slash community, but I never took part in that, so I guess I missed out on that lol. I guess take the above with a grain of salt. I just started therapy about a year ago, in my early thirties, where I'm finally working on accepting myself. So maybe the lens I'm looking through aren't the most objective.
I feel like the house system was very weird for her to implement. It’s a real thing in the uk in some schools but is chosen randomly not by characteristics. It might have been something she observed with being restricted to a group of people and how that changes you but plain stereotyping is weird. If she didn’t make it personality based it would be less of a big deal that we don’t see people from other houses as often. The “Slytherin bad” thing could have been a great commentary on nurture and how ideologies spread easily. Funnily enough Jkr being this rigid shows that as I’m assuming she was in a house as she went to boarding school. Jkr has a very rigid mindset herself (politically and not) so she applied it to what she was writing in the same way.
I was a bit over the age range when Harry Potter came out, I was at that 'I am too cool for kid stuff phase' of my teenage years. Which is ironic. But even to this day I never connected with it or knew anyone that did. And I am British too, Harry Potter was wild over here in the early 2000's, it was on everything, but I kind of flew over it. But in hindsight I am glad I never had that attachment seeing how the author has been behaving.
Not to mention that with fandom at it's peak during the height of Harry Potter's popularity, the usage of the word "Trope" spiked. This in turn, what allowed a very deadly concoction of JK Rowling, John K, and John Boorman to cause harm to the entertainment industry. If it wasn't Excalibur, it was Harry Potter. If it wasn't Harry Potter, it was Ren & Stimpy due to how starved Young Adults were for media at the time.
I didn't get into the books when the craze was going on, and I've only fallen in love with the world through its fanfiction. I was doing a Creative Writing course at university in the early 2000s and one of my teachers made a comment about the books and was surprised at the class' reaction to it. Pretty much every student who read the books ripped them to pieces for their lack of quality and spark. I even remember some saying they were horrified (and disgusted) with how big the series had got when there were more well-crafted books out there which wouldn't get a tenth of the Harry Potter attention.
@@Bionickpunk They are both bad but movie Hermione became a little more likable. I already see you are a agressive stan and i love chatting with people like you so i am looking forward to an angry responds because Hermione stans are the most agressive people ever.
I love Hermione but I can see how she could have been seen as a know-it-all Also is it just me or did her characterization seem to revolve more and more around romance as the books went on? Eh idk I could be misremembering
The funny thing is now you literally can't have magic people in a school setting at all without the Harry Potter comparison. Even Name of the Wind got that sometimes which feels kind of reductive if you've actually read that book
When I came across the Worst Witch books, I was shocked by all the similarities! I do think Rowling was writing for a slightly older audience, but people definitely need to talk about how much in these books lines up more.
@@michaellauritano5252 I think Netflix did a Worst Witch reboot at some point which was ****ing hilarious when I considered that almost everyone who saw that will consider this story from the 1970s is ripping off Harry Potter
It would be EXTREMELY unfair to say she ripped off Earthsea, considering that Roke is barely described at all and is more like a mystic academy than an actual modern boarding school. And Roke wasn't even the first magic school, there are still Keshatta, Scholomance and the one in Once and Future King.
Going to be a bit of a devil's advocate here. I'm not going to claim that the books were flawless, or that the criticisms aren't valid. But I wouldn't say there's _nothing_ worthwhile in the books, or that the only reason we like them is because of self-inserting. I'm GenX, so I was an adult when the books came out. I loved fantasy, though, and became addicted to HP. Even wrote a few fanfics, and read many, many more. I never inserted myself in the books (self-inserting is kind of a foreign concept to me. I read books to get away from myself and become somebody else). So it isn't that. For me, outside of the world itself, and the character of Harry, I... really enjoyed the themes of HP. Yes, themes. :) Specifically, the ongoing themes of love being the strongest (but least exploitable) magic, and the theme of choice. While love conquering all is a cliche, I do think the HP books did a great job of showing that, while it's super-powerful, it's also impossible to purposely exploit. The act of trying to exploit it, nullifies it. It can only be given freely, and that type of magic can't be used for your own personal gain. And I do think that HP did an unusually good job of teaching children that it's our choices that define us. Believe it or not, that's not something we always took for granted. It got to the point where, when JKR's behavior started getting really egregious, the best way I could think to respond was to "make a choice between that which is right and that which is easy."
That's the Tolkienian concept of the moral victory over evil, best exemplified in Frodo needing to destroy to the Ring, or Théoden's Ride of the Rohirrim at the Fields of Pellenor. She didn't invent that trope. I'd say she was much worse at it, because she didn't have a mythological-cosmogonical background for her themes, and she treated the material loosely.
Yes, thank you! Fellow Gen-x here. I’m seeing the book in the context of the time in which it was written. I was also an adult at the time. I love JK’s writing, the great character development, the humour and the themes. I’m not sure it’s fair to ask a book written 30 years ago to fulfill the demands of the present society.
I consider myself fortunate to have grown up reading the works of Terry Pratchett, and that the whole 'potter' thing passed me by unnoticed. There was so much to the text and subtext in Pratchett's output, and a genuine warmth and love of a flawed humanity underneath it all, and a mystified indignation at how barmy we can be at out worst, that seemingly just isn't present in rowling's writing Plus the author himself being a delightful rascal who decided that, having been knighted and therefore legally permitted to wear a sword, sourced some meteoric iron and forged his own sword of meteoric iron, is so much better than spending hours on twitter inserting retroactive representation and worldbuilding about pooping into the canon
For anyone reading the comments looking for book recommendations: Read Belle Revolte. It's a queer fantasy nove; about two girls swapping magic schools, with a well defined hard magic system with clear limitations, and is about overthrowing a corrupt Monarchy.
Another recommendation: A Practical Guide to Evil. It's a sorta generic fantasy world, except everyone knows they are living in a story, and stories have the force of laws of physics. A Hero pushed off a cliff by a Villain will NEVER be harmed by the fall. People whose beloved mentors just sacrificed themselves are effectively indestructible, so smart opponents just withdraw immediately and try again later. "Aggrieved orphan finds a magic sword and avenges the conquest of the Kingdom" is such a powerful force of nature that villains build well-funded orphanages which provide a solid education to minimize the number of aggrieved orphans in existence. There's an actual, canonical, inverse Evil Overlord List called Two Hundred Heroic Axioms, including such gems as "If your trusted companion suffers a loss and then starts wearing black, they are no longer to be considered a trusted companion." It's also the best queer fiction I've ever read. It's a world where patriarchy is almost nonexistent. Almost none of the labels we use for sexual and gender identities are ever used in this world because we were never othered for who we are. It's not just queer acceptance or inclusion, but full integration into a world which never sees us as something to call queer. And on top of that is the fact that the superpower system of this world, Heroes, Villains, anyone else who takes up a Named Role in a Story unfolding, is explicitly a trans metaphor. Characters often take on a new identity, a new Name, transitioning into the Role, by declaring it. Making it so by the declaration. It's got the single best character arc I've ever read, which I will say no more about. The first books have good prose, while the later ones have hands down the best prose I've ever read. The world is well-conceived and built, with history and the consequences of that history plainly on display. And it probably did a lot of the heavy lifting in radicalizing my politics far to the left. AND it's a free webserial. I can't recommend it enough.
Harry Potter was the first time I recall when I saw an online fandom where people treated "I like this media thing" with the same energy as a religion, which probably wasn't helped by actual religious groups beefing with it. I will forever associate it with people who fought viciously over fan couples/sites & LJs devoted to them and with people getting really pissed when I said JKR was a coward for not making Dumbledore's gayness actual text. (Everyone in the latter category owes me an apology, unless you're STILL cool with off-page "reveals" for queer characters.) I could & still do understand why so many people latched onto HP's world as kids, but I was in my 20s when the books came out, and the adult fandom were the ones that I saw, and they have always, at best, confused me. I dipped after the first book leaned hard into "these people are bad, and their badness is revealed by virtue of their looks" in a way that not even Roald Dahl did. I'm glad that Percy Jackson is still around, even if he did almost immediately cave to pressure to erase his off-page "this character is ace" reveal. Not gonna forget or forgive that, given how little we had at that point. At least Riordan is TRYING to be a decent influence, instead of swan diving into destructively vocal hatred.
@@berengustav7714 I think it was Artemis. (Knowing my mythology more than his series, I personally would have chosen Athena for an Olympian character who's ace, but that's beside the point.) The reactions from people who didn't like that reveal were extremely nasty, and he reversed it the next day. As if social media reveals weren't already a cop-out...
joanne "you mean i didn't invent fascism??" rowling edit: i'm feeling really seen by your conclusion that the end of the series--that god damn epilogue--ruined the entire story. i was *obsessed* with harry potter. but i was 19 or 20 when the final book came out, and as a person of color who was grappling with their sexuality and indirect biphobia, it really left a bad taste in my mouth that harry's happy ending turned out to be working for the system that failed him and endangered his contemporaries in the first place. and people gave me shit for it! i used to joke that the experience of reading deathly hallows and learning the truth about dumbledore (who was my favorite character, a sort of father figure ideal bc my dad was kind of horrible) was the book equivalent of growing up and realizing that your parents aren't what you set them up to be in your child mind. that could be applied to the entire series, tbh.
I was squarely in the demographic age group for Harry Potter as it was coming out. I was also a capital-R Reader - any time not spent reading was time I resented. My favourite genres were Sci-Fi and Fantasy. I never owned the Harry Potter books. My younger brother did, and I would borrow them from him. My favourite series at the time was Animorphs and while I liked Harry Potter just fine, I could not figure out why everyone was going mad for it. To me it just... didn't stand out. It was like the Worst Witch, but with bits of Narnia and Roald Dahl thrown in. Thank you for validating my childhood confusion!
Yes. The answer is yes. No, comment section, it wasn't "just the fanfics" or "just the merchandise" or whatever, you greatly overestimate the engagement of the average Harry Potter reader in fandom. I read it and fell in love with it just as it was, on its own, and so did basically every person I knew back then. Now that we aren't ten years old anymore we recognize more and more flaws in the book series, go figure, but this doesn't mean it was secretly bad all along. It wasn't.
Actually it does mean it. And yes it is just the fanfiction and the merchindise or whatever. I am still glad most children have moved over to better franschises.
@@poppie267 Look, I get it. It would all be a lot easier if Harry Potter was the worst book series ever, because then it wouldn't be as conflicting to talk or think about Rowling's horrible politics. You can just peacefully hate her and everything she's ever done and stood for. And hey, it's pretty easy to go into a book deciding to hate every last bit of it and then not enjoy it. So go on and do it if it gives you peace of mind, and just assume that every single person on earth was... very stupid, I guess, two decades ago. That sounds very sensible. Like you said, much fewer modern kids are now reading Harry Potter, so it will just naturally fade out of the public consciousness eventually. That's fine. Given Rowling's current actions, it's probably for the best. And since people are so allergic to nuance, its legacy will (to some people) probably be about how it had no redeeming qualities whatsoever. It is what it is.
@@baguettegott3409 I am so glad children like Amari now with is ironic since even boys love Amari. You need to stop compare fanfictions to the actual books because the fanfictions are actually deep and complex more then those plot hole books are. And i do not mean the horny ones.
@@poppie267 I never read Harry Potter fanfics, I don't know how good or bad they are. It's not relevant. And I also don't know what gave you the impression that boys/men didn't read and like Harry Potter. They very much did. I feel like you might have no idea what you're even talking about tbh, you seem a bit confused.
People forget that barely 10 years have passed since the actions of Voldemort and even Snape is barely 30 in book one. The movies in a way reinforce the "no change, utter stasis" because of the actors that portrayed the characters. Old. Respectable. Middle-aged. For kids, people who are immutable and stuck where they are. No change.
Video: “Was Harry Potter ever good?” Me: “yes” Video: “its not a masterpiece” Me: “Ohhh, you thought it was a masterpiece. Thats rough buddy.” Looking forward to see what you say.
I still agree with you but tbf, @16:00, the patil twins aren’t the only POC Harry interacts with on a side character basis- Dean Thomas literally lives in his dorm, and Angelina Johnson was on the Quidditch team with him and Lee Jordan is/was the twins best friend.. it’s still a little “my best friend’s friend is black” but it should be noted so your essay sounds familiar with the material you’re analyzing.
@K.C-2049 - Dean Thomas wasn't given a physical description in the original version of the first book, but in the US edition he was described as "a black boy even taller than Ron". He's never described again, so if you've only read the UK editions, then Dean Thomas could be of any race, I guess. Angelina and Lee on the other hand were described as black even in the original editions.
There absolutely were popular children/teen fantasy prior to Harry Potter. Lloyd Alexander of the Black Cauldron was absurdly popular as well as Diana Wynne Jones of Howls Moving Castle, Robin McKinley, and a personal favorite of mine Tamora Pierce. Redwall by Brian Jacques is just as mature as Harry Potter even though it’s often categorized as children’s. Also Animorphs came out around the same time and they were given an entire shelf in my library. Harry Potter wasn’t groundbreaking in any way. It was just lucky enough to find the right audience at the right time.
Ah, Redwall. I watched the animated series on PBS, and read every book I could find of his at the library. I loved Harry Potter, and re-read the books constantly, but I also read “A Series of Unfortunate Events”, “Redwall,” “The Once and Future King,” Agatha Christie, “Sherlock Holmes,” “The Lord of the Rings,” and even Gothic horror novels like “The Picture of Dorian Gray,” “The Phantom of the Opera,” and “Dracula.” I kept asking my middle school librarian if she had a copy of “Dracula,” and she eventually just handed me a Barnes & Noble voucher so I could get my own copy. It was hard to read for twelve-year-old me, and it took several months to read.
I agree - and going forward we get to see Dudley understand that Harry was not just a "freak" or outsider, but a courageous wizard fighting the evil he had been sheltered from in his safe suburban home. Dudley sees his own ignorance and intolerance because he didn't understand the threats Harry faced (to be fair Harry was always facing demons on his own).
I really like Dudley's character development. He started to understand that him bullying Harry was wrong and became a better person after that. I'm just glad Harry and Dudley ended on good terms. Dudley started treating Harry like an actual brother and equal.
tbf, this whole video is a whole ass smear campaign against potter series. Rowling is a problematic figure and I don't like her retcons for the series. HP is not a perfect series but this video takes every small problem with the series an blows it way out of proportions.
@@EmilAhvenainen Obviously the HP series has issues, just like the creator said. Like how Slytherian is written as the "evil" house, though that could be just bc Harry is bias. But yeah I feel like this Creator nitpicked some stuff. HP was popular for a reason, even if it was poorly written in comparison to other Fantasy series.
@@EmilAhvenainen, ahh yes, the person who in one comment doesn't see anything wrong with the concept of cops despite the current state of the world also happens to think that 1 (one) singular video mildly criticizing/questioning some things about the HP series is a "whole ass smear campaign". Wish I could say that I was surprised that some HP fans are both cop apologists and reactionaries who make wild hyperbolic assumptions while accusing others of doing the same, but strangely enough this isn't even the first time I've seen this exact combo LOL
The thing about the ending of Harry Potter is that it didn't "ruin the series" it just showed what the series was actually about. It wasn't a "the king is dead" moment, it was a "Emperor has no clothes" moment
it's amazing when I see people attempting to hold these books up as genuinely great. they hit the market at the right time (with a solid marketing budget behind them) and took off and became a phenomenon, no question there. I wouldn't disagree that the novels are fun enough... if you don't think too hard about how her world works... and maybe haven't read much other fiction. but the moment you examine it a bit more closely, the utter laziness of it all becomes apparent and the whole thing just falls apart completely. and it's not just that her politics are bad (though they are, and have gotten much worse), it's that _everything_ I've seen her say or do or create just points to a complete lack of curiosity about the world, and more than a little contempt for the genre she chose to write in. there is very little difference to be found anymore between her and the ignorant, paranoid weirdos desperately seeking to ban her writing a couple decades ago. (except that now like her, because she says nasty things they happen to agree with)
To people interested in fantasy series, I'll recommend Discworld by Terry Pratchet. The books follow different kinds of characters and the world-building is phenomenal, it leans more on the comedy side but especially the later books are very satirical and insightful.
