You are spot on with the incuriosity. As a child reading this, I wished Hermione was the point of view character because, I wanted to hear the thoughts of an outsider, who came to understand the magic system and the history of this world. Later, I realized that the Author doesn't care about the things Harry doesn't know about. And she simply needs a Dumbledore, a Hermione or anyone else to say "This is how it is, I have thought about it, and I am way smarter than you, now get on with it".
I think you are spot-on with her lack of curiosity with the world building process. If you watch Shaun's analysis of Harry Potter, he describes the phenomenon where she would introduce a paradigm-shifting element in one book, receive questions and criticism from it via readers and fans after that element had no appearance or impact in the following book, and then surreptitiously coming up with a way to negate, destroy, or revisit the element entirely in the book after that (the one-book-lag phenomenon). Basically, she wanted readers to accept the world she was giving them as-is and in the way she made it, but many people love examining how things affect other things and would ask her how, why, why not, etc until she got fed up and "knocked the element off the shelf" in protest. She continued this even after book 7 in the supplemental articles on Pottermore and in answers she gave to fan questions. It's why people were begging her to stop expanding her own stories long before she started stumping for fascists.
Personally, I'm very anti-novel as a medium, just because I think it's a bit like college; everyone gets pushed to write them but there are very few stories that are worth making to 40k words. Not that you can't do it, I just think the short story is the superior style. And that's because all the writers I take inspiration from wrote in that format, such as Lovecraft or Doyle. The real struggle with novels is that if they're not structured or paced well, they end up falling apart quickly. But that's entirely my personal view; novels can be great and people who want to write them should. I will say that on the matter of worldbuilding, my personal view is that you need to do enough that the audience knows what's going on and you know what's going on, but you don't need to do so much that the setting becomes the story. One flaw in a lot of isekai/manhua/litrpgs is that the setting becomes the entire story; the system becomes what the story is about, and that's boring af. As interesting as we the writers are in our own worlds, the audience isn't. they're not there for a wiki page on our world, they're there for a story. So that's why I said in the video that Rowling both succeeded and failed. When the story was focused on Harry exploring this world, she had done enough worldbuilding without the setting becoming the story. When the story suddenly became about the world itself and the balance of power in it, she didn't do nearly enough, and it was extremely obvious that she didn't.
I think its not that everything has to planned out, but the major stuff outlined enough to not make major plunders. Or if you have to change things, make it loose enough you can be flexible later while having an idea of the world. It just needs to be hold track off enough to , make it sense. That even if you inprovise, what should make sense. Loosely. Ok and none of that is the worst sin in worldbuilding, do research about others cultures , you write about, for inspiration. Do bloody enough research to not just write stereotypes. Or of, write them at least interesting researched stereotypes tht arent offensive. . Ok her worst sin is unable to take criticism and learn from it.
@@marocat4749 that makes sense. One of the things that always stuck out for me reading the Potter books was how Fleur read such of a stereotype French women of the worst type. I have read the books close to a dozen times and every time I think not only how much a stereotype Fleur is but how clearly she seems to hate the character. If there was anything I was sure of it was that Rowling hated attractive French women. That said I agree you need to do your research and you can still loose with things.
@@stephennootens916I personally think writers should do what is best for their story. If they want a story that is huge and expansive then focus the story on exploring the world. If the writer wants to be character driven then focus on that. For the latter I don't think there should be no world building or world building that focuses exclusively on the character just what is needed for the story. Again whatever the writer wants to do.
You did bring up some great points but i think some of your points felt contradictory. Particularly about Rowlings worldbuilding. You criticized her for not expanding her world much beyond Britain while also criticizing her that the Ministry of Magic felt unbelievable. And the mention that Harry never hated Voldemort is actually a point to his character. He DOESN'T hate voldemort who was cruel and evil, but he does hate people like Wormtail who betrayed his parents, or Umbridge who was abusive towards him. Whether this is a positive to his character or a negative is left to interpretation. I also feel like many of your points about the story structure were operating under the notion that novels need have a specific story structure. Which is untrue. Harry doesnt follow a traditional heroes journey because thats not really the point of his story. His story i'd argue is closer to a progression fiction when the protag is faced with several rising stakes events where he must learn and improve to overcome. Only this story ties all those events to Voldemort and Harrys relationship with him. I understand this is entirely my opinion and im not trying to defend Rowling, but as someone who analyzes stories a lot i realized i had lots of opinions i wanted to share.
I would agree with some of this, but I want to respond a bit to clarify my thought process. The problem is not that she lacked worldbuilding. It's that she chose to expand her universe further than she was willing to world build, which creates holes and contradictions. It's not that the Ministry feels unbelievable as a concept. It's that it's suddenly introduced as a thing containing hundreds of magical WMDs in order to rapidly increase the stakes, making it feel like the author is trying to retroactively add them before she thought of them. It's GOOD to have a character that doesn't hate their antagonist. But that loses all meaning if they don't have a reason they could hate them that's personal. Put it like this, which is more impactful? A character who is separated from the acts of the villain, such as death of his parents before he has memories or attachment, and chooses to not hate someone for that? Or someone who as an adult experiences injustice and loss because of someone and then chooses not to hate them? Harry choosing not to hate Voldemort is a good idea. Narratively speaking, it would be stronger if Voldemort did something that actively gave him a reason to search his own feelings on the matter. All the evil things Voldemort does to harm Harry are either done before he's self aware or by other people whos serve him. As for story structure, all novels have structure. Storytelling has a formula, and you can play with that formula, but that doesn't mean you can do whatever you want. There's a reason why you want rising action and then a climax, and why you organize your story beats a certain way. Put it like this: when you organize the story of a novel, you have the normal arc of rising action, climax, end. But, within a series, there are now multiples of these that exist within a larger one. So, in a progression series, you would have several smaller arcs that when zoomed out form a bigger arc. When you plot the course of Harry potter, it's linear progression until book 4, and then suddenly it shoots up like a wall. The pacing is all wrong. It looks like an EKG machine. That's why it feels weird compared to the earlier books. It wants to have the pacing of a thriller but it hasn't built in the things needed to be a thriller.
@@thesilversymposium i understand what you mean, I do believe it was a bit clearer in your comment than your video. I do agree that the pacing is bad just overall and perhaps I'm just being overly sympathetic towards the series. But your point about storytelling has a formula, I would agree but not every formula is the same and some stories do benefit greatly from a break from the norm, I personally believe that Harry Potter would have been stronger with a further break of the formula. But thats also looking at it with the hindsight of today. Thanks for chatting your response are quite interesting
I agree fully that you can and should be able to break the formula at times. In fact, sometimes it's better to break from the formula. But I believe that it should always be for the benefit of the story. One of the things that you see in a lot of independent films for example is the desire to break free from the three act structure, the way someone like Quentin Tarantino does. Think about something like Pulp Fiction or Inglorious Bastards, neither of which have standard three act structures; there, it's broken because it benefits the way the story is being told. But he can do that because Tarantino basically wrote the book on the three act structure. One of my personal beliefs is that writers should not be afraid to adhere to things that are tried and true. That they shouldn't be afraid to follow the rules and go down the expected route. People like the expected route! Imagine if every time you ate a Snickers it had a random flavor! It would probably not be something you would be willing to eat as often as you might do so otherwise. The problem in Rowling's case is that she very successfully follows a structure in the first four books. That is to its credit! It then breaks with this during the last three. Now, it COULD have been okay, but the problem is less that it has a NEW structure and more that it doesn't feel like it has any structure. In my view, it almost feels like a precursor to what she'd write later in her career, which are thriller mystery novels, because that's what it feels like she's trying to copy from structure wise. It's just grafted on to the wrong kind of story.
So you say its a coming of age story, which too, have usually a structure. Through i kinda think the ball in 4 makes sense, like no one believed voldemord was any risk and , while harry dealing more with feeling gaslit about that and that stuff, and yeah, he should be way more horny there and not just be ball obsessed. or a reason why he and ron care so much about balls. Like if rons poor background, i dont know, and harry, just let him be a bit horny as reason there, good enough. Voldemord if he is still the big bad still should have some sort of trauma he has to deal with. or show harrys darker side, he has. Its not explored enough, but he has. Likr draco could see that potential to tempt him and, its an entire different story, that actually makes him wanting to tempt harry insead being just a dick. And then redemption by harry making him a better person by his company? letting him explore more his potentional for darkness would make harry way better, even if he rejects that at the end. That its part of him, would be interesting.
1:04:37 I would argue that Cedric death in the graveyard was Harry's true call to action which would fit with your analysis that books 1-4 and books 5-7 are two separate stories because Harry finally is forced to face Voldemort, survives but is left irreparably changed for the last three books
See I would accept that argument, but there's one problem: Cedric isn't anyone super important to Harry. I mean I'm sure that he's super upset that someone he knew as a classmate died like that. But he's not like a close friend, he's not a character we've been with for a bunch of books, and we never get the sense that this one death changes his life. One of the things a call to action should do, in my view, is impress upon the character AND the audience that this is an important, life changing event. The audience and the character should BOTH want to go on the journey. In the lord of the rings, for example, this moment of no return, I feel, is in the mines of moria, where Gandalf is removed from the group after sacrificing himself to stop the balrog. That raises the stakes and makes it so the protagonists, who at this point have not really encountered evil beyond ring wraiths and goblins, encounter what they can tell is a vast, dangerous evil. That's the moment where they realize that while they might have chosen to do something before, they have to do it now. That moment in Harry Potter is either A. the death of his parents, where he's a baby and thus never really experiences loss over this, or B. the death of Dumbledore, but that's not done by Voldemort, so it's not really a proper call to defeat the big bad. If the goal was to do something similar to Gandalf and the Balrog, where the mentor is killed/removed by a secondary force attached to the main villain, it happens WAY too late in the story for it to be what it needs to be. If you wanted the mentor to die at that point, you'd need Voldemort to be the one to kill him, so that Harry then has a personal, direct reason to act. Without that, there's only the most tenuous of threads connecting them.
But why dies Cedric need to be someone important for it to be Harry's call to action. I think its immensely more powerful that he's not, he's just an innocent bystander who got in the way. Voldemorts line "Kill the spare" meant that Cedric death wasn't even something meaningful, he was just a spare in the way of Harry. And that is the moment that Harry is changed, and its easy to see it how much he spent thinking about it for the first several chapters of the next book. Most of his action in book five are directly tied to his anger, fear and grief over the death of Cedric. You can't argue that death didn't heavily affect him and he seems to spend even more time thinking about Cedric death than even Sirius' death. Again I think you are comparing Harry Potter plot structure to other stories too heavily. Its NOT Lord of the Ring, and I think a comparison there is a bit unfair as Tolkien and Rowling had vastly different goals with their writing. Harry potters plot structure is a bit unique at the time which helped to lend to its immense popularity growth and just because copycats who tried to use the same structure failed doesn't mean that Harry Potters structure was inherently flawed or that it was just a fluke that it worked this once. Either way thank you for the discussion.
