Was Harry Potter Ever Good? | A Harry Potter Video Essay

Harry Potter has over the years developed a complicated legacy. JK Rowling has drawn controversy thanks to her transphobic statements, but the original works are still great, right?
Let's reevaluate the original Harry Potter books, compare them to other fantasy novels that came before and after, and see if the works really are as good as we remember them to be.
Video References
• How Transphobes Wield ...
• The Worst Line in the ...
• How is JK Rowling Tran...
• Book Critics discuss H...
• Harry Potter, Book 4 r...
• Rick Riordan talks abo...
• The Art Of Building a ...
• We need to talk about ...
• Learn About Ursula K. ...
• What Happened to These...
Credit to Artists
ace-artemis-fanartist.tumblr....
hatepotiona...
Scotsman Article
www.scotsman.com/news/uk-news...
Chapters:
0:00 Was Harry Potter Ever Good?
1:33 My Personal History with Harry Potter
4:14 Harry Potter Mania in the 90s and 2000s
10:38 What Happened to Books After Harry Potter?
15:30 Racism, Fatphobia, and Homophobia in Harry Potter
20:07 Why Slytherin Makes No Sense
25:27 The Status Quo of Harry Potter Never Changes
26:26 Magic and Worldbuilding in Harry Potter Makes No Sense
28:24 Harry Potter vs Earthsea
33:14 There Are No Consequences in Harry Potter
37:45 Harry Potter is British Imperialism
41:58 There Has to Be Something Good About Harry Potter, Right?
45:27 The End of Harry Potter
47:42 The Misery of Modern Harry Potter Fandom (Hogwarts Legacy)

[@agramuglia]

So to address a few reoccurring responses: A lot of characters who are Black in the films are not distinctly Black in the text until significantly after their film appearances (if ever). Yes, The Worst Witch should have been mentioned. I misinterpreted the Rick Riordan article so I thought he was criticizing Palestine, not supporting it. I should have mentioned Nina's magical powers are basically emotional manipulation and later necromancy The only good Earthsea adaptation is the BBC Radio broadcast. There are a number of YA fantasy series published prior to Harry Potter, but I think Harry Potter's success helped elevate them to a more mainstream status. A rising tide lifts all ships. I'll update this as I notice more responses. Just wanted to clarify that now.

[@R.B.564]

Also, Hagrid is mentioned as an example of a 'fat' character, but is he evil? That being said, it's just nitpicking - but please try to be correct when criticizing Rowling. It's necessary, to stop the wrong people who defend her from pointing out these tiny discrepancies.

[@nostalji75]

@@R.B.564 Well Hagrid is potentially a half giant. And faces plenty of discrimination for it. Also is he discribed as "fat" or just big? From my memory his discription is certainly more euphemistic than Dugleys. It does already reveal how hypocritical Rowling is thinking. I mean the story is about fighting discrimination aka "evil" but the slavery of sentinent beings is cool. Or if the discrimination happens to the "bad guys" like giving Dugley a pigtale. THATS "hilarious". But don't you dare to say the wrong word to one of the good guys! Calling Hermine a "mudblood" was treated like a crime against humanity. If the wizard society weren't racist hypocrites they wouldn't even care about this term. Rowling like several modern authors has really twisted moral sense and its alarming how popular this was.

[@TalkingToTheBirds]

Why capitalize the word “black”? I also wouldn’t encourage using screenshots of BuzzFeed articles to make your point. BuzzFeed may as well be The Onion at this point as far as their credibility goes.

[@cruizlee214]

I think we are all wondering when you are going to do a video essay on Animorphs and Katherine Applegate, the Anti-Rowling.

[@agramuglia]

@@cruizlee214 i would need to reread Animorphs before doing that. It's been awhile.

[@ThePonderer]

I think Rowling is a much much simpler woman than she believes herself to be, and the flaws in her approach as a storyteller become more and more clear the higher age demographic she tries to write for.

[@shizachan8421]

She is genuinly stupid.

[@a.tevetoglu3366]

Well, that argument is also valid for the Brothers Grimm. So what? Confusing the marketing with the product does not define the writer. It defines the publishing sector and its customers. I believe she doesn't think of herself as some writer genius.

[@cayreet5992]

@@a.tevetoglu3366 With the difference that the Brothers Grimm did not write the fairy tales. They collected them and put them all in a book for people to read. Before that, those stories had already been around for centuries at least, but they were only passed on orally from one person to another. We do not know who 'wrote' Snow White or Sleeping Beauty or Little Red Riding Hood - most likely, nobody did. The stories were shaped by many, many people telling and retelling them. The other big accomplishment of the Brothers Grimm actually was to create the first German dictionary.

[@a.tevetoglu3366]

@@cayreet5992 exactly. That is why I mentioned them.

[@markreadsbo]

So harry Potter is pro brexit but the writer campaigned for including post on a website.

[@agosgregor]

As an Argentinian, I remembered I was so confused when I found out that the southamerican school of magic was on Brazil, one of the few countries in Latinamerica where spanish is not the official language. Like, what are the spanish speaking people suppose to do??😂 learn portuguese just to go to school?? That's madness. That was the moment where i realized she didn't know a thing about the world outside England.

[@glauciamsq]

I am brazillian, and I thought that was one of the most ridiculous things ever, too. Of COURSE in JK's little head there would be at least 3 western-european schools, but only one school in an entire freaking CONTINENT like ours, and in one of the few countries that don't speak spanish, to add insult to injury. And the name!! It literally means "witch castle", for heaven's sake, she simply couldn't care less. That was when I completely lost interest in the so-called "expanded universe" (Edit for spelling mistakes)

[@antoniofernandesmarchetti1097]

@glauciamsq If you think about that, being a Brazilian school, It problable would get the name of the founder of the School or some famous política, like the big majority of the schools are named here.

[@jaybee4118]

She probably knew, she just didn’t care enough to do research on something that’s throw away for her. Edit, though I will say, when she wrote the books the internet was a lot less available, so research was harder… but far from impossible.

[@markreadsbo]

Just a small point to add to the discussion the why brazil for the location of the schools when it's official language is Portuguese and most of the rest speak Spanish is because of the following. The Bishop of Rome Alexander 6 split the so called new world in half in 1494 According to Harry Potter cannon the school was founded in 10th 11th century before an imposed rule and language, by the Catholic Church. Just think if that Bishop of Rome chose the other way around Argentina would speak Portuguese not Spanish. She also wrote the first Harry Potter book philosopher/sorcerer in Edinburgh the capital of Scotland outside England.

[@antoniofernandesmarchetti1097]

@@markreadsbo Just a small correction: when Alexander VI split the world, Brazil actually got excluded of the portuguese area. John II, king of Portugal contested this and him the queen of Castille and the king of Aragon, actual Spain, split again with the treaty of Tordesillas, this time including Brazilian east coast.

[@fallenhero3130]

I don't think HP being so UK-centric and focusing on Voldemort only being a threat to the UK and not really addressing the rest of the world is that unusual. A lot of American-centric stories do the same thing with their stories.

[@Toshiro93]

To be totally objective, Voldemort may be powerful and have horcruxes, but he is nothing more than a terrorist. A danger, sure, but it's not on the same level as a standard dark lord who is capable of commanding armies and assaulting various territorial entities... I mean, I don't see Voldemort waging war on the entire wizarding world (I mean, all communities scattered around the world), it would be too much of an effort for him. Furthermore, Harry Potter never intended to be such a wide-ranging story, having started out as a sort of "children's mystery", with slight hints of horror here and there.

[@Joaking91]

​@@Toshiro93didnt he take over the UK government?

[@TanukiTracks]

@@Joaking91 He did yes. It's hard to say what he was planning to do after that because after that he mostly focused on cracking down and solidifying his rule and freaking out over losing Horcruxes.

[@Toshiro93]

@@Joaking91 TanukiTracks already answered the way I would have phrased the answer, however...yes. He takes possession of the Britain ministry, but then does not seem to move towards conquering the whole world (indeed, from what I understand he never even makes brief hints about this possible plan of domination).

[@Joaking91]

@@Toshiro93 i just didnt see it as just a terrorist

[@PickleJello]

There's absolutely no way that Hogwarts would teach that Salazar Slytherin was a bad guy in real life. They'd try to gloss over his fascism, and when they do teach him, they'd call him a "polarizing" figure.

[@jaydenc367]

Isn`t that what they did though? Just say he was a polarizing figure?

[@KarishmaChanglani]

Honestly that's how I felt Hogwarts basically treated him. They still keep the house he made, the hat enchantment never got reversed. Etc.

[@Mcvthree3]

Don Lemon is Slytherin! Go Jo!! JK Row!

[@jamesb.russell2942]

Name me a historical figure who isn't a polarizing figure, no matter how good/virtuous/genius they are (or you might think they are). MLK? Ben Franklin? Gandhi? Mother Theresa? Even Jesus Christ! If even the purest man who ever lived and hurt no one and preached peace and love can be polarizing, I think this is a useless discourse.

[@jaydenc367]

@@jamesb.russell2942 Eh no most of those aren`t polarizing, there is also those lke John f Kennedy who seemed loved by everybody.

[@cruizlee214]

Animorphs should have been the popular youth series. Don't let the silly morphing covers fool you. Inside the pages of Animorphs you will find an epic war tragedy. The child heroes go through bloody combat, ptsd, psychotic breakdowns, moral failings, and meaningful sacrifices. There are consequences, character growth, and upsets to the status quo. Animorphs!

[@ellisr.kinnear164]

Animorphs is a surprisingly excellent examination of the horrors of guerilla warfare and invisible enemies. The core characters are amazing. also the way it subtly reworks characters preconceived notions on races

[@sonoio869]

Well if in Cars 2 it is implemented that Gesus and Hitler existed as cars why can't people turning into seahorses and dogs experience the tragedies as war?

[@cruizlee214]

@@sonoio869 Kids turning into animals do experience the horrors of war. That's the central conceit of the whole Animorphs franchise.

[@TheMightyPika]

The hard scifi elements were FANTASTIC!! The broken combined universes at the end of Andelite Chronicles were something out of classic Harlen Ellison.

[@ellisr.kinnear164]

@@TheMightyPika also has the advantage that to my knowledge K.A. Applegate is a pretty cool person

[@insomniacnerd5592]

No wonder there’s so much Harry Potter fanfiction. Half of the building blocks aren’t there, or most of them have such clear flaws that people can’t help but want to rebuild it into what they’d want.

[@Ugly_German_Truths]

that's an important part of it. Especially "side characters" are mostly sketched very shallowly, opening up all kinds of ideas for their life outside of the books (which focus mostly on what Harry knows and sees). And Rowlings slightly flawed decision for pairings based on her own self image (her intereviews basically say that hermione has a lot in common with how JK was in school, while Ginny represents what she WANTED to be... popular, effortlessly liked, sporty, "beautiful"...) But it's also due to the IDEA, the ambient feeling of the world having touched a side in people that other works, especially the ones mentioned as "better written" just could not touch. The Potterworld feels more inspiring than Harry Dresden or Percy Jackson and it's only with the advancing disassembly of her own universe in the Fantastic Beast movies that it is slowly ebbing away...

[@TheFriendlyAnarchist]

Pro writer here. The fact that kids can project themselves into the book is massive, but also Rowling’s real talent is the ability to write characters (especially bad guys) in such a way that it illicits a strong emotional reaction in the reader. I went to a boarding school and there was one teacher at this school that absolutely everyone was terrified of, even including kids like me who weren’t in his class-and for good reason. Dude was a total asshole who reprimanded me once for not saying “please” to someone *else* in such a traumatic way that I still have the memory of it to this day. When I read Harry Potter, Snape wasn’t Alan Rickman, Snape *was* that teacher. Fear of Snape and hatred for Umbrage and love for Hagrid and Dumbledore are something the reader feels on an emotional level with such intensity that it actually drives immersion with the series.

[@Toshiro93]

Very good points!

[@dinosaysrawr]

Yes! She wrote characters people could really empathize with or otherwise imagine and "feel" vividly. Credit where it's due, she even made us adore Dumbledore when he's objectively a bad guardian and kind of crappy dude in a number of respects that weren't lampshaded or critiqued enough in the text.

[@matttriano]

@@dinosaysrawr How do we think she did that?

[@dinosaysrawr]

@@matttriano , she created a character who was besieged from all sides, then gave us a sprinkling of characters who were kind to him. Also, most passionate Potterites were kids when the books came out, and a lot of adults don't even get great training on how to spot toxicity, abuse, and manipulation!