I admittedly don't read much. But as someone nearing 40, and finally (very slowly) reading through a lot of Terry Pratchet's world, I'm starting to really reflect on how tonally weird HP was (which I did read back in the day). I don't think adding higher stakes and making the world more mature as the books progressed were a mistake, it was actually an interesting concept to have the characters grow alongside the readers, and OBVIOUSLY the drama a fresh faced 11 year old experiences is gonna be different from 16+. But I feel like the combo of Rowling wanting quirky magical whimsy, AND dramatic set pieces, and also trying to fit it all into the 'real world', while also never really giving any thought to how everything works together... it just... all kinda collapses in on itself as the books trying to delve deeper. Compare it to Pratchett's work where his stuff has a very strong sense of magical whimsy, and has very steadily set up the world and it's magic to literally not make sense. There's a sense of chaos as even the magic users don't really know what's going on. The characters just understand this inherently and roll with the chaos, while also developing amazing arcs during their adventures. The villains and threats are usually mocked and seen as silly, but still provide a perfect level of pressure onto the story. Voldemort existing in Pratchetts world would have the author consistently mocking him, and the Deatheater's would likely all be idiots. Not to mention Pratchett's open and supportive views meant, as the series developed, there was more and more representation, and the character's themselves frequently had to face and reevaluate their own bias' (Vimes trying to help and save a 'lowly goblin' springs to mind, but it's a frequent thing in most books). I dunno it just feels like Rowling wanted too much. She wanted whimiscal comedy and thrillier and crime and drama and everything else. Perhaps a more ttalented author could manage the tonal shift, but it just worked sooooo poorly in the actual books imo. It probably wasn't helped that it was all written by- at the time- a shitty centrist who had little interest in actually considering the problems of the real world, her world, or any of the character's biases. Her basic world view was good people do good things because they are good, bad people are bad and do bad because... they're bad??? Good person can't do bad, because trhey're good. If good person does bad, actually it's good because they're good. Ironically those kinda views are what usually makes a villain in Pratchetts worlds, lol.
One bit in the books I find funny looking back is Sirius saying the world isn't split into good people and Death Eaters in Order of the Phoenix. Because that's exactly the morality Rowling split the series into. Any character who didn't think Harry was the best thing since sliced bread was either with or had similar beliefs to Voldemort.
You nailed it 😆And some people really keep insisting how not black and white the series is ha ha ha. Even Dumbledore and Snape who are supossed to be moraly grey characters get treathed like pure good guys in the end 😂
@@holliebrokaw3716 In a series where different characters have different morals that line would work. Not in HP though where you're evil if you don't kiss Harry the Gary Stu's ass, don't hail Rowling's self insert Hermione as a genius and don't see bullying incel Snape as a poor victim.
@@holliebrokaw3716 There are indeed plenty of good lines wasted in this black and white series. For exemple Dumbledore line of how it only matters in what someone grows to be in. With in this case is a slave owning cop who embraces the status quo.
I’ve heard some HP fans try to claim that people are being too harsh on some of the magic in the series and to “Don’t think about it too hard.” To me, I don’t think this is a really good argument. Most fantasy series usually have some basic set rules or lore to their magic system. While Harry Potter does have some “rules”, they’re either way too vague or not well explained. Take transfiguration for example, wizards are just able to make animals from inanimate objects or vise-versa. This causes some questions to arise: Can it even think, or does it have to be trained to be an animal? If you Transfigure a bird into a safe or something, is that considered killing it?, Ron turned a rat into a tea cup and it still had fur and a tail, so is it still alive? ect. When you have some powerful spell or magic items, you have to at least explain more about than it just existing.
Yeah, HPs biggest problem in regards to magic is that it is a soft-magic system trying to pass off as a hard-magic system, because a magic school setting requires the latter. Lord of the Rings for example can get away with a soft magic system, because Middle Earth has not many people being well-versed in magic, as far as i remember. When the magical population is big enough to warrant a school system, then it becomes complicated.
@@aureliodeprimus8018 There's a theory that there actually is no magic at all in LOTR. Tolkien himself uses words like "skill" or "craft" when describing what powerful beings are doing and the subtext there is that it's really just complicated technology. Galadriel comments to Sam when they are at the mirror 'For this is what your folk would call magic, I believe; though I do not understand clearly what they mean; and they seem also to use the same word of the deceits of the Enemy.' Being simple Hobbits, Frodo and Sam have no background to understand how the mirror works so Galadriel just humors them and agrees to call it magic.
@@gunkulator1 Well, i am not well-versed in Middle Earth lore at all (I always fall asleep while trying to watch or read Lord of the Rings), so i will not dispute that. I just know that LotR is often brought up as an example for a soft magic system.
@@aureliodeprimus8018 LOTR is a story told from the point of view of Hobbits. Because they are so simple of a people, they just call things magic when they don't understand them and leave it at that. Whether it actually is or isn't magic does not matter to the Hobbits. “Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic” - Arthur C Clark. With HP, the action mostly takes place at an actual magic school, i.e. a place that exists to explain the ins and outs of magic. This put JKR in a much more difficult position. She has to explain it, at least to some degree. JKR also makes the narrative choice of her main character aging up and becoming wiser with each book. Simple explanations about magic that would have satisfied 11 year old Harry are insufficient for 17 year old Harry and therefore insufficient for the reader as well.
@@gunkulator1 And yet you would expect that HP has at least some internal consistency between years. Yet the moment you start thinking about it further more questions pop up. Take for example the portkeys introduced in book 4. I don`t remember if there was ever an explanation how a portkey is made, which would actually be relevant, since a major plot point is that the tri-wizard trophy is turned into one with no one noticing....Can you simply turn anything into a portkey? If it is possible, then why at the beginning of Deathly Hallows Moody wouldn`t show up with a portkey to the Weasley house instead of the sharade with the fake Harrys? Same goes with Harrys signature spell Expelliarmus. How is a spell that is specifically designed to disarm able to go toe-to-toe with a spell specifically designed to instantly kill you? Same with the logic about wands changing their owner once the previous one is defeated in a duel. Considering that the "wand seeks the wizard" a lost duel basically means your potential as a wizard is crippled...And that is just off the top of my head. Just as a counterexample i will mention my favorite series, Skulduggery Pleasant. In SP there are two types of sorcerers: Elementalists (exactly what it says) and Alchemists (every other discipline). Elemental abilities are clearly defined as manipulating the air, moisture and heat around you with earth being the last resort measure by becoming one with it through instant petrification for an unspecified amount of time. Every alchemy ability gets a short explanation during the course of the book it is introduced, for example Teleportation requires you to fully picture the place you want to teleport to. Necromancy needs a focus to bind shadows to that are gathered by visiting places associated with death, like murder sites. The type of item used as a focus also defines how you use the shadow, a pistol for example fires shadow ammo, a shadow cloak stretches and slices and a shadow-infused ring lets you cloak your fist in shadows for more punching power. Even some more out-there abilities like the ability to break every single bone in a persons body requires for example a direct touch with specifically the finger tips. Or the spy that has the passive trait of being completely forgotten once vanishing from sight can circumvent his trait by gifting her friends something that reminds them of her, like a bracelet.
It's noted that when people want to dislike a series, they go out of their way to focus on things (ethics, logical consistency etc) that are irrelevant to why people like it and treat the things that people love (humour, tone, genre-mixing, characters) as "quirks" that have nothing to do with literary quality.
(Teaching simple moral lessons and crafting a hard magic system with near-scientific laws were never the point of the series. Readers can seek out and prefer other types of books if they want, but if a hard magic system, for example, is obviously not a part of the story, then its absence isn't a legitimate criticism of the series.)
Also because there are hundreds of stories where magic is not explained in the slightest, on the contrary... I believe that, until the last few decades, almost no author bothered to make the issue realistic. There are simply people who know how to use magic, and other than a very few limitations due to experience, there are no other explanations for HP's magic. It may be a little disappointing, but I don't think it's a big point against the books.
@@Toshiro93 Yeah, the point of magic is that it's magic. It should have some mystery & absurdity. Absurdity is vital to what makes the wizarding world unique. I think what happens is that HP does have rich world-building and a lot of detail, which leads some readers to expect Earthsea or to want explanations for everything, instead of using their imaginations. Lewis Carroll & Roald Dahl don't get this criticism because they more obviously reject logic.
@@Amy3422 Exactly. HP is a saga for kids, it starts as a detective story set in a school, no child was interested in reading about how magic worked. Of course, there are stories that invest more in this aspect (I'm thinking of Avatar, the cartoon), but in HP it wasn't essential that magic was explained, but that there was magic, to distinguish that world from the Muggle one.
I struggle with reading regular novels. One of my friend groups is doing a reading of the Percy Jackson series (pretty good series all things considered), but I struggle to remember some details and visualize it because I don't have much visual reference to make a detailed picture in my head (it's something that helps me read). I blame this on my ADHD/autism brain. It's why comic books are much easier for me to get into. What I'm saying is: I think that difficulty reading novels helped me avoid the Harry Potter books. I remember trying to read the first book in the fourth grade and I just struggled to connect with it. I didn't even watch the movies (still haven't to this day). It wasn't because of malice, but just indifference. Knowing what Rowling is like as a person (and as someone who has transgendered friends and a trans sister/gender non-conforming sibling), I've blacklisted the HP series. There's no way I can give that series an honest and fair look because all I'm gonna be thinking of is how this author wants people I care about dead just for being trans.
I think you'd love Atelier of Witch hat. Is a manga series about a girl who plays with magic and gets into some real trouble because of it and therefore she has to study to become a Witch so she can fix her mistake. Is seriously an amazing series, the art is stunning and the paneling gets very creative at times. Definitely a way better alternative than Harry Potter, I could go on and on about how is so much better.
Rowling had one GENIUS idea with her story: it's a perfect vehicle for escapism. It might have been accidental but I think she hit the jackpot on it. Harry is unremarkable and dull as a character (pretty much EVERYONE else in the books is more memorable than their supposed protagonist), and he's a "loser" in the muggle world, abused by his family, bullied by his peers and disliked at school. He's a boring dude born into a boring life, and growing up in exceptionally shitty environment. And then one day, through absolutely no action or effort of his own, he gets magically pulled into a world in which not only is he a celebrity, but also filthy rich AND with magical powers and a whole new universe of possibilities to explore. This was a dream scenario to any abused kid that came across the first book (I know several people for whom HP books are sacred for this reason - they were an escape and a beacon of hope in the IRL abuse they faced), but also very attractive to just your average kid because there was something in that story for everyone. Easy to project yourself onto Harry, or assume that if he can be a magical boy then so can you. And it's not like you needed to work hard to get to Hogwarts, the invitation is going to find YOU because you are secretly just THAT special.
Just compare the endings of Harry Potter and Percy Jackson. At the end of the books, Percy is offered literal god status by the Olympians. But instead of becoming part of the system that is upholding the status quo that led to the Titan War in the first place, what does he do? He thinks of Ethan Nakamura, who was radicalized into following Kronos by the fact he was never claimed, and demands the gods recognize their kids. (For those who have never read the books, when you get to Camp Half-Blood, you stay in Hermes cabin until your godly parent claims you. That might be tomorrow. Or in a year. Or never. Who knows?) He thinks of Hecate and the other minor gods that joined the Titans because the Olympians look down on them, and demands they be treated with respect. He thinks of Calypso, who was unjustly incarcerated on her island, despite being neutral in the first Titan War, just because her father wasn't, and demands that those who are punished despite not opposing the gods be set free. When offered the choice, Percy chooses to fix the system. Harry, however, becomes part of it.
So to address a few reoccurring responses:
A lot of characters who are Black in the films are not distinctly Black in the text until significantly after their film appearances (if ever).
Yes, The Worst Witch should have been mentioned.
I misinterpreted the Rick Riordan article so I thought he was criticizing Palestine, not supporting it.
I should have mentioned Nina's magical powers are basically emotional manipulation and later necromancy
The only good Earthsea adaptation is the BBC Radio broadcast.
There are a number of YA fantasy series published prior to Harry Potter, but I think Harry Potter's success helped elevate them to a more mainstream status. A rising tide lifts all ships.
I'll update this as I notice more responses. Just wanted to clarify that now.
Also, Hagrid is mentioned as an example of a 'fat' character, but is he evil? That being said, it's just nitpicking - but please try to be correct when criticizing Rowling. It's necessary, to stop the wrong people who defend her from pointing out these tiny discrepancies.
@@darnbricks Well Hagrid is potentially a half giant. And faces plenty of discrimination for it. Also is he discribed as "fat" or just big? From my memory his discription is certainly more euphemistic than Dugleys. It does already reveal how hypocritical Rowling is thinking. I mean the story is about fighting discrimination aka "evil" but the slavery of sentinent beings is cool. Or if the discrimination happens to the "bad guys" like giving Dugley a pigtale. THATS "hilarious". But don't you dare to say the wrong word to one of the good guys! Calling Hermine a "mudblood" was treated like a crime against humanity. If the wizard society weren't racist hypocrites they wouldn't even care about this term. Rowling like several modern authors has really twisted moral sense and its alarming how popular this was.
Why capitalize the word “black”? I also wouldn’t encourage using screenshots of BuzzFeed articles to make your point. BuzzFeed may as well be The Onion at this point as far as their credibility goes.
I think we are all wondering when you are going to do a video essay on Animorphs and Katherine Applegate, the Anti-Rowling.
@@cruizlee214 i would need to reread Animorphs before doing that. It's been awhile.
I don't think HP being so UK-centric and focusing on Voldemort only being a threat to the UK and not really addressing the rest of the world is that unusual. A lot of American-centric stories do the same thing with their stories.
To be totally objective, Voldemort may be powerful and have horcruxes, but he is nothing more than a terrorist.
A danger, sure, but it's not on the same level as a standard dark lord who is capable of commanding armies and assaulting various territorial entities... I mean, I don't see Voldemort waging war on the entire wizarding world (I mean, all communities scattered around the world), it would be too much of an effort for him.
Furthermore, Harry Potter never intended to be such a wide-ranging story, having started out as a sort of "children's mystery", with slight hints of horror here and there.
@@Toshiro93didnt he take over the UK government?
@@Joaking91 He did yes. It's hard to say what he was planning to do after that because after that he mostly focused on cracking down and solidifying his rule and freaking out over losing Horcruxes.
@@Joaking91 TanukiTracks already answered the way I would have phrased the answer, however...yes. He takes possession of the Britain ministry, but then does not seem to move towards conquering the whole world (indeed, from what I understand he never even makes brief hints about this possible plan of domination).
@@Toshiro93 i just didnt see it as just a terrorist
No wonder there’s so much Harry Potter fanfiction. Half of the building blocks aren’t there, or most of them have such clear flaws that people can’t help but want to rebuild it into what they’d want.
that's an important part of it. Especially "side characters" are mostly sketched very shallowly, opening up all kinds of ideas for their life outside of the books (which focus mostly on what Harry knows and sees). And Rowlings slightly flawed decision for pairings based on her own self image (her intereviews basically say that hermione has a lot in common with how JK was in school, while Ginny represents what she WANTED to be... popular, effortlessly liked, sporty, "beautiful"...)
But it's also due to the IDEA, the ambient feeling of the world having touched a side in people that other works, especially the ones mentioned as "better written" just could not touch. The Potterworld feels more inspiring than Harry Dresden or Percy Jackson and it's only with the advancing disassembly of her own universe in the Fantastic Beast movies that it is slowly ebbing away...
The Harry Potter books were very fun and super entertaining, especially now that we know Jo is a hero.
@@Mcvthree3 You are rigth the Harry Potter books WHERE fun and entertaining but not anymore. Especially now that we know Jo is a villain.
@@poppie267 jo row is a real woman with a vagina and a child she birthed from a UTERUS. so i know that makes her a villain to some weirdos.
@@poppie267 why is she a villain?
There's absolutely no way that Hogwarts would teach that Salazar Slytherin was a bad guy in real life. They'd try to gloss over his fascism, and when they do teach him, they'd call him a "polarizing" figure.
Isn`t that what they did though? Just say he was a polarizing figure?
Honestly that's how I felt Hogwarts basically treated him. They still keep the house he made, the hat enchantment never got reversed. Etc.
Don Lemon is Slytherin! Go Jo!! JK Row!
Name me a historical figure who isn't a polarizing figure, no matter how good/virtuous/genius they are (or you might think they are). MLK? Ben Franklin? Gandhi? Mother Theresa? Even Jesus Christ! If even the purest man who ever lived and hurt no one and preached peace and love can be polarizing, I think this is a useless discourse.
@@James.B.Russell Eh no most of those aren`t polarizing, there is also those lke John f Kennedy who seemed loved by everybody.
I want to clarify that there's two primary ideas of magic in fantasy: Hard Magic (explain the rules, keeps consistent) and Soft Magic (strange and unknown, story based).
Harry Potter's issue is not that the magic is soft and we want a hard magic. Soft magic can be some of the best fantasy you read, because it relies on the writer's ability to inspire wonder and fear and confusion in you. It wields the confusion to its benefit to set magic aside from science.
HP has neither. Her magic is soft when she doesn't want to explain, and harder when she decides to set an arbitrary limitation. She made it up as she went and only detailed the part that she cared about.