@@thesilversymposiumthere is a theory floating around online that originally, it was Ron who was supposed to be selected as a fellow competitor in the triwizard tournament and it was Ron who was supposed to be killed by Voldemort in the confrontation at Godric’s Hollow, and that it was the death of Ron that would be Harry’s needed motivation for the last 3 books, but for some reason at the last minute Rowling realised there was a plot hole of some kind (Ron wasn’t old enough to participate?) and created the character of Cedric to fill that role.
Nice analysis of the Harry Potter series, particularly the use of characters other than Harry to illustrate the world and allow him to learn about wizard's and their ways through them. I think this helps to explain why characters other than Harry often seem flat and one-dimensional - they are just authorial mouthpieces for Rowling to use to provide information to the reader. I also agree that the first four books are a different kettle of fish than the last three, but I think the transition in tone and writing begins to take place in book 4, with the international quidditch tournament in particular. I remember reading it when the book was first released and thinking how much different the tone was compared to the opening of the first three books. I also felt you could have left the whole tournament out of the book and lost nothing of importance. I also noticed how much longer book 4 was in terms of word count compared to the first three - almost twice as long as book 3, and longer than books 1 and 2 put together. This continued for the rest of the series, with the final four books being much longer than the first three in terms of word count. I also find the last four much more tedious to read, with pacing problems and diversions into things that do nothing for the overall plot or for world-building. I read books 5 and 6 when they came out, just to see where the story was going, but by the time book 7 arrived, I could not be bothered and just waited for the Wikipedia plot summary to appear so that I could find out how it all concluded. Your analysis has helped me understand why I was so disappointed at the time. One thing I have read that relates to this is how Rowling's relationship to her publisher changed after the success of the first three books. The series was not an instant hit - it took a few years to be hugely popular. As a result, the first three books went through the normal editing process for children's literature, with the publisher having a significant degree of influence over the contents and the overall length of the novels. By the fourth book, however, Rowling was so popular with her audience that she had far more control over the contents, and this led to the books being longer and less tightly focused. I think this helps to explain why the later books feel so different than the first ones.
I think what you said about focusing on what you know is something a lot of people don't fully grasp. But to add to that people have to know what they want to write and focus on that idea. I feel like a lot of stories aren't focused. Any story is about many things but great stories focus on a few things. Which makes those things lift weaker parts of the story. Like I feel so many people view world building as something separate from the story and not an extension of the story. You can have a story focus on world building but then that has to be the intent and focus.
I feel there's a few things you didn't touch on 1.) The first 3 books are mystery novels that just happen to take place in a magical world. That's why the magic system isn't as important. But when she deviates into more of a fantasy epic story with the final 4 books then it really shows the cracks in her writing. 2.) I agree, it's not really important why magic works or why spells are the way they are. But where the magic system falls flat is in other places. Why is Dumbledore the most powerful wizard? What makes a wizard powerful? Can anybody of any skill level learn any spell? Once she started to introduce "power" to the world she needed an explanation of what actually makes somebody powerful or not. The elder wand is "the most powerful wand" so does the wand dictate power? Are some people unable to cast certain spells or do certain magic because their wand isn't powerful enough? That's where she needed to go into more detail.
I would divide the Harry Potter books into two parts. 1-4 and 5-7. The first four books are children books. The last three are a typical young adult fantasy. So the first four books are using cliches and typical tropes and stylistic devices for children books. A logical worldbuilding or developed (complicated characters) aren't necessary, the most important is too amaze the read, to immerse him in the world and make him emotionaly invested with characters. So characters are like that, because they have their roles. Snape is a mean teacher archetype. Dumbledore is a good old wizard archetype, Draco is a school bully archetype. Hermione and Ron have their sidekicks archetypes. A logical worldbuilding isn't improtant, so Harry and Ron didn't use a Night Bus to get to the school in the 2nd book. Probably Rowling even didn't came up with this idea at this point. But those things aren't important. Books are very well written and readers love them. My fav is the Prisoner of Azkaban. A nice plot, no Voldemort, Harry has some drive to make himself better. And the great finale. The later books are different. They grow up with readers, so they became a typical young adult series. They are worse. I mean they are still very well written and I read them with pleasure (as we say in Poland: Rowling has a "lekkie pióro" light pen/quill), but overall they are worse in quality and content. HP and the Order of the Phoenix is too long and Harry and others around him act totally lost. The Half Blood Prince is ok-ish and the Last Book is bad, just a typical young adult dystopian/war novel, at least better written than other novels like that, but character and plot wise bad. For me one of issues with the later books is how the main character is presented. Harry doesn't change much from the earlier more naive books. When in the children books he might be just a walking and talking plot device and we learn about the world when it is needed for him, in more serious books it doesn't work anymore. He doesn't have any drive to make himself better, which he once had in the Prisoner of Fire and even in the Goblet of Fire. So we got a pathetic final duel, where Voldemort was killed by the rebound of his own curse. But overall, the change was needed, readers who started as children with the Philosopher's Stone were in their early 20s when the final book was published, but I think it might have been better executed.
It's amazing how Harry is such an inactive character that just pinballs from one plot point to another, like he's such a generic "good guy" that after seeing the movies and reading most of the books I literally have no idea what he truly wants or believes. I have no sense of who Harry is other than "generic protagonist that beats big bad because chosen one" and that's a big problem.
11:05 bit of a nitpick, but JKR didn't grow up in the ninties, she was born in 1965. She did start writing the books around the middle of 1990. Listening further I think you may have just misspoken because it sounds like you get she was tapping into the culture she was in while she was writing. 🤷♀️
This is a great video but I need to push back on the idea that Voldy needs to stay in the shadows for the story to work. The original Star Wars trilogy (which I am SURE was one of Rowling's inspirations) pulled off "Satan coming into the light" quite nicely. So did Stargate SG1 with Anubis. There are other examples. It CAN work. So I don't think a blanket statement that a writer should never attempt it applies in this case.
One thing Rowling is good at is coming up with new cool stuff, which she did every book of the series, so the magical world always stays interesting. But she never actually thinks about the implications of whay she includes.
The spells being in Latin suggests that English magic descends from either the Roman Empire or the Catholic Church. Maybe the schism dates back to when Merlin wanted a divorce?
That or just Latin being the shared scholar language of Europe. Rome was present in England and Wales 1000 years ago or so. Presumably Runes deals with other ancient languages. Like old Norse for example.
Man I really gotta say you hit the nail on the head with the flaws in Rowlings writing style and how the series drops off after goblet I distinctly have never really been as into the series post goblet in book or movie form and never been able to truly say why outside of it feeling like the mystery and wonder kinda gets lost for more plotting and build up for the final battle or something
the call to action issue also just. makes harry a painfully passive character. which didn't even really make sense to me in the initial few books because if i suddenly found out i'm a wizard and magic is real and moved into a magic castle to take magic classes, i would genuinely spend all my time trying to learn more and practice magic. even thought this back when i first read the books and i was literally eleven so i was exactly harry's age. but it's even worse as the books progress. SO many things happen and harry just floats through the story not really caring about anything or doing anything except playing quidditch. he doesn't even learn much magic??? he relies on expelliarmus for literally everything INCLUDING the final confrontation with voldemort?? even in book 5 when they're trying to teach themselves defense against the dark arts, they just learn the patronus spell and expelliarmus and then like the exploding one?? the literal wizard nazis come back and harry just sits in the gryffindor common room going "yeah thats bad. anyway." it's just boring.
Thinking back to when I was a teenager it was very easy for someone to come back from summer break being a different person. Watching someone die can add to that. Since the characters were teens, it isn't preposterous for them to be different people after a few books. Some of the character progression should have been foreshadowed better. It was somewhat foreshadowed in book 3, but it could have been handled better to make it more gradual. He could have also grown closer to Cedric.
There's plenty of young heroes in Western story telling too. It works across cultures allegorically as a way of illustrating the concept of coming of age. I've never felt taken out of media because a group of teenagers and their youthful thinking defeat the embodiment of the old system. It's not only an anime thing, though Japanese culture has more reason to idolize youth than most places... though we still have even in the West those who peak in high school or never truly mentally age out of the youth mentality. You talk a lot of Lord of the Rings, but contemporary to that you also had The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe where four children beat a Nephilim witch to free a magical kingdom of talking animals. You even bring some of this up later. I think your criticism would have come off more valid if you stuck to the specific misteppings of Rowling herself instead of spending so much time declaring certain story directions impossible on the whole, when you even had to go back and admit on some level they happen before. You are perfectly aware that these are things that can be handled in a story, yet you so broadly condemn the notion, so it made your video fall flat for me. The fact that Rowling neglected world building in many spots and paced her story awkwardly so that the entire tone had to shift in book four is a valid and specific critique instead of spinning a lot of words to say you don't personally relate to teen protagonists, but then also admit that their spot in a hero's journey is an obvious allegory for maturation.
Garth niy keys of the kingdom, Ther are several series with action and young adults that are not being the most badass and solve everything just crucial, In whatever way.
So I could probably have made an entire video on this topic, but I can elaborate on the point I was trying to make. Because you're correct, child heroes maturing makes for an easy hero's journey plotline, and audiences can accept younger protagonists. However, there are caveats to this. For one, western audiences expect different things from younger characters than the ones you'd find in manga. In manga it's not strange if a 15 year old becomes a godlike being or someone capable of defeating people much older in terms of skill or power. But western audiences don't think that way; the way in which we think about age in terms of story matters. For example, it would be hard to pitch a story where a 15 year old becomes the savior of an entire world in a western context, but this is common in anime. The reason I bring up The Lion, The Witch, and the Wardrobe is that the characters are of various ages, some older and some younger. As the series progresses, they even age out of the series; part of this is the author's sexism, at least in regards to Susan. But it also makes a good contrast, because the fact that they're children is extremely important to the story. C.S. Lewis uses them being young and flawed to tell his story, because he's trying to use that to show Christian values and concepts. Ideas like sin and temptation are on full display, but so is innocence. Them being children is required for the story to work. I contrast this with Harry Potter because initially him being 11 is very important; him being a child allows the audience to see the world through his eyes, and this works. But when he's 15 and now expected to face down wizard Hitler, that is a little more of a stretch for the audience, because the work hasn't been done to age him in the minds of the audience the same way. Furthermore, it feels weird that people aren't treating him like the child he is; if you were part of a resistance movement against fascists, would you really be deferring to the 16 year old, even if it's claimed he's the chosen one? My point in comparing all these things is to point out how hard Rowling suddenly needs to work in book 5 and 6 to rapidly mature Harry from a child to an adult, because she suddenly has to change her story's tone and subject, and it's jarring because it's not a gradual shift. It's rapid and somewhat clunky in execution.