[@jaydenc367]

@@dinosaysrawr Eh....Dumbledore isn`t a great guardian but not a bad one or well a crappy person. Again far from perfect but he clearly was a good person.

[@sofielindgren3078]

As a Ukrainian I have to say that putting all post-Soviet countries together in one school is wrong for so many reasons. That school is permanently on fire. And, well, that's very much russian colonialism there;-;

[@renatarossokha3119]

І не кажи, завжди це бісило

[@copycat0284]

Facts. As a Polish I would rather die than go to this school

[@ttiffany]

yes, same for the school in japan.. legacies of imperialism will always remain.

[@amyidk.]

honestly the whole grouping of countries in one school creates so many problems. even hogwarts being a school in the scottish highlands but being founded and primarily ran by the english would be a massive issue if uk relations in the hp universe are at all similar to real life edit: ive just gotten to the point in the video w the distribution map and hold tf up not only is hogwarts in scotland but run by the english but youve also got the irish in there?? the english and irish in the SAME SCHOOL???? and its RUN BY THE ENGLISH????? jesus fucking christ joanne

[@kindlingking]

Спросить забыли

[@m.furball5112]

I've been aware of this for years now, but the real contribution I got from Harry Potter is all from fanfiction, from reading stories where people see the problems of the original books and come up with better ways to do things, to deal with problems, to ask questions, to change.

[@jeremyadler9620]

Agreed! I've read some GREAT fanfiction stories set in that world, be it crossovers or standalone stories. Hell, I'm reading some new ones right now that are MILES better than the books themselves! The level of creativity found in them is AMAZING!

[@goodbye5299]

Yes, my mom and I love HP fanfics. They're usually so much better than the books and my favourite genre of fanfics is ship fics (I don't even care about the ship most of the time, because that's how much I love the stories), but I also love anything hurt/comfort and generally rewrites of the books (I'm working on my own rewrite, just gotta get a Jewish person, non-binary person, Shona person and Tamil person to work with me on this once I'm in the middle stages of this due to me wanting to get my representation right).

[@jeremyadler9620]

@@goodbye5299, Good luck with it. Hope the story comes together for you :)

[@goodbye5299]

@@jeremyadler9620 Thanks! I'm still working on the broad strokes, but so far I love it.

[@roxycempron5781]

Can I ask for links?

[@Jocaolinita]

As a Brazilian guy, Castelobruxo completely baffles me. It's an Aztec-like pyramid hidden in the middle of the Amazon rainforest (where likely no Aztec ever stepped) as if anyone could properly get there, and the school houses Brazilian and other Latin American wizards. Now, what language are the classes in? Most students would speak Spanish. However, the school's name is in Portuguese and it's in Brazil, which would suggest Portuguese. Also caiporas, keep in mind that Caipora is a protector of nature, now protects this man-made building for some reason. All that in what I suppose is one of the lesser offenders.

[@UbinTimor]

Weather it's considered cannon or not, the game Hogwarts Mystery claims that part of being accepted into Castelobruxo is the ability to navigate through the jungle to get to the school- in a way, the first test to get into the school is to actually find the school. There's an exchange student in the game that comes from Castelobruxo and that's the explanation that she gives, she even says that she got lost in the jungle for 5 days one time and had to live off of rain water and ants. I have to assume that students in Castelobruxo are forced to learn Portuguese as the character, Alanza Alvez, speaks Portuguese and is from Brazil and I don't remember her mentioning if other languages other than Portuguese are spoken there.

[@antoniofernandesmarchetti1097]

From My knowledge the caipora IS more of a mischievous Spirit thank a protector of Nature. I think you're saying curupira right?

[@Jocaolinita]

@@antoniofernandesmarchetti1097 oh sorry, I always thought of them as one and the same! You may be right, as far as I knew both referred to curupira as different names, but now after some research it seems like the essence of the caipora itself may be wildly different depending on the region of Brazil where you ask, while curupira is more established country-wide. I guess I kinda took my version as everyone's haha

[@Jocaolinita]

@@UbinTimor wow aren't they like 11 too? kinda hardcore to live off of rain and ants as a child, mad respect for her

[@antoniofernandesmarchetti1097]

@@Jocaolinita humm i didn't know that either! To me, the caipora IS more like "give me tobacco or i Will curse you!" Kkkk

[@lnsflare1]

There's a distressing lack of Terry Pratchett in this video, despite him being pretty much point for point the Nega-Rowling.

[@egg_bun_]

Time for a part 2!

[@mathewperring]

That was what I was thinking the whole time watching this, when is he going to mention Pratchett? He said back in the day her stuff was devoid. As a 12 years old I was exposed to (and met) TP, and I think that made me a better person than if I had been given HP instead.

[@SpaceCase1701]

I'll always always always recommend Discworld to people looking for a better fantasy series

[@FunkyLittlePoptart]

Terry Pratchett, straight up trans novel in 2003. Yup. He's the anti-Rowling. GNU, PTerry!

[@lnsflare1]

​​@@FunkyLittlePoptart Shoot, Feet of Clay had an invisible poisoner (*), explored the concept of bucking a culture's engrained gender norms, and went into depth about the implications of having a magical slave race with an alien mindset in 1996, around two years before Chamber of Secrets introduced the magical slave race that Hermione is treated as a wet blanket for having any issues with for the rest of the series. And was, you know, just immaculately written. (*) SPOILERS: Who had a huge obsession with bloodlines.

[@jerseyfanel]

A dear friend of mine insisted I read 'A Wizard from Earthsea'. Every time I mentioned HP, he kept telling me it Earthsea was better and I'd love Ursula K. Le Guin. He was right. It was the best recommendation he gave me, and I'm very grateful for him being kind of an asshole because he didn't like HP 😂

[@Nio744]

While I find the comparison between The Earthsea Cycle and Harry Potter not that deep seeing as how the only things they share are "a wizard school" and even then Ged isn't even that much present at the school on roke in the first book, I agree it's vastly superior in every way.

[@jojobookish9529]

I'm retroactively salty that no one handed me Earthsea when I was 12 and I didn't discover it until adulthood. I was fully living in Middle-earth at that age, but still.

[@Mcvthree3]

​@Nio744 Earthsea isn't better. It's bland and characterless

[@Mcvthree3]

Earthsea smells like balls

[@Mcvthree3]

Earthsea was written by a bag lady

[@Grf1556]

Even when I was a kid I though it was so dumb that Rowling got away with not explaining how magic works or the history of the magical world by just going “Harry was bored by it so he wasn’t listening”.

[@peterwestmer576]

Oh my God, I hated that too. Harry was lazy as hell, incurious and disinterested in anything other than his own pleasures.

[@notshardain]

that was so obnoxious to me when i was a young child reading those books. What do you MEAN we can't learn about the history and the magic system in the magic school books. Harry was so uninterested in the majority of this new magical world he suddenly found himself immersed in!

[@test-kf2zv]

In case anyone thinks this is exaggeration, it isn't.

[@VenathTehN3RD]

It's especially annoying for me in the first couple books because Harry is being introduced to the world and generally seems to be pretty fascinated and transfixed by everything around him. So it's a bit odd that all of his fascination just kind of vanishes when Rowling would need to, you know, explain how things actually work. If anything, some of the most in-depth bits of exposition we got in terms of how things work was in the last couple of books (and mostly about them were kind of jarring since they were basically introduced in those books instead of building towards them from early on), when Harry would probably have the LEAST motive to learn about it due to being focused on the increasingly dire situation with Voldemort and his followers, the loss of Dumbledore, etc, etc. So...also kind of weird and jarring.

[@teahaze]

​@@VenathTehN3RDAnd when things are getting increasingly dire we are still hearing about Quidditch practice and homework anxiety, even in book 6, as if these characters wouldn't rather be training to be child soldiers in the wizard war

[@justinn8541]

Harry Potter somehow managed to capture lighting in a bottle and released at the right time.

[@cronchyskull]

Harry Potter somehow managed to capture lightning in a bottle, and stick it to a kid's forehead.

[@gehtkeinenwasan8087]

yeah and thats fine Luck is a part of that game. still does not make the books bad... its a fun fantasy nothing more nothing less.

[@musichere3287]

Definitely. Being a good book series to boot helps too!

[@netanelaker4437]

​@@musichere3287lol sure

[@ZaiDrizzleDrop]

@@cronchyskull HA

[@emilymoran9152]

It is WILD that Rowling is now claiming that a key part of the whole "wizard Nazi" we thought was that main real-world-relevant parallels of the books was TOTALLY ACCIDENTAL! I'm not sure if I believe it, but at the same time, I totally can believe it. Because when I first read the books I assumed one of the reasons Hermione worked so hard is because she's Muggle-born and knows she's going to have to be twice as good to be respected...because that's what every real-world minority kid/child of immigrants/woman in a male field knows! But then I realized - no, she's an over-achiever just because, and Rowling doesn't seem to know there are stages of oppression in between rude names and genocide...

[@dinosaysrawr]

One wonders how many other profound points or brilliant bits of subtext were just purely accidental, and we're the ones projecting that additional meaning onto the books?

[@raeoverhere923]

I think the other part that's so wild about the 'coincidence' is that it's the driving conflict in the Fantastic Beasts films. The protagonists are driven to try and stop Grindelwald by horrific visions of what will happen if they don't: World War 2.

[@MattJDave]

@@raeoverhere923 Actually it's the other way around; Grindelwald has visions of WWII and sells his followers on the idea of subjugating muggles by offering the possibility of PREVENTING WWII. So the heroic forces trying to stop Grindelwald... are fighting to save WWII. It's like the ultimate status quo warrior move lol.

[@anko6484]

U don’t make sense

[@J-manli]

What's worse is when you consider that Hermione is Rowling's self-insert into the story.

[@MissWascallyWabbit]

"The magic happened, and the magic is gone." That's a great way to sum up how I feel about the series now. It was great while I thought it was great, but I've moved on and find magic in other stories now!

[@thetribunaloftheimaginatio5247]

In its heyday, there WAS one other thing that allowed kids like us (Granted, I was in high-school when my maternal grandparents introduced me to these books) to immerse ourselves in the power-fantasy of "Higher Education As An Escape-Hatch From Your Normie-Dipshit Upbringing." "Hello. My name is Professor Charles Xavier. Welcome to my School For The Gifted."

[@KariIzumi1]

“You’re a mutant, Scotty” 😂 But yeah, I got into that a couple weeks ago after ‘97 came out and the original cartoon absolutely holds up on that. Obviously, there was censorship, but they discussed real, relatable issues of diversity and acceptance in an age appropriate way, and the sequel absolutely does not pull punches (and I mean that quite literally in Rogue’s case lol)

[@Kate-ms2mn]

That was worse in all the same ways though tbh

[@thetribunaloftheimaginatio5247]

@@Kate-ms2mn IF YOU DO NOT LIKE THE X-MEN, YOU CANNOT BE MY FRIEND.

[@Kate-ms2mn]

@@thetribunaloftheimaginatio5247 good

[@thetribunaloftheimaginatio5247]

@@Kate-ms2mn Wow, you must be a RIOT at parties... that you don't get invited to, because you're "The Creepy Weirdo-Loser Nobody Likes, Therefore MUST Be Evolved Beyond The Common Rabble."

[@charlieboone1298]

Aside from Earthsea being decades prior to HP and doing the concept of scholastic magic far, far better, there are other far more on-the-nose examples that it looks like Rowling copied. The Worst Witch is a fairly obvious one, but the example that pissed me off the most was Groosham Grange, primarily because Horowitz said he wouldn't continue the story, first published in the 80s, for fear of being perceived as ripping off Rowling.

[@carpevinum8645]

Books of Magic by Neil Gaiman was another.

[@reneedemers8218]

Young Wizards by Diane Duane

[@skylerricketts7392]

And Charlie bone series by Jenny Nimmo. Honestly the school setting and Mc copied from that

[@berengustav7714]

​@@reneedemers8218I love not just the magic system,but that the big baddie in onyx (black) armour didn't use a generic title. The title the Lone Power conveys his lack of friends,and only followers.

[@asarishepard8171]

Don't forget the 80s movie Troll. Thats where she got the name Harry Potter from, the kid is literally named that in the film.

[@redlunatic2224]

I read these books right after immigrating to a different country as a disabled kid. I dropped them after the 2nd? book because, even if i couldnt express it at the time, i understood that, if i had anyone to identify with in those pages, it was the non magic humans, the ones who are made fun of, used, abused and powerless to do anything about it. JKR may like to say this is a world for everyone, but it didn't take me long to realise that she never believed it.