Example: incantations seemed to be necessary to cast in earlier stories, you had to say the spell usually. But then she realized that she can't write gun-based action scenes off that, so later on people just hurl spells from wands like bullets. No strategy, no specific use of a spell, just blasts like it's fucking D&D and they only learned magic missile.
The problem isn't that HP's magic is too soft. It's that it is straight up fucking stupid.
So you only watched the movies right? In the movies they have this stupid thing of casting spells with no incantations with the sound of a canonball, but in the books they are always pronouncing them. Only in the sixth book they learn Nonverbal Spells... which Harry is horrible and never really masters. Exemple still in the sixth book when Snape beats the hell out of Harry when he is chasing him after killing Dumbledore... if you are speaking the spell your opponent can block or repel it.
@@diegocardoso4231 She wrote the books with the movies and the later books with the movies in mind. She handpicked the actors and produced the later movies.
Non-verbal spells only become a concept in the later books, there’s no mention of older students or Ron’s brothers being able to perform such spells in the earlier books because she makes stuff up as she goes along. If you don’t think non-verbal spells was a retcon or only a movie specific issue then what do you think about Dumbledore’s sexuality? Or Tom Riddles Diary? Or Harry’s invincibility cloak?
She was making it all up as she went along and is still making up random stuff about her canon to this day.
I’m sick to death of HP fans trying to defend their precious books because the movies were so bad. The source material is bad and no matter how faithful you make the adaptation it will still be shit because at the end of the day you’re still adapting harry potter novels.
The book is usually always better than the film, that doesn’t make the book good.
If anything the movies do a good job overall of toning down some of the worst characters like snape and outright removing problematic and done death parts of the story like SPEW regardless of how terrible they are as films in their own right.
@@AntiChris84 In the first chapter of the first book, non verbal spells are used. Harry uses non verbal magic in the zoo scene. Did you read the book?
@@MegaLokopotbf, that type of magic, in the first few books, is presented as something that only magical children can do when their magic first presents itself, like it's strong during that time, but it's uncontrollable. Harry making the glass disappear, Neville bouncing after his uncle(?) tossed him out a window. From the way they talk about it, that type of thing stops once you start learning to control it. If it didn't, it seems like a huge waste to not take advantage. It seems like it's effective in high emotion situations, and has the ability to cast spells that the user doesn't actually know.
When Neville falls off the broom and breaks his wrist, why didn't he bounce then? That could have also caused a much more serious injury. Why, when the kids are angry at each other, just as angry as Harry was at Dudley, do things not happen?
I think that the magic that caused the glass to disappear is different than the magic that everyone else uses, so using it as an example of wandless, incantationless magic doesn't seem equivalent, if that makes sense.
On another note, the books set up the fact that magic is a fine art, that you need to be incredibly clear with your words and that the wand movements are very important. You might say that this only applies to younger students while they're still learning, but flitwick makes it very clear the type of things that happen to competent adult wizards when they don't cast carefully.
All that being said, there's a reason the books were so popular. Sure, the technical aspects and world building aren't the best, and she isn't a consistent writer, but the books are *fun*. The first few especially are an escapist fantasy. The characters are endearing, the villains are insufferable in just the right way. The plot can be silly and character choices don't always make sense, but it also doesn't matter that much, because the result is something fun. The books aren't great, but that doesn't mean you can't enjoy it, doesn't mean that you can't look past the issues, both writing and problematic social issues, and just enjoy it. But critical analysis is another way people engage with the community, and pointing these things out can help people improve their own writing.
@@drake_diangelo Like you said they learn to control them, and buy control it is meant that they learn how to restrain them, which is far easier than to outright use them consciously. Neville didn't bounce because he wasn't confident or practiced enough to know that when he fell he would bounce, he probably thought if he tried to do something he would have made it worse, why didn't he use his want? I don't see how it counts as inconsistent world building. Anyways one of the first things we see at least in the movies is mc gonnagal transforming into a human from cat form, that is certainly magic, and it is certainly non verbal and wand less.
Pro writer here. The fact that kids can project themselves into the book is massive, but also Rowling’s real talent is the ability to write characters (especially bad guys) in such a way that it illicits a strong emotional reaction in the reader.
I went to a boarding school and there was one teacher at this school that absolutely everyone was terrified of, even including kids like me who weren’t in his class-and for good reason.
Dude was a total asshole who reprimanded me once for not saying “please” to someone *else* in such a traumatic way that I still have the memory of it to this day.
When I read Harry Potter, Snape wasn’t Alan Rickman, Snape *was* that teacher.
Fear of Snape and hatred for Umbrage and love for Hagrid and Dumbledore are something the reader feels on an emotional level with such intensity that it actually drives immersion with the series.
Very good points!
Yes! She wrote characters people could really empathize with or otherwise imagine and "feel" vividly.
Credit where it's due, she even made us adore Dumbledore when he's objectively a bad guardian and kind of crappy dude in a number of respects that weren't lampshaded or critiqued enough in the text.
@@dinosaysrawr How do we think she did that?
@@matttriano , she created a character who was besieged from all sides, then gave us a sprinkling of characters who were kind to him. Also, most passionate Potterites were kids when the books came out, and a lot of adults don't even get great training on how to spot toxicity, abuse, and manipulation!
@@dinosaysrawr Eh....Dumbledore isn`t a great guardian but not a bad one or well a crappy person. Again far from perfect but he clearly was a good person.
I think Rowling is a much much simpler woman than she believes herself to be, and the flaws in her approach as a storyteller become more and more clear the higher age demographic she tries to write for.
She is genuinly stupid.
Well, that argument is also valid for the Brothers Grimm. So what? Confusing the marketing with the product does not define the writer. It defines the publishing sector and its customers. I believe she doesn't think of herself as some writer genius.
@@a.tevetoglu3366 With the difference that the Brothers Grimm did not write the fairy tales. They collected them and put them all in a book for people to read. Before that, those stories had already been around for centuries at least, but they were only passed on orally from one person to another. We do not know who 'wrote' Snow White or Sleeping Beauty or Little Red Riding Hood - most likely, nobody did. The stories were shaped by many, many people telling and retelling them. The other big accomplishment of the Brothers Grimm actually was to create the first German dictionary.
@@cayreet5992 exactly. That is why I mentioned them.
So harry Potter is pro brexit but the writer campaigned for including post on a website.
As an Argentinian, I remembered I was so confused when I found out that the southamerican school of magic was on Brazil, one of the few countries in Latinamerica where spanish is not the official language. Like, what are the spanish speaking people suppose to do??😂 learn portuguese just to go to school?? That's madness. That was the moment where i realized she didn't know a thing about the world outside England.
I am brazillian, and I thought that was one of the most ridiculous things ever, too. Of COURSE in JK's little head there would be at least 3 western-european schools, but only one school in an entire freaking CONTINENT like ours, and in one of the few countries that don't speak spanish, to add insult to injury.
And the name!! It literally means "witch castle", for heaven's sake, she simply couldn't care less. That was when I completely lost interest in the so-called "expanded universe"
(Edit for spelling mistakes)
@glauciamsq If you think about that, being a Brazilian school, It problable would get the name of the founder of the School or some famous política, like the big majority of the schools are named here.
She probably knew, she just didn’t care enough to do research on something that’s throw away for her. Edit, though I will say, when she wrote the books the internet was a lot less available, so research was harder… but far from impossible.
Just a small point to add to the discussion the why brazil for the location of the schools when it's official language is Portuguese and most of the rest speak Spanish is because of the following.
The Bishop of Rome Alexander 6 split the so called new world in half in 1494
According to Harry Potter cannon the school was founded in 10th 11th century before an imposed rule and language, by the Catholic Church.
Just think if that Bishop of Rome chose the other way around Argentina would speak Portuguese not Spanish.
She also wrote the first Harry Potter book philosopher/sorcerer in Edinburgh the capital of Scotland outside England.
@@markreadsbo Just a small correction: when Alexander VI split the world, Brazil actually got excluded of the portuguese area. John II, king of Portugal contested this and him the queen of Castille and the king of Aragon, actual Spain, split again with the treaty of Tordesillas, this time including Brazilian east coast.
Her whole “the status quo is good, ambition is always a red flag” thing goes even further than villainizing people who want more that what they’re given or who don’t meet her beauty standards. Rather, she elevates social station itself into a universal truth. You’re either magic or a muggle (or squib). No muggle can become magic because they don’t have the magic genes. And all muggles we meet - even the sympathetic ones - are presented as stupid, shallow, shortsighted and incurious. GEE, SUBTLE ONE THERE, Granny Jojo. -_-
These are fantastic points! Also, absolutely cackling at "Granny Jojo"
I've also always found it really peculiar, how nobody seems to really know how magic is fundamentally supposed to work within the universe of Harry Potter. From the picture that the narrative paints for us, magic is something that's been around and both studied and taught for at the very least give or take a millenia and over the course of time, people of the Wizarding World have come up both some extremely mundane and bizarrely extravagant things you could do with it, but nobody seemingly ever bothers to question as to what exactly magic is or where it comes from; it's something that happens to manifest through certain individuals and not others, just because.
Not sure how much that would tie to your specific point about Rowling's attitude towards status quo, but it does seem somewhat indicative of her apparent narrow-mindness and lack of curiosity to question why things are the way they are.
so? why do you care so much about muggles? it's just a story & the wizards obviously didn't care much about them.
@@neitiajatusrikos Well muggles are kinda by default extremely easy to relate to, on account that as it stands, we'd all be muggles in Harry Potter universe and from that lense it becomes notable how garbled and messy the series' attitude towards muggles comes across. Like it's bizarre how much the whole secret society angle hinges on in-built elitism of the denizens of the wizarding world thinking themselves better than muggles, who by and large aren't even privied to their existance and yet the wizarding world is completely reliant on muggle society to even exist, because at the end of the day their society only exists within the confines of the non-magical society and just about every aspect of their secret world is just concepts copied from muggles, but with a magical coat of paint, making the dynamic between the two worlds feel borderline paracitic in nature.
@@jondoe7036 yeah it's political satire. it's like a mirror of our world.
As a Brazilian guy, Castelobruxo completely baffles me. It's an Aztec-like pyramid hidden in the middle of the Amazon rainforest (where likely no Aztec ever stepped) as if anyone could properly get there, and the school houses Brazilian and other Latin American wizards. Now, what language are the classes in? Most students would speak Spanish. However, the school's name is in Portuguese and it's in Brazil, which would suggest Portuguese. Also caiporas, keep in mind that Caipora is a protector of nature, now protects this man-made building for some reason. All that in what I suppose is one of the lesser offenders.
Weather it's considered cannon or not, the game Hogwarts Mystery claims that part of being accepted into Castelobruxo is the ability to navigate through the jungle to get to the school- in a way, the first test to get into the school is to actually find the school.
There's an exchange student in the game that comes from Castelobruxo and that's the explanation that she gives, she even says that she got lost in the jungle for 5 days one time and had to live off of rain water and ants. I have to assume that students in Castelobruxo are forced to learn Portuguese as the character, Alanza Alvez, speaks Portuguese and is from Brazil and I don't remember her mentioning if other languages other than Portuguese are spoken there.
From My knowledge the caipora IS more of a mischievous Spirit thank a protector of Nature. I think you're saying curupira right?
@@antoniofernandesmarchetti1097 oh sorry, I always thought of them as one and the same! You may be right, as far as I knew both referred to curupira as different names, but now after some research it seems like the essence of the caipora itself may be wildly different depending on the region of Brazil where you ask, while curupira is more established country-wide. I guess I kinda took my version as everyone's haha
@@UbinTimor wow aren't they like 11 too? kinda hardcore to live off of rain and ants as a child, mad respect for her
@@Jocaolinita humm i didn't know that either! To me, the caipora IS more like "give me tobacco or i Will curse you!" Kkkk
Animorphs should have been the popular youth series. Don't let the silly morphing covers fool you. Inside the pages of Animorphs you will find an epic war tragedy. The child heroes go through bloody combat, ptsd, psychotic breakdowns, moral failings, and meaningful sacrifices. There are consequences, character growth, and upsets to the status quo. Animorphs!
Animorphs is a surprisingly excellent examination of the horrors of guerilla warfare and invisible enemies. The core characters are amazing. also the way it subtly reworks characters preconceived notions on races
Well if in Cars 2 it is implemented that Gesus and Hitler existed as cars why can't people turning into seahorses and dogs experience the tragedies as war?
@@sonoio869 Kids turning into animals do experience the horrors of war. That's the central conceit of the whole Animorphs franchise.
The hard scifi elements were FANTASTIC!! The broken combined universes at the end of Andelite Chronicles were something out of classic Harlen Ellison.
@@TheMightyPika also has the advantage that to my knowledge K.A. Applegate is a pretty cool person
I've been aware of this for years now, but the real contribution I got from Harry Potter is all from fanfiction, from reading stories where people see the problems of the original books and come up with better ways to do things, to deal with problems, to ask questions, to change.
Agreed! I've read some GREAT fanfiction stories set in that world, be it crossovers or standalone stories. Hell, I'm reading some new ones right now that are MILES better than the books themselves! The level of creativity found in them is AMAZING!
Yes, my mom and I love HP fanfics. They're usually so much better than the books and my favourite genre of fanfics is ship fics (I don't even care about the ship most of the time, because that's how much I love the stories), but I also love anything hurt/comfort and generally rewrites of the books (I'm working on my own rewrite, just gotta get a Jewish person, non-binary person, Shona person and Tamil person to work with me on this once I'm in the middle stages of this due to me wanting to get my representation right).
@@readingdino711, Good luck with it. Hope the story comes together for you :)
@@jeremyadler9620 Thanks! I'm still working on the broad strokes, but so far I love it.
Can I ask for links?
Honestly, I don't really like the Harry Potter books that much anymore, but I love the world as a mechanism for fanfiction authors to take and mold their own versions of it. The fandom and fanon around the world of Harry Potter is what I love.
The fandom and its creative gears are a machine for fantastic storytelling. But I think it has to be that way because the original works are so incomplete.
@@agramuglia But you wouldn’t like this pitch: Harry Potter gets adopted by Minerva Mcgnagall from birth, kills Voldemort again at a young age prompting Mcgnagall to give him a biscuit, and her brutal schooling turns him into the best Quidditch Seeker in the world and the smartest kid in school who showboats a lot. Even though Mcgnagall gets embarrassed by Harry showboating, she still loves him. Harry’s love interest is a Hufflepuff named Willow Birnbaum who Malfoy picks on for being fat but she doesn’t care what he thinks. Willow’s also got dreams of becoming a performer and she actually finds Harry cute when he’s beating up Dark wizards or showboating and is only nervous about meeting his mum.
Why wouldn't i like that pitch? That sounds pretty imaginative. I think the only thing i would say is that would make an interesting original story. @@jeffreygao3956
That said, i can see that working as a love story.
@@agramuglia I just wanted one scenario where Mcgnagall adopted Harry because screw the Dursleys! Plus, Willow’s already prettier than Cho.
It is WILD that Rowling is now claiming that a key part of the whole "wizard Nazi" we thought was that main real-world-relevant parallels of the books was TOTALLY ACCIDENTAL! I'm not sure if I believe it, but at the same time, I totally can believe it. Because when I first read the books I assumed one of the reasons Hermione worked so hard is because she's Muggle-born and knows she's going to have to be twice as good to be respected...because that's what every real-world minority kid/child of immigrants/woman in a male field knows! But then I realized - no, she's an over-achiever just because, and Rowling doesn't seem to know there are stages of oppression in between rude names and genocide...
One wonders how many other profound points or brilliant bits of subtext were just purely accidental, and we're the ones projecting that additional meaning onto the books?
I think the other part that's so wild about the 'coincidence' is that it's the driving conflict in the Fantastic Beasts films. The protagonists are driven to try and stop Grindelwald by horrific visions of what will happen if they don't: World War 2.
@@raeoverhere923 Actually it's the other way around; Grindelwald has visions of WWII and sells his followers on the idea of subjugating muggles by offering the possibility of PREVENTING WWII.
So the heroic forces trying to stop Grindelwald... are fighting to save WWII. It's like the ultimate status quo warrior move lol.
U don’t make sense
What's worse is when you consider that Hermione is Rowling's self-insert into the story.
In the first book, you could see Slytherin house, and Snape’s bullying, from a kid’s perspective. It worked because you experience bullies and scary people as a child. But as the series goes, it turns out that Slytherin actually is evil. Draco Malfoy’s dad is just blatantly a Death Eater and nobody notices.
Indeed it make some sort of sense that to see Slytherin as evil in the first couple of books because Harry is a child but the the longer the series went that became more and more unreasenable and even adults hate Slytherin.