I hate Harry Potter after reading the 1st tome. There are many things wrong, especially when Harry and friends lose points only to recover them in the adventure. This is unfair for others students and they didn't know about that. It's an excuse to spotlight Harry. We have also the exchange between Dumbledore and McGonagall. She told him to not depose Harry here because on how bad the Dursley are but Dumbledore "counters" her by saying he will a legend. And for ten years, he didn't check if Harry is happy here. And don't mention the "in seven years, he will be famous" like Rowling planned seven tomes. Ugh. I never get the hype on these books. 56:54 The worst part: when the author doesn't understand what they are writing. 1:10:07 The architect kind of writer
Great video, but there's one thing I widely disagree with. You don't need Harry's tragedy to struck him when he was older to not make him a blanck slate. Naruto is pretty much the same as Harry in that regard (orphaned as a baby, heavily isolated/mistreated during his childhood) and you still can see that he isn't a blanck slate and has proper growth during his journey of hero (even when Kishimoto is still a pretty flawed writer himself).
any time a book for film gets really big. there will always be those who call it overrated. Its always the successful things that are called overrated. There is a small book series that people call overrated. In my own opinion, Harry Potter is most definitely overrated. for how big it got. Its a great series. Love harry potter. HP with a little work on its magic system and a few other areas. It would have been a lot better.
I don't understand the position that Harry had no motivation to oppose Voldemort. Like, wizard Hitler over there was actively trying to take over the country and kill anyone he didn't like and Harry was very high up on Voldemort's do not like list. Harry very much had every motivation to try to oppose the guy wherever he could, even though he was just a kid and ultimately had little he could actually do to meaningfully stop him for most of the series
What I meant was that Rowling tries very hard throughout the series to make it seem like Harry has a PERSONAL reason to fight Voldemort; she sets up that he killed his parents, that he's responsible for lots of the things that happen in the different books, but the problem I'm bringing up is that these are all secondary things, not primary ones. As I said, Harry didn't KNOW his parents; he wasn't attached to them in the same way he would be if he knew them and thus doesn't experience the same loss that he might have if he had been older when they died. Voldemort isn't the one who kills his mentor figure Dumbledore either. He's not the one directly threatening his friends and loved ones, those are his death eaters. He didn't cause the death of his only living relative, Sirius. He exists, but he exists in the background, separated from Harry directly. "You're the guy who ordered the people who did the things I hate" is less motivating than "you're the person who murdered my family, ruined my life, killed my mentor, and my only living relative." The issue is that the series WANTS Harry and Voldemort to have this dramatic, climactic showdown, like they're personally opposed to each other. They want it to be like a showdown between Batman and the Joker, or between Superman and Lex Luthor; a situation where one side has been PERSONALLY opposed by this other force and must now step up to defeat his opponent. But Harry has no real personal animus to Voldemort beyond second hand issues; he has a bigger problem with Snape who killed Dumbledore and made his life miserable over the years than he does with the wizard fascist, and that's what I'm getting at. You can't do the dramatic showdown between two hated enemies when they've not been directly clashing all this time. How much more powerful would that moment have been, if Harry had lost his parents at like 7, where he knew loss and then was made miserable by his aunt and uncle. How much more potent would it have been if Voldemort killed Dumbledore who was defending Harry, thus making it clear that the mentor figure can no longer defend him? The only person that is killed directly in front of Harry is Cedric, and it's hard to care about a guy who is introduced and dies in one book.
@@thesilversymposium I mean, I understand what you're saying here and I get what you're driving at, but I just feel like someone actively trying to kill you either directly or by proxy for half of your life, does make your beef personal. Hell, the fact that Voldemort has a very personal reason to try to hunt Harry down ought to contribute to this as Harry knows that he will never be able to have a free or happy life unless Voldemort is defeated which feels like a very personal reason for him to care and not just a detached "Hero's just always got to fight the big bad" sort of reason. Maybe if Voldemort just didn't really care about Harry and was more or less willing to let bygones be bygones if Harry didn't get in his way I would be questioning the sense of personal motivation on Harry's part, but the fact that Voldemort would not give him that out means that Harry basically has to have a personal motivation because Voldemort is making it personal. All that said though, I do agree that what you described would have made things more personal/visceral than the way it was actually handled.
And this is what I'm trying to get at: what you're describing are Voldemort's motivations for wanting to get at Harry. But Harry's motivation boils down to 'this guy won't leave me alone.' He's not aiming to be a hero himself, he's not seeking redemption or revenge for his parents or mentor, he doesn't feel obligation to be the one to step up because of some mistake or previous weakness. He ends up where he does because the plot requires it, and the villain demands it, but the problem is that if Voldemort just stopped seeking him out personally, all the wrongs done to him are done by the people beneath him. And you could structure the story that way, where it's a matter of personal obligation even though the hero doesn't want the responsibility. But the issue is that Rowling wrote a story where Harry, the protagonist, is meant to have this kind of batman and joker esque relationship with Voldemort, where the two are in opposition and also mirrors of each other, where one cannot exist if the other does. And yes, only one side of the conflict is written as if that is the case; Voldemort spends the whole story driven by the belief that so long as Harry is alive, he will one day destroy him. That's been done a lot of times, and generally the way you do that is by having the villain's actions result in the hero he fears coming into being. But that's not what's been written; we end up with the plot saying 'only one can live' and Harry having no personal motivation beyond that statement because Voldemort has never personally wronged him when he was conscious of it happening. Every bad thing that's occurred to him was done either before he could remember it or by someone else, aside from the death of a character who was introduced in that same book. If you want to do 'these two are personal, hated enemies' you can't have one of them be almost entirely disconnected from the struggle. That's different from 'the villain creates the hero due to his own paranoia.'
@@thesilversymposium Again, I kinda get what you're saying but even the example you use here to illustrate your point, comparing Harry and Voldemort to the Joker and Batman fits more my point than yours. The Joker is very much obsessed with Batman because he sees him as his perfect foil, but Batman very much does not see Joker in the same way. Batman only cares what the Joker is doing because he is trying to combat crime more generally. Joker did not kill Batman's parents (at least in most iterations of the character) and Batman has no real visceral personal stake in fighting the Joker. If the Joker didn't commit crimes or was locked up in prison with no chance of escape then Batman would take no further interest in him, nor would his core motivation have changed in the slightest because Joker is only one criminal out of the countless members of Batman's rogues gallery and the even more numerous common criminals. And if Batman and Joker can still have something approaching the dichotomous relationship you are looking for even though only the villain has a serious personal motivation in their struggle, then why not Harry and Voldemort?
I've spent twenty minutes listening to you plod and hedge your way through a myriad of abstract concepts without entering into a single concrete example or practical concept. I don't know if I'm still at the intro but that is _way_ too long. And, perhaps ironically I've arguably found a contradiction or two. You said stories are "largely formulaic because formulas work" "storytelling is an art, there is a right way and a wrong way to do it" - that's a craft. Traditionally speaking the phrase "an art" is used to describe a processes which does not by necessity have a rigid articulatible, step by step formula, but something which is more abstract, intuitive and ultimately subjective. This leads into you working from a paradoxical foundation of logic. You are stating that we should not look at a work based on value judgments, but saying this is "right" and this is "wrong" are value judgments. By definition. I'd suppose you're arguing solely against the application of ethically based value judgments but that distinction is not drawn. Then there's the assertion that narratives are best when they are a product of their time, however if there were an objective standard of storytelling logic, a "right" and a "wrong" way that transcends contemporary value judgments there's no reason it wouldn't transcend those of the timein which it was made. Because most (if not all) of the ways we describe art being a product of its time is through a looking glass of value judgments distorted by time. So it's not clear how one could set aside value judgments that have evolved over time while assessing the quality of something based on how it's reflective of its own time.
See, I wouldn't argue that it's a value judgement to talk about structure. To compare it to painting, there are brush techniques that you can analyze and deconstruct to say whether or not something is technically correct, without discussing whether or not the work is personally pleasing to you. For example, a Picasso is, from a technique standpoint, very good. Whether or not you like the themes or the subject is a personal question. And I bring these things up because if things can shift radically over time, then we have to ask if they're really concrete judgements. If you can argue that a thing is X, and then thirty years pass and you argue that it is X, but you have moved from saying it's positive to negative without changing the argument, is that a judgement of the work on a technical level or a judgement of the values? In my view, an author's personal views only matter in two contexts: 1. is the work a reflection of something that the author believes/is trying to express? 2. the effects of the author's views in the time in which they lived. So something like Lovecraft's bigotry is important when discussing his works, because his personal views bleed into his works. Something like Starship Troopers is a reflection and response to the era it was written in and espouses a concrete worldview of the author. Harry Potter is neither an expression of the author's views, nor does it widely affect the world in which it was created. Her personal views and the work are, in this case, separate. I bring up her crime novels as a case when her personal views and the views in her book are linked; Harry Potter is not that.
@@thesilversymposium I don't know that I agree with your brushwork analogy, and a value judgment is just "is something 'good' or is it 'bad'" so "right" and "wrong" concepts are inherently subtitutions for that, I don't know if it's really something you can agree to disagree on. Technically. So maybe it would be better for you to articulate the concept you're trying to put across in a different way. Otherwise I understand your position much better now but you still spent too much time on it especially if the bulk of my watch time was spent on that, and considering I still needed the clarification regardless.
She definitely doesn't understand plot structure beyond "vibes" and doesn't tolerate criticism. Crimes of Grindelwald has no second act and needed a complete rewrite.
Hell the pronounciation could actually make sense, mostly. If ther is made clear that silent magic is a thing and it kinda works wit focus, and intent and precision. And that the üpronounciation thing is, to train them the precision and intent and focus, in which pronounciation isnt doing the magic, its an aid. But then she could do actually make that clear in the story and learn i class, because , people might like any explaination and , yeah incuriosity. But ther is said its a start, and like things donr even need good explainations, just thoughts when she writes. which yeah incuriosity. Also christopher nolan went to do better, he did his masterpiece with abrams, who is actually good working with the right people. person of interest is way bette rthan westwork, and less pretentious but really good, as smart, fun. its the masterpiece, and caviezen despite being a nut is a great actor,
I like your analysis. You put words to a lot of feelings I had when I read those books as a teenager. I think one of her flaws is that she doesn't build very good morals. She has to tell you who the good people are and who the bad people are. And she also doesn't really tell you about the motivations the bad people have to be bad. And that's why the whole Malfoy redemption arc doesn't really work. And for me Dumbledore never worked as a good guy. He was just the dude that came by at the end of the story to dump a bunch of worldbuilding on Harry. Funnily enough I think the book that Dumbledore dies in was the first I ever started to acknowledge him as a person with motivations. And what about Snape - I mean... Snape is a core character in those books and then suddenly he redeems himself offscreen. But yeah, he is another character that has motivations that I found very far fetched. Albus Brother is a lot better as a character than a lot of the main characters. The whole housing points system explains how Rowling thinks characters motivation work. They either give Slytherin or Gryffindor points just because then like or dislike Harry. Finding out that Snape has no life of his own and his entire mission in life became protecting Harry through hate and abuse was a turn I didn't like. Snape worked better as a teacher that just disliked a student.
1:22:20 back Again about your point of making choices you can't come back from. That's literally the entire point of Harry's decision to spare Wormtail at the end of book three, he had the chance to kill him then and there but he didn't and because of that Wormtail was able to resurrect Voldemort and set the rest of the series in motion. That decision mattered. Though I completely agree with Quirrells death being a bit meaningless and unimportant
The world outside of the UK is not relevant in the 3 last books. The only international characters appear in book for and it's not too relevant. Grindelwald is mentioned in the last book, but his foreign origins aren't relevant to the plot. I'd say the series has a bunch of problems, but they're not that.