[@miwoj]

Lol you actually got offended by inequality in a fictional world of wizzards. Ok. Stay offended.

[@mousethehuman7179]

​@@miwoj yeah because she was just cruel and a bully to anyone who didn't fit her agenda. I thought about writing a au/fanfic about the struggle and uprise of Squibs, which I found weirdly ostracised for being from the right families, probably even pure-blood, but just not able to do magic (the invisible disability of the wizarding world). Look at how they treated Neville, when he was just a late-bloomer and not that good or fast with magic as the others. His relatives threw him in a lake and out of a window! And if he would really had been a Squib he would not have bounced off the ground, but died. If you have no problem with that ideology and rhetoric being taught to millions of children, then you should really evaluate your morals.

[@miwoj]

@@mousethehuman7179 anyone who is this weirdly invested in social justice of fictional characters in a fictional world should really evaluate... something about themselves i don't know. to me nevile was just a cool character with a great story arc and that's it. somehow it never crossed my mind to over-analyze every detail of his fictional life trying to find some social ramifications to get offended by.

[@yoonahkang7384]

As a southamerican I am so used to being erased from media that I didnt see it. I was already alienated. Even now people swear pedro pascal is white. I dont know how in the fu... But they do 🤣🤣🤣🤣 (pedrito es pura, just so you know)

[@cosmic_cookie5669]

​@@miwoj there's nothing wrong with taking a shallow approach to something, to read a book and not empathize with it at all, it might just mean you lack imagination, or that you were too young to actually delve into the world, but in the end it just means the book didn't lure you into its world. I wasn't into HP as a kid either, and liking or not liking it is up to each person, but it's not just "You're thinking too deep into it, you're a loser lol." Because this shallow, mean piece of work shaped an entire generation, it was the only popular book kids had to see themselves in it, which, if you watch the video at all, you can see it's what happened. It's not "Oh a kid was thrown out a window, whatever." It's "damn, in this world tossing a kid off a window because he can't do magic is seen as okay?" In the end, if you're not questioning what happens in the book, if you're not interested in the world you're reading, you're just skimming through pages mindlessly, you're not even truly reading anything. It might not even be your fault, but the book's for not being written in a way that can pull the reader in. Harry Potter was, and to some extent it still is, a titan of literature, and it's not wrong to take a moment to see what made it so or what are the lessons it imparts to its audience.

[@magyar_3414]

As a 21 year old reading Percy Jackson for the first time… I kinda wish I read it for the first time as a kid

[@TuxedMask]

Agree on this. I didn't read start reading Percy Jackson until I was in my early 20's. But somehow, Rick Riordan made wonderful characters that held up so good regardless of the age. My belief is that JK Rowling wanted a simple story with simple characters for a wide net of an audience. And wrote Harry Potter at the right time, with the right audience.

[@kk00au]

I read Percy Jackson when I was around 11-12 years old, and it was like lightning in a bottle for me. I didn't read HP until was a few years older. I still prefer Percy Jackson over HP anyday; I've never finished the book series (is it still ongoing? I can't remember),but I would love to set out and re-read then all over again

[@TuxedMask]

​@kk00au The PJO series as a whole is done. The 3 main book series are great, I highly either reading them or listening to them. As of right now most of that comes out of Rick Riordian, are basic side plots and one offs.

[@brendantuthill6491]

I read The Lightning Thief when I was a kid and had just moved away from Long Island. It didn't take long to get attached, and I can say that it was every bit as magical but more meaningful, since I came away feeling empowered to disrespect any and every adult who treated me like I didn't deserve to be taken seriously.

[@jeremymullens7167]

From the first Percy Jackson book. Percy would reference old movies I thought was odd given his background. Read a Steven King book with a kid doing the same thing but with a convincing home life to make it believable. I could also tell that the author didn’t live on the west coast. Navigating water is extremely easy for Percy. He needed to get to California. He should have traveled along the Colorado river. Really bugged me because it wasn’t even addressed. I also didn’t like how they killed Gabe then just basically laughed about it.

[@KidEgoMedia]

I joke (as a former Hp kid) that Harry Potter was only big because Anime wasnt a thing in the West yet. But this video made me realize it was kinda our first real Otaku Culture with Fanfics and everything lol.

[@micahmakes]

The funniest part (personally) is that the fanfics are written better than jks

[@KidEgoMedia]

@@micahmakes 🤣 100%

[@rowandunning6877]

@@micahmakes i mean...maybe not my immortal

[@agramuglia]

Especially My Immortal.

[@rowandunning6877]

@@agramuglia 🤣

[@ohnoitsandrew9538]

One of the biggest problems from a pure world building standpoint? The magic is boring. There's never an explanation of how it works or what makes somebody a powerful wizard. Magic is just a convenience in her world. After moving on to other fantasy books this only became more apparent

[@RoadtoArkham]

It’s not just that. It’s that they’re incredibly stupid with it. The Wizarding World is remarkably unimaginative and when you insert yourself into a world it’s an inherently imaginative act

[@ohnoitsandrew9538]

@@RoadtoArkham EXACTLY! Like it's just "Unlock door" "petrify person" "disarm them" I know it's not everyone's favorite series, but just compare it to the magic in Eragon or The (incredibly underrated) Belgariad.

[@isaacthomas1198]

It’s worldbuilding without my favourite part of worldbuilding - when I worldbuild, I start with a mundane thing, say to myself ‘what if it was like this’ and then go ‘what would that mean for everything else? How does this affect the world, and how does it fit into it? Why is it like this, and what does that mean?’. Rowling stops at the ‘what if it was like this’, and it makes her world incredibly flat, boring, one-dimensional and fractured

[@marcyheil5038]

Exactly! The magic in HP doesn’t require the characters to be innovative and imaginative with magic, something that magic should be all about. There’s a spell for everything, even killing, so they never need to come up with their own ideas about how to do things. There’s nothing to discover about the magic, it loses all the mysteriousness magic should have.

[@dinosaysrawr]

I'd argue that what actually made the books page-turners is that the main characters were relatable and the stories themselves were actually mysteries.

[@laurarowen6053]

I've only ever watched the first two movies. And I remember finding it weird that Slytherin was just inherently evil. At the end when Slytherin was supposed to win whatever, and then Dumbledoore kept giving points to Gryffindor until they'd beaten Slytherin, I remember think 'does JK Rowling just really hate Slytherin?'

[@rivkavermeij]

I even thought it was pretty unfair the first time, these Slytherin kids worked a whole year for that

[@MaxIronsThird]

you stopped right before the best movie, Prizoner of Azkaban.

[@msjkramey]

If they weren't all the super privileged students, it could have been an interesting (but on the nose) look at the school-to-prison pipeline, since all the kids grew up to participate in generational crime with many losing their lives and their freedom

[@netanelaker4437]

Harry Potter's strength is its aesthetics, not the books themselves. The books don't even matter - the merchandise is.

[@orktv4673]

I prefer to call it immersiveness. Yes, the school looks breathtaking, but it also appeals to the idea of going to a place where you can develop a hidden talent of magic, explore secrets, work together in a House, and embrace your quirks. A story can have an amazing plot, profound themes, and masterful writing, it won't catch on if you cannot imagine yourself wandering around in its world.

[@romacechina]

Neville Longbottom grows, he goes from being an insecure, timid, bullied young boy whom few take seriously to leading the students during the seventh book at Hogwarts, to standing up to Voldemort and the Death Eaters, killing Nagini and being a lot more confident, positive person.

[@agramuglia]

I feel Neville is the exception that proves the rule.

[@TheDCbiz]

I did like Neville

[@shizachan8421]

I mean, it happens mostly in passing during book 5, there is no continuous character arc that builds Nevilles growth.

[@lucyairapetian407]

@@shizachan8421there is, literally starting from book 1. I feel like people commenting that only remember the movies.

[@shizachan8421]

@@lucyairapetian407 There was a tiny moment where he stands up against the Trio which is mostly played for comedy and for the final asspull. Generally he consistently remains a comic relief or target for bullying through most of the books, then he becomes competent mostly offscreen in book 5 and a full on hero fully offscreen in book 7.

[@lordcabrito]

And don't forget, she put The Latín América Magic school in The only country that don't speak spanish (Brasil). That show You that she don't Even try.

[@tiagodasilva1124]

Brasil is in Latin America

[@HectorT52]

​@@tiagodasilva1124Yes, the commentor says so themselves. The point is that Brasil speaks portuguese not spanish so the population of all other countries must learn portuguese intead of only brazilian wizards having to learn spanish, it is really simple stuff if rowling did the bare minimum in that map.

[@SylvesterLazarus]

I've been joking about a thing for years.. saying that if she ever wrote an Ilvermorny series there would be a character in it, a Mexican exchange student called Amigo Gonzales, but I stopped when I realized it felt more real than just a joke.

[@zoerebon3127]

And also, the countries have way bigger populations than Uk, to combine them all in just one school is nonsensical, even with the magic factor. Not to mention that uniting chileans with argentinians in one place sounds like hell lmao

[@felipedasilveira5808]

@@zoerebon3127 Or chileans with peruvians (pisco). Or chileans and bolivians (Antofagasta). Or argentinians and uruguayans (football+Liga Federal). argentinians and paraguayans (Chaco). Or-

[@patrickmuller7334]

As someone who started reading HP in their twenties, I never had much illusions about the series. It was a cute school series with some random magical elements sprinkled in top. To me, it was pretty clear from the start that there was little underneath the surface. I mean, look at Quiddich, a game so ridiculously designed to give the male protagonist a big hero moment, single-handedly winning what was ostensibly a team sport. The one redeeming quality the author had was her ability to write a good plot twist. The biggest strength of the first few books were the endings that subverted expectations and surprised us. But as the serious dragged on, the lack of vision became cleared and clearer. You can see it in the Quiddich matches as much as everything else. The loopholes the story has to go through to make the games interesting beyond catching the Snitch is telling. And then the world got increasingly darker, lost it's initial charm, while more and more bad world-building was stacked upon upon each other. By the time the last books rolled around, reading them felt more like a chore, and the best thing about the ending was that it gave me enough closure to put the series down and ultimately stop caring about it. Looking back, it feels like a mix of traditional boarding school fiction, a sprinkle of barely understood magic and a good sense of pace and suspense that caught on fire at the exact right time and snowballed into this huge phenomenon. Lucky break.

[@WanderlustZero]

Nailed it. It was never meant to become as big as it did. A grievous mistake of history, perhaps :D

[@celisewillis]

Ugh, I wouldn't even call the "plot twists" good. As a kid, I couldn't follow the ending of the 3rd book, all these random characters I've never met or formed an attachment to popping up like it's some big reveal. And that 4th book ending, WOAH was that bad. As a kid, I was thinking "who tf is Crouch??" And on top of that, learning Harry hadn't actually formed any relationship with Moody was such a rug pull. A twist for the sake of a twist; nothing thematically added to the story. M Night Shamaylan-level writing.

[@Kandarako]

The problem with slytherin is how in one hand rowling says is the house of ambition and cunning, not necessarily being a bad thing because wizards like merlin (that is why i liked being in that house).... but in the other hand, every character she mentions being in slytherin are not described, or described with weird malformations, unhealthy appaerance, or being too thin or too fat... or uf they are relevant, aleays plain evil

[@Venejan]

What I've never understood is: If the Slytherin kids are all evil, why are they permitted to attend Hogwarts in the first place?

[@celisewillis]

​@@Venejan it's reflective of Rowling's view on the world. Shaun (the skull icon guy) has a great Harry Potter video that goes into how Rowling inserts her politics into her books.

[@marveler8994]

I think the aesthetic and John Williams score really carried the series for me which is probably why I've only enjoyed the first 3 movies and the Universal Theme park. It was an escape but once you actually think about the stuff in these books/ movies its kinda just stories and characters that have all been done better somewhere else

[@andresacosta4832]

Same, actually? I've barely touched any HP media in...a while, the only things I revisit CONSTANTLY are John Williams' scores, which I used to listen to while reading the books as a teenager but now I often put them on to listen to as...well, concert music on MP3s or some kind of magic-themed ballet. Maybe it's for the better that when Williams was brought in to conduct for the opening of the Universal park he did a suite of music from the scores rather than writing a whole original piece based on it like he did with Star Wars: Galaxy's Edge (though tbf the Galaxy's Edge theme kicks ass)

[@marveler8994]

@@andresacosta4832 Exactly lmao, JK Rowling just got really really lucky

[@andresacosta4832]

@@marveler8994 Got absurdly lucky until that luck wore off after...at least circa 2012, at most 2018/19.