And no Slughorn and Regulus Black are no defences because they do not chance anything about the bad name of the house.
I think in book one and two and maybe even three Harry's views on them being so black and white was okay, Harry was still a kid. But if house Slytherin is truly that evil and racist then it shouldn't exist anymore and if they are more nuanced that should have been a bigger plot point.
@@Nike-gs8ig Right. Its jarring that all of them are so mean. Some of them could have been on Harry’s side.
@@Nike-gs8igI feel like that was every single plot point that related to Slytherin characters (except Voldy) in Books 6 and 7.
@@flutisticwonder Nope not true at all, It it was the Slytherins would be on his side in the battle but nah they all turned out to be scaredy cats. And Draco remained his horrible self as well.
So you felt wrong.
Slytherin House's main trait is supposed to be "cunning" and "ambition", yet the trait mostly stressed by the house seems to be "conservativism" and "strict social stratification" (when it isn't straight up sociopathy and short-sighted selfishness). Ambitous people would not have sided with Umbrage when she had come to sabotage their magical education. They would not follow a guy who mostly fishes for followers within the top 1% of society and who threatens to arbitrarily curtail ambition with blood-purity nonsense. A Slytherin House functioning as advertised would have been a bastion of anti-Voldemort sentiment. Gryffindor would have actually been a more likely supporter for the Death Eaters as their "courage" seems to stop whenever societal change is threatened, so like when Hermione tried to help the House Elves and pretty much every other member of the house ridiculed her for it.
It's funny how the Weasly Twins are pretty much what an ideal House Slytherin member would be like.
To be fair (though it is kinda bs in hindsight), if I remember correctly, a large majority of Slytherins are pure blood and the remainder are half blood (apparently during harry's time there was no muggle born slytherins which is bizarre to me). So it could be possible that those ones *could* be swindled into supporting him, but even then it's mostly out of questionable writing
Gryffindor and slytherin are more alike than either would like to admit
It would have been better if it turned out it’s only a small minority in Slytherin were into the blood-supremacy stuff, while all the rest of the House roll their eyes at it.
“But Slytherin said-“
“He was super old when he said all that nonsense. I don’t see why we should alienate 3/4 of the wizarding world because of what our founder ranted in his dotage.”
Sociopathy is just slightly bad UwU
I mean, even in the books they go into how other factors than just whether someone is ambitious and cunning goes into slytherin. Slughorn was in slytherin and he us neither cunning or particularly ambitious. Cedric Diggary was courageous and ambitious and could have easily been in Griffindor.
I think the fact that most people end up in the same house as their parents says a lot.
Honestly, a bug trait that Slytherin seem to share is fear. They fear change, they fear loss of power, they fear defying the staus quo. They fear those things because they learn that to get a head they need those things.
I doubt JK built the system originally for that, tho. I think she just wanted a rival house for the main characters.
You can't just drop Yuuri Katsuki into the middle of a video on harry potter and not have me crying over the cancellation again
Pls my heart can't take it 😭 I will always love Yuri!!! On Ice. Maybe one day, we'll get a season 2 or a short movie instead of a longer project. Honestly, screw studio MAPPA, though.
JKR putting Japan, China and not only South but also NORTH Korea together under one wizarding school is...a choice
In fairness, she puts Japan in its own school....and puts China and India in the same school
How on earth do you fit the wizarding population of the 2 most populated countries in the world in one school
@@vanilla4983 ...Magic.
@@GoeTeeks Critical research failure.
You think that's the problem? It's ok for Koreans to be together they're one nation. She put 2 of the most populous countries together
Even when I was a kid I though it was so dumb that Rowling got away with not explaining how magic works or the history of the magical world by just going “Harry was bored by it so he wasn’t listening”.
Oh my God, I hated that too. Harry was lazy as hell, incurious and disinterested in anything other than his own pleasures.
that was so obnoxious to me when i was a young child reading those books. What do you MEAN we can't learn about the history and the magic system in the magic school books. Harry was so uninterested in the majority of this new magical world he suddenly found himself immersed in!
In case anyone thinks this is exaggeration, it isn't.
It's especially annoying for me in the first couple books because Harry is being introduced to the world and generally seems to be pretty fascinated and transfixed by everything around him. So it's a bit odd that all of his fascination just kind of vanishes when Rowling would need to, you know, explain how things actually work. If anything, some of the most in-depth bits of exposition we got in terms of how things work was in the last couple of books (and mostly about them were kind of jarring since they were basically introduced in those books instead of building towards them from early on), when Harry would probably have the LEAST motive to learn about it due to being focused on the increasingly dire situation with Voldemort and his followers, the loss of Dumbledore, etc, etc. So...also kind of weird and jarring.
@@VenathTehN3RDAnd when things are getting increasingly dire we are still hearing about Quidditch practice and homework anxiety, even in book 6, as if these characters wouldn't rather be training to be child soldiers in the wizard war
The problem with slytherin is how in one hand rowling says is the house of ambition and cunning, not necessarily being a bad thing because wizards like merlin (that is why i liked being in that house).... but in the other hand, every character she mentions being in slytherin are not described, or described with weird malformations, unhealthy appaerance, or being too thin or too fat... or uf they are relevant, aleays plain evil
What I've never understood is: If the Slytherin kids are all evil, why are they permitted to attend Hogwarts in the first place?
@@Venejan it's reflective of Rowling's view on the world. Shaun (the skull icon guy) has a great Harry Potter video that goes into how Rowling inserts her politics into her books.
@@Venejan because in her world giving the hitler youth their own class is equality
Hogwarts was built in the 11 century, Merlin lived AGES ago
the books are written from harry's perspective, so it makes sense that every slytherin seems evil to him. he's biased as most kids and teens are.
The toilet thing is still something that gives me a headache. How did wizards didn't had toilets or bathrooms if one of it's founders literally built the entrance to a giant magic chamber of evil in a bathroom?
Why not? The pipes were there for water, toilet seats must have been installed later.
Actually,Slytherin used the bathroom as the entrance of the chambee out of hate for muggle potty systems,that was also the reason he fought Griffindor and left Hogwarts.
I have no proof,yet no doubt.
It gets even worse. Kids don't learn magic until they're 11, which means up until then they'd always need their parents to magic away their poo. And assuming they don't learn that spell on the first day of school, I can only assume that the prefects have to go around vanishing the first-years' poop until they start to get a hang of the spell. And then even once they learn the spell, they can't perform magic outside of school, which means every kid below the age of 17 still needs their parents to vanish their turds for them during the summer breaks.
@@DTHains There's probably some low-level constant magic running throughout the place that magics away any 'stuff'. Like the magical lighting; it just exists and does it's thing without anyone thinking about it.
@@vintovkinPipes didn’t existed before the 18th century, and Hogwarts was built around the 12th century, this in my opinion is why it doesn’t make much sense, toilets did existed before pipes, but the fact that the entrance to Chamber is thought the handwasher, makes it weird for me.
As a Ukrainian I have to say that putting all post-Soviet countries together in one school is wrong for so many reasons. That school is permanently on fire.
And, well, that's very much russian colonialism there;-;
І не кажи, завжди це бісило
Facts. As a Polish I would rather die than go to this school
yes, same for the school in japan.. legacies of imperialism will always remain.
honestly the whole grouping of countries in one school creates so many problems. even hogwarts being a school in the scottish highlands but being founded and primarily ran by the english would be a massive issue if uk relations in the hp universe are at all similar to real life
edit: ive just gotten to the point in the video w the distribution map and hold tf up not only is hogwarts in scotland but run by the english but youve also got the irish in there?? the english and irish in the SAME SCHOOL???? and its RUN BY THE ENGLISH????? jesus fucking christ joanne
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A dear friend of mine insisted I read 'A Wizard from Earthsea'. Every time I mentioned HP, he kept telling me it Earthsea was better and I'd love Ursula K. Le Guin. He was right. It was the best recommendation he gave me, and I'm very grateful for him being kind of an asshole because he didn't like HP 😂
While I find the comparison between The Earthsea Cycle and Harry Potter not that deep seeing as how the only things they share are "a wizard school" and even then
Ged isn't even that much present at the school on roke in the first book,
I agree it's vastly superior in every way.
I'm retroactively salty that no one handed me Earthsea when I was 12 and I didn't discover it until adulthood. I was fully living in Middle-earth at that age, but still.
@Nio744 Earthsea isn't better. It's bland and characterless
Earthsea smells like balls
Earthsea was written by a bag lady
I read these books right after immigrating to a different country as a disabled kid. I dropped them after the 2nd? book because, even if i couldnt express it at the time, i understood that, if i had anyone to identify with in those pages, it was the non magic humans, the ones who are made fun of, used, abused and powerless to do anything about it.
JKR may like to say this is a world for everyone, but it didn't take me long to realise that she never believed it.
Lol you actually got offended by inequality in a fictional world of wizzards. Ok. Stay offended.
@@miwoj yeah because she was just cruel and a bully to anyone who didn't fit her agenda.
I thought about writing a au/fanfic about the struggle and uprise of Squibs, which I found weirdly ostracised for being from the right families, probably even pure-blood, but just not able to do magic (the invisible disability of the wizarding world).
Look at how they treated Neville, when he was just a late-bloomer and not that good or fast with magic as the others. His relatives threw him in a lake and out of a window! And if he would really had been a Squib he would not have bounced off the ground, but died.
If you have no problem with that ideology and rhetoric being taught to millions of children, then you should really evaluate your morals.
@@mousethehuman7179 anyone who is this weirdly invested in social justice of fictional characters in a fictional world should really evaluate... something about themselves i don't know.
to me nevile was just a cool character with a great story arc and that's it. somehow it never crossed my mind to over-analyze every detail of his fictional life trying to find some social ramifications to get offended by.
As a southamerican I am so used to being erased from media that I didnt see it. I was already alienated. Even now people swear pedro pascal is white. I dont know how in the fu... But they do 🤣🤣🤣🤣
(pedrito es pura, just so you know)
@@miwoj there's nothing wrong with taking a shallow approach to something, to read a book and not empathize with it at all, it might just mean you lack imagination, or that you were too young to actually delve into the world, but in the end it just means the book didn't lure you into its world. I wasn't into HP as a kid either, and liking or not liking it is up to each person, but it's not just "You're thinking too deep into it, you're a loser lol." Because this shallow, mean piece of work shaped an entire generation, it was the only popular book kids had to see themselves in it, which, if you watch the video at all, you can see it's what happened. It's not "Oh a kid was thrown out a window, whatever." It's "damn, in this world tossing a kid off a window because he can't do magic is seen as okay?"
In the end, if you're not questioning what happens in the book, if you're not interested in the world you're reading, you're just skimming through pages mindlessly, you're not even truly reading anything. It might not even be your fault, but the book's for not being written in a way that can pull the reader in. Harry Potter was, and to some extent it still is, a titan of literature, and it's not wrong to take a moment to see what made it so or what are the lessons it imparts to its audience.
I think the central point of divergence between Harry Potter and Percy Jackson is the moment Sally uses Medusa's head to turn Gabe to stone and sell the resulting statue. Imagine Harry came home after the first book, burnt the Dursleys to a crisp, and sold their ashes to the highest bidder.
I far prefer Percy Jackson.
The difference is the Dursleys served a purpose of protection for harry throughout the whole series. Gabe was only partially useful in the first book to cover Percy but then there was no longer a need for him as that was eventually useless (it was only until Percy went to camp half blood which most of the time was like the Dursleys, a protective barrier). I still prefer the Percy Jackson series over harry potter.
@@jadbayram496 Honestly, i doubt that this entire thing was something JK Rowling had in mind from the beginning. Looking back, she very much didn't plan the story out. I mean, this entire bond of blood spell has ultra specific conditions. And even so, the Dursleys protected Harry specifically from Voldemort. What's stopping, say for example, Bellatrix from finishing the job? Really, the only thing stopping her is the fact that Voldemort insists he has to be the one to kill Harry. If, instead of insisting he has to kill Harry, Voldemort had just sent literally anyone else to kill him (seriously, what do you expect Vernon and Petunia to do against someone like Bellatrix, or even just Wormtail?), that would have worked. The Bond of Blood only protects you against the person who you were saved from.
I joke (as a former Hp kid) that Harry Potter was only big because Anime wasnt a thing in the West yet. But this video made me realize it was kinda our first real Otaku Culture with Fanfics and everything lol.
The funniest part (personally) is that the fanfics are written better than jks
@@micahmakes 🤣 100%
@@micahmakes i mean...maybe not my immortal
Especially My Immortal.
@@agramuglia 🤣
"The magic happened. And the magic is gone." That sums up the entire phenomenon of Harry Potter, because that's really what it was. A phenomenon. Something that hit hard culture-wise, and instead of remaining a fond memory is now tainted for a slew of reasons. We would look back at it with nostalgic glee, the way we think about Saturday morning cartoons and our childhood in general. There's nothing there that will endure. I mean, I might be wrong but I don't think so. Very good video!
True 👍
Amari is very popular with children but unlike Harry Potter it is not gonna chance because it will be a huge universe a la Marvel Dc Star Wars.
With lots of real life issues to teach children.
An utterly woke, infantile, and DEI driven interpretation. Literally no one cares. Making your JK hate sound sophisticated doesn't dilute what it really is, pure hate. Ridiculous.
I agree it’s super disappointing. And this isn’t the first time this has happened with a franchise or a book series. Or even any form of media. Wizard of Oz while a beloved movie and I still love it, we know now on what happen to Judy who played Dorthy and the heinous abuse she had to deal with just off screen. Just recently with Nickelodeon, I don’t think I need to say any that wasn’t already said. It’s hard to watch media knowing the really dark and horrible stuff that happened.
I think it will endure, but for our generation it is tainted. Perhaps in the future it will remain a cult favorite for some
There's a distressing lack of Terry Pratchett in this video, despite him being pretty much point for point the Nega-Rowling.
Time for a part 2!
That was what I was thinking the whole time watching this, when is he going to mention Pratchett? He said back in the day her stuff was devoid. As a 12 years old I was exposed to (and met) TP, and I think that made me a better person than if I had been given HP instead.
I'll always always always recommend Discworld to people looking for a better fantasy series
Terry Pratchett, straight up trans novel in 2003. Yup. He's the anti-Rowling. GNU, PTerry!
@@FunkyLittlePoptart Shoot, Feet of Clay had an invisible poisoner (*), explored the concept of bucking a culture's engrained gender norms, and went into depth about the implications of having a magical slave race with an alien mindset in 1996, around two years before Chamber of Secrets introduced the magical slave race that Hermione is treated as a wet blanket for having any issues with for the rest of the series.
And was, you know, just immaculately written.
(*) SPOILERS:
Who had a huge obsession with bloodlines.
The wizard poop disappearing thing stands out bc there’s not like a performative social justice reason for the retcon, it’s just the silliest thing you’ve ever heard
One of the biggest problems from a pure world building standpoint? The magic is boring. There's never an explanation of how it works or what makes somebody a powerful wizard. Magic is just a convenience in her world. After moving on to other fantasy books this only became more apparent
It’s not just that. It’s that they’re incredibly stupid with it. The Wizarding World is remarkably unimaginative and when you insert yourself into a world it’s an inherently imaginative act
@@RoadtoArkham EXACTLY! Like it's just "Unlock door" "petrify person" "disarm them"
I know it's not everyone's favorite series, but just compare it to the magic in Eragon or The (incredibly underrated) Belgariad.
It’s worldbuilding without my favourite part of worldbuilding - when I worldbuild, I start with a mundane thing, say to myself ‘what if it was like this’ and then go ‘what would that mean for everything else? How does this affect the world, and how does it fit into it? Why is it like this, and what does that mean?’. Rowling stops at the ‘what if it was like this’, and it makes her world incredibly flat, boring, one-dimensional and fractured
Exactly! The magic in HP doesn’t require the characters to be innovative and imaginative with magic, something that magic should be all about. There’s a spell for everything, even killing, so they never need to come up with their own ideas about how to do things. There’s nothing to discover about the magic, it loses all the mysteriousness magic should have.
I'd argue that what actually made the books page-turners is that the main characters were relatable and the stories themselves were actually mysteries.
I've only ever watched the first two movies. And I remember finding it weird that Slytherin was just inherently evil. At the end when Slytherin was supposed to win whatever, and then Dumbledoore kept giving points to Gryffindor until they'd beaten Slytherin, I remember think 'does JK Rowling just really hate Slytherin?'
I even thought it was pretty unfair the first time, these Slytherin kids worked a whole year for that
you stopped right before the best movie, Prizoner of Azkaban.