45:11 it isn't about Western fiction, but about how JKR treats it. In worlds like Rick Riordan's universe, the adults (the gods) are fighting another monster, so the teenagers (the halfbloods like Percy) have to face the Big Bad Kronos; they have no other choice. In The Hunger Games, the adults are very much involved in the revolution, but Katniss is THE symbol of revolution, the mockingjay. In Thunderhead (the sequel to Scythe, my favorite sci-fi book), no adult will help Citra because they all think (reasonably) that Rowan is a serial k¡ller (which he is). In JKR's world, the adults don't do anything because they think it's silly. I don't know about you, but in a world where you can make spells that can alter the laws of nature (like making things fly, change your appearance, or even reviving corpses to use them as puppets), I'd think twice before dismissing a rumor about the greatest enemy the wizarding world has confronted has resurrected. Great analysis though!!!
She had a good wizarding idea, but she is not a fantastic plotter. The only believable relationships in her series were the Weasleys and their counterparts in Darkness, the Lestranges, a couple who served the Dark Lord together and went to Azkaban together. Granted she said little about each couple which may have saved her, but like a painter with a brush, sometimes few words are the masterpiece maker. Most of her other relationships were meh or just plain out of character meaning you can't really have those 2 together and keep their characters as she wrote them. Snape/Lily for example. Really? Just no in so many ways. She uses toxic relationships as a plot explanation in too many cases, this one included and Dumbledore/Grindelwald. Snape could've had other reasons to have served the dark lord, and still not be evil, but she'd have to think that one out. Then when her adult mystery books were so dreadful she allowed Cursed play which she did not even write and in that she betrayed her own writing. Voldemort shagging? Really? No. Her deaths in the series were poorly written as well and many of them just weren't believable. That said,I actually discovered a couple of fan fiction writers that actually keep to canon, not changing a word she wrote as for as what HP knows himself and yet they fixed many deaths and plot holes and relationships. I detest fan fiction because it's usually so out of character and out there, rather like cursed child but these bros actually fixed it and not by correcting but by filling in the blanks. They even gave the LGBT healthy relationships, and no not Harry/Draco, I said they did not change canon nd in canon both are straight. LOL. But as they sort of fixed all my issues I had to mention them. They're on fanficion.net as well as archive of our own and the author name is blaisegellert. Not a plug as it isn't me, but I was blown away. LOL. They contacted me after seeing one of my cursed child rants and their fix to it was healing to my little Dark soul. LOL
Let's be honest, you don't need the the original 7 books to show her inability to world build. Just look at what happens when she tried to do it with the American Wizarding Community. I've read fanfiction that was better than that crap. Pretty sure a Second Grader could write better material. Generally, it was a good thing that Rowling kept it to a bare minimum within the original books, because she's just not good at it. When it comes to world building, there is such a thing as too much. Part of it is quality (bad world building is too much by default), but I would also argue that world building that doesn't contribute to the story (basically never brought up), is too much world building. Keep in mind, too much world building doesn't necessarily hurt the story directly, but it can act as a bit of a distraction to actually sitting down and that could act as a deleterious effect on the quality of the final product, or maybe not. Just depends I guess.
I do get and agree with a lot of your points, but the fact that your examples are pretty frequently inaccurate or straight up false kinda makes your points weak :/ There are most certainly big issues with the story, plot and writing and some are tackled, but other things that do work get reshaped as if they don‘t and that‘s just frustrating to listen to
Hey did you know the hobbit was written to entertain children YOUNGER than teens? I guess that explains why the world building is so shallow and inconsistent cuz it didn't really matter cuz kids /s
Also a strengh of the first 3-4 books, itr was still with that whimsical and not he rtrying to be overly serious, despite some elements. Ok on whimsical the world building doesnt need to be good.
It’s irrational to call someone a terrible person for having one single opinion, an opinion that she herself assumes is an attempt to stand up for women and is justifiable. You guys are ridiculous lmao
You're ridiculous for taking what people say at face value when they have an agenda and not reading between the lines of not subtle dogwhistles. She's friends with n*zis bruv. she's in a hate group. grow a brain and get some media literacy cos you are being taken for a fool rn lmao
seems to me the real problem here is the author's personal life. when you try do criticize the books you become contradictory and a little desesperate. you should make a video about how you disagree with JK opinions, that one might work.
"incapable of writing about things outside her experience" so apparently Rowling is a witch who lives at Hogwarts. 'whether or not author's story will survive, depends on whether they can handle bigger scope. JK Rowling is not one of those authors" yet her story is extremely popular and made her a billionaire. 'ways to do it right and ways to do it wrong' so could you state your credentials at least, what makes you qualify to judge it from artistic perspective. 'simple stories'? can you elaborate on that statement. Entire speech about being at the right time is nonsense. how does the time of the story makes any difference on the plot of Harry Potter? It might as well have been a medieval story, you failed to explain this point. How is Harry Potter outdated now? 'it feels like the 90s' were you reading a different book or something? people write with quills and parchment, they travel by carriages, rooms lit by candles, what are you even talking about? 'writing about a kid ostracized from everyone' I mean he was occasionally excluded only by Dursleys, what do you mean everyone? What assumptions does she make about the time period in Fantastic beasts, that make no sense to you? She doesn't understand other cultures - examples or these are mere meaningless words on your part. She does not flash out the magic system - she uses 'magic from words' system, there are plenty details about wands and non words spells, what else do you expect. Watching this video is a torture, I disagree with everything, it's been only 17 minutes of watching. Your opinions appear to me idiotic because you cannot complete and explain the issue coherently on any one of the issues you've described.
I type this before getting too deep into the video. The Potter books are on my vary short list of fantasy books I like. The other are Stephen King's The Stand and most of The Dark Tower (I haven't read the last two books) and that is about it. I barely finished Fallowship of the Rings it was so boring and I only manage 40 pages into the first wheel of times book before given up. There have been other fantasy series that I barely made a couple chapters in.
Ok her pr manager did revolutionize it, okj, her pr manager. The story isnt revolutionary at all, its very rahl and magic schools werent rare even trhen, but great pr. And its eas to read, which kinda , good for a childrens book series. Not groundbreaking but brilliant marketing.
i can think of several million fans who would disagree with you. and what is the name of your best selling series? criticism is easy, accurate criticism is not.
I would argue that you don't need to be a chef to know whether the food you're eating tastes good. You don't need to have painted a masterpiece to know if a piece of art looks good. It's true that you can lend more weight to a subject by having succeeded in it, but it's not a requirement. Personally, I think that it's good people will disagree with me; if everyone agreed with me, I think that would be very weird. I am curious though what you mean by 'accurate' in this case, and I'm curious what you would say if you wanted to give such critique to this series. I would seriously love to hear it, because I fully believe that there are lots of avenues that I haven't explored or thought of.
@@thesilversymposium Balderdash. This criticism is far beyond the scope you are defending. This is the equivalent of claiming that da Vinci was a moron because manga fans don't like his art. I stand by my original statement; and you prove it's validity with continued inept criticism.
@@wonder_sr_land Literally not at all I could not disagree more. Have some standards for the art you consume and PAY for lol. You don't owe billionaires or corporations your appreciation or grace they will not return it, they care about your money. use critical thinking and get some self-respect before giving it to entities that do not deserve it and do not care about you.
The Harry Potter books are definitely flawed, but the minute you started talking about her 'bigotry', I stopped listening. This is obviously going to be about finding fault with JK Rowling's writing because you dislike her standing up for women's rights. So not worth listening to you spouting for 1.5 hours from a position of bias, in the hope of finding a couple of valid points.
@@nicokrasnow1851 Then why bring up that he thinks she's a bigot? Obviously he isn't going to sing her praises if he despises her. Perhaps he'll review Hitler's watercolours next week.
@@erichmyles4481 The long-fought-for right of women to have spaces away from potential, or actual rapists and abusers. The right of women to compete against each other in sport without men pushing them to one side. The right of women not to be mocked and demeaned by narcissistic, preening men dressed up in tarty dresses. Do I have to go on?
What a rambling mess of a video that even at 2x speed feels slow. I shouldn't be able to understand someone speaking at 2x speed yet it feels like it's 1.25 speed. All spoken from someone who has a bias against the novel format in the first place so from the first comment the well is already poisoned and 15 minutes into the video he's rambling about things that don't ultimately matter to the writing in Harry Potter that can't also be applied to any other story, novel or short story and is a stupid slippery slope where the conclusion should be that stories just shouldn't be written because they'll never be perfect.
I used to love the format of quick-spoken 5-facts-a-minute kindof structure for youtube channels (like O.S.P.. But now i find they stress me out. I really enjoyed this video/Podcast, because of the pacing! It is calming, doesn't trigger my fight or flight reflex just by trying to keep up with everything being said.
So I see you skipped over the part where I said that the first four novels are good, and the last three could be good, but because they are telling fundamentally different stories they act in competition with each other. I don't like novels as a format that everyone feels to write, but that's not to say that novels cannot be good. Sorry if wasn't for you though! I do respect your feedback, so clearly I need to speed things up.
@@thesilversymposiumnah, you don’t need to speed things up. This person may or may not have a preference for rapid fire delivery - or perhaps they’re an easily pissed off Rowling fan expressing what is ultimately a quibbling aesthetic preference with far more vitriol than could ever be warranted. I tend to find slower, thoughtful delivery more appealing, and rapid speech a barrage. If someone is thinking deeply about what they’re saying, I want to have the time as a listener to also consider the merits of what I’m hearing to the same depth.
@@thesilversymposiumyou don't need to take critique from someone who insults your work while giving it. I appreciate the thoughtful pace of the video and the points you made
Maybe, but I don't mind critique. I have thick skin, and I think that all critique has some value, even if it's insulting. I would never change everything over it, but I think that it's worth hearing all the same.
You are spot on with the incuriosity.
As a child reading this, I wished Hermione was the point of view character because, I wanted to hear the thoughts of an outsider, who came to understand the magic system and the history of this world.
Later, I realized that the Author doesn't care about the things Harry doesn't know about.
And she simply needs a Dumbledore, a Hermione or anyone else to say "This is how it is, I have thought about it, and I am way smarter than you, now get on with it".
I think you are spot-on with her lack of curiosity with the world building process.
If you watch Shaun's analysis of Harry Potter, he describes the phenomenon where she would introduce a paradigm-shifting element in one book, receive questions and criticism from it via readers and fans after that element had no appearance or impact in the following book, and then surreptitiously coming up with a way to negate, destroy, or revisit the element entirely in the book after that (the one-book-lag phenomenon).
Basically, she wanted readers to accept the world she was giving them as-is and in the way she made it, but many people love examining how things affect other things and would ask her how, why, why not, etc until she got fed up and "knocked the element off the shelf" in protest. She continued this even after book 7 in the supplemental articles on Pottermore and in answers she gave to fan questions. It's why people were begging her to stop expanding her own stories long before she started stumping for fascists.