[@jaydenc367]

Not exactly, like the story and characters in other places are different.

[@TheFinalFanboy]

There's a book series I'd like to compare Harry Potter to: The Inheritance Games by Jennifer Lynn Barnes. Like Harry, the main character of that series suddenly becomes insanely rich. An oil billionaire dies and leaves her the vast majority of his fortune, but nobody is really sure why he did that, since they were complete strangers. The major thrust of the book series is about figuring out why he made that decision, but the books are also about challenging people's preconceptions of this guy and his immense wealth. Avery doesn't have those preconceptions because she has never been rich before. She isn't comfortable with suddenly being a multi-billionaire, but she's kind of stuck with it because the protection afforded by his money is the only thing keeping her from being murdered by those who feel that they got screwed in the will. As the book goes on, it turns out that this guy had some skeletons in his closet. He screwed over a lot of people to become the man he was. One of those people is out to get revenge by usurping his family fortune. He knew that if he left the money to any of his sons, they'd have a target on their back, so he knowingly put the target on hers instead. She eventually succeeds in keeping the fortune out of the wrong hands, but also points out that no single person's hands are the right ones, not even hers. That storyline ends with her resolving to give away the vast majority of the money, either through charity or as prizes in elaborate games (something that will be followed up on in the next book). This is what a character actually challenging the status quo of their world looks like. Avery saw the problems caused by this family's immense wealth and solved them by distributing it, while calling into question the idea that anyone should be that rich.

[@KariIzumi1]

I never really thought much about it till recently, but Harry Potter might be the single most passive protagonist in any given Hero’s Journey narrative in all of English literature. He does do a few nice things, like give his Triwizard winnings to the Weasley twins, but there’s no deep analysis about how the HP world works. Umbridge is hated for many things, such as her treatment of non human magical users, but that law against them wielding wands was in place long before she got there, as one example.

[@ms-abominable]

​@@KariIzumi1 I loved the Harry Potter series growing up but I was struck by how I couldn't really relate to Harry himself. All the pieces were there for him to be a sympathetic character, but something was missing that I couldn't put my finger on... and I think you've articulated it here: he's too passive.

[@egg_bun_]

Omg. I've never heard of this book, but that sounds AMAZING.

[@TheFinalFanboy]

@@egg_bun_ Great series. It has a new book coming out in July, for which I'm incredibly excited.

[@egg_bun_]

@@TheFinalFanboy whoa! That's awesome. I assumed that it was an older book.

[@GuardianSpirits13]

Already subscribed after the mention of Six of Crows and PJO but anyone who brings up Fullmetal Alchemist in a discussion about literary merit is automatically one of my favorite people. As far as I am concerned, Fullmetal Alchemist (the manga, in its og form) is as close to perfect as a story can get :)

[@NothingIsKnown00]

In the first book, you could see Slytherin house, and Snape’s bullying, from a kid’s perspective. It worked because you experience bullies and scary people as a child. But as the series goes, it turns out that Slytherin actually is evil. Draco Malfoy’s dad is just blatantly a Death Eater and nobody notices.

[@poppie267]

Indeed it make some sort of sense that to see Slytherin as evil in the first couple of books because Harry is a child but the the longer the series went that became more and more unreasenable and even adults hate Slytherin. And no Slughorn and Regulus Black are no defences because they do not chance anything about the bad name of the house.

[@Nike-gs8ig]

I think in book one and two and maybe even three Harry's views on them being so black and white was okay, Harry was still a kid. But if house Slytherin is truly that evil and racist then it shouldn't exist anymore and if they are more nuanced that should have been a bigger plot point.

[@NothingIsKnown00]

@@Nike-gs8ig Right. Its jarring that all of them are so mean. Some of them could have been on Harry’s side.

[@wolfmantheimpaler]

Makes you wonder if Harry Potter would be as popular if it came out today.

[@smilesface3741]

Obv hell no. The general genres today would classify hp as purely children books. Remember them scandalous hp fanfics from adults?

[@natesmodelsdoodles5403]

Hell no. With the games and anime boom that's happened between then and now, HP would get eaten for breakfast by basically all the competition.

[@jennatavares4695]

Probably not? Back when the books came out, there weren't KZbin book reviewers who could read the books and say "well it's alright, but it's not great" or ask questions about the content of the books to mass audiences. When she released the books, the market for young adult fantasy novels was still largely untapped. You didn't have twilight or house of night or divergent or vampire diaries or stuff like that to saturate the market and make you look really critically at the writing.

[@jazmineraymond7495]

​@@jennatavares4695Are you implying the house of night is good or bad writing, I can't tell???

[@redballoon9007]

If it was written by a different writer…probably. TOH is basically the modern day HP and it did big on numbers but that was because that series had a good writing team. High fantasy is still pretty popular these days.

[@captainoftheneverdie21]

SPEW and how people treated Hermione for starting it and the justifications for slavery, nuff said

[@sylvan-tomfoolery]

It would be one thing if the characters eventually realized they were being awful and apologized, but they never do. The universe shows that she was wrong, and the others were right to humiliate her. The one time Hermione actually tried to change things and do good but inconvenient to humans, she was the butt of a joke. SPEW? Really, Rowling? You'd openly mock an earnest attempt at doing right. Who DOES that??

[@vapx0075]

It is a reflection on the writer who can raise topics like Civil Rights, Personal Agency and Freedom and then cast VICIOUS MOCKERY on them with NO Educational subtext on the greater morality. Hermione is trying to help people out of slavery = Hermoine's so smart and yet such an idiot. How insufferable are people that care so much for others that she extends that beyond the MC. smh

[@TheJadedJames]

@@sylvan-tomfoolery JK Rowling is a centrist. Hermione’s character flaw in that storyline is being an annoying progressive social activist. What she should have done in the moral universe of Harry Potter is to become a politician who gets some tiny incremental change to the treatment of elves rather than just making everyone uncomfortable with a full throated protest movement

[@lightdarksoul2097]

Didn't her actions make the elves quit cleaning the girls dorm

[@arnaeri9290]

@@TheJadedJames I think some of the HP fanfics that I read (don't remember the titles off the top of my head) have painted the ministry as starkly incompetent, on top of already being described in the books as horribly corrupt. What I'm trying to say is that even if Hermione were to join the ministry and try fighting for the lives of the downtrodden, she would realize how pointless it is just as quickly as her stunt with SPEW went south.

[@arlecchino4004]

The problem is not really the fact that nothing changes. The problem is that the "nothing changes" is not planned and not trying to say anything. There are many good creations that have an ending where the characters and world stay the same (I have several examples off of my head, but they're mostly theater because I'm a theater magor), but they are criticizing the world and characters, and through them, criticizing the world we live in. My favorite example is the play "Mother Courage and Her Children" by Bertolt Brecht and Margarete Steffin. In the beginning and the end of the play, Mother Courage (the main character) stays practically the same, and the same war is going on all throughout the play, and nothing changes although (spoiler) all of Mother Courage's children die throughout the play. But the whole point of this play is to criticize the capitalistic world that is full of wars. This is on purpose, and has a reason. And this is done really well. So my point is, I agree with you in general, but I think this is important to note

[@DreamsOfLight009]

Her whole “the status quo is good, ambition is always a red flag” thing goes even further than villainizing people who want more that what they’re given or who don’t meet her beauty standards. Rather, she elevates social station itself into a universal truth. You’re either magic or a muggle (or squib). No muggle can become magic because they don’t have the magic genes. And all muggles we meet - even the sympathetic ones - are presented as stupid, shallow, shortsighted and incurious. GEE, SUBTLE ONE THERE, Granny Jojo. -_-

[@celisewillis]

These are fantastic points! Also, absolutely cackling at "Granny Jojo"

[@Ellthom]

I was a bit over the age range when Harry Potter came out, I was at that 'I am too cool for kid stuff phase' of my teenage years. Which is ironic. But even to this day I never connected with it or knew anyone that did. And I am British too, Harry Potter was wild over here in the early 2000's, it was on everything, but I kind of flew over it. But in hindsight I am glad I never had that attachment seeing how the author has been behaving.

[@Gaia_BentosZX5]

Not to mention that with fandom at it's peak during the height of Harry Potter's popularity, the usage of the word "Trope" spiked. This in turn, what allowed a very deadly concoction of JK Rowling, John K, and John Boorman to cause harm to the entertainment industry. If it wasn't Excalibur, it was Harry Potter. If it wasn't Harry Potter, it was Ren & Stimpy due to how starved Young Adults were for media at the time.

[@TheNightmareRider]

For anyone reading the comments looking for book recommendations: Read Belle Revolte. It's a queer fantasy nove; about two girls swapping magic schools, with a well defined hard magic system with clear limitations, and is about overthrowing a corrupt Monarchy.

[@tup4443]

It always sounds more normal with context lol.

[@ilmiraculousdibill3686]

Thank you pal

[@cosmic_cookie5669]

Wish I could favorite comments

[@Frommerman]

Another recommendation: A Practical Guide to Evil. It's a sorta generic fantasy world, except everyone knows they are living in a story, and stories have the force of laws of physics. A Hero pushed off a cliff by a Villain will NEVER be harmed by the fall. People whose beloved mentors just sacrificed themselves are effectively indestructible, so smart opponents just withdraw immediately and try again later. "Aggrieved orphan finds a magic sword and avenges the conquest of the Kingdom" is such a powerful force of nature that villains build well-funded orphanages which provide a solid education to minimize the number of aggrieved orphans in existence. There's an actual, canonical, inverse Evil Overlord List called Two Hundred Heroic Axioms, including such gems as "If your trusted companion suffers a loss and then starts wearing black, they are no longer to be considered a trusted companion." It's also the best queer fiction I've ever read. It's a world where patriarchy is almost nonexistent. Almost none of the labels we use for sexual and gender identities are ever used in this world because we were never othered for who we are. It's not just queer acceptance or inclusion, but full integration into a world which never sees us as something to call queer. And on top of that is the fact that the superpower system of this world, Heroes, Villains, anyone else who takes up a Named Role in a Story unfolding, is explicitly a trans metaphor. Characters often take on a new identity, a new Name, transitioning into the Role, by declaring it. Making it so by the declaration. It's got the single best character arc I've ever read, which I will say no more about. The first books have good prose, while the later ones have hands down the best prose I've ever read. The world is well-conceived and built, with history and the consequences of that history plainly on display. And it probably did a lot of the heavy lifting in radicalizing my politics far to the left. AND it's a free webserial. I can't recommend it enough.

[@colonelmustang854]

It really is funny how two decades ago, the Prequel Trilogy was seen as a joke that allowed Harry Potter to take Star Wars’ place as THE cultural media touchstone. But the older we got - and the more aware of the world we became - the more we realized that George Lucas had a lot of intelligent things to say about how neoliberal centrism can give rise to fascism while JK Rowling had *nothing* to say. We shunned the man who told us the harsh truths we needed to hear and embraced the fairy tale worldview of a woman who never believed in the line she was selling. Perhaps that’s how we wound up with the world we live in now.

[@avidfather1864]

They're both garbage. LOTR is where it's at.

[@lightdarksoul2097]

I wouldn't defend the prequel at least not attack of the clones

[@J-manli]

@@lightdarksoul2097 As movies there were memeable, but in terms of the messaging, they were way deeper than any gave them credit for at the time.

[@Nio744]

Earthsea, now that's a great series.

[@spotsthenpc7796]

The prequels being unironically DEEPER than Hp while having Jar Jar fucking Binks in them tells you all you need to know about Hp lol.

[@Shhmallison]

Not to be a hipster but I always felt this way. As a big reader I felt these were very much potato chips books but I know a lot of avid readers that felt differently so 🤷🏻‍♀️

[@PrincessOzaline]

I don't think she ripped of Earth Sea, I think she ripped off Worst Witch.

[@TheJadedJames]

The funny thing is now you literally can't have magic people in a school setting at all without the Harry Potter comparison. Even Name of the Wind got that sometimes which feels kind of reductive if you've actually read that book

[@michaellauritano5252]

When I came across the Worst Witch books, I was shocked by all the similarities! I do think Rowling was writing for a slightly older audience, but people definitely need to talk about how much in these books lines up more.

[@vapx0075]

I watched The Worst Witch when I was little.

[@TheJadedJames]

@@michaellauritano5252 I think Netflix did a Worst Witch reboot at some point which was ****ing hilarious when I considered that almost everyone who saw that will consider this story from the 1970s is ripping off Harry Potter

[@federerlkonig330]

It would be EXTREMELY unfair to say she ripped off Earthsea, considering that Roke is barely described at all and is more like a mystic academy than an actual modern boarding school. And Roke wasn't even the first magic school, there are still Keshatta, Scholomance and the one in Once and Future King.