If they weren't all the super privileged students, it could have been an interesting (but on the nose) look at the school-to-prison pipeline, since all the kids grew up to participate in generational crime with many losing their lives and their freedom
? The slytherin kids were nothing but jackasses the entire year and harry and co literally just saved the school, do you not see how children reading it would see it as a win for the heros and a "stick it to those snobs" sort of thing?
@@jayla3282 Look, it's been a while since I watched the movie, and it's not like I don't think Gryffindor deserved to win, the kids literally saved the school (though it's f*cked up that it was up to children to do that). But you've kind of said my point, the Slytherin kids are awful, but why? What about being Slytherin makes someone inherently bad.
Harry Potter somehow managed to capture lighting in a bottle and released at the right time.
Harry Potter somehow managed to capture lightning in a bottle, and stick it to a kid's forehead.
yeah and thats fine Luck is a part of that game. still does not make the books bad... its a fun fantasy nothing more nothing less.
Definitely. Being a good book series to boot helps too!
@@musichere3287lol sure
@@cronchyskull HA
It's weird that Harry is an outsider to the world of Wizards but never expresses any desire to change anything. He has an outside perspective and it never comes up.
Yeah, it feels like the author wanted a blank slate character for the audience to project on but forgot to put in like. Nuanced impressions. When she wants to show off a new thing the character becomes a ragdoll
Harry just act as our eyes, he's just a neutral point of view for the reader.
@@ThelouwseFD yes, but he's also the main character. Which was my point. He could have been both a pov character and a person with his own opinions about the greater world aside from "this guy sucks" or "this magical version of that conventional thing is cool". The blind acceptance of the world makes it feel stagnant. It's completely fine if it doesn't to you. A lot of people just feel it's weird that a reader pov character who grew up in our world doesn't seem to act like he does aside from not knowing shit about the wizarding world.
@@szatan9717 Oh I never said it was a good thing ! I understand why it would bother you, I was just being factual sorry.
Tbh I think Harry was maybe too happy to finally feel like he belonged somewhere to question anything.
@@ThelouwseFD Don't worry, i didn't take it like that!
And it would actually be a great choice, to make it so that he's so excited and happy to belong somewhere thathe doesn't pay attention to the concerning stuff. It pretty clearly wasn't the author's intent, but it's really interesting and i would love to read something like that
Harry Potter's strength is its aesthetics, not the books themselves. The books don't even matter - the merchandise is.
I prefer to call it immersiveness. Yes, the school looks breathtaking, but it also appeals to the idea of going to a place where you can develop a hidden talent of magic, explore secrets, work together in a House, and embrace your quirks. A story can have an amazing plot, profound themes, and masterful writing, it won't catch on if you cannot imagine yourself wandering around in its world.
MOICHENDISING! Where the REAL money from the franchise is made!
McGonagall should’ve raised Harry Potter and his love interest should’ve been a fat performer with a pet Machairodus.
They do matter, how do they not matter with how important they are?
@@Jdudec367 You life in the past they do not matter anymore 🤣😂Please read other books.
In its heyday, there WAS one other thing that allowed kids like us (Granted, I was in high-school when my maternal grandparents introduced me to these books) to immerse ourselves in the power-fantasy of "Higher Education As An Escape-Hatch From Your Normie-Dipshit Upbringing."
"Hello. My name is Professor Charles Xavier. Welcome to my School For The Gifted."
“You’re a mutant, Scotty” 😂
But yeah, I got into that a couple weeks ago after ‘97 came out and the original cartoon absolutely holds up on that. Obviously, there was censorship, but they discussed real, relatable issues of diversity and acceptance in an age appropriate way, and the sequel absolutely does not pull punches (and I mean that quite literally in Rogue’s case lol)
That was worse in all the same ways though tbh
@@Kate-ms2mn IF YOU DO NOT LIKE THE X-MEN, YOU CANNOT BE MY FRIEND.
@@thetribunaloftheimaginatio5247 good
@@Kate-ms2mn Wow, you must be a RIOT at parties... that you don't get invited to, because you're "The Creepy Weirdo-Loser Nobody Likes, Therefore MUST Be Evolved Beyond The Common Rabble."
As a 21 year old reading Percy Jackson for the first time… I kinda wish I read it for the first time as a kid
Agree on this. I didn't read start reading Percy Jackson until I was in my early 20's. But somehow, Rick Riordan made wonderful characters that held up so good regardless of the age.
My belief is that JK Rowling wanted a simple story with simple characters for a wide net of an audience. And wrote Harry Potter at the right time, with the right audience.
I read Percy Jackson when I was around 11-12 years old, and it was like lightning in a bottle for me. I didn't read HP until was a few years older. I still prefer Percy Jackson over HP anyday; I've never finished the book series (is it still ongoing? I can't remember),but I would love to set out and re-read then all over again
@kk00au The PJO series as a whole is done. The 3 main book series are great, I highly either reading them or listening to them. As of right now most of that comes out of Rick Riordian, are basic side plots and one offs.
I read The Lightning Thief when I was a kid and had just moved away from Long Island. It didn't take long to get attached, and I can say that it was every bit as magical but more meaningful, since I came away feeling empowered to disrespect any and every adult who treated me like I didn't deserve to be taken seriously.
From the first Percy Jackson book. Percy would reference old movies I thought was odd given his background.
Read a Steven King book with a kid doing the same thing but with a convincing home life to make it believable.
I could also tell that the author didn’t live on the west coast. Navigating water is extremely easy for Percy. He needed to get to California. He should have traveled along the Colorado river. Really bugged me because it wasn’t even addressed.
I also didn’t like how they killed Gabe then just basically laughed about it.
One thing about Percy Jackson is also that at the end of the fifth book, Percy rejects what the Gods (the system) give him as a thanks for his service and instead change the system so that no other children should be ignore or rejected by there parents.
"It fails to understand that there exists a world outside of Britain." So like how most shows form the USA are about the USA. As someone from central Europe I got used to it. All the different planets in Star Trek and Stargate etc. are very very American. And in anime everyone behaves very Japanese, no matter where they come from/where the anime is supposed to take place. I gave up complaining about that.
Kinda hilarious seeing him complain that the one time when US wasnt the center of the universe in a fictional work. Also why would it, write whats familiar to you. She is British so of course she would write about British stuff. The point when she tried to write about international wizard communities is when she fumbled greatly.
@@Bionickpunk That's not at all the point he was making. He's pointing out that compared to other masterworks of fiction whose plots have a grander scope of effects and implications on their respective fictional worlds, Harry Potter ends up feeling pretty shallow because it's as if these things were never considered and the world begins and ends within a self contained bubble. The world of Middle Earth for instance feels infinitely more fleshed out, elaborate and dynamic because the immediate plot feels connected and influenced by all the realms and cultures that exist within the world. Same can be said about Game of Thrones. Harry Potter has none of that whatsoever.
@@dougiejones628 Most of Middle Earth wasn't written for kids. Lord of the Rings and Silmarillion were adult books. If you want to compare, only compare the Hobbit.
@@Bionickpunk That might be valid for the first couple Harry Potter books where it was far more whimsical and read like children's books... But by the end of the series, the books had taken on so many more adult themes with the core plot surrounding fascism, racism and eugenics, and it was clearly trying to be a more mature allegory on society and politics. I don't think it's fair to dismiss valid world-building criticisms because "it's just a kids story." It started as a kids book and tried to transition into the big leagues of these epic fantasy classics like LOTR.
@@dougiejones628So russian literature aren't full of masterpieces, because they depict russian reality 😂😂😂😂😂😂😂
And don't forget, she put The Latín América Magic school in The only country that don't speak spanish (Brasil). That show You that she don't Even try.
Brasil is in Latin America
@@tiagodasilva1124Yes, the commentor says so themselves. The point is that Brasil speaks portuguese not spanish so the population of all other countries must learn portuguese intead of only brazilian wizards having to learn spanish, it is really simple stuff if rowling did the bare minimum in that map.
I've been joking about a thing for years.. saying that if she ever wrote an Ilvermorny series there would be a character in it, a Mexican exchange student called Amigo Gonzales, but I stopped when I realized it felt more real than just a joke.
And also, the countries have way bigger populations than Uk, to combine them all in just one school is nonsensical, even with the magic factor.
Not to mention that uniting chileans with argentinians in one place sounds like hell lmao
@@zoerebon3127 Or chileans with peruvians (pisco). Or chileans and bolivians (Antofagasta). Or argentinians and uruguayans (football+Liga Federal). argentinians and paraguayans (Chaco). Or-
The problem is not really the fact that nothing changes. The problem is that the "nothing changes" is not planned and not trying to say anything. There are many good creations that have an ending where the characters and world stay the same (I have several examples off of my head, but they're mostly theater because I'm a theater magor), but they are criticizing the world and characters, and through them, criticizing the world we live in. My favorite example is the play "Mother Courage and Her Children" by Bertolt Brecht and Margarete Steffin. In the beginning and the end of the play, Mother Courage (the main character) stays practically the same, and the same war is going on all throughout the play, and nothing changes although (spoiler) all of Mother Courage's children die throughout the play. But the whole point of this play is to criticize the capitalistic world that is full of wars. This is on purpose, and has a reason. And this is done really well. So my point is, I agree with you in general, but I think this is important to note
This is such a specious criticism passed around by the echo chamber crowd. A work is not poorly written merely because it doesn’t offer the explicitly revolutionary leftist narrative you seem to demand from practically everything.
Growing up, I went to a church that hated Harry Potter. And often times I was verbally bullied by the adults for this.
Harry Potter was my own escapism at the time. And reading how these kids stood up to these evil people who were opposing them made me realize that my church was.. gross...
They didn't like anyone that didn't fit their mold. They bullied people who were different. So I got out of there.
Growing up, the world of Harry Potter, and JK herself, made me realize that the very thing that helped me escape my bullies were... No different... It's strange to think about.
But it makes a strange amount of sense.
Maybe it was familiar enough not to feel too radical but also different enough to help if you know what I mean ☺️
Every time I watch the D.A. Training scene in Order of the Phoenix I’m disappointed Harry doesn’t become a teacher, come on Joan
I once came across someone who have a idea that Harry could be the Auror after a war but because of his untrieted Ptsd he quite and become DA teacher to make sure the next generations gonna be more prepared for all Wizarding World dangers. And honestly I love it
@@copycat0284I love this! The idea that some scars don’t go away, but we still heal and grow and sometimes even manage to find our/a purpose from them
@@Sophie_Pea I couldn't describe it better :)
For thematic points, it signifies the end of the “curse” on that position since Voldemort was rejected from it.
That would have been beautiful
Makes you wonder if Harry Potter would be as popular if it came out today.
Obv hell no. The general genres today would classify hp as purely children books. Remember them scandalous hp fanfics from adults?
Hell no. With the games and anime boom that's happened between then and now, HP would get eaten for breakfast by basically all the competition.
Probably not? Back when the books came out, there weren't TH-cam book reviewers who could read the books and say "well it's alright, but it's not great" or ask questions about the content of the books to mass audiences. When she released the books, the market for young adult fantasy novels was still largely untapped. You didn't have twilight or house of night or divergent or vampire diaries or stuff like that to saturate the market and make you look really critically at the writing.
@@jennatavares4695Are you implying the house of night is good or bad writing, I can't tell???
If it was written by a different writer…probably. TOH is basically the modern day HP and it did big on numbers but that was because that series had a good writing team. High fantasy is still pretty popular these days.
I disagree with your take the Harry Potter's use of a soft magic system is detrimental, because it's partially responsible for the series' broad appeal. A lot of folks don't like having to wrap their heads around hard fictional systems. It's the same reason why Star Wars was so initially successful, where rules around things like "The Force" are never explained mechanically, only emotionally.
For all her flaws, Rowling was extremely good at having her plots make emotional sense, allowing most readers to suspend disbelief and follow along. Soft magic itself really isn't the problem. Look at all the stuff in Lord of The Rings that's never explained outside "a wizard did it." The problem is Rowling failed to integrate her soft magic system into the wider world, something she DID build hard rules for, forcing audiences to see the soft magic more critically.
Things like every adult wizard being able to teleport wherever they wished, for example. That only works if the world accounts for it, which it very much doesn't.
I really would not compare magic in Harry Potter to Lord of the Rings, because aside from minor stuff like moments of premonition and what not, in the Lord of the Rings the ins and outs of using magic would be privied to a few exceptionally powerful individuals, none of whom are our point of view characters into the world (while Gandalf is one of the heroes of the story, we never experience it from his perspective), whereas in Harry Potter the titular main character and our direct pov into the narrative is someone who actively uses magic and thus should presumably be able to comprehend its intricacies in some level of detail. With that frame of mind, it does make the writing of the magic system come across as pretty poor, when outside Expecto Patronum (the only spell in the entire series I can think of, which has specific requirements to be used and which we see Harry have any kind of extensive struggles to learn it) we can only really tell the difference between simple and advanced magic via the story explicitely spelling out which is supposed to be which and I really can't think of a single other spell, that would be established to have any tangible way in which it would be difficult or taxing for the caster, beyond needing them to focus on what they'd want the spell to do and even that is hardly all that consistent.
@@jondoe7036 | Again, it all comes down to personal preference. Rowling considers spells only as plot devices as opposed to a deeper part of the world, and for many people that's all they needed to be. Harry struggling with one spell but not others doesn't make logical sense, but it DOES make emotional sense, because that one specific spell represents him grappling with his childhood trauma and whatnot.
Now, a BETTER writer that actually paused to think about things for a bit could EASILY have made the spells work from both logical AND emotional standpoints, but it's best to judge art for what it is and not what it isn't, eh?
@@PotatoPatatoVonSpudsworth Still find in terms of execution Harry Potter's magic system is servicable at best, for how being so vague and simplistic, yet also hyperspecific and broad in terms of utility, it ends up feeling messy, logically inconsistent and weirdly underwhelming after a certain point. Something Star Wars and Lord of the Rings don't suffer from, due to keeping the use of magic as more limited and simple, while assigning a greater sense of importance to it; nobody uses the Force to do their laundry.
Harry Potter's magic system is Soft or Hard depending on if JK want to bother with it or not.
I agree with you. I think only RPG fans know the difference between hard magic and soft magic. I don't think the general public knows the difference nor they care.
One thing I do really like about books is the way that Rowling writes grief. It’s something she personally understands and something that was really central to my childhood and i think a big part of why the books resonated emotionally for me so much
"The magic happened, and the magic is gone." That's a great way to sum up how I feel about the series now. It was great while I thought it was great, but I've moved on and find magic in other stories now!
As someone who started reading HP in their twenties, I never had much illusions about the series. It was a cute school series with some random magical elements sprinkled in top.
To me, it was pretty clear from the start that there was little underneath the surface. I mean, look at Quiddich, a game so ridiculously designed to give the male protagonist a big hero moment, single-handedly winning what was ostensibly a team sport.
The one redeeming quality the author had was her ability to write a good plot twist. The biggest strength of the first few books were the endings that subverted expectations and surprised us.
But as the serious dragged on, the lack of vision became cleared and clearer. You can see it in the Quiddich matches as much as everything else. The loopholes the story has to go through to make the games interesting beyond catching the Snitch is telling.
And then the world got increasingly darker, lost it's initial charm, while more and more bad world-building was stacked upon upon each other.
By the time the last books rolled around, reading them felt more like a chore, and the best thing about the ending was that it gave me enough closure to put the series down and ultimately stop caring about it.
Looking back, it feels like a mix of traditional boarding school fiction, a sprinkle of barely understood magic and a good sense of pace and suspense that caught on fire at the exact right time and snowballed into this huge phenomenon.
Lucky break.
Nailed it. It was never meant to become as big as it did. A grievous mistake of history, perhaps :D
Ugh, I wouldn't even call the "plot twists" good. As a kid, I couldn't follow the ending of the 3rd book, all these random characters I've never met or formed an attachment to popping up like it's some big reveal.
And that 4th book ending, WOAH was that bad. As a kid, I was thinking "who tf is Crouch??" And on top of that, learning Harry hadn't actually formed any relationship with Moody was such a rug pull. A twist for the sake of a twist; nothing thematically added to the story. M Night Shamaylan-level writing.
Ambition alone does not put you in Slytherin. Percy Weasley.
Given the road Percy goes down I'm surprised he wasn't put into Slytherin.
@@GoeTeeksReally makes the sorting even worse. You get designated as one thing and that’s what you stay as for your entire school career. No matter how much you change.
I think the most common trait in Slytherin was people who feared things like change, or loss of power. Some feared them so much they would do horrible things to keep things as they were. Tom Riddle feared his muggle side, feared not having the power over others, and feared death.
This makes sense why Slytherin kids tended to side with the non progressive side. It also makes sense why someone like Slughorn was slytherin, or Snape.