And suddenly I feel validated for spending way too much time planning out my world building when I start writing a new novel.
Personally, I'm very anti-novel as a medium, just because I think it's a bit like college; everyone gets pushed to write them but there are very few stories that are worth making to 40k words. Not that you can't do it, I just think the short story is the superior style. And that's because all the writers I take inspiration from wrote in that format, such as Lovecraft or Doyle. The real struggle with novels is that if they're not structured or paced well, they end up falling apart quickly.
But that's entirely my personal view; novels can be great and people who want to write them should.
I will say that on the matter of worldbuilding, my personal view is that you need to do enough that the audience knows what's going on and you know what's going on, but you don't need to do so much that the setting becomes the story. One flaw in a lot of isekai/manhua/litrpgs is that the setting becomes the entire story; the system becomes what the story is about, and that's boring af. As interesting as we the writers are in our own worlds, the audience isn't. they're not there for a wiki page on our world, they're there for a story.
So that's why I said in the video that Rowling both succeeded and failed. When the story was focused on Harry exploring this world, she had done enough worldbuilding without the setting becoming the story. When the story suddenly became about the world itself and the balance of power in it, she didn't do nearly enough, and it was extremely obvious that she didn't.
So when it comes to world building you should give the readers enough to get the general idea of how the world works?
I think its not that everything has to planned out, but the major stuff outlined enough to not make major plunders.
Or if you have to change things, make it loose enough you can be flexible later while having an idea of the world. It just needs to be hold track off enough to , make it sense. That even if you inprovise, what should make sense. Loosely.
Ok and none of that is the worst sin in worldbuilding, do research about others cultures , you write about, for inspiration. Do bloody enough research to not just write stereotypes. Or of, write them at least interesting researched stereotypes tht arent offensive. .
Ok her worst sin is unable to take criticism and learn from it.
@@marocat4749 that makes sense. One of the things that always stuck out for me reading the Potter books was how Fleur read such of a stereotype French women of the worst type. I have read the books close to a dozen times and every time I think not only how much a stereotype Fleur is but how clearly she seems to hate the character. If there was anything I was sure of it was that Rowling hated attractive French women.
That said I agree you need to do your research and you can still loose with things.
@@stephennootens916I personally think writers should do what is best for their story. If they want a story that is huge and expansive then focus the story on exploring the world. If the writer wants to be character driven then focus on that. For the latter I don't think there should be no world building or world building that focuses exclusively on the character just what is needed for the story. Again whatever the writer wants to do.
You did bring up some great points but i think some of your points felt contradictory. Particularly about Rowlings worldbuilding. You criticized her for not expanding her world much beyond Britain while also criticizing her that the Ministry of Magic felt unbelievable.
And the mention that Harry never hated Voldemort is actually a point to his character. He DOESN'T hate voldemort who was cruel and evil, but he does hate people like Wormtail who betrayed his parents, or Umbridge who was abusive towards him. Whether this is a positive to his character or a negative is left to interpretation.
I also feel like many of your points about the story structure were operating under the notion that novels need have a specific story structure. Which is untrue. Harry doesnt follow a traditional heroes journey because thats not really the point of his story. His story i'd argue is closer to a progression fiction when the protag is faced with several rising stakes events where he must learn and improve to overcome. Only this story ties all those events to Voldemort and Harrys relationship with him.
I understand this is entirely my opinion and im not trying to defend Rowling, but as someone who analyzes stories a lot i realized i had lots of opinions i wanted to share.
I would agree with some of this, but I want to respond a bit to clarify my thought process.
The problem is not that she lacked worldbuilding. It's that she chose to expand her universe further than she was willing to world build, which creates holes and contradictions. It's not that the Ministry feels unbelievable as a concept. It's that it's suddenly introduced as a thing containing hundreds of magical WMDs in order to rapidly increase the stakes, making it feel like the author is trying to retroactively add them before she thought of them.
It's GOOD to have a character that doesn't hate their antagonist. But that loses all meaning if they don't have a reason they could hate them that's personal. Put it like this, which is more impactful? A character who is separated from the acts of the villain, such as death of his parents before he has memories or attachment, and chooses to not hate someone for that? Or someone who as an adult experiences injustice and loss because of someone and then chooses not to hate them? Harry choosing not to hate Voldemort is a good idea. Narratively speaking, it would be stronger if Voldemort did something that actively gave him a reason to search his own feelings on the matter. All the evil things Voldemort does to harm Harry are either done before he's self aware or by other people whos serve him.
As for story structure, all novels have structure. Storytelling has a formula, and you can play with that formula, but that doesn't mean you can do whatever you want. There's a reason why you want rising action and then a climax, and why you organize your story beats a certain way. Put it like this: when you organize the story of a novel, you have the normal arc of rising action, climax, end. But, within a series, there are now multiples of these that exist within a larger one. So, in a progression series, you would have several smaller arcs that when zoomed out form a bigger arc. When you plot the course of Harry potter, it's linear progression until book 4, and then suddenly it shoots up like a wall. The pacing is all wrong. It looks like an EKG machine. That's why it feels weird compared to the earlier books. It wants to have the pacing of a thriller but it hasn't built in the things needed to be a thriller.
@@thesilversymposium i understand what you mean, I do believe it was a bit clearer in your comment than your video. I do agree that the pacing is bad just overall and perhaps I'm just being overly sympathetic towards the series. But your point about storytelling has a formula, I would agree but not every formula is the same and some stories do benefit greatly from a break from the norm, I personally believe that Harry Potter would have been stronger with a further break of the formula. But thats also looking at it with the hindsight of today. Thanks for chatting your response are quite interesting
I agree fully that you can and should be able to break the formula at times. In fact, sometimes it's better to break from the formula. But I believe that it should always be for the benefit of the story. One of the things that you see in a lot of independent films for example is the desire to break free from the three act structure, the way someone like Quentin Tarantino does. Think about something like Pulp Fiction or Inglorious Bastards, neither of which have standard three act structures; there, it's broken because it benefits the way the story is being told. But he can do that because Tarantino basically wrote the book on the three act structure.
One of my personal beliefs is that writers should not be afraid to adhere to things that are tried and true. That they shouldn't be afraid to follow the rules and go down the expected route. People like the expected route! Imagine if every time you ate a Snickers it had a random flavor! It would probably not be something you would be willing to eat as often as you might do so otherwise.
The problem in Rowling's case is that she very successfully follows a structure in the first four books. That is to its credit! It then breaks with this during the last three. Now, it COULD have been okay, but the problem is less that it has a NEW structure and more that it doesn't feel like it has any structure. In my view, it almost feels like a precursor to what she'd write later in her career, which are thriller mystery novels, because that's what it feels like she's trying to copy from structure wise. It's just grafted on to the wrong kind of story.
So you say its a coming of age story, which too, have usually a structure.
Through i kinda think the ball in 4 makes sense, like no one believed voldemord was any risk and , while harry dealing more with feeling gaslit about that and that stuff, and yeah, he should be way more horny there and not just be ball obsessed. or a reason why he and ron care so much about balls. Like if rons poor background, i dont know, and harry, just let him be a bit horny as reason there, good enough.
Voldemord if he is still the big bad still should have some sort of trauma he has to deal with. or show harrys darker side, he has. Its not explored enough, but he has. Likr draco could see that potential to tempt him and, its an entire different story, that actually makes him wanting to tempt harry insead being just a dick. And then redemption by harry making him a better person by his company? letting him explore more his potentional for darkness would make harry way better, even if he rejects that at the end. That its part of him, would be interesting.
1:04:37 I would argue that Cedric death in the graveyard was Harry's true call to action which would fit with your analysis that books 1-4 and books 5-7 are two separate stories because Harry finally is forced to face Voldemort, survives but is left irreparably changed for the last three books
See I would accept that argument, but there's one problem: Cedric isn't anyone super important to Harry. I mean I'm sure that he's super upset that someone he knew as a classmate died like that. But he's not like a close friend, he's not a character we've been with for a bunch of books, and we never get the sense that this one death changes his life.
One of the things a call to action should do, in my view, is impress upon the character AND the audience that this is an important, life changing event. The audience and the character should BOTH want to go on the journey. In the lord of the rings, for example, this moment of no return, I feel, is in the mines of moria, where Gandalf is removed from the group after sacrificing himself to stop the balrog. That raises the stakes and makes it so the protagonists, who at this point have not really encountered evil beyond ring wraiths and goblins, encounter what they can tell is a vast, dangerous evil. That's the moment where they realize that while they might have chosen to do something before, they have to do it now.
That moment in Harry Potter is either A. the death of his parents, where he's a baby and thus never really experiences loss over this, or B. the death of Dumbledore, but that's not done by Voldemort, so it's not really a proper call to defeat the big bad. If the goal was to do something similar to Gandalf and the Balrog, where the mentor is killed/removed by a secondary force attached to the main villain, it happens WAY too late in the story for it to be what it needs to be. If you wanted the mentor to die at that point, you'd need Voldemort to be the one to kill him, so that Harry then has a personal, direct reason to act. Without that, there's only the most tenuous of threads connecting them.
But why dies Cedric need to be someone important for it to be Harry's call to action. I think its immensely more powerful that he's not, he's just an innocent bystander who got in the way. Voldemorts line "Kill the spare" meant that Cedric death wasn't even something meaningful, he was just a spare in the way of Harry. And that is the moment that Harry is changed, and its easy to see it how much he spent thinking about it for the first several chapters of the next book. Most of his action in book five are directly tied to his anger, fear and grief over the death of Cedric. You can't argue that death didn't heavily affect him and he seems to spend even more time thinking about Cedric death than even Sirius' death.
Again I think you are comparing Harry Potter plot structure to other stories too heavily. Its NOT Lord of the Ring, and I think a comparison there is a bit unfair as Tolkien and Rowling had vastly different goals with their writing. Harry potters plot structure is a bit unique at the time which helped to lend to its immense popularity growth and just because copycats who tried to use the same structure failed doesn't mean that Harry Potters structure was inherently flawed or that it was just a fluke that it worked this once.
Either way thank you for the discussion.
@@thesilversymposiumthere is a theory floating around online that originally, it was Ron who was supposed to be selected as a fellow competitor in the triwizard tournament and it was Ron who was supposed to be killed by Voldemort in the confrontation at Godric’s Hollow, and that it was the death of Ron that would be Harry’s needed motivation for the last 3 books, but for some reason at the last minute Rowling realised there was a plot hole of some kind (Ron wasn’t old enough to participate?) and created the character of Cedric to fill that role.
@@esyphillis101 I am not sure if i should give her that credit, but it would be great i guess.
Nice analysis of the Harry Potter series, particularly the use of characters other than Harry to illustrate the world and allow him to learn about wizard's and their ways through them. I think this helps to explain why characters other than Harry often seem flat and one-dimensional - they are just authorial mouthpieces for Rowling to use to provide information to the reader.
I also agree that the first four books are a different kettle of fish than the last three, but I think the transition in tone and writing begins to take place in book 4, with the international quidditch tournament in particular. I remember reading it when the book was first released and thinking how much different the tone was compared to the opening of the first three books. I also felt you could have left the whole tournament out of the book and lost nothing of importance.