[@dubitataugustinus]

I used to be a Potterhead. I read the first book when I was Harry's age and there were no sequels out yet; I was a fan from the start and grew up with the series. I was obsessed. But, luckily... HP wasn't my first literary love. My enjoyment of the series started to decline as the films were coming out, and when book 5 was published, I already didn't GAF. Why? I started feeling that the books were mediocre as hell. When I was 10, I didn't notice this at all. An idea came to me WAY before JK became an outspoken bigot; the idea that HP was manipulative. That it drew me in so bad because it offered the perfect fantasy (another world where you're rich, famous, and accepted) rather than because of any narrative merits. Has anybody else felt like that early on?

[@egg_bun_]

Ah! You're one of the og's!

[@dubitataugustinus]

@@egg_bun_ when I was in love with HP it was a dumb book for unpopular nerds. When I stopped caring about it, it was a trendy international phenomenon. FML x)

[@CorwinFound]

I wasn't an HP kid. I was an adult reading them to my kids. And I really enjoyed the first three books. I still do. They were simple, clear themes and plotlines, and made effective use of kid's lit and fantasy tropes. I understood the craze. But you are right that by the fourth, things started downhill. Steeply. The greatest thing HP has to offer is that it opened the literature world up for kid and young adult fantasy and SF. Basically showed it could be massively profitable for publishers, opening the door for many better writers.

[@egg_bun_]

@@dubitataugustinus yes! So accurate for me as well. Except I was a few years behind you, since I started reading it in 2004, but (in my personal experience anyways) I experienced the same phenomenon. Like it was cool for the people who liked it, and there was stuff like idk? Bookmarks? Posters? Small things for the nerds, but nothing like how it started getting all totally nutty a few years after that.

[@rockmangurlx4973]

So I wasn’t the only one that felt that Harry was kinda given everything in the first book/movie?

[@hakon_helgoy]

I find it a little sad how the main appeal of the Harry Potter series isn't mentioned at all. In simple terms, the dialouge in Harry Potter is very much like how children would and do behave at this age, though with a bit more polish. And with her background as a teacher this is her main strength as a writer. Rowling is extremely good at depicting the thoughts and actions of adolecents that the entire series is carried on this idea. This includes the childlike wonder of magic, which shouldn't be a strictly defined system of spells to begin with, as it would be less immersive for the intended audience. All in all Harry potter isn't meant for adults, and more complicated fantasy books like Game of Thrones, and Mistborn just simply aren't for children. It would be come a homework assignment instead of something fun. And that's ok. The important bit is to what extent a work appeals to its intended audience, and Harry Potter is incredible at it. In short, falling put of love with something doesn't make that something bad, just that your tastes have changed, and that's ok.

[@Eralealea]

I want more people to call out the racism behind Cho Chang. So many try to give Rowling the benefit of the doubt, try to argue that some romanisation systems and some dialects can render certain characters as "Cho Chang". But here's the thing - Rowling names all her other characters meaningfully, even the unfortunate ones like Shacklebolt. If Rowling had researched a specific culture and language to come up with a meaningful name for Cho Chang, she would have told us what her name meant, how it's written in the original language, and boasted loudly about her research efforts YEARS ago. The fact that she has never done so, inadvertently reveals that there never was any research nor any meaning to the name. Rowling thinks Asian names are just meaningless sounds. The Chinese translation of Harry Potter "translates" her name with qiu 秋 instead of any of the characters pronounced as "cho", because having a given name be homonymous with chou 醜 (especially in a culture that places so much emphasis on wordplay) would be very unfortunate and unpleasant.

[@emiliapawny4746]

Her name really feels like something straight out of a racist caricature rather than something belonging to a living, breathing character

[@melasn9836]

Harry Potter was the first time I recall when I saw an online fandom where people treated "I like this media thing" with the same energy as a religion, which probably wasn't helped by actual religious groups beefing with it. I will forever associate it with people who fought viciously over fan couples/sites & LJs devoted to them and with people getting really pissed when I said JKR was a coward for not making Dumbledore's gayness actual text. (Everyone in the latter category owes me an apology, unless you're STILL cool with off-page "reveals" for queer characters.) I could & still do understand why so many people latched onto HP's world as kids, but I was in my 20s when the books came out, and the adult fandom were the ones that I saw, and they have always, at best, confused me. I dipped after the first book leaned hard into "these people are bad, and their badness is revealed by virtue of their looks" in a way that not even Roald Dahl did. I'm glad that Percy Jackson is still around, even if he did almost immediately cave to pressure to erase his off-page "this character is ace" reveal. Not gonna forget or forgive that, given how little we had at that point. At least Riordan is TRYING to be a decent influence, instead of swan diving into destructively vocal hatred.

[@berengustav7714]

What character is/was ace?

[@melasn9836]

@@berengustav7714 I think it was Artemis. (Knowing my mythology more than his series, I personally would have chosen Athena for an Olympian character who's ace, but that's beside the point.) The reactions from people who didn't like that reveal were extremely nasty, and he reversed it the next day. As if social media reveals weren't already a cop-out...

[@dadinside8739]

@@melasn9836it was actually Reyna

[@user-uk7fb6om6z]

It was the 90s. She was probably talked out of making his gayness intext canon.

[@jjr5233]

I myself found it quite fascinating how Lord Vetinari changed throughout Pratchett's books- and how some of his character reverted as the illness took more and more of poor Mr. Pratchett

[@shelbyherring92]

I think a good bit to bring up is Brennan Lee Mulligan and Matt Mercer's discussion on how bonkers and not thought out the HP universe is. Like it's pretty funny.

[@AzaleaJane]

I'll check that out, I never get tired of HP bashing

[@Jack-sy8mr]

Every time I watch the D.A. Training scene in Order of the Phoenix I’m disappointed Harry doesn’t become a teacher, come on Joan

[@copycat0284]

I once came across someone who have a idea that Harry could be the Auror after a war but because of his untrieted Ptsd he quite and become DA teacher to make sure the next generations gonna be more prepared for all Wizarding World dangers. And honestly I love it

[@nalfeinxi4196]

Strong points here. I was one of those kids who escaped into the Harry Potter world. I would read them obsessively and part of me wants to give credit to the series for helping me to enjoy reading as much as I do today. But the truth is that I liked to read even before Harry Potter and now I wish that I had latched onto a different series. I think its house-system was actually a little damaging because it suggested that people were best when they box themselves into destined identities that played to their strengths. I don't want to just blame Harry Potter, but I think it made me rigid in my pre-teen and teenage years, where I had to maintain some image of who I was supposed to be and of those around me. At the same time, I was grappling (or more accurately avoiding) with discovering that my sexuality was gay. So there's a ton of stuff from that which isn't really fair to put on these books, but I guess I'm looking at it as an opportunity cost. I wish I had had escaped into a world that would have actually helped my development in real life, rather than Harry Potter which reinforced the idea that the system was right, that I needed to conform to it, and in my case, that meant that my sexuality was a bad thing. It seems odd to say all this when Harry Potter had such a big slash community, but I never took part in that, so I guess I missed out on that lol. I guess take the above with a grain of salt. I just started therapy about a year ago, in my early thirties, where I'm finally working on accepting myself. So maybe the lens I'm looking through aren't the most objective.

[@Mir_Teiwaz]

The recommendation I often hear is the Discworld series.

[@agramuglia]

Discworld is fantastic, but the vibe is VERY different from HP, imo.

[@erraticonteuse]

​@@agramuglia The vibe is different but I understand why it gets brought up as a counter recommendation all the time: because the pervasive worldview of Pratchett that every person gets the last word on who they are. No race, no culture of origin, no sex or gender, nor even the typical tropes of the genre of the story you're in, defines you if you don't want it to. If you want to do something different, you can do it, and doing so despite your original context is the ultimate victory. Even the personification of Death gets to define himself outside the box people want to put him in. So when you finally encounter those kinds of stories, the idea of your personality at 10 defining anything about you loses its charm real fast.

[@annafdd]

True to the different vibe, although the Tiffany Aching books are very close - but I read all of them with undimished pleasure as I grew up.

[@shizachan8421]

@@agramuglia Hey. Because you mentioned the vilification of ambition in Harry Potter, it made me think about why Harry falls so short as a YA protagonist and in the attempts at framing him as an underdog multiple times in the series, in that he just lacks any sense of ambition and struggle inside the system he stumbles into. Because you already mentioned some anime, compare him to Luffy and Naruto. Both are protagonists in what could be considered YA Manga who are introduced to us with their ambitions, their dreams which make up the initial hook of the series and the journey they undergo. Both want to be the best, Luffy wants to become the Pirate King and uncover a legendary treasure and Naruto wants to become Hokage and be the strongest Ninja in his village. Its very simple, but something everyone can empathize with. We all have big dreams when we are kids, we all want at some point or the other to become something extraordinary and the best in something we are passionate about. With Naruto it has the added layer of him being an actual underdog, he is an orphan outcast who gets shunned for being different by his environment, similar to Harry Potter, and his aspiration to become Hokage is primarily driven by believing that this will earn him the respect and friendship of his environment. He wants to become the popular kid everyone likes, as somebody who is disliked by everyone. Its something many kids who feel drawn to escapist media will be able to empathize with. And really one important difference is, that for Naruto this challenges he faced from early childhood on inform his path to becoming Hokage, because it is ultimately not about just being the most powerful, power is just a means to escalate the action elements of the story. With Harry, we are informed about how much his upbringing humbled him and how his most powerful strength is love, but where does Harry ever act particularily empathetic compared to others? Where does he really reach out? Most of the time, he is judgemental of others in his internal dialogue. With Naruto on the other hand, his ability to connect with others and understand their pain due to the loneliness he himself suffered under is a major plotpoint through the entire series. He connects to Sasukes Pain, he can empathize with Gaara and safe him by offering him compansionship, he experiences the pain Nagato suffered under and inspires him by chosing to not persue further vengeance. And the more he sees of the Shinobi World and the more of those who suffered under its system he meets, the more his ambitions become grander, first to not only become the best but to safe a dear friend of him, towards wanting to circle of pain his world is stuck in. For all of its flaws, Naruto challenges the status quo. Harry challenges nothing.

[@agramuglia]

@@shizachan8421 shonen anime protagonists are basically driven by ambition more than bravery: to better themselves and the world around them.

[@PotatoPatatoVonSpudsworth]

I disagree with your take the Harry Potter's use of a soft magic system is detrimental, because it's partially responsible for the series' broad appeal. A lot of folks don't like having to wrap their heads around hard fictional systems. It's the same reason why Star Wars was so initially successful, where rules around things like "The Force" are never explained mechanically, only emotionally. For all her flaws, Rowling was extremely good at having her plots make emotional sense, allowing most readers to suspend disbelief and follow along. Soft magic itself really isn't the problem. Look at all the stuff in Lord of The Rings that's never explained outside "a wizard did it." The problem is Rowling failed to integrate her soft magic system into the wider world, something she DID build hard rules for, forcing audiences to see the soft magic more critically. Things like every adult wizard being able to teleport wherever they wished, for example. That only works if the world accounts for it, which it very much doesn't.

[@JanbluTheDerg]

Something I just realised is in the comparison between Harry Potter and Percy Jackson. One is a series that has been unable to grow past it's initial run. The other is a series which has continued well into the present day and has an infinite number of stories that could be told

[@wolftitanreading5308]

Except Percy Jackson is far more boring, with lack of interesting characters and with nothing to actually say Harry Potter came in and left on a high note

[@JanbluTheDerg]

@@wolftitanreading5308 Did you... read Percy Jackson?

[@wolftitanreading5308]

@@JanbluTheDerg yes, and Percy was insufferable, a brat who is special cause of who his father was, and a major Gary stu

[@JanbluTheDerg]

@@wolftitanreading5308 Godamn didn't know someone could have so much hate in their heart for a sassy (lmao I forgot the word) kid

[@wolftitanreading5308]

@@JanbluTheDerg nope sarcastic kids are fine but Percy is just a crappy character, with nothing redeeming about him.

[@RiderNexus]

I find it funny that my Potter phase ended right as Half Blood Prince's book came out I wasn't a fan of how more dreary and dire the tone was becoming and it just sucked out all the appeal of the setting for me Around the time, I got into a series called Bionicle, and I loved the novels, as that series progressed, it too had a tonal shift but it always had moments of levity and hopeful themes and morals that stayed with me after finishing each book Especially when it seemed like evil had won

[@sarahmetcalfe50]

There were Bionicle novels? I was only ever familiar with the figures, which I think were Lego based or something.