Harry Potter was not GOOD. It was FUN, especially if you were in the age group that "grew up" along with the book's characters.
That's what makes a children's book guy my guy, these aren't the pinnacle of writing, as a children's book it's great.
@@bencheevers6693 I think we're making the same point. The video is titled "Was Harry Potter Ever Good?" and the answer is "no". So thousands of writers say "how did it become one of the best selling series of all time?" and the answer is that it was fun. Not just for children, but for adults.
They became emotionally invested in the entire world, as well as the characters in it.
It's similar to the different between watching TV one episode per week, versus binging an entire series in one sitting.
What made so many shows enjoyable was the speculation and fan interaction between episodes. Wondering about the most major to minor plot aspects.
That element is entirely gone once the show is over, unless you find group of people willing to watch it one episode at a time, avoid the wiki, and discuss it. But even then it doesn't replicate the experience of going to work and all your coworkers discussing the most recent episode of Fringe over lunch.
Harry Potter is the same. When it's all done and behind us, it's both mediocre and troubled. But if you were there for the ride, it was incredibly fun.
@@PsRohrbaugh I disagree, but you explained your point well. Harry Potter isn't bad or even mediocre, it's fine, there's nothing wrong with it and it is very good in some areas. When you look at it through the lens of it's target audience, it's got good characterization with relatable although fantastical struggles and excellent world building. I mean it's not LotR or Wheel of Time but it is entirely comprehensible by children and I would bet statistically wishing to be a wizard and part of the harry potter world was the number one fantasy of western kids. The cultural storm was created by those factors I mentioned that got kids and their parents into the series, you can start harry potter with an 8 year old or a 14 year old can pick it up and get started, that's another aspect that's great about the series, it's perfectly targeted. I'm not saying it's equivalent to lotr or even The Hobbit but i just convinced myself, for a childrens book I'd say it's quite good. Obviously there are tons of plot points to criticize and I do, it could be better in that aspect but overall it's at least a B and probably a B+
Edit: And that's kind of what I was saying in my original comment on what makes a children's book good, I would criticize plot points in HP but the characters and world and adventure aren't hampered in a child;s mind by that. Since Rowling became a hated figure I've seen valid criticisms of the plot but I've also seen a lot of reaching and a lot of revisionist history, that's what got me to click on this video, people hate her now and want to discredit her, that's such motivated reasoning. For what it is, it's quite good and only not great because medium level plot issues though nothing egregious, it's a lot harder to write yourself into a corner when you've got magic and contrivance also isn't as bad when you're dealing with prophecy and chosen ones.
@@bencheevers6693 My point was simply that with hindsight, you can compare HP to many contemporary works and realize that they were almost as good, equivalent, or even superior. I'm not a literature expert. But I read many books during that time which were at least as captivating, but never gained the same level of popular appeal. From Animorphs to Endymoin Spring there was a lot of good contemporary literature out there. But they never quite got that mass appeal fun factor.
And yes I spent hours trying Harry Potter spells hoping they'd work. The innocence of youth.
@@PsRohrbaugh I would say HP is significantly better than Animorphs, i mean Animorphs is ok, it's basically power rangers, alien good guy gives team powers to fight alien bad guys, I don't remember a single character from animorphs and even with that criticism, Animorphs has good world building and neat powers and fighting but it doesn't nearly have that mass, genre escaping appeal that HP did. I'm not familiar with the second one but the question is "was HP ever good" and the answer to that, I think, is obviously, and it still is. Animorphs was quite successful, on my scale I'd give it a B-. Another good series was Artemis Fowl which I'd give a B, it's not as good as HP, it's a little silly but I think it's aimed at the ages as HP. It's got a cool magical world and a ridiculous mundane world, it has some good magical characters and some quite silly ones, and some very silly conventions. I would say it's not a mistake that HP became a juggernaut while these other properties didn't, the only one I'd put on the same level of it is His Dark Materials but that's just a couple years older. HP didn't do expired kids till 4.
Edit: I don't know if any As exist in children's books, like maybe the Hobbit, I put LoTR down after Rivendell and picked up the hobbit and loved it, probably around 13. HDM is probably an A-, it's really really hard to straddle that line of complexity and depth while also being for children and adolescents. Also The giver books are As, especially Gathering Blue, I read that in 6th grade and it was the first book I loved from outside fantasy. I also read The Book of Three that year and couldn't understand the place names or keep the character names straight. That's the challenge with writing for dumb kids, you need to make things really accessible and that's the strength in HP, it's super accessible while also being surprisingly complex. Also I read her-minion every time.
I think the aesthetic and John Williams score really carried the series for me which is probably why I've only enjoyed the first 3 movies and the Universal Theme park. It was an escape but once you actually think about the stuff in these books/ movies its kinda just stories and characters that have all been done better somewhere else
Same, actually?
I've barely touched any HP media in...a while, the only things I revisit CONSTANTLY are John Williams' scores, which I used to listen to while reading the books as a teenager but now I often put them on to listen to as...well, concert music on MP3s or some kind of magic-themed ballet. Maybe it's for the better that when Williams was brought in to conduct for the opening of the Universal park he did a suite of music from the scores rather than writing a whole original piece based on it like he did with Star Wars: Galaxy's Edge (though tbf the Galaxy's Edge theme kicks ass)
@@andresacosta4832 Exactly lmao, JK Rowling just got really really lucky
@@marveler8994 Got absurdly lucky until that luck wore off after...at least circa 2012, at most 2018/19.
Not exactly, like the story and characters in other places are different.
Oh… no wonder i only liked the 1st and 3rd movie.. the stakes & conflict in later movies wasn’t that gripping for me
So many flaws in Harry Potter could have been avoided if JK Rowling simply chose to not involve the real world
SPEW and how people treated Hermione for starting it and the justifications for slavery, nuff said
It would be one thing if the characters eventually realized they were being awful and apologized, but they never do. The universe shows that she was wrong, and the others were right to humiliate her. The one time Hermione actually tried to change things and do good but inconvenient to humans, she was the butt of a joke. SPEW? Really, Rowling? You'd openly mock an earnest attempt at doing right. Who DOES that??
It is a reflection on the writer who can raise topics like Civil Rights, Personal Agency and Freedom and then cast VICIOUS MOCKERY on them with NO Educational subtext on the greater morality. Hermione is trying to help people out of slavery = Hermoine's so smart and yet such an idiot. How insufferable are people that care so much for others that she extends that beyond the MC. smh
@@tomfoolery-4444 JK Rowling is a centrist. Hermione’s character flaw in that storyline is being an annoying progressive social activist.
What she should have done in the moral universe of Harry Potter is to become a politician who gets some tiny incremental change to the treatment of elves rather than just making everyone uncomfortable with a full throated protest movement
Didn't her actions make the elves quit cleaning the girls dorm
@@TheJadedJames I think some of the HP fanfics that I read (don't remember the titles off the top of my head) have painted the ministry as starkly incompetent, on top of already being described in the books as horribly corrupt.
What I'm trying to say is that even if Hermione were to join the ministry and try fighting for the lives of the downtrodden, she would realize how pointless it is just as quickly as her stunt with SPEW went south.
Diana Wynne Jones is way underrated for how great she is at writing fantasy. She is one of the forgotten giants whose shoulders Rowling stood on.
"he's killed but he gets better very quickly"
this single phrase is so unintentionally hilarious
Already subscribed after the mention of Six of Crows and PJO but anyone who brings up Fullmetal Alchemist in a discussion about literary merit is automatically one of my favorite people. As far as I am concerned, Fullmetal Alchemist (the manga, in its og form) is as close to perfect as a story can get :)
Liking the manga over 2003.
Oh the grief people (adults, not kids!) gave me like 10-15 years ago when I *dared* to say that I don't think the Harry Potter books are such amazing literature!
The way people would call me and other people who criticized them elitist and worse.
I think a good counterpoint to Rowling is Terry Pratchetts' discworld, because even though the tone is different, that of satire, paraody, and comedy. The world is better explained and better built. Also, Pratchetts writing is also very British, but all of the various characters have nuances, different perspectives, and the ability to grow. Pratchett also questions the status que a lot as is sorta the point in satire.The series also has a wizard university, which is just fun and daft
Another point I'd like to add: The morality is pretty much not based on action, but on association. To make it simple: There are no bad actions, only bad factions.
Harry and his friends do obviously horrible stuff, much worse than some things that supposed "bad guys" do. Let's take chamber of secrets as an example. What's the worst thing that Malfoy has done at the end apart from being the son of a slave-owner (which is excused in book 4)? He has stolen something from Nevil for a mean prank, and he said mean things. Now what about the protagonist trio? They have drugged, stripped, and locked up people to investigate a hunch that turned out to be false. But that's okay because these were bad guys. They were innocent, but they belonged to the bad group. The protagonists don't suffer any consequences and don't even have to apologize.
I find it a little sad how the main appeal of the Harry Potter series isn't mentioned at all.
In simple terms, the dialouge in Harry Potter is very much like how children would and do behave at this age, though with a bit more polish.
And with her background as a teacher this is her main strength as a writer.
Rowling is extremely good at depicting the thoughts and actions of adolecents that the entire series is carried on this idea.
This includes the childlike wonder of magic, which shouldn't be a strictly defined system of spells to begin with, as it would be less immersive for the intended audience.
All in all Harry potter isn't meant for adults, and more complicated fantasy books like Game of Thrones, and Mistborn just simply aren't for children. It would be come a homework assignment instead of something fun.
And that's ok.
The important bit is to what extent a work appeals to its intended audience, and Harry Potter is incredible at it.
In short, falling put of love with something doesn't make that something bad, just that your tastes have changed, and that's ok.
That was the initial appeal yes and it works for first half of the series. Thing is Harry doesn’t stay a child for long, everyone witnessed Harry grow up in realtime, Rowling had many opportunities to gradually add depth & nuance to her world via Harry maturing; have his initial outlook of the world questioned or whatnot cause that’s a fundamental experience of growing up. Something i think especially matters when setting up a War plot. But it seemed the simplicity that was its charm became detrimental as the story gets darker & darker. I don’t think Rowling was prepared nor knowledgeable enough to write something that serious and complex.
Wait... when was Rowling ever a teacher? I can't find that she ever did that.
@@astrinymris9953 yeah, it's on her wikipedia page.
She finished the philosophers stone right before earning a teachers degree, and taught students for while until she earned enough from her writing on its own.
I agree, reading now the books, some of the characters for me come as obnoxious but they mature through the books and as an adult yourself you start to question things from another point of view. Still I will always like Harry Potter for its simplicity and world building I guess
the house elves status quo and how the main characters just accept it, particularly Harry, just shows how weak and bland of a character Harry actually is. he stands for nothing, except that he wants to stop Voldemort. he just wants to be a cop to reinforce the clearly problematic status quo.
That is bullshit, bro. So, If a person is not simping for any trendy bumper sticker ideologies, they are weak and bland?
@@vitokorunic3761 Not bullshit at all. All i see is truth bro. But than again all your Potterheads are too far in your own delusional mind. Very sad.
@@vitokorunic3761 I mean shit, he could have stood for something, anything at all, that certainly would have been better than what he turned out being
@@himbourbanist He stands for bravery, vigilance, and camaraderie as far as I remember. But I guess those aren't taught at liberal arts colleges, so it's not something zoomer idiots can yap about.
@@vitokorunic3761I don’t think being anti-slavery is a “trendy ideology,” bro.
I think HP has a kind of genius symbolic power. Harry living beneath the stairs is such a brilliantly dickensian image.
I myself found it quite fascinating how Lord Vetinari changed throughout Pratchett's books- and how some of his character reverted as the illness took more and more of poor Mr. Pratchett
One of the red flags that I noticed even as a kid when reading the books was that in "The Order of the Phoenix" Harry is not capable of committing torture, even when he clearly wants it. That's when I realized that Rownling's characters are not real characters, they are just rag dolls.
"Frodo is unable to throw the ring, even when he clearly wants to"
Well, the example of Frodo is exactly my point. Frodo ultimately fell to the power of the ring, showing how powerful the power of the ring is and that Frodo is not an incorruptible character. But Harry was not able to torture Bellatrix because he was not sadist enough for the Crucio curse to work or whatever. It is very lazy writing to keep the hands of your protagonist clean when he clearly wants them dirty. It would have been also thematically more complex, as Harry would have discovered he is also capable of committing horrible things, just like Voldemort. But in Rowling's simplistic worldview the good are good and the bad are bad, and that’s it.
I used to be a Potterhead. I read the first book when I was Harry's age and there were no sequels out yet; I was a fan from the start and grew up with the series. I was obsessed.
But, luckily... HP wasn't my first literary love. My enjoyment of the series started to decline as the films were coming out, and when book 5 was published, I already didn't GAF.
Why? I started feeling that the books were mediocre as hell. When I was 10, I didn't notice this at all. An idea came to me WAY before JK became an outspoken bigot; the idea that HP was manipulative. That it drew me in so bad because it offered the perfect fantasy (another world where you're rich, famous, and accepted) rather than because of any narrative merits. Has anybody else felt like that early on?
Ah! You're one of the og's!
@@egg_bun_ when I was in love with HP it was a dumb book for unpopular nerds. When I stopped caring about it, it was a trendy international phenomenon. FML x)
I wasn't an HP kid. I was an adult reading them to my kids. And I really enjoyed the first three books. I still do. They were simple, clear themes and plotlines, and made effective use of kid's lit and fantasy tropes. I understood the craze.
But you are right that by the fourth, things started downhill. Steeply. The greatest thing HP has to offer is that it opened the literature world up for kid and young adult fantasy and SF. Basically showed it could be massively profitable for publishers, opening the door for many better writers.
@@dubitataugustinus yes! So accurate for me as well. Except I was a few years behind you, since I started reading it in 2004, but (in my personal experience anyways) I experienced the same phenomenon. Like it was cool for the people who liked it, and there was stuff like idk? Bookmarks? Posters? Small things for the nerds, but nothing like how it started getting all totally nutty a few years after that.
So I wasn’t the only one that felt that Harry was kinda given everything in the first book/movie?
Something I just realised is in the comparison between Harry Potter and Percy Jackson. One is a series that has been unable to grow past it's initial run. The other is a series which has continued well into the present day and has an infinite number of stories that could be told
Except Percy Jackson is far more boring, with lack of interesting characters and with nothing to actually say Harry Potter came in and left on a high note
@@wolftitanreading5308 Did you... read Percy Jackson?
@@JanbluTheDerg yes, and Percy was insufferable, a brat who is special cause of who his father was, and a major Gary stu
@@wolftitanreading5308 Godamn didn't know someone could have so much hate in their heart for a sassy (lmao I forgot the word) kid
@@JanbluTheDerg nope sarcastic kids are fine but Percy is just a crappy character, with nothing redeeming about him.
Kingsley is the only black character and he doesn't appear till the fifth book... Assuming you ignore Dean Thomas who appears in let me check... Every single book.
Yes. And also Lee Jordan
And angelina, who is also explicitly black
@@jayla3282and Blaise Zabini
@@krishmajumder1411Were any of the characters described as black, though? I remember with Blaise how even his gender wasn’t nailed down from the start.
@@animeotaku307i havent read the books but i think so because the producers of the films(dont remember his name)and the first director Chris columnis really wantes to cast actors that looks similar to the characters of the books
I first fell out of love with the series, strangely enough, due to RL Stine. He had a collection that had a Bram Stoker story in it, leading me down a road of Bloch, Matheson, Sloane, and King, and leading me to realize how shallow the Potter books were. That said, I still enjoy some content that is admittedly not the best (oh Warriors, my beloved), so I don't know how much I can say about this without being slightly hypocritical.
I have a lot of respect for Stine. He wrote a lot of silly, light books for kids, but those silly, light books drew from a massive wealth of horror literature to be effective and memorable. He knew the assignment.
And there was that one with the vampire dog. That cover was pretty creepy.
Fellow WC fan 🫡
@@Grey_3438 I'll never stop loving those ridiculous cats.
@@agramugliayou should make a video about warrior cats
Kingley isnt the only black person.... there is Lee Jordan, Blaise Zabini and Angelina Johnson who are also black.
This doesn’t help their argument. However, even if there wasn’t a lot of diversity…I don’t see the issue. The book is set in the 90s…at a British boarding school…in Scotland. I’m very confused on the issue. Also, how far does “representation” go? Do we need one blind person, a deaf person, a neurodivergent person etc? Like does every box need to be ticked
@@davidfairweather3301it’s a fantasy book, if diversity is the one thing that makes you complain about realism then you have something else going on there.