I also noticed how much longer book 4 was in terms of word count compared to the first three - almost twice as long as book 3, and longer than books 1 and 2 put together. This continued for the rest of the series, with the final four books being much longer than the first three in terms of word count. I also find the last four much more tedious to read, with pacing problems and diversions into things that do nothing for the overall plot or for world-building.
I read books 5 and 6 when they came out, just to see where the story was going, but by the time book 7 arrived, I could not be bothered and just waited for the Wikipedia plot summary to appear so that I could find out how it all concluded. Your analysis has helped me understand why I was so disappointed at the time.
One thing I have read that relates to this is how Rowling's relationship to her publisher changed after the success of the first three books. The series was not an instant hit - it took a few years to be hugely popular. As a result, the first three books went through the normal editing process for children's literature, with the publisher having a significant degree of influence over the contents and the overall length of the novels. By the fourth book, however, Rowling was so popular with her audience that she had far more control over the contents, and this led to the books being longer and less tightly focused. I think this helps to explain why the later books feel so different than the first ones.
I think what you said about focusing on what you know is something a lot of people don't fully grasp. But to add to that people have to know what they want to write and focus on that idea. I feel like a lot of stories aren't focused. Any story is about many things but great stories focus on a few things. Which makes those things lift weaker parts of the story.
Like I feel so many people view world building as something separate from the story and not an extension of the story. You can have a story focus on world building but then that has to be the intent and focus.
I feel there's a few things you didn't touch on
1.) The first 3 books are mystery novels that just happen to take place in a magical world. That's why the magic system isn't as important. But when she deviates into more of a fantasy epic story with the final 4 books then it really shows the cracks in her writing.
2.) I agree, it's not really important why magic works or why spells are the way they are. But where the magic system falls flat is in other places. Why is Dumbledore the most powerful wizard? What makes a wizard powerful? Can anybody of any skill level learn any spell? Once she started to introduce "power" to the world she needed an explanation of what actually makes somebody powerful or not. The elder wand is "the most powerful wand" so does the wand dictate power? Are some people unable to cast certain spells or do certain magic because their wand isn't powerful enough? That's where she needed to go into more detail.
I would divide the Harry Potter books into two parts. 1-4 and 5-7. The first four books are children books. The last three are a typical young adult fantasy.
So the first four books are using cliches and typical tropes and stylistic devices for children books. A logical worldbuilding or developed (complicated characters) aren't necessary, the most important is too amaze the read, to immerse him in the world and make him emotionaly invested with characters. So characters are like that, because they have their roles. Snape is a mean teacher archetype. Dumbledore is a good old wizard archetype, Draco is a school bully archetype. Hermione and Ron have their sidekicks archetypes. A logical worldbuilding isn't improtant, so Harry and Ron didn't use a Night Bus to get to the school in the 2nd book. Probably Rowling even didn't came up with this idea at this point. But those things aren't important. Books are very well written and readers love them. My fav is the Prisoner of Azkaban. A nice plot, no Voldemort, Harry has some drive to make himself better. And the great finale.
The later books are different. They grow up with readers, so they became a typical young adult series. They are worse. I mean they are still very well written and I read them with pleasure (as we say in Poland: Rowling has a "lekkie pióro" light pen/quill), but overall they are worse in quality and content. HP and the Order of the Phoenix is too long and Harry and others around him act totally lost. The Half Blood Prince is ok-ish and the Last Book is bad, just a typical young adult dystopian/war novel, at least better written than other novels like that, but character and plot wise bad. For me one of issues with the later books is how the main character is presented. Harry doesn't change much from the earlier more naive books. When in the children books he might be just a walking and talking plot device and we learn about the world when it is needed for him, in more serious books it doesn't work anymore. He doesn't have any drive to make himself better, which he once had in the Prisoner of Fire and even in the Goblet of Fire. So we got a pathetic final duel, where Voldemort was killed by the rebound of his own curse.
But overall, the change was needed, readers who started as children with the Philosopher's Stone were in their early 20s when the final book was published, but I think it might have been better executed.
It's amazing how Harry is such an inactive character that just pinballs from one plot point to another, like he's such a generic "good guy" that after seeing the movies and reading most of the books I literally have no idea what he truly wants or believes. I have no sense of who Harry is other than "generic protagonist that beats big bad because chosen one" and that's a big problem.
11:05 bit of a nitpick, but JKR didn't grow up in the ninties, she was born in 1965. She did start writing the books around the middle of 1990. Listening further I think you may have just misspoken because it sounds like you get she was tapping into the culture she was in while she was writing. 🤷♀️
This is a great video but I need to push back on the idea that Voldy needs to stay in the shadows for the story to work. The original Star Wars trilogy (which I am SURE was one of Rowling's inspirations) pulled off "Satan coming into the light" quite nicely. So did Stargate SG1 with Anubis. There are other examples. It CAN work. So I don't think a blanket statement that a writer should never attempt it applies in this case.
They definitely keep the big bad in the dark in original trilogy of Star wars
"Incurious" has to be the most polite way of saying "Lazily mediocre" I've ever heard.
It's a roundabout way of calling people stupid imo lol
One thing Rowling is good at is coming up with new cool stuff, which she did every book of the series, so the magical world always stays interesting. But she never actually thinks about the implications of whay she includes.
The spells being in Latin suggests that English magic descends from either the Roman Empire or the Catholic Church. Maybe the schism dates back to when Merlin wanted a divorce?
Or that the language was adopted by muggles.
That or just Latin being the shared scholar language of Europe. Rome was present in England and Wales 1000 years ago or so. Presumably Runes deals with other ancient languages. Like old Norse for example.
Man I really gotta say you hit the nail on the head with the flaws in Rowlings writing style and how the series drops off after goblet
I distinctly have never really been as into the series post goblet in book or movie form and never been able to truly say why outside of it feeling like the mystery and wonder kinda gets lost for more plotting and build up for the final battle or something
These books are a classic example to me of good characters, decent story, and ABYSMAL worldbuilding.
Actually, shitty characters, terrible nonsense story, and whatever world building.
good characters? they're terrible people and not even well written terrible people
the call to action issue also just. makes harry a painfully passive character. which didn't even really make sense to me in the initial few books because if i suddenly found out i'm a wizard and magic is real and moved into a magic castle to take magic classes, i would genuinely spend all my time trying to learn more and practice magic. even thought this back when i first read the books and i was literally eleven so i was exactly harry's age. but it's even worse as the books progress. SO many things happen and harry just floats through the story not really caring about anything or doing anything except playing quidditch. he doesn't even learn much magic??? he relies on expelliarmus for literally everything INCLUDING the final confrontation with voldemort?? even in book 5 when they're trying to teach themselves defense against the dark arts, they just learn the patronus spell and expelliarmus and then like the exploding one?? the literal wizard nazis come back and harry just sits in the gryffindor common room going "yeah thats bad. anyway." it's just boring.
Harry doesn't cast a single spell in book 1
Thinking back to when I was a teenager it was very easy for someone to come back from summer break being a different person. Watching someone die can add to that. Since the characters were teens, it isn't preposterous for them to be different people after a few books. Some of the character progression should have been foreshadowed better. It was somewhat foreshadowed in book 3, but it could have been handled better to make it more gradual. He could have also grown closer to Cedric.
There's plenty of young heroes in Western story telling too. It works across cultures allegorically as a way of illustrating the concept of coming of age. I've never felt taken out of media because a group of teenagers and their youthful thinking defeat the embodiment of the old system. It's not only an anime thing, though Japanese culture has more reason to idolize youth than most places... though we still have even in the West those who peak in high school or never truly mentally age out of the youth mentality.
You talk a lot of Lord of the Rings, but contemporary to that you also had The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe where four children beat a Nephilim witch to free a magical kingdom of talking animals.
You even bring some of this up later. I think your criticism would have come off more valid if you stuck to the specific misteppings of Rowling herself instead of spending so much time declaring certain story directions impossible on the whole, when you even had to go back and admit on some level they happen before. You are perfectly aware that these are things that can be handled in a story, yet you so broadly condemn the notion, so it made your video fall flat for me. The fact that Rowling neglected world building in many spots and paced her story awkwardly so that the entire tone had to shift in book four is a valid and specific critique instead of spinning a lot of words to say you don't personally relate to teen protagonists, but then also admit that their spot in a hero's journey is an obvious allegory for maturation.
Garth niy keys of the kingdom, Ther are several series with action and young adults that are not being the most badass and solve everything just crucial, In whatever way.
So I could probably have made an entire video on this topic, but I can elaborate on the point I was trying to make. Because you're correct, child heroes maturing makes for an easy hero's journey plotline, and audiences can accept younger protagonists.
However, there are caveats to this. For one, western audiences expect different things from younger characters than the ones you'd find in manga. In manga it's not strange if a 15 year old becomes a godlike being or someone capable of defeating people much older in terms of skill or power. But western audiences don't think that way; the way in which we think about age in terms of story matters. For example, it would be hard to pitch a story where a 15 year old becomes the savior of an entire world in a western context, but this is common in anime.
The reason I bring up The Lion, The Witch, and the Wardrobe is that the characters are of various ages, some older and some younger. As the series progresses, they even age out of the series; part of this is the author's sexism, at least in regards to Susan. But it also makes a good contrast, because the fact that they're children is extremely important to the story. C.S. Lewis uses them being young and flawed to tell his story, because he's trying to use that to show Christian values and concepts. Ideas like sin and temptation are on full display, but so is innocence. Them being children is required for the story to work.
I contrast this with Harry Potter because initially him being 11 is very important; him being a child allows the audience to see the world through his eyes, and this works. But when he's 15 and now expected to face down wizard Hitler, that is a little more of a stretch for the audience, because the work hasn't been done to age him in the minds of the audience the same way. Furthermore, it feels weird that people aren't treating him like the child he is; if you were part of a resistance movement against fascists, would you really be deferring to the 16 year old, even if it's claimed he's the chosen one?
My point in comparing all these things is to point out how hard Rowling suddenly needs to work in book 5 and 6 to rapidly mature Harry from a child to an adult, because she suddenly has to change her story's tone and subject, and it's jarring because it's not a gradual shift. It's rapid and somewhat clunky in execution.
I hate Harry Potter after reading the 1st tome. There are many things wrong, especially when Harry and friends lose points only to recover them in the adventure. This is unfair for others students and they didn't know about that. It's an excuse to spotlight Harry.
We have also the exchange between Dumbledore and McGonagall. She told him to not depose Harry here because on how bad the Dursley are but Dumbledore "counters" her by saying he will a legend. And for ten years, he didn't check if Harry is happy here.
And don't mention the "in seven years, he will be famous" like Rowling planned seven tomes. Ugh.
I never get the hype on these books.
56:54 The worst part: when the author doesn't understand what they are writing.
1:10:07 The architect kind of writer
Great video, but there's one thing I widely disagree with. You don't need Harry's tragedy to struck him when he was older to not make him a blanck slate. Naruto is pretty much the same as Harry in that regard (orphaned as a baby, heavily isolated/mistreated during his childhood) and you still can see that he isn't a blanck slate and has proper growth during his journey of hero (even when Kishimoto is still a pretty flawed writer himself).
any time a book for film gets really big. there will always be those who call it overrated. Its always the successful things that are called overrated. There is a small book series that people call overrated.