[@RiderNexus]

@@sarahmetcalfe50 Oh there's novels and comics that expanded the lore of the series It was legitimately amazing for a toyline aimed at children because they never felt like the story talked down to them There are movies too

[@Raidmasterprod]

I, too, am a fan of both Bionicle and Harry Potter. I'm in fact old enough to remember both at their heyday. I also remember Bionicle's fall into obscurity and HP's rise in the 2010's. A decade later, it seems the tables have flipped.

[@Raidmasterprod]

@@sarahmetcalfe50 Yes, there were Bionicle novels written as the series became popular.

[@anko6484]

Ever heard of the heroes journey? Or the rising conflict on the “dramatic curve”?

[@camerondodge2070]

I first fell out of love with the series, strangely enough, due to RL Stine. He had a collection that had a Bram Stoker story in it, leading me down a road of Bloch, Matheson, Sloane, and King, and leading me to realize how shallow the Potter books were. That said, I still enjoy some content that is admittedly not the best (oh Warriors, my beloved), so I don't know how much I can say about this without being slightly hypocritical.

[@agramuglia]

I have a lot of respect for Stine. He wrote a lot of silly, light books for kids, but those silly, light books drew from a massive wealth of horror literature to be effective and memorable. He knew the assignment.

[@sarahmetcalfe50]

And there was that one with the vampire dog. That cover was pretty creepy.

[@Grey_3438]

Fellow WC fan 🫡

[@camerondodge2070]

@@Grey_3438 I'll never stop loving those ridiculous cats.

[@chegg27]

I think the reason this series is so popular is very simple. It is not written for people who will think about the intricacies and subtext. It is written as a very surface level form of entertainment. It was written and catered towards a younger audience and not scholars who will notice the finer details

[@poppie267]

Weird since other books from the same audience who do all those themes even better exist. Please act smart elsewere.

[@cablefeed3738]

​@@poppie267Except I read all of them too I like all of them and I refuse to think deeply about entertainment. I want to think deeply. I research something and I do that quite often but if I'm watching or reading or playing entertainment, I don't care about digging deeper. I just want to sit back and enjoy

[@PsRohrbaugh]

Harry Potter was not GOOD. It was FUN, especially if you were in the age group that "grew up" along with the book's characters.

[@HubPie3]

I struggle with reading regular novels. One of my friend groups is doing a reading of the Percy Jackson series (pretty good series all things considered), but I struggle to remember some details and visualize it because I don't have much visual reference to make a detailed picture in my head (it's something that helps me read). I blame this on my ADHD/autism brain. It's why comic books are much easier for me to get into. What I'm saying is: I think that difficulty reading novels helped me avoid the Harry Potter books. I remember trying to read the first book in the fourth grade and I just struggled to connect with it. I didn't even watch the movies (still haven't to this day). It wasn't because of malice, but just indifference. Knowing what Rowling is like as a person (and as someone who has transgendered friends and a trans sister/gender non-conforming sibling), I've blacklisted the HP series. There's no way I can give that series an honest and fair look because all I'm gonna be thinking of is how this author wants people I care about dead just for being trans.

[@starlightsith]

Couldn't have said it better myself! I'm glad I'm not the only one who prefers comics for the same reasons.

[@Venejan]

>>this author wants people I care about dead just for being trans.

[@cherrylikesclouds4796]

I think you'd love Atelier of Witch hat. Is a manga series about a girl who plays with magic and gets into some real trouble because of it and therefore she has to study to become a Witch so she can fix her mistake. Is seriously an amazing series, the art is stunning and the paneling gets very creative at times. Definitely a way better alternative than Harry Potter, I could go on and on about how is so much better.

[@Theguy493]

One of the few positive memories I have with my mom as she was being treated for cancer was reading through the Harry Potter books with her. Now I feel like those memories are tainted because of Rowling's bigotry and general terribleness.

[@mechanicalmonk2020]

They're only tainted if you force them to be tainted by dwelling on the artist.

[@carolineholland5841]

@@mechanicalmonk2020It’s hard to ignore what an author believes, when the reader can see those beliefs having an influence on the book itself. Especially when those beliefs proliferate throughout the book and can literally be seen in plot points.

[@AsuraSantosha]

I watched another video essay a little while ago... I can't remember who it was by... maybe Verilybitchy? Anyway, it talked about fans taking the Canon back from Rowling and making the Fandom their own. As in literally owned by the fans who now have much more power over Thales Fandom than Rowling or Warner Brothers really has. I think you can definitely take that perspective. The Fandom can be yours and others' who love what it meant to you as a reader and not the authors' bizarre and garbage personnel beliefs.

[@Aelffwynn]

​@AsuraSantosha agreed. I would say most of the remaining fandom does not approve of JKR anymore and has adopted a "keep the whimsy while throwing away the author" attitude. Watch A Very Potter Musical (which has problematic aspects, but the creators have since addressed and disavowed those things). Watch Potter Puppet Pals. Read fanfic, if you like. Some of it is good! These things don't benefit JKR and they are fun and beautiful. Maybe controversial, but i also believe that still engaging with/supporting the franchise itself isnt necessarily bad. I know Joanne said she thinks supporting HP = supporting her views specifically, but she says a lot of dumb shit. She is already richer than the gods, so residuals are a drop in the bucket to her. But they do help support the actors and other people on those projects too. Ultimately HP was made by lots of people, including us. She doesn't get to decide it's alll about her weird neoliberal fascist anti-lgbt views.

[@AsuraSantosha]

@Aelffwynn thanks for the recs, I will check those out. I also try not to purchase HP merch, not because I don't want to support JKR (although honestly, that too), but more so because I don't want to support consumerism. Warner Brothers owns the HP Franchise in the US, and when you buy HP merch, that majority of the money goes to them. And they really don't need more of it. If I really want some Merch, I'll try to purchase something fan-made. I take a similar approach with other fandoms. This year, I've been trying to address my own materialistic and consumerist tendencies both for my mental health, my wallet, and the kind of world I want to live in. So I've been buying a lot of things used, going without or buying things from a business that I genuinely want to support. It's obviously not going perfectly because we live in a consumerist economy, but I think it's important to try to live in line with your values as much as you can.

[@Kestra84]

On the colonialism baked in to Harry Potter: years ago, I wrote a fanfic about the enforcement of the magical seclusion act (an agreement of European wizards somehow enforced on other societies... How, exactly, Joanne?) In it, a Russian wizard traveled to Central Asia to propose this idea to the magical community there. I drew on my knowledge of Central Asian cultural ideas about magical practice (for instance, using a knife instead of a wand.) In the story, the Russian emissary meets with an ancient mountain witch, who reveals to him, subtly, that she and other magic users, who are embedded in their community, will not withdraw from it, but rather are using spells to Confuddle Russian soldiers and imperial bureaucrats to make them think local magic is just "native superstition", playing on European racism to blind them to the truth. She also reminisces about a magic-using sister she had to fight and ultimately kill because she wanted to use their magic against the Russian invaders, and her sister knew that would touch off a war of extermination, because of that same racism. It makes me spitting mad, because that right there is better head-cannon on magical history than anything Rowling has ever written about anywhere that wasn't Britain (more like, anywhere that wasn't England and rural Fantasy Scotland.) AND SHE COULD HAVE DONE THIS! I mean, rather, *she* couldn't have done this, but she could have seen HP as a world she could have shared. Especially given the backing of a major international media conglomerate like Warner Brothers (pre-gutting-by-Zaslav, which may not have been necessary if they hadn't put a lot of their eggs in the HP basket, only to find it going rancid after less than a decade.) In another world, where Rowling understood and acknowledged her limits as a writer, she could have hired dozens of writers from other cultures and countries to write HP tie-in material localized for their markets. It would have deepened the lore in exactly the way fans craved, the way Pottermore seems to have been designed to do, but she couldn't get out of her own way. Instead, she busied herself suing fans for trying to publish this kind of tie-in themselves. She wouldn't share. It's the same reason the spin-off series movies suck, because she has let her ego get so out of hand that she won't collaborate or accept editors, and the result is boring, confusing mishmash of plot and characters written like fanfiction trying desperately to fit in references-for-references' sake, and as you note, complete stagnation of world-building and character growth, with arcs that are more-or-less circles, and literally no change to the status quo, like a Saturday morning cartoon from the '80s. I think partly she accomplished this slight-of-hand of making us think the books were deeper than they were, because she was still writing the books as we read them, still revealing secrets and twists and it all seemed to be building towards some grand statement of inclusivity and progressive values triumphing over staid conservatism and bigotry. That's the story *she told us* she was writing. But in the end, as you note, she wasn't writing incisive social critique about the need for change in order to grow. She was writing how the status quo is Just Fine, Actually, and we only need to get off our asses if there's a literal fascist movement threatening folks' comfort (comfort built on slavery and exploitation.) But only *she* knows who the fascists are, so the rest of us need to Shut Up. God, it is so painfully post-war BRITISH with a Capital B. The house-elves continue to be emblematic of this, because they are such a fumble that turn out to be crucial to the story in ways that expose her embarrassingly British colonial mindset. An American, even the most tone-deaf white American who believes in the Lost Cause and the White Man's Burden and all that trash, would have recognized that in the house-elves, they are writing an allegory to slavery and segregation, and even the most dimwitted American author would have recognized that parallels between house-elves being treated like that by magical society, who *is also treated like that by mundane society*, leading to the exact social malaise Rowling was trying to critique with the DeathEaters. The obvious social critique was just left sitting there with nothing to say, because Rowling is a coward who couldn't bring herself to write the truth even while exposing herself with her comfortable lies. Dobbie wasn't a typical elf, he was a weirdo! The elves Like It Actually, Shut Up About It, Hermione. It was such a curve we readers refused to believe she was serious right up until book 7 ended. There had to be some crucial change coming, some pivotal moment when house-elves triumphed and turned the tide against Voldemort, and proved, along with giants, centaurs, and other non-human magic users during the Battle of Hogwarts, that they could stand shoulder-to-shoulder with wizards and deserved to be equals in wizard society. A satisfying ending with lots of climax of the themes of social inclusion and multi-culturalism succeeding over bigotries. But she proved herself to be a vastly lesser writer than Le Guin, in the end, because she couldn't make any changes in her cozy little hierarchy. Humans on top, but benevolently, like Dumbledore, not meanly like Voldemort. The magical creatures were set-dressing in service of the human's story all along, because a colonial Brit writing in the imperial core is apparently incapable of recognizing White Man's Burden when she is literally writing it. And even Le Guin noted structural flaws in Earthsea and returned to it thirty years later to write three follow-ups on the female point-of-view, continuing the story of Tanar and making the entire series stronger, deeper, and more satisfying, not less. And Le Guin was a noted feminist writer when she wrote Earthsea to begin with! She is a great enough writer, a great enough person, to learn and grow over decades. Sadly, Rowling has proven, in both her writing and her TERF activism, to be capable of neither.

[@dlutz7248]

Lol, what a crock of bullshit. Russians themselves had been victims of European racism, colonialism attempts and imperialism, better should've written about that, not some Central Asian "oppressed folks". Let's also remember that Central Asians were a part of the Golden Horde that enslaved Russians during their own conquest, so no, bot buying this world building one bit. Jusr an excuse to be a Russophobe.

[@why-by5sc]

oh my god! did you publish the fic anywhere? i’d love to read it

[@Venejan]

>>it all seemed to be building towards some grand statement of inclusivity and progressive values triumphing over staid conservatism and bigotry.

[@Kestra84]

@@Venejan It was the "mudblood" theme introduced in the second book and Hermione and Harry both facing blood purity prejudice as The Heroes, heavily implying that the entire bigotted structure was problematic and needed reform. Again, this seemed *obvious* from an American child's point of view in the mid-90s, with all the other themes of inclusivity and multi-culturalism and respect that were part of the cultural milieu at the time for us. Maybe it wasn't obvious to Brits. Proves my thesis that Rowling didn't understand what she was writing or why her audience ate it up. And a better writer could have written all of wizarding society dealing with that social change, but instead she just made it all the DeathEaters fault, so if Voldemort is dead it isn't a problem any more.

[@Venejan]

@@Kestra84 Thanks, I wasn't aware of this background.