And no, you do not need to tick every box. But I don’t see what’s wrong with making a children’s story that provides a sense of immersion and belonging and choosing to incorporate different types of people in order to succeed further with that, hence the Percy Jackson series.
@@char932 Tell me the issue with Harry Potter having mostly white characters?
@@davidfairweather3301 So like if you actually watch the video you would be able to understand how that could be detrimental. In Harry Potter’s instance, it’s clear that JKR has a bias towards a specific group of people-white, heteronormative, British, goes with the status quo, so on and so forth. When we acknowledge this it becomes acceptable to question her intentions of having only those group of people heavily involved in the story, while those who aren’t apart of those groups are often side characters with no actual depth, made a spectacle, or are ostracized based on the characteristics she deems to be deserving of those treatments. You see what kind of message that sends to children, especially one, as I mentioned before, provided immersion and belonging? But I’m not sure why I’m typing this all out anyways, because I’m sure you’re just asking that as an attempted “gotcha.”
@@char932 you’re crying about a lack of diversity in a book series set in Britain in the 1990s…with the school being in Scotland. Diversity for diversity sake isn’t progressive it’s pandering.
I remember feeling something off, as a teenager, Hermione was constantly advocating for elves and everyone around her was upset and rolling eyes at her. At one point, I think I even remember Ron had an argument with her and Harry kind of sided with him that Hermione was doing too much. It also bothered me a lot that I remember Harry having a massive amount of money at Gringotts but couldn’t be bothered to help more to the Weasleys. And the excuse was always the same. That they would be offended and had too much pride to accept his money. Apparently, the Weasleys were poor but too centered economically to accept social welfare or something that could’ve helped them without being exploited.
28:02
That was actually a point I brought up to one of my friends when I said that Hogwarts itself makes no sense. The way their spells work, it would be like going to school and learning what a math problem's answer is, but not learning to work the problem or apply the method to other problems. Harry Potter magic is like learning a language from a phrase book, they give you specific words and pronunciation and tell you what they translate into, but don't teach you the grammar, sentence structure, or phonetics. Hogwarts, as a school focused on teaching magic, should have classes on magic theory, spell development, etc.... The closest it gets is potions, but even there everythjng is rote formula, with the closest we get to potion theory being Snape taunting students with various ways it can go wrong, without explaining why that happens.
Sorry, for the slight rant, anyone who happens to be reading, but even when I was first reading the books in middle school that bothered me. I couldn't express what was wrong in the way I can now, but the magic system seemed poorly thought out.
Strong points here. I was one of those kids who escaped into the Harry Potter world. I would read them obsessively and part of me wants to give credit to the series for helping me to enjoy reading as much as I do today. But the truth is that I liked to read even before Harry Potter and now I wish that I had latched onto a different series. I think its house-system was actually a little damaging because it suggested that people were best when they box themselves into destined identities that played to their strengths. I don't want to just blame Harry Potter, but I think it made me rigid in my pre-teen and teenage years, where I had to maintain some image of who I was supposed to be and of those around me. At the same time, I was grappling (or more accurately avoiding) with discovering that my sexuality was gay. So there's a ton of stuff from that which isn't really fair to put on these books, but I guess I'm looking at it as an opportunity cost. I wish I had had escaped into a world that would have actually helped my development in real life, rather than Harry Potter which reinforced the idea that the system was right, that I needed to conform to it, and in my case, that meant that my sexuality was a bad thing. It seems odd to say all this when Harry Potter had such a big slash community, but I never took part in that, so I guess I missed out on that lol.
I guess take the above with a grain of salt. I just started therapy about a year ago, in my early thirties, where I'm finally working on accepting myself. So maybe the lens I'm looking through aren't the most objective.
I feel like the house system was very weird for her to implement. It’s a real thing in the uk in some schools but is chosen randomly not by characteristics. It might have been something she observed with being restricted to a group of people and how that changes you but plain stereotyping is weird. If she didn’t make it personality based it would be less of a big deal that we don’t see people from other houses as often. The “Slytherin bad” thing could have been a great commentary on nurture and how ideologies spread easily. Funnily enough Jkr being this rigid shows that as I’m assuming she was in a house as she went to boarding school. Jkr has a very rigid mindset herself (politically and not) so she applied it to what she was writing in the same way.
I was a bit over the age range when Harry Potter came out, I was at that 'I am too cool for kid stuff phase' of my teenage years. Which is ironic. But even to this day I never connected with it or knew anyone that did. And I am British too, Harry Potter was wild over here in the early 2000's, it was on everything, but I kind of flew over it. But in hindsight I am glad I never had that attachment seeing how the author has been behaving.
Not to mention that with fandom at it's peak during the height of Harry Potter's popularity, the usage of the word "Trope" spiked. This in turn, what allowed a very deadly concoction of JK Rowling, John K, and John Boorman to cause harm to the entertainment industry. If it wasn't Excalibur, it was Harry Potter. If it wasn't Harry Potter, it was Ren & Stimpy due to how starved Young Adults were for media at the time.
I get John K and Joanne but Boorman?
I didn't get into the books when the craze was going on, and I've only fallen in love with the world through its fanfiction. I was doing a Creative Writing course at university in the early 2000s and one of my teachers made a comment about the books and was surprised at the class' reaction to it. Pretty much every student who read the books ripped them to pieces for their lack of quality and spark. I even remember some saying they were horrified (and disgusted) with how big the series had got when there were more well-crafted books out there which wouldn't get a tenth of the Harry Potter attention.
Divergent was written in a week and it sure feels like it.
Don’t even get me started on how as Hermoine became a more generally likable character, her hair got less & less curly
In the movies maybe in the books she became worse.
You are mixing movie Hermione with book Hermione.
@@Bionickpunk They are both bad but movie Hermione became a little more likable.
I already see you are a agressive stan and i love chatting with people like you so i am looking forward to an angry responds because Hermione stans are the most agressive people ever.
I love Hermione but I can see how she could have been seen as a know-it-all
Also is it just me or did her characterization seem to revolve more and more around romance as the books went on? Eh idk I could be misremembering
Her hair is never described as less curly in the books. That's an issues with the movies
I don't think she ripped of Earth Sea, I think she ripped off Worst Witch.
The funny thing is now you literally can't have magic people in a school setting at all without the Harry Potter comparison. Even Name of the Wind got that sometimes which feels kind of reductive if you've actually read that book
When I came across the Worst Witch books, I was shocked by all the similarities! I do think Rowling was writing for a slightly older audience, but people definitely need to talk about how much in these books lines up more.
I watched The Worst Witch when I was little.
@@michaellauritano5252 I think Netflix did a Worst Witch reboot at some point which was ****ing hilarious when I considered that almost everyone who saw that will consider this story from the 1970s is ripping off Harry Potter
It would be EXTREMELY unfair to say she ripped off Earthsea, considering that Roke is barely described at all and is more like a mystic academy than an actual modern boarding school. And Roke wasn't even the first magic school, there are still Keshatta, Scholomance and the one in Once and Future King.
Going to be a bit of a devil's advocate here. I'm not going to claim that the books were flawless, or that the criticisms aren't valid. But I wouldn't say there's _nothing_ worthwhile in the books, or that the only reason we like them is because of self-inserting. I'm GenX, so I was an adult when the books came out. I loved fantasy, though, and became addicted to HP. Even wrote a few fanfics, and read many, many more. I never inserted myself in the books (self-inserting is kind of a foreign concept to me. I read books to get away from myself and become somebody else). So it isn't that.
For me, outside of the world itself, and the character of Harry, I... really enjoyed the themes of HP. Yes, themes. :) Specifically, the ongoing themes of love being the strongest (but least exploitable) magic, and the theme of choice.
While love conquering all is a cliche, I do think the HP books did a great job of showing that, while it's super-powerful, it's also impossible to purposely exploit. The act of trying to exploit it, nullifies it. It can only be given freely, and that type of magic can't be used for your own personal gain.
And I do think that HP did an unusually good job of teaching children that it's our choices that define us. Believe it or not, that's not something we always took for granted. It got to the point where, when JKR's behavior started getting really egregious, the best way I could think to respond was to "make a choice between that which is right and that which is easy."
That's the Tolkienian concept of the moral victory over evil, best exemplified in Frodo needing to destroy to the Ring, or Théoden's Ride of the Rohirrim at the Fields of Pellenor. She didn't invent that trope. I'd say she was much worse at it, because she didn't have a mythological-cosmogonical background for her themes, and she treated the material loosely.
Yes, thank you! Fellow Gen-x here. I’m seeing the book in the context of the time in which it was written. I was also an adult at the time. I love JK’s writing, the great character development, the humour and the themes. I’m not sure it’s fair to ask a book written 30 years ago to fulfill the demands of the present society.
@@iamrubenmes Tolkein stole it from a 3000+ year old Indian epic Mahabharata.
@@iamrubenmesTolkien did not create these story lines. He borrowed it from ancient mythology
There is nothing new under the sun. That said, if you enjoyed Harry Potter as an adult, that's on you.
I consider myself fortunate to have grown up reading the works of Terry Pratchett, and that the whole 'potter' thing passed me by unnoticed. There was so much to the text and subtext in Pratchett's output, and a genuine warmth and love of a flawed humanity underneath it all, and a mystified indignation at how barmy we can be at out worst, that seemingly just isn't present in rowling's writing
Plus the author himself being a delightful rascal who decided that, having been knighted and therefore legally permitted to wear a sword, sourced some meteoric iron and forged his own sword of meteoric iron, is so much better than spending hours on twitter inserting retroactive representation and worldbuilding about pooping into the canon
For anyone reading the comments looking for book recommendations: Read Belle Revolte. It's a queer fantasy nove; about two girls swapping magic schools, with a well defined hard magic system with clear limitations, and is about overthrowing a corrupt Monarchy.
It always sounds more normal with context lol.
Thank you pal
Wish I could favorite comments
Another recommendation: A Practical Guide to Evil. It's a sorta generic fantasy world, except everyone knows they are living in a story, and stories have the force of laws of physics. A Hero pushed off a cliff by a Villain will NEVER be harmed by the fall. People whose beloved mentors just sacrificed themselves are effectively indestructible, so smart opponents just withdraw immediately and try again later. "Aggrieved orphan finds a magic sword and avenges the conquest of the Kingdom" is such a powerful force of nature that villains build well-funded orphanages which provide a solid education to minimize the number of aggrieved orphans in existence. There's an actual, canonical, inverse Evil Overlord List called Two Hundred Heroic Axioms, including such gems as "If your trusted companion suffers a loss and then starts wearing black, they are no longer to be considered a trusted companion."
It's also the best queer fiction I've ever read. It's a world where patriarchy is almost nonexistent. Almost none of the labels we use for sexual and gender identities are ever used in this world because we were never othered for who we are. It's not just queer acceptance or inclusion, but full integration into a world which never sees us as something to call queer. And on top of that is the fact that the superpower system of this world, Heroes, Villains, anyone else who takes up a Named Role in a Story unfolding, is explicitly a trans metaphor. Characters often take on a new identity, a new Name, transitioning into the Role, by declaring it. Making it so by the declaration.
It's got the single best character arc I've ever read, which I will say no more about. The first books have good prose, while the later ones have hands down the best prose I've ever read. The world is well-conceived and built, with history and the consequences of that history plainly on display. And it probably did a lot of the heavy lifting in radicalizing my politics far to the left. AND it's a free webserial. I can't recommend it enough.
Harry Potter was the first time I recall when I saw an online fandom where people treated "I like this media thing" with the same energy as a religion, which probably wasn't helped by actual religious groups beefing with it. I will forever associate it with people who fought viciously over fan couples/sites & LJs devoted to them and with people getting really pissed when I said JKR was a coward for not making Dumbledore's gayness actual text. (Everyone in the latter category owes me an apology, unless you're STILL cool with off-page "reveals" for queer characters.) I could & still do understand why so many people latched onto HP's world as kids, but I was in my 20s when the books came out, and the adult fandom were the ones that I saw, and they have always, at best, confused me. I dipped after the first book leaned hard into "these people are bad, and their badness is revealed by virtue of their looks" in a way that not even Roald Dahl did.
I'm glad that Percy Jackson is still around, even if he did almost immediately cave to pressure to erase his off-page "this character is ace" reveal. Not gonna forget or forgive that, given how little we had at that point. At least Riordan is TRYING to be a decent influence, instead of swan diving into destructively vocal hatred.
What character is/was ace?
@@berengustav7714 I think it was Artemis. (Knowing my mythology more than his series, I personally would have chosen Athena for an Olympian character who's ace, but that's beside the point.) The reactions from people who didn't like that reveal were extremely nasty, and he reversed it the next day. As if social media reveals weren't already a cop-out...
@@melasnexperienceit was actually Reyna
It was the 90s. She was probably talked out of making his gayness intext canon.
@@s2CHAN-m5rthe seventh HP book was published 2007
joanne "you mean i didn't invent fascism??" rowling
edit: i'm feeling really seen by your conclusion that the end of the series--that god damn epilogue--ruined the entire story. i was *obsessed* with harry potter. but i was 19 or 20 when the final book came out, and as a person of color who was grappling with their sexuality and indirect biphobia, it really left a bad taste in my mouth that harry's happy ending turned out to be working for the system that failed him and endangered his contemporaries in the first place. and people gave me shit for it!
i used to joke that the experience of reading deathly hallows and learning the truth about dumbledore (who was my favorite character, a sort of father figure ideal bc my dad was kind of horrible) was the book equivalent of growing up and realizing that your parents aren't what you set them up to be in your child mind. that could be applied to the entire series, tbh.
I was squarely in the demographic age group for Harry Potter as it was coming out. I was also a capital-R Reader - any time not spent reading was time I resented. My favourite genres were Sci-Fi and Fantasy.
I never owned the Harry Potter books. My younger brother did, and I would borrow them from him. My favourite series at the time was Animorphs and while I liked Harry Potter just fine, I could not figure out why everyone was going mad for it. To me it just... didn't stand out. It was like the Worst Witch, but with bits of Narnia and Roald Dahl thrown in.
Thank you for validating my childhood confusion!
Yes. The answer is yes.
No, comment section, it wasn't "just the fanfics" or "just the merchandise" or whatever, you greatly overestimate the engagement of the average Harry Potter reader in fandom. I read it and fell in love with it just as it was, on its own, and so did basically every person I knew back then. Now that we aren't ten years old anymore we recognize more and more flaws in the book series, go figure, but this doesn't mean it was secretly bad all along.
It wasn't.
Actually it does mean it. And yes it is just the fanfiction and the merchindise or whatever.
I am still glad most children have moved over to better franschises.
@@poppie267 Look, I get it. It would all be a lot easier if Harry Potter was the worst book series ever, because then it wouldn't be as conflicting to talk or think about Rowling's horrible politics. You can just peacefully hate her and everything she's ever done and stood for.
And hey, it's pretty easy to go into a book deciding to hate every last bit of it and then not enjoy it. So go on and do it if it gives you peace of mind, and just assume that every single person on earth was... very stupid, I guess, two decades ago. That sounds very sensible.
Like you said, much fewer modern kids are now reading Harry Potter, so it will just naturally fade out of the public consciousness eventually. That's fine. Given Rowling's current actions, it's probably for the best. And since people are so allergic to nuance, its legacy will (to some people) probably be about how it had no redeeming qualities whatsoever. It is what it is.
@@baguettegott3409 I am so glad children like Amari now with is ironic since even boys love Amari.
You need to stop compare fanfictions to the actual books because the fanfictions are actually deep and complex more then those plot hole books are. And i do not mean the horny ones.
@@poppie267 I never read Harry Potter fanfics, I don't know how good or bad they are. It's not relevant. And I also don't know what gave you the impression that boys/men didn't read and like Harry Potter. They very much did. I feel like you might have no idea what you're even talking about tbh, you seem a bit confused.
@@baguettegott3409 Is there a little child in your life ? If so he/she can do a better job with the series then Rowling did as well.
People forget that barely 10 years have passed since the actions of Voldemort and even Snape is barely 30 in book one. The movies in a way reinforce the "no change, utter stasis" because of the actors that portrayed the characters. Old. Respectable. Middle-aged. For kids, people who are immutable and stuck where they are. No change.
Video: “Was Harry Potter ever good?”
Me: “yes”
Video: “its not a masterpiece”
Me: “Ohhh, you thought it was a masterpiece. Thats rough buddy.”
Looking forward to see what you say.
I still agree with you but tbf, @16:00, the patil twins aren’t the only POC Harry interacts with on a side character basis- Dean Thomas literally lives in his dorm, and Angelina Johnson was on the Quidditch team with him and Lee Jordan is/was the twins best friend.. it’s still a little “my best friend’s friend is black” but it should be noted so your essay sounds familiar with the material you’re analyzing.