In my own opinion, Harry Potter is most definitely overrated. for how big it got. Its a great series. Love harry potter.
HP with a little work on its magic system and a few other areas. It would have been a lot better.
I don't understand the position that Harry had no motivation to oppose Voldemort. Like, wizard Hitler over there was actively trying to take over the country and kill anyone he didn't like and Harry was very high up on Voldemort's do not like list. Harry very much had every motivation to try to oppose the guy wherever he could, even though he was just a kid and ultimately had little he could actually do to meaningfully stop him for most of the series
What I meant was that Rowling tries very hard throughout the series to make it seem like Harry has a PERSONAL reason to fight Voldemort; she sets up that he killed his parents, that he's responsible for lots of the things that happen in the different books, but the problem I'm bringing up is that these are all secondary things, not primary ones. As I said, Harry didn't KNOW his parents; he wasn't attached to them in the same way he would be if he knew them and thus doesn't experience the same loss that he might have if he had been older when they died. Voldemort isn't the one who kills his mentor figure Dumbledore either. He's not the one directly threatening his friends and loved ones, those are his death eaters. He didn't cause the death of his only living relative, Sirius.
He exists, but he exists in the background, separated from Harry directly. "You're the guy who ordered the people who did the things I hate" is less motivating than "you're the person who murdered my family, ruined my life, killed my mentor, and my only living relative."
The issue is that the series WANTS Harry and Voldemort to have this dramatic, climactic showdown, like they're personally opposed to each other. They want it to be like a showdown between Batman and the Joker, or between Superman and Lex Luthor; a situation where one side has been PERSONALLY opposed by this other force and must now step up to defeat his opponent. But Harry has no real personal animus to Voldemort beyond second hand issues; he has a bigger problem with Snape who killed Dumbledore and made his life miserable over the years than he does with the wizard fascist, and that's what I'm getting at.
You can't do the dramatic showdown between two hated enemies when they've not been directly clashing all this time. How much more powerful would that moment have been, if Harry had lost his parents at like 7, where he knew loss and then was made miserable by his aunt and uncle. How much more potent would it have been if Voldemort killed Dumbledore who was defending Harry, thus making it clear that the mentor figure can no longer defend him? The only person that is killed directly in front of Harry is Cedric, and it's hard to care about a guy who is introduced and dies in one book.
@@thesilversymposium I mean, I understand what you're saying here and I get what you're driving at, but I just feel like someone actively trying to kill you either directly or by proxy for half of your life, does make your beef personal. Hell, the fact that Voldemort has a very personal reason to try to hunt Harry down ought to contribute to this as Harry knows that he will never be able to have a free or happy life unless Voldemort is defeated which feels like a very personal reason for him to care and not just a detached "Hero's just always got to fight the big bad" sort of reason. Maybe if Voldemort just didn't really care about Harry and was more or less willing to let bygones be bygones if Harry didn't get in his way I would be questioning the sense of personal motivation on Harry's part, but the fact that Voldemort would not give him that out means that Harry basically has to have a personal motivation because Voldemort is making it personal.
All that said though, I do agree that what you described would have made things more personal/visceral than the way it was actually handled.
And this is what I'm trying to get at: what you're describing are Voldemort's motivations for wanting to get at Harry. But Harry's motivation boils down to 'this guy won't leave me alone.' He's not aiming to be a hero himself, he's not seeking redemption or revenge for his parents or mentor, he doesn't feel obligation to be the one to step up because of some mistake or previous weakness. He ends up where he does because the plot requires it, and the villain demands it, but the problem is that if Voldemort just stopped seeking him out personally, all the wrongs done to him are done by the people beneath him. And you could structure the story that way, where it's a matter of personal obligation even though the hero doesn't want the responsibility. But the issue is that Rowling wrote a story where Harry, the protagonist, is meant to have this kind of batman and joker esque relationship with Voldemort, where the two are in opposition and also mirrors of each other, where one cannot exist if the other does. And yes, only one side of the conflict is written as if that is the case; Voldemort spends the whole story driven by the belief that so long as Harry is alive, he will one day destroy him. That's been done a lot of times, and generally the way you do that is by having the villain's actions result in the hero he fears coming into being. But that's not what's been written; we end up with the plot saying 'only one can live' and Harry having no personal motivation beyond that statement because Voldemort has never personally wronged him when he was conscious of it happening. Every bad thing that's occurred to him was done either before he could remember it or by someone else, aside from the death of a character who was introduced in that same book. If you want to do 'these two are personal, hated enemies' you can't have one of them be almost entirely disconnected from the struggle. That's different from 'the villain creates the hero due to his own paranoia.'
@@thesilversymposium Again, I kinda get what you're saying but even the example you use here to illustrate your point, comparing Harry and Voldemort to the Joker and Batman fits more my point than yours. The Joker is very much obsessed with Batman because he sees him as his perfect foil, but Batman very much does not see Joker in the same way. Batman only cares what the Joker is doing because he is trying to combat crime more generally. Joker did not kill Batman's parents (at least in most iterations of the character) and Batman has no real visceral personal stake in fighting the Joker. If the Joker didn't commit crimes or was locked up in prison with no chance of escape then Batman would take no further interest in him, nor would his core motivation have changed in the slightest because Joker is only one criminal out of the countless members of Batman's rogues gallery and the even more numerous common criminals. And if Batman and Joker can still have something approaching the dichotomous relationship you are looking for even though only the villain has a serious personal motivation in their struggle, then why not Harry and Voldemort?
Frank Herbert was quite homophobic, Dune's still awesome.
I've spent twenty minutes listening to you plod and hedge your way through a myriad of abstract concepts without entering into a single concrete example or practical concept. I don't know if I'm still at the intro but that is _way_ too long. And, perhaps ironically I've arguably found a contradiction or two.
You said stories are "largely formulaic because formulas work" "storytelling is an art, there is a right way and a wrong way to do it" - that's a craft. Traditionally speaking the phrase "an art" is used to describe a processes which does not by necessity have a rigid articulatible, step by step formula, but something which is more abstract, intuitive and ultimately subjective.
This leads into you working from a paradoxical foundation of logic. You are stating that we should not look at a work based on value judgments, but saying this is "right" and this is "wrong" are value judgments. By definition. I'd suppose you're arguing solely against the application of ethically based value judgments but that distinction is not drawn.
Then there's the assertion that narratives are best when they are a product of their time, however if there were an objective standard of storytelling logic, a "right" and a "wrong" way that transcends contemporary value judgments there's no reason it wouldn't transcend those of the timein which it was made. Because most (if not all) of the ways we describe art being a product of its time is through a looking glass of value judgments distorted by time. So it's not clear how one could set aside value judgments that have evolved over time while assessing the quality of something based on how it's reflective of its own time.
See, I wouldn't argue that it's a value judgement to talk about structure. To compare it to painting, there are brush techniques that you can analyze and deconstruct to say whether or not something is technically correct, without discussing whether or not the work is personally pleasing to you. For example, a Picasso is, from a technique standpoint, very good. Whether or not you like the themes or the subject is a personal question.
And I bring these things up because if things can shift radically over time, then we have to ask if they're really concrete judgements. If you can argue that a thing is X, and then thirty years pass and you argue that it is X, but you have moved from saying it's positive to negative without changing the argument, is that a judgement of the work on a technical level or a judgement of the values?
In my view, an author's personal views only matter in two contexts: 1. is the work a reflection of something that the author believes/is trying to express? 2. the effects of the author's views in the time in which they lived.
So something like Lovecraft's bigotry is important when discussing his works, because his personal views bleed into his works. Something like Starship Troopers is a reflection and response to the era it was written in and espouses a concrete worldview of the author.
Harry Potter is neither an expression of the author's views, nor does it widely affect the world in which it was created. Her personal views and the work are, in this case, separate. I bring up her crime novels as a case when her personal views and the views in her book are linked; Harry Potter is not that.
@@thesilversymposium I don't know that I agree with your brushwork analogy, and a value judgment is just "is something 'good' or is it 'bad'" so "right" and "wrong" concepts are inherently subtitutions for that, I don't know if it's really something you can agree to disagree on. Technically. So maybe it would be better for you to articulate the concept you're trying to put across in a different way.
Otherwise I understand your position much better now but you still spent too much time on it especially if the bulk of my watch time was spent on that, and considering I still needed the clarification regardless.
It's the power of love. Like the song, Harry Potter and his mother's sacrifice of love. It kind of sort of works.
She definitely doesn't understand plot structure beyond "vibes" and doesn't tolerate criticism. Crimes of Grindelwald has no second act and needed a complete rewrite.
She took an established subgenre and McDonaldized it
Hell the pronounciation could actually make sense, mostly. If ther is made clear that silent magic is a thing and it kinda works wit focus, and intent and precision. And that the üpronounciation thing is, to train them the precision and intent and focus, in which pronounciation isnt doing the magic, its an aid.
But then she could do actually make that clear in the story and learn i class, because , people might like any explaination and , yeah incuriosity. But ther is said its a start, and like things donr even need good explainations, just thoughts when she writes. which yeah incuriosity.
Also christopher nolan went to do better, he did his masterpiece with abrams, who is actually good working with the right people. person of interest is way bette rthan westwork, and less pretentious but really good, as smart, fun. its the masterpiece, and caviezen despite being a nut is a great actor,
I like your analysis. You put words to a lot of feelings I had when I read those books as a teenager. I think one of her flaws is that she doesn't build very good morals. She has to tell you who the good people are and who the bad people are. And she also doesn't really tell you about the motivations the bad people have to be bad. And that's why the whole Malfoy redemption arc doesn't really work. And for me Dumbledore never worked as a good guy. He was just the dude that came by at the end of the story to dump a bunch of worldbuilding on Harry. Funnily enough I think the book that Dumbledore dies in was the first I ever started to acknowledge him as a person with motivations.
And what about Snape - I mean... Snape is a core character in those books and then suddenly he redeems himself offscreen.
But yeah, he is another character that has motivations that I found very far fetched. Albus Brother is a lot better as a character than a lot of the main characters.
The whole housing points system explains how Rowling thinks characters motivation work. They either give Slytherin or Gryffindor points just because then like or dislike Harry. Finding out that Snape has no life of his own and his entire mission in life became protecting Harry through hate and abuse was a turn I didn't like. Snape worked better as a teacher that just disliked a student.
1:22:20 back Again about your point of making choices you can't come back from. That's literally the entire point of Harry's decision to spare Wormtail at the end of book three, he had the chance to kill him then and there but he didn't and because of that Wormtail was able to resurrect Voldemort and set the rest of the series in motion. That decision mattered. Though I completely agree with Quirrells death being a bit meaningless and unimportant
The world outside of the UK is not relevant in the 3 last books. The only international characters appear in book for and it's not too relevant. Grindelwald is mentioned in the last book, but his foreign origins aren't relevant to the plot. I'd say the series has a bunch of problems, but they're not that.