[@petercolson2990]

I consider myself fortunate to have grown up reading the works of Terry Pratchett, and that the whole 'potter' thing passed me by unnoticed. There was so much to the text and subtext in Pratchett's output, and a genuine warmth and love of a flawed humanity underneath it all, and a mystified indignation at how barmy we can be at out worst, that seemingly just isn't present in rowling's writing Plus the author himself being a delightful rascal who decided that, having been knighted and therefore legally permitted to wear a sword, sourced some meteoric iron and forged his own sword of meteoric iron, is so much better than spending hours on twitter inserting retroactive representation and worldbuilding about pooping into the canon

[@hwelsh201]

close your eyes and it's like Alan Alda has a channel!

[@CelynBrum]

I was squarely in the demographic age group for Harry Potter as it was coming out. I was also a capital-R Reader - any time not spent reading was time I resented. My favourite genres were Sci-Fi and Fantasy. I never owned the Harry Potter books. My younger brother did, and I would borrow them from him. My favourite series at the time was Animorphs and while I liked Harry Potter just fine, I could not figure out why everyone was going mad for it. To me it just... didn't stand out. It was like the Worst Witch, but with bits of Narnia and Roald Dahl thrown in. Thank you for validating my childhood confusion!

[@milkflavored]

I still agree with you but tbf, @16:00, the patil twins aren’t the only POC Harry interacts with on a side character basis- Dean Thomas literally lives in his dorm, and Angelina Johnson was on the Quidditch team with him and Lee Jordan is/was the twins best friend.. it’s still a little “my best friend’s friend is black” but it should be noted so your essay sounds familiar with the material you’re analyzing.

[@K.C-2049]

were any of those characters notedly black in the books though? or were they just kind of waffly referred to as "dark skinned" or not even mentioned so so that white people could freely imagine as white? they were black in the adaptations, I'm just trying to remember if any of them were ever actively described by JK as black? I think Dean might have been.

[@randallflagg3700]

@@K.C-2049 - Dean Thomas wasn't given a physical description in the original version of the first book, but in the US edition he was described as "a black boy even taller than Ron". He's never described again, so if you've only read the UK editions, then Dean Thomas could be of any race, I guess. Angelina and Lee on the other hand were described as black even in the original editions.

[@Alien1375]

I like how everybody suddenly discovers that Harry Potter is mediocre after J.K. Rowling turned out to be a boomer.

[@poppie267]

Because they have wisen up by now.

[@agramuglia]

It happened also coincidentally as we got older

[@Amy3422]

It's honestly fascinating how little people can separate art from artist. Potter inevitably has backlash because of its success, but so many fans used to apply the logic of "I love this; the author must be perfect and brilliant." Now the same thing is happening in reverse: "This author is problematic, therefore Potter was never good."

[@poppie267]

@@Amy3422 Good thing it happened the books are toxic anyway.

[@Amy3422]

@@poppie267 You can dislike things without disregarding their value.

[@apieceofbitsandpieces342]

I’ve heard some HP fans try to claim that people are being too harsh on some of the magic in the series and to “Don’t think about it too hard.” To me, I don’t think this is a really good argument. Most fantasy series usually have some basic set rules or lore to their magic system. While Harry Potter does have some “rules”, they’re either way too vague or not well explained. Take transfiguration for example, wizards are just able to make animals from inanimate objects or vise-versa. This causes some questions to arise: Can it even think, or does it have to be trained to be an animal? If you Transfigure a bird into a safe or something, is that considered killing it?, Ron turned a rat into a tea cup and it still had fur and a tail, so is it still alive? ect. When you have some powerful spell or magic items, you have to at least explain more about than it just existing.

[@aureliodeprimus8018]

Yeah, HPs biggest problem in regards to magic is that it is a soft-magic system trying to pass off as a hard-magic system, because a magic school setting requires the latter. Lord of the Rings for example can get away with a soft magic system, because Middle Earth has not many people being well-versed in magic, as far as i remember. When the magical population is big enough to warrant a school system, then it becomes complicated.

[@gunkulator1]

@@aureliodeprimus8018 There's a theory that there actually is no magic at all in LOTR. Tolkien himself uses words like "skill" or "craft" when describing what powerful beings are doing and the subtext there is that it's really just complicated technology. Galadriel comments to Sam when they are at the mirror 'For this is what your folk would call magic, I believe; though I do not understand clearly what they mean; and they seem also to use the same word of the deceits of the Enemy.' Being simple Hobbits, Frodo and Sam have no background to understand how the mirror works so Galadriel just humors them and agrees to call it magic.

[@aureliodeprimus8018]

@@gunkulator1 Well, i am not well-versed in Middle Earth lore at all (I always fall asleep while trying to watch or read Lord of the Rings), so i will not dispute that. I just know that LotR is often brought up as an example for a soft magic system.

[@gunkulator1]

@@aureliodeprimus8018 LOTR is a story told from the point of view of Hobbits. Because they are so simple of a people, they just call things magic when they don't understand them and leave it at that. Whether it actually is or isn't magic does not matter to the Hobbits. “Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic” - Arthur C Clark. With HP, the action mostly takes place at an actual magic school, i.e. a place that exists to explain the ins and outs of magic. This put JKR in a much more difficult position. She has to explain it, at least to some degree. JKR also makes the narrative choice of her main character aging up and becoming wiser with each book. Simple explanations about magic that would have satisfied 11 year old Harry are insufficient for 17 year old Harry and therefore insufficient for the reader as well.

[@aureliodeprimus8018]

@@gunkulator1 And yet you would expect that HP has at least some internal consistency between years. Yet the moment you start thinking about it further more questions pop up. Take for example the portkeys introduced in book 4. I don`t remember if there was ever an explanation how a portkey is made, which would actually be relevant, since a major plot point is that the tri-wizard trophy is turned into one with no one noticing....Can you simply turn anything into a portkey? If it is possible, then why at the beginning of Deathly Hallows Moody wouldn`t show up with a portkey to the Weasley house instead of the sharade with the fake Harrys? Same goes with Harrys signature spell Expelliarmus. How is a spell that is specifically designed to disarm able to go toe-to-toe with a spell specifically designed to instantly kill you? Same with the logic about wands changing their owner once the previous one is defeated in a duel. Considering that the "wand seeks the wizard" a lost duel basically means your potential as a wizard is crippled...And that is just off the top of my head. Just as a counterexample i will mention my favorite series, Skulduggery Pleasant. In SP there are two types of sorcerers: Elementalists (exactly what it says) and Alchemists (every other discipline). Elemental abilities are clearly defined as manipulating the air, moisture and heat around you with earth being the last resort measure by becoming one with it through instant petrification for an unspecified amount of time. Every alchemy ability gets a short explanation during the course of the book it is introduced, for example Teleportation requires you to fully picture the place you want to teleport to. Necromancy needs a focus to bind shadows to that are gathered by visiting places associated with death, like murder sites. The type of item used as a focus also defines how you use the shadow, a pistol for example fires shadow ammo, a shadow cloak stretches and slices and a shadow-infused ring lets you cloak your fist in shadows for more punching power. Even some more out-there abilities like the ability to break every single bone in a persons body requires for example a direct touch with specifically the finger tips. Or the spy that has the passive trait of being completely forgotten once vanishing from sight can circumvent his trait by gifting her friends something that reminds them of her, like a bracelet.

[@The__Creeper]

As a baby, I was reading the craziest most fucked up children's books possible (like Animorphs) and when everyone around me was screaming about how great and amazing Harry Potter was, I finally gave in and read it (because I got points for a school thing) and it was the most boring, generic thing possible. If it came out today, people would accuse it of being AI generated. Completely divorced from Rowling being a horrendous shitbag, it's still just a very bad X-Men knockoff. (There are many other series that have accused Rowling of ripping them off but I called it bad magic X-Men as a baby and it stuck.) Your initial point is that children's books didn't exist prior to Harry Potter. This is false. It just became popular to write children's books. There were a ton of massive series before Harry Potter but they weren't as rabid as Harry Potter fans. It's like how Pokemon wasn't the first monster capturing game but it blew up in popularity because of Pokemon.

[@kidfantastic]

If you've read KA Applegate and Chris Claremont then yeah this is baby shit.

[@nickythekidd5517]

Rowling is right though and it’s called freedom of speech

[@The__Creeper]

@@nickythekidd5517 Then why do people get mad when they say everything Rowling says back at her?

[@K.C-2049]

​@@nickythekidd5517 and that person is free to call Rowling a horrendous shitbag lol how come freedom of speech only works one way to bigots?

[@zana2587]

i dont think harry potter was ever really as strong as nostalgia would like us to believe, but i cant help but feel similarly about the chronicles of narnia. CS lewis wasn't ever quite able to outdo his own first book in the series. i would love to hear your takes!

[@agramuglia]

Narnia i feel i could do a whole video on at least. That work is fascinating because it is so...all over the place in terms of quality

[@mattwolf7698]

A lot of people also get kind of annoyed with Narnia now over the blatant religious propaganda in it. As a kid who grew up in a super religious house I picked up on that stuff even when I was in elementary school but obviously didn't mind it. Now I'm no longer religious and find those books a little annoying at times when they are trying to push a message, I overall like them though.

[@natanaga9892]

I'm Indonesian and even if I'm not that much of a fan of Harry Potter series, I'm excited to see what the equivalent of magic school in Indonesia. Needless to say, I'm disappointed but not surprised. We're an immensely diverse group of people from different ethnicities, cultures and belief systems. Our view of 'magic' differs as well, as we're not a monolith. Majority viewed it as working with demons and spirits, more akin to shamanic magics, but even that differs from culture to culture. To say that our fictional wizarding society need to go to one place in Indonesia is insane, let alone to tell us we need to go out of country to 'properly learn' (weirdly colonial if you think about it). And after I've read people grievances from different countries, I guess Just Kidding Rowling is too lazy to even hire someone from that country.

[@imacg5]

Everything described in the video could be summed up as "It's the '90s."

[@meropale]

Of course, all of this surfaces now when people want to distance themselves from her views by devaluing her work.

[@creativerealms]

I remember when Twilight got big and Stephen King made a comment about it and Harry Potter. He said that the biggest difference was that J. K Rowling was actually a good writer. I doubt he would have kind words to say about her now.

[@BitOBear]

Treasure Island. Buck Rogers. Johnny quest. Star wars. Harry Potter. Isakai. Every generation has a story of being whisked away to be the hero. It is accessible, fun, easy, and not always particularly deep nor endlessly well crafted. It is the first elementary reader Of literature, and it is eternal and repetitive. It comes in like the tide and washes away to be replaced by the next wave.

[@crios8307]

Heroes are not all the same. Not all of them are "chosen one", or rich. Some of them don't have friends, or are plainly bad people whom go on a journey to confront a shadow. Don't confuse the role of a protagonist with a stereotype of a singular type of hero. We wouldn't have different stories and preferences if they were all the same character.

[@kameelmohammed4683]

I think a good counterpoint to Rowling is Terry Pratchetts' discworld, because even though the tone is different, that of satire, paraody, and comedy. The world is better explained and better built. Also, Pratchetts writing is also very British, but all of the various characters have nuances, different perspectives, and the ability to grow. Pratchett also questions the status que a lot as is sorta the point in satire.The series also has a wizard university, which is just fun and daft

[@lucyairapetian407]

18:41 he starts to become a better person after he’s attacked by dementors. He lost weight before that incident. It’s in no way tied.

[@haileymaurer122]

I agree - and going forward we get to see Dudley understand that Harry was not just a "freak" or outsider, but a courageous wizard fighting the evil he had been sheltered from in his safe suburban home. Dudley sees his own ignorance and intolerance because he didn't understand the threats Harry faced (to be fair Harry was always facing demons on his own).

[@falcon_arkaig]

I really like Dudley's character development. He started to understand that him bullying Harry was wrong and became a better person after that. I'm just glad Harry and Dudley ended on good terms. Dudley started treating Harry like an actual brother and equal.

[@EmilAhvenainen]

tbf, this whole video is a whole ass smear campaign against potter series. Rowling is a problematic figure and I don't like her retcons for the series. HP is not a perfect series but this video takes every small problem with the series an blows it way out of proportions.

[@falcon_arkaig]

@@EmilAhvenainen Obviously the HP series has issues, just like the creator said. Like how Slytherian is written as the "evil" house, though that could be just bc Harry is bias. But yeah I feel like this Creator nitpicked some stuff. HP was popular for a reason, even if it was poorly written in comparison to other Fantasy series.