@K.C-2049 - Dean Thomas wasn't given a physical description in the original version of the first book, but in the US edition he was described as "a black boy even taller than Ron". He's never described again, so if you've only read the UK editions, then Dean Thomas could be of any race, I guess.
Angelina and Lee on the other hand were described as black even in the original editions.
There absolutely were popular children/teen fantasy prior to Harry Potter. Lloyd Alexander of the Black Cauldron was absurdly popular as well as Diana Wynne Jones of Howls Moving Castle, Robin McKinley, and a personal favorite of mine Tamora Pierce. Redwall by Brian Jacques is just as mature as Harry Potter even though it’s often categorized as children’s. Also Animorphs came out around the same time and they were given an entire shelf in my library. Harry Potter wasn’t groundbreaking in any way. It was just lucky enough to find the right audience at the right time.
I know, right? This is just a shocking misrepresentation of children's/YA fantasy at the time! Just baffling.
Ah, Redwall. I watched the animated series on PBS, and read every book I could find of his at the library. I loved Harry Potter, and re-read the books constantly, but I also read “A Series of Unfortunate Events”, “Redwall,” “The Once and Future King,” Agatha Christie, “Sherlock Holmes,” “The Lord of the Rings,” and even Gothic horror novels like “The Picture of Dorian Gray,” “The Phantom of the Opera,” and “Dracula.” I kept asking my middle school librarian if she had a copy of “Dracula,” and she eventually just handed me a Barnes & Noble voucher so I could get my own copy. It was hard to read for twelve-year-old me, and it took several months to read.
As much as I loved Tamora Pierce, even in middle school we were reading with one eyebrow raised lol
18:41 he starts to become a better person after he’s attacked by dementors. He lost weight before that incident. It’s in no way tied.
I agree - and going forward we get to see Dudley understand that Harry was not just a "freak" or outsider, but a courageous wizard fighting the evil he had been sheltered from in his safe suburban home. Dudley sees his own ignorance and intolerance because he didn't understand the threats Harry faced (to be fair Harry was always facing demons on his own).
I really like Dudley's character development. He started to understand that him bullying Harry was wrong and became a better person after that. I'm just glad Harry and Dudley ended on good terms. Dudley started treating Harry like an actual brother and equal.
tbf, this whole video is a whole ass smear campaign against potter series. Rowling is a problematic figure and I don't like her retcons for the series. HP is not a perfect series but this video takes every small problem with the series an blows it way out of proportions.
@@EmilAhvenainen Obviously the HP series has issues, just like the creator said. Like how Slytherian is written as the "evil" house, though that could be just bc Harry is bias. But yeah I feel like this Creator nitpicked some stuff. HP was popular for a reason, even if it was poorly written in comparison to other Fantasy series.
@@EmilAhvenainen, ahh yes, the person who in one comment doesn't see anything wrong with the concept of cops despite the current state of the world also happens to think that 1 (one) singular video mildly criticizing/questioning some things about the HP series is a "whole ass smear campaign".
Wish I could say that I was surprised that some HP fans are both cop apologists and reactionaries who make wild hyperbolic assumptions while accusing others of doing the same, but strangely enough this isn't even the first time I've seen this exact combo LOL
The thing about the ending of Harry Potter is that it didn't "ruin the series" it just showed what the series was actually about. It wasn't a "the king is dead" moment, it was a "Emperor has no clothes" moment
As a kid i drifted towards a series of unfortunate events instead of harry potter and I couldnt tell you why. Maybe I sensed the hollowness back then.
it's amazing when I see people attempting to hold these books up as genuinely great. they hit the market at the right time (with a solid marketing budget behind them) and took off and became a phenomenon, no question there. I wouldn't disagree that the novels are fun enough... if you don't think too hard about how her world works... and maybe haven't read much other fiction. but the moment you examine it a bit more closely, the utter laziness of it all becomes apparent and the whole thing just falls apart completely. and it's not just that her politics are bad (though they are, and have gotten much worse), it's that _everything_ I've seen her say or do or create just points to a complete lack of curiosity about the world, and more than a little contempt for the genre she chose to write in. there is very little difference to be found anymore between her and the ignorant, paranoid weirdos desperately seeking to ban her writing a couple decades ago. (except that now like her, because she says nasty things they happen to agree with)
They're good, maybe even very good. Hard to call them "great" or "masterpieces" once you've...grown up...
To people interested in fantasy series, I'll recommend Discworld by Terry Pratchet. The books follow different kinds of characters and the world-building is phenomenal, it leans more on the comedy side but especially the later books are very satirical and insightful.
I admittedly don't read much. But as someone nearing 40, and finally (very slowly) reading through a lot of Terry Pratchet's world, I'm starting to really reflect on how tonally weird HP was (which I did read back in the day). I don't think adding higher stakes and making the world more mature as the books progressed were a mistake, it was actually an interesting concept to have the characters grow alongside the readers, and OBVIOUSLY the drama a fresh faced 11 year old experiences is gonna be different from 16+. But I feel like the combo of Rowling wanting quirky magical whimsy, AND dramatic set pieces, and also trying to fit it all into the 'real world', while also never really giving any thought to how everything works together... it just... all kinda collapses in on itself as the books trying to delve deeper.
Compare it to Pratchett's work where his stuff has a very strong sense of magical whimsy, and has very steadily set up the world and it's magic to literally not make sense. There's a sense of chaos as even the magic users don't really know what's going on. The characters just understand this inherently and roll with the chaos, while also developing amazing arcs during their adventures. The villains and threats are usually mocked and seen as silly, but still provide a perfect level of pressure onto the story. Voldemort existing in Pratchetts world would have the author consistently mocking him, and the Deatheater's would likely all be idiots. Not to mention Pratchett's open and supportive views meant, as the series developed, there was more and more representation, and the character's themselves frequently had to face and reevaluate their own bias' (Vimes trying to help and save a 'lowly goblin' springs to mind, but it's a frequent thing in most books).
I dunno it just feels like Rowling wanted too much. She wanted whimiscal comedy and thrillier and crime and drama and everything else. Perhaps a more ttalented author could manage the tonal shift, but it just worked sooooo poorly in the actual books imo. It probably wasn't helped that it was all written by- at the time- a shitty centrist who had little interest in actually considering the problems of the real world, her world, or any of the character's biases. Her basic world view was good people do good things because they are good, bad people are bad and do bad because... they're bad??? Good person can't do bad, because trhey're good. If good person does bad, actually it's good because they're good. Ironically those kinda views are what usually makes a villain in Pratchetts worlds, lol.
Yes
One bit in the books I find funny looking back is Sirius saying the world isn't split into good people and Death Eaters in Order of the Phoenix. Because that's exactly the morality Rowling split the series into. Any character who didn't think Harry was the best thing since sliced bread was either with or had similar beliefs to Voldemort.
You nailed it 😆And some people really keep insisting how not black and white the series is ha ha ha. Even Dumbledore and Snape who are supossed to be moraly grey characters get treathed like pure good guys in the end 😂
Avatar The Last Airbender boy that show knows how to do shades of grey between good and evil. (The cartoon not the shitty remake)
That was such a banger of a line. Someone just put it in the wrong series
@@holliebrokaw3716 In a series where different characters have different morals that line would work. Not in HP though where you're evil if you don't kiss Harry the Gary Stu's ass, don't hail Rowling's self insert Hermione as a genius and don't see bullying incel Snape as a poor victim.
@@holliebrokaw3716 There are indeed plenty of good lines wasted in this black and white series. For exemple Dumbledore line of how it only matters in what someone grows to be in.
With in this case is a slave owning cop who embraces the status quo.
I’ve heard some HP fans try to claim that people are being too harsh on some of the magic in the series and to “Don’t think about it too hard.” To me, I don’t think this is a really good argument.
Most fantasy series usually have some basic set rules or lore to their magic system. While Harry Potter does have some “rules”, they’re either way too vague or not well explained.
Take transfiguration for example, wizards are just able to make animals from inanimate objects or vise-versa. This causes some questions to arise: Can it even think, or does it have to be trained to be an animal? If you Transfigure a bird into a safe or something, is that considered killing it?, Ron turned a rat into a tea cup and it still had fur and a tail, so is it still alive? ect.
When you have some powerful spell or magic items, you have to at least explain more about than it just existing.
Yeah, HPs biggest problem in regards to magic is that it is a soft-magic system trying to pass off as a hard-magic system, because a magic school setting requires the latter.
Lord of the Rings for example can get away with a soft magic system, because Middle Earth has not many people being well-versed in magic, as far as i remember.
When the magical population is big enough to warrant a school system, then it becomes complicated.
@@aureliodeprimus8018 There's a theory that there actually is no magic at all in LOTR. Tolkien himself uses words like "skill" or "craft" when describing what powerful beings are doing and the subtext there is that it's really just complicated technology. Galadriel comments to Sam when they are at the mirror 'For this is what your folk would call magic, I believe; though I do not understand clearly what they mean; and they seem also to use the same word of the deceits of the Enemy.' Being simple Hobbits, Frodo and Sam have no background to understand how the mirror works so Galadriel just humors them and agrees to call it magic.
@@gunkulator1 Well, i am not well-versed in Middle Earth lore at all (I always fall asleep while trying to watch or read Lord of the Rings), so i will not dispute that. I just know that LotR is often brought up as an example for a soft magic system.
@@aureliodeprimus8018 LOTR is a story told from the point of view of Hobbits. Because they are so simple of a people, they just call things magic when they don't understand them and leave it at that. Whether it actually is or isn't magic does not matter to the Hobbits. “Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic” - Arthur C Clark.
With HP, the action mostly takes place at an actual magic school, i.e. a place that exists to explain the ins and outs of magic. This put JKR in a much more difficult position. She has to explain it, at least to some degree. JKR also makes the narrative choice of her main character aging up and becoming wiser with each book. Simple explanations about magic that would have satisfied 11 year old Harry are insufficient for 17 year old Harry and therefore insufficient for the reader as well.
@@gunkulator1 And yet you would expect that HP has at least some internal consistency between years. Yet the moment you start thinking about it further more questions pop up. Take for example the portkeys introduced in book 4. I don`t remember if there was ever an explanation how a portkey is made, which would actually be relevant, since a major plot point is that the tri-wizard trophy is turned into one with no one noticing....Can you simply turn anything into a portkey? If it is possible, then why at the beginning of Deathly Hallows Moody wouldn`t show up with a portkey to the Weasley house instead of the sharade with the fake Harrys? Same goes with Harrys signature spell Expelliarmus. How is a spell that is specifically designed to disarm able to go toe-to-toe with a spell specifically designed to instantly kill you? Same with the logic about wands changing their owner once the previous one is defeated in a duel. Considering that the "wand seeks the wizard" a lost duel basically means your potential as a wizard is crippled...And that is just off the top of my head.
Just as a counterexample i will mention my favorite series, Skulduggery Pleasant.
In SP there are two types of sorcerers: Elementalists (exactly what it says) and Alchemists (every other discipline). Elemental abilities are clearly defined as manipulating the air, moisture and heat around you with earth being the last resort measure by becoming one with it through instant petrification for an unspecified amount of time. Every alchemy ability gets a short explanation during the course of the book it is introduced, for example Teleportation requires you to fully picture the place you want to teleport to. Necromancy needs a focus to bind shadows to that are gathered by visiting places associated with death, like murder sites. The type of item used as a focus also defines how you use the shadow, a pistol for example fires shadow ammo, a shadow cloak stretches and slices and a shadow-infused ring lets you cloak your fist in shadows for more punching power. Even some more out-there abilities like the ability to break every single bone in a persons body requires for example a direct touch with specifically the finger tips. Or the spy that has the passive trait of being completely forgotten once vanishing from sight can circumvent his trait by gifting her friends something that reminds them of her, like a bracelet.
It's noted that when people want to dislike a series, they go out of their way to focus on things (ethics, logical consistency etc) that are irrelevant to why people like it and treat the things that people love (humour, tone, genre-mixing, characters) as "quirks" that have nothing to do with literary quality.
(Teaching simple moral lessons and crafting a hard magic system with near-scientific laws were never the point of the series. Readers can seek out and prefer other types of books if they want, but if a hard magic system, for example, is obviously not a part of the story, then its absence isn't a legitimate criticism of the series.)
Also because there are hundreds of stories where magic is not explained in the slightest, on the contrary... I believe that, until the last few decades, almost no author bothered to make the issue realistic. There are simply people who know how to use magic, and other than a very few limitations due to experience, there are no other explanations for HP's magic. It may be a little disappointing, but I don't think it's a big point against the books.
@@Toshiro93 Yeah, the point of magic is that it's magic. It should have some mystery & absurdity. Absurdity is vital to what makes the wizarding world unique.
I think what happens is that HP does have rich world-building and a lot of detail, which leads some readers to expect Earthsea or to want explanations for everything, instead of using their imaginations. Lewis Carroll & Roald Dahl don't get this criticism because they more obviously reject logic.
@@Amy3422 Exactly. HP is a saga for kids, it starts as a detective story set in a school, no child was interested in reading about how magic worked. Of course, there are stories that invest more in this aspect (I'm thinking of Avatar, the cartoon), but in HP it wasn't essential that magic was explained, but that there was magic, to distinguish that world from the Muggle one.
@@Amy3422 All those criticm are valid i do not know why you are here pretending to be a professor 🤓
I struggle with reading regular novels. One of my friend groups is doing a reading of the Percy Jackson series (pretty good series all things considered), but I struggle to remember some details and visualize it because I don't have much visual reference to make a detailed picture in my head (it's something that helps me read). I blame this on my ADHD/autism brain. It's why comic books are much easier for me to get into. What I'm saying is: I think that difficulty reading novels helped me avoid the Harry Potter books. I remember trying to read the first book in the fourth grade and I just struggled to connect with it. I didn't even watch the movies (still haven't to this day). It wasn't because of malice, but just indifference. Knowing what Rowling is like as a person (and as someone who has transgendered friends and a trans sister/gender non-conforming sibling), I've blacklisted the HP series. There's no way I can give that series an honest and fair look because all I'm gonna be thinking of is how this author wants people I care about dead just for being trans.
Couldn't have said it better myself! I'm glad I'm not the only one who prefers comics for the same reasons.
>>this author wants people I care about dead just for being trans.
I think you'd love Atelier of Witch hat. Is a manga series about a girl who plays with magic and gets into some real trouble because of it and therefore she has to study to become a Witch so she can fix her mistake. Is seriously an amazing series, the art is stunning and the paneling gets very creative at times. Definitely a way better alternative than Harry Potter, I could go on and on about how is so much better.
So whoever doesnt think trans people are normal wants them dead now? Wow tell us about miss-information!
@@Venejanshe never outright said that she wants everyone trans dead, yet it is the subtext of a lot of the stuff she has written down or did.
Rowling had one GENIUS idea with her story: it's a perfect vehicle for escapism. It might have been accidental but I think she hit the jackpot on it.
Harry is unremarkable and dull as a character (pretty much EVERYONE else in the books is more memorable than their supposed protagonist), and he's a "loser" in the muggle world, abused by his family, bullied by his peers and disliked at school. He's a boring dude born into a boring life, and growing up in exceptionally shitty environment. And then one day, through absolutely no action or effort of his own, he gets magically pulled into a world in which not only is he a celebrity, but also filthy rich AND with magical powers and a whole new universe of possibilities to explore.
This was a dream scenario to any abused kid that came across the first book (I know several people for whom HP books are sacred for this reason - they were an escape and a beacon of hope in the IRL abuse they faced), but also very attractive to just your average kid because there was something in that story for everyone. Easy to project yourself onto Harry, or assume that if he can be a magical boy then so can you. And it's not like you needed to work hard to get to Hogwarts, the invitation is going to find YOU because you are secretly just THAT special.
Just compare the endings of Harry Potter and Percy Jackson. At the end of the books, Percy is offered literal god status by the Olympians. But instead of becoming part of the system that is upholding the status quo that led to the Titan War in the first place, what does he do?
He thinks of Ethan Nakamura, who was radicalized into following Kronos by the fact he was never claimed, and demands the gods recognize their kids. (For those who have never read the books, when you get to Camp Half-Blood, you stay in Hermes cabin until your godly parent claims you. That might be tomorrow. Or in a year. Or never. Who knows?)
He thinks of Hecate and the other minor gods that joined the Titans because the Olympians look down on them, and demands they be treated with respect.
He thinks of Calypso, who was unjustly incarcerated on her island, despite being neutral in the first Titan War, just because her father wasn't, and demands that those who are punished despite not opposing the gods be set free.
When offered the choice, Percy chooses to fix the system. Harry, however, becomes part of it.
So true!