45:11 it isn't about Western fiction, but about how JKR treats it. In worlds like Rick Riordan's universe, the adults (the gods) are fighting another monster, so the teenagers (the halfbloods like Percy) have to face the Big Bad Kronos; they have no other choice. In The Hunger Games, the adults are very much involved in the revolution, but Katniss is THE symbol of revolution, the mockingjay. In Thunderhead (the sequel to Scythe, my favorite sci-fi book), no adult will help Citra because they all think (reasonably) that Rowan is a serial k¡ller (which he is). In JKR's world, the adults don't do anything because they think it's silly. I don't know about you, but in a world where you can make spells that can alter the laws of nature (like making things fly, change your appearance, or even reviving corpses to use them as puppets), I'd think twice before dismissing a rumor about the greatest enemy the wizarding world has confronted has resurrected. Great analysis though!!!
She had a good wizarding idea, but she is not a fantastic plotter. The only believable relationships in her series were the Weasleys and their counterparts in Darkness, the Lestranges, a couple who served the Dark Lord together and went to Azkaban together. Granted she said little about each couple which may have saved her, but like a painter with a brush, sometimes few words are the masterpiece maker. Most of her other relationships were meh or just plain out of character meaning you can't really have those 2 together and keep their characters as she wrote them. Snape/Lily for example. Really? Just no in so many ways. She uses toxic relationships as a plot explanation in too many cases, this one included and Dumbledore/Grindelwald. Snape could've had other reasons to have served the dark lord, and still not be evil, but she'd have to think that one out. Then when her adult mystery books were so dreadful she allowed Cursed play which she did not even write and in that she betrayed her own writing. Voldemort shagging? Really? No. Her deaths in the series were poorly written as well and many of them just weren't believable. That said,I actually discovered a couple of fan fiction writers that actually keep to canon, not changing a word she wrote as for as what HP knows himself and yet they fixed many deaths and plot holes and relationships. I detest fan fiction because it's usually so out of character and out there, rather like cursed child but these bros actually fixed it and not by correcting but by filling in the blanks. They even gave the LGBT healthy relationships, and no not Harry/Draco, I said they did not change canon nd in canon both are straight. LOL. But as they sort of fixed all my issues I had to mention them. They're on fanficion.net as well as archive of our own and the author name is blaisegellert. Not a plug as it isn't me, but I was blown away. LOL. They contacted me after seeing one of my cursed child rants and their fix to it was healing to my little Dark soul. LOL
Let's be honest, you don't need the the original 7 books to show her inability to world build.
Just look at what happens when she tried to do it with the American Wizarding Community. I've read fanfiction that was better than that crap. Pretty sure a Second Grader could write better material. Generally, it was a good thing that Rowling kept it to a bare minimum within the original books, because she's just not good at it.
When it comes to world building, there is such a thing as too much. Part of it is quality (bad world building is too much by default), but I would also argue that world building that doesn't contribute to the story (basically never brought up), is too much world building.
Keep in mind, too much world building doesn't necessarily hurt the story directly, but it can act as a bit of a distraction to actually sitting down and that could act as a deleterious effect on the quality of the final product, or maybe not. Just depends I guess.
I do get and agree with a lot of your points, but the fact that your examples are pretty frequently inaccurate or straight up false kinda makes your points weak :/
There are most certainly big issues with the story, plot and writing and some are tackled, but other things that do work get reshaped as if they don‘t and that‘s just frustrating to listen to
Bruv this is a children's book series written to entertain and entrance children and teenagers.
Hey did you know the hobbit was written to entertain children YOUNGER than teens?
I guess that explains why the world building is so shallow and inconsistent cuz it didn't really matter cuz kids /s
Also a strengh of the first 3-4 books, itr was still with that whimsical and not he rtrying to be overly serious, despite some elements.
Ok on whimsical the world building doesnt need to be good.
It’s irrational to call someone a terrible person for having one single opinion, an opinion that she herself assumes is an attempt to stand up for women and is justifiable. You guys are ridiculous lmao
You're ridiculous for taking what people say at face value when they have an agenda and not reading between the lines of not subtle dogwhistles. She's friends with n*zis bruv. she's in a hate group. grow a brain and get some media literacy cos you are being taken for a fool rn lmao
seems to me the real problem here is the author's personal life. when you try do criticize the books you become contradictory and a little desesperate. you should make a video about how you disagree with JK opinions, that one might work.
"incapable of writing about things outside her experience" so apparently Rowling is a witch who lives at Hogwarts.
'whether or not author's story will survive, depends on whether they can handle bigger scope. JK Rowling is not one of those authors" yet her story is extremely popular and made her a billionaire.
'ways to do it right and ways to do it wrong' so could you state your credentials at least, what makes you qualify to judge it from artistic perspective.
'simple stories'? can you elaborate on that statement. Entire speech about being at the right time is nonsense.
how does the time of the story makes any difference on the plot of Harry Potter? It might as well have been a medieval story, you failed to explain this point.
How is Harry Potter outdated now?
'it feels like the 90s' were you reading a different book or something? people write with quills and parchment, they travel by carriages, rooms lit by candles, what are you even talking about?
'writing about a kid ostracized from everyone' I mean he was occasionally excluded only by Dursleys, what do you mean everyone?
What assumptions does she make about the time period in Fantastic beasts, that make no sense to you?
She doesn't understand other cultures - examples or these are mere meaningless words on your part.
She does not flash out the magic system - she uses 'magic from words' system, there are plenty details about wands and non words spells, what else do you expect.
Watching this video is a torture, I disagree with everything, it's been only 17 minutes of watching. Your opinions appear to me idiotic because you cannot complete and explain the issue coherently on any one of the issues you've described.
Its why umbridge is her best villain, she knows how to write that,.. based on her projecting herself?!
I taste salt
Keep crying.
I type this before getting too deep into the video. The Potter books are on my vary short list of fantasy books I like. The other are Stephen King's The Stand and most of The Dark Tower (I haven't read the last two books) and that is about it. I barely finished Fallowship of the Rings it was so boring and I only manage 40 pages into the first wheel of times book before given up. There have been other fantasy series that I barely made a couple chapters in.
Ok her pr manager did revolutionize it, okj, her pr manager.
The story isnt revolutionary at all, its very rahl and magic schools werent rare even trhen, but great pr.
And its eas to read, which kinda , good for a childrens book series. Not groundbreaking but brilliant marketing.
i can think of several million fans who would disagree with you. and what is the name of your best selling series? criticism is easy, accurate criticism is not.
Would you have felt the need to post this comment if the video contained only positive opinions toward the series?
The bible is still bestselling.
And selling isnt same as good (and i would credit her marketer there to be honest)
I would argue that you don't need to be a chef to know whether the food you're eating tastes good. You don't need to have painted a masterpiece to know if a piece of art looks good. It's true that you can lend more weight to a subject by having succeeded in it, but it's not a requirement.
Personally, I think that it's good people will disagree with me; if everyone agreed with me, I think that would be very weird. I am curious though what you mean by 'accurate' in this case, and I'm curious what you would say if you wanted to give such critique to this series. I would seriously love to hear it, because I fully believe that there are lots of avenues that I haven't explored or thought of.
Harold Bloom - one of the greatest literary critics of our times - also didn't think J K Rowling is a good writer
@@thesilversymposium Balderdash. This criticism is far beyond the scope you are defending. This is the equivalent of claiming that da Vinci was a moron because manga fans don't like his art. I stand by my original statement; and you prove it's validity with continued inept criticism.
Seems to be a good business to criticize someone's success, right? ;)
Are they criticizing someone's success... Or their art?
@@wonder_sr_land keep crying, she is not gonna give you a single cent.
Better to be a hater than a bootlicker
@@j-skullzextremes, extremes... better to be graceful and appreciative, right?
@@wonder_sr_land Literally not at all I could not disagree more. Have some standards for the art you consume and PAY for lol. You don't owe billionaires or corporations your appreciation or grace they will not return it, they care about your money. use critical thinking and get some self-respect before giving it to entities that do not deserve it and do not care about you.
I never liked harry Potter
The Harry Potter books are definitely flawed, but the minute you started talking about her 'bigotry', I stopped listening.
This is obviously going to be about finding fault with JK Rowling's writing because you dislike her standing up for women's rights. So not worth listening to you spouting for 1.5 hours from a position of bias, in the hope of finding a couple of valid points.
His critique is specifically about the books though
He brings up her views just to say that you can like or dislike things regardless of the authors real world views
@@nicokrasnow1851
Then why bring up that he thinks she's a bigot? Obviously he isn't going to sing her praises if he despises her.
Perhaps he'll review Hitler's watercolours next week.
Standing up for women's rights? Lmao which rights? Be specific
@@erichmyles4481
The long-fought-for right of women to have spaces away from potential, or actual rapists and abusers. The right of women to compete against each other in sport without men pushing them to one side. The right of women not to be mocked and demeaned by narcissistic, preening men dressed up in tarty dresses.
Do I have to go on?
What a rambling mess of a video that even at 2x speed feels slow. I shouldn't be able to understand someone speaking at 2x speed yet it feels like it's 1.25 speed. All spoken from someone who has a bias against the novel format in the first place so from the first comment the well is already poisoned and 15 minutes into the video he's rambling about things that don't ultimately matter to the writing in Harry Potter that can't also be applied to any other story, novel or short story and is a stupid slippery slope where the conclusion should be that stories just shouldn't be written because they'll never be perfect.
I used to love the format of quick-spoken 5-facts-a-minute kindof structure for youtube channels (like O.S.P.. But now i find they stress me out. I really enjoyed this video/Podcast, because of the pacing! It is calming, doesn't trigger my fight or flight reflex just by trying to keep up with everything being said.
So I see you skipped over the part where I said that the first four novels are good, and the last three could be good, but because they are telling fundamentally different stories they act in competition with each other. I don't like novels as a format that everyone feels to write, but that's not to say that novels cannot be good. Sorry if wasn't for you though! I do respect your feedback, so clearly I need to speed things up.
@@thesilversymposiumnah, you don’t need to speed things up. This person may or may not have a preference for rapid fire delivery - or perhaps they’re an easily pissed off Rowling fan expressing what is ultimately a quibbling aesthetic preference with far more vitriol than could ever be warranted.
I tend to find slower, thoughtful delivery more appealing, and rapid speech a barrage. If someone is thinking deeply about what they’re saying, I want to have the time as a listener to also consider the merits of what I’m hearing to the same depth.
@@thesilversymposiumyou don't need to take critique from someone who insults your work while giving it. I appreciate the thoughtful pace of the video and the points you made
Maybe, but I don't mind critique. I have thick skin, and I think that all critique has some value, even if it's insulting. I would never change everything over it, but I think that it's worth hearing all the same.
Can't even pronounce her name properly.
Expected an evaluation of the Harry Potter story, instead got a political hit piece on Rowling. Bye-bye. I'm done.
2:04 she isn’t even a bigot lmao
She is though lmao
She literally is. Do two seconds of research and you’ll find numerous examples of her saying wild unhinged hateful nonsense