[@keppakappa5033]

​@@EmilAhvenainen, ahh yes, the person who in one comment doesn't see anything wrong with the concept of cops despite the current state of the world also happens to think that 1 (one) singular video mildly criticizing/questioning some things about the HP series is a "whole ass smear campaign". Wish I could say that I was surprised that some HP fans are both cop apologists and reactionaries who make wild hyperbolic assumptions while accusing others of doing the same, but strangely enough this isn't even the first time I've seen this exact combo LOL

[@GThe-su9kl]

I think that part of the reason why HP is still pretty common is less because it's good, or because the same people keep reading it over and over, and more because books for people who want to begin reading are "hard to come by". So, people go for what they know : books with adaptations. The issue is kind of obvious when looking at languages other than English: sometimes, we had books similar to HP released roughly at the same time, and they were sometimes better than HP, but the lack of any kind of adaptation (sometimes due to the small size of the market for which they were written) made them "disappear".

[@djdoc06]

There is something great about the books that give them mass appeal, regardless of the flaws of the author. The books are not perfect, but trying to retcon history and say they were never good in the first place, is cognitive distortion or flat out disingenuous.

[@TheJadedJames]

- JKR is a bigot and a narcissist. - JKR is also a centrist. Outside of her exceptional committed to transphobia, she holds many entirely normal neoliberal beliefs and if you notice contradictions in the ideology of her work, congrats, you're a progressive. The world of Harry Potter is the world of a centrist neoliberal institutionalist. Rowling is capable of understanding that the bad thing is bad, but cannot take the next step of "the systems that perpetrate are the bad thing must be changed to stop the bad thing". That's how centrists think. I'm not shocked by that, most people I know are neoliberals/centrists. - The Harry Potter books were ultimately still entertaining fantasy stories. We wouldn't be having this discussion if people didn't love them and weren't struggling with the implications of being a fan of something that is so highly associated with an awful person as if a transitive property exists that makes you complicit in systems of prejudice and oppression because you enjoyed a novel that had nothing to do with that issue at all. I understand being do put off by JKR that you don't want to give her the win of having written good books. But I also remember shortly after 2016 there was a bump of people overrating this books somewhat because of the anti-fascism that was VERY basic in the 1990s, but suddenly more relevant after Trump and Brexit. For me, Rowling discourse has tainted my ability to return to Harry Potter without thinking of the controversy. It's just not possible for me to engage with the material the same way anymore ... but like Ender's Game before it, the author's real world awfulness can't go back in time and change my original impressions.

[@lyxthen]

I feel like the books' main redeeming quality is that they are fun, but even as a kid, they weren't as fun as let's say, Roal Dahl. I started reading the books at 13 and my main takeaway was "that was fun, I think fascism is bad" but when I read Lord of the Rings it legitimately changed my life. Same with Earthsea. Heck, The Name of the Wind was a lot more fun and thoughtful than Harry Potter and I read that when I was 12. I think JKRs main problem as a fantasy writer is that she isn't actually a fantasy writer. She doesn't actually hold much respect for fantasy as a genre, its conventions and its history. She's a murder mystery writer, first and foremost. So her work feels careless and empty when compared to most other fantasy works, bc it was made with no love for magic beyond its aesthetics.

[@habibikebabtheiii2037]

JK Rowling is a 90s liberal. To many it was the end of history. But a phobia is an irrational fear. She can't be transphobic, her fears are justified. She is a third wave feminist. Many feminists today are 4th wave and it's deconstructed womanhood on baseless philosophy.

[@Eroil]

I feel like this is pushing the idea of not separating the artist from the art very far. Are you not gonna be able to appreciate or enjoy works not made by people that share your same worldview? The sentence of "that's how centrists think" really got to me. Can you see what I'm getting at here?

[@TheJadedJames]

@@Eroil When JK Rowling harasses trans people on Twitter she’s being exceptional. Normal people don’t do that nor do they think about trans people as much as Rowling even if they have similar views on them. By contrast, the moral universe of Harry Potter in my opinion, just passively regurgitates the dominant centrist ideology of the world we live in today (and especially in the 1990s when Rowling was originally writing it). Progressives get tripped up on this, because if you are a progressive if you think a bad thing is bad then by transitive property, an institution which does the bad thing is bad. Centrists don’t see the world that way, so when they make art, it is going to feel inconsistent when you analyze it

[@ahmadalimi9784]

Calling someone are narcissist is objectively a bad thing to do especially as it alludes to NPD a real disorder people face.

[@RedAngelSophia]

The US and Canada share one magic school? Zeriously?!?!? When I did my worldbuilding for a Kids on Brooms campaign, I had _multiple_ schools in the USA - one for each region of the country. (My campaign was set in the magic school for the Southeastern United States. That means, we not only would not see any students form Ontaria - we also would not see any students from Massachusets, California, even Texas.)

[@Grudgebearer47]

Also the Japanese school’s name just translates to “magic school”.

[@emiliapawny4746]

Isn't US like massive? And isn't Canada also massive? Though apparently all former Soviet Block countries share one school, and it hasn't led to a war

[@RedAngelSophia]

@@emiliapawny4746 - Yeah -- I probably would have given more than one school for the former Soviet block. But I never really fleshed out that area in my worldbuilding. So yeah - in that world I built for that KIDS ON BROOMS campaign, the former Soviet block countries have more than one school -- but I can not tell you the exact number, let alone their names and what exact territory each one covers. Of course, there are some areas of the world that I was not able to handle -- like areas where a specific country is too small to have its own school, but too culturally different from its neighbors to really be compatible to share a school with them. Yes, exposing kids to broader horizons is part of what school is for - but it also helps if there is a common language spoken in the school. And true, we are in the fantasy genre, so you might think it should be easy to come up with a magical solution for the language barrier - but the problem is, you need to do it in a way that won’t make the players think: “Hey, if they can do that, why do they need school in the first place?” - and that can be a problem even in the fantasy genre.

[@bobbygomesDFS]

“They never confront the systems of their world” that’s literally all they do the last 4 books.

[@Toshiro93]

In fact, already in the third book there are clear signs that there are distortions in the government of the ministry (just think of the case mounted by Lucius Malfoy against Hagrid because of Buckbeak), and previously, in The chamber of secrets, there had been mention of Lucius' blackmailing ways. But from the fourth book onwards, all the problems that magical society has, arise in an increasingly evident way: however, I believe that it is... how can I put it? It is unrealistic to expect that, at the end of The Deathly Hallows, laws against elven slavery would be enacted, or all the corruption in the Ministry would disappear at any moment. And this for two simple reasons: first of all, the story of Harry Potter is the story... of Harry Potter (yes, quite a revelation), of an individual and what he goes through to mature. In between there are moral and ethical battles against the Ministry (that is, the whole thing about Umbridge's sadism, does anyone remember that? Or the fact that Dumbledore is forced to let Umbridge stay, even though it's clear that he doesn't want her in the school). Furthermore, the changes are only slightly hinted at: Kingsley is appointed Ministry by popular election, Azkaban is emptied of the innocents imprisoned there on false charges, the dementors are driven out... in short, there are signs that indicate how the magical world is changing. But are slow mutations that happen off-screen: indeed, on one hand, it was better that we did not receive detailed information - within the books - about what happened in those 19 years of peace. Everyone can imagine what they want, and I think that anyone who has enjoyed this series has imagined an improvement in relations between muggles and wizards, the end of the discriminatory ideology against muggle-borns or half-breeds, etc.

[@poppie267]

And they also stop caring about it in the last chapter.

[@Amy3422]

It's noted that when people want to dislike a series, they go out of their way to focus on things (ethics, logical consistency etc) that are irrelevant to why people like it and treat the things that people love (humour, tone, genre-mixing, characters) as "quirks" that have nothing to do with literary quality.

[@Amy3422]

(Teaching simple moral lessons and crafting a hard magic system with near-scientific laws were never the point of the series. Readers can seek out and prefer other types of books if they want, but if a hard magic system, for example, is obviously not a part of the story, then its absence isn't a legitimate criticism of the series.)

[@Toshiro93]

Also because there are hundreds of stories where magic is not explained in the slightest, on the contrary... I believe that, until the last few decades, almost no author bothered to make the issue realistic. There are simply people who know how to use magic, and other than a very few limitations due to experience, there are no other explanations for HP's magic. It may be a little disappointing, but I don't think it's a big point against the books.

[@Amy3422]

@@Toshiro93 Yeah, the point of magic is that it's magic. It should have some mystery & absurdity. Absurdity is vital to what makes the wizarding world unique. I think what happens is that HP does have rich world-building and a lot of detail, which leads some readers to expect Earthsea or to want explanations for everything, instead of using their imaginations. Lewis Carroll & Roald Dahl don't get this criticism because they more obviously reject logic.

[@Toshiro93]

@@Amy3422 Exactly. HP is a saga for kids, it starts as a detective story set in a school, no child was interested in reading about how magic worked. Of course, there are stories that invest more in this aspect (I'm thinking of Avatar, the cartoon), but in HP it wasn't essential that magic was explained, but that there was magic, to distinguish that world from the Muggle one.

[@alcoholicgoat]

"Oh no I didn't realize there would be messed up implications" That seems like it's pretty typical for Harry Potter/JK Rowling.

[@Nathouuuutheone]

Describing or naming a cultural icon, be it a creature, deity, prophet, you name it... should NEVER be considered "disrespectful". Upholding someone's superstition isn't a form of respect. Participating in limitating knowledge as demanded by a religious authority, that's disrespect to everyone. The whole premise of asking that a name not be said is inherently fascist in nature. I know authoritarianism is not at the core of american indigenous traditions, but it doesn't mean we shouldn't question the specifics when they are imposed on us.

[@ivana2609]

I did not expect a yuri on ice mention but I appreciate it, knowing tat the movie is cancelled is still pretty soul crushing to me 😭

[@Gaia_BentosZX5]

That one Hoshii No Kirby episode is a self-fufilling prophecy about imposter syndrome. Write a book about wizards once, get destroyed by your own ego. Not to mention that a book like the Harry Potter series already existend in the DC back catalog in the Sandman comics which adds to the devastating imposter syndrome.

[@leonis5664]

Books of magic!! The protagonist was very similar to Harry...

[@NaturallyDark]

As someone who was a huge fan of the third book (a very long time ago, at this point), I feel the need to mention that time turners work with "bootstrap" time travel logic; that is, it is not possible to rewrite the future because all time travel is already accounted for in the present timeline. It's like Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure, if you've seen that (and if you haven't, you should, it's a great movie). But while I prefer this kind of time travel over the usual kind seen in Back to the Future, you'd think that their mere existence would prevent someone like Voldemort from ever coming into being. Wizards and other magical entities can have prophetic visions, and if one such person who was able to see the future was given a time turner, it would be like Death Note if Light could kill the criminals before they even committed the crime. I wonder if Voldemort or the Death Eaters ever tried to get their hands on those things in order to ensure their rule would be successful. Shouldn't have been too hard, considering a random teen was given one just so she could do more homework. Just by introducing the element of time travel, so many worldbuilding problems crop up that I'd give myself a headache if I tried to think of all of them. These books weren't just written for children and children alone, they also read like they were written by a child.

[@agramuglia]

Agreed here. And Bill and Ted is fantastic. More a fan of Bogus Journey than Excellent Adventure, if only because of the Grim Reaper

[@Gringo7213]

Just need to ignore the stageplay, because that retconned the idea that it was not possible

[@cablefeed3738]

​@@Gringo7213No, they didn't retcon it if you know that much, then, you should also know the fact that it was a modified one, meaning it was a prototype that they found a way around it. The old ones that everyone used were incapable of changing the past.

[@leonardofernandez6488]

I don't think JK Rowling ever denied the Shoah.

[@Idekjustwhatever]

I agree with a lot of your criticisms of both the books and Rowling as a person. However, I noticed some flaws in your arguments. 1. The Patil twins are not the only people of colour Harry meets before Kingsley. There are Dean Thomas, Angelina Johnson, Lee Jordan and Cho Chang (totally agree about the name btw) who are all explicitly described as poc. 2. The line "Dumbledore's got style" is not said by Kingsley in the book but by the portrait of Phineas Nigellus. The movie changed that for some reason. 3. Praising the use of time turners in Cursed Child is insane to me because the play completely misunderstands how time travel worked in Prisoner of Azkaban. You cannot change the past because if you had, it wouldn't have happened in the first place (that's why time turners aren't actually that big of a plot hole, and only became so due to the Cursed Child). 4. You claim Rowling is pro-monarchy without giving evidence. I wish you had expanded on that. 5. Claiming Rowling is pro-Thatcher is a big stretch to me. Rowling herself was on social benefits in the 90s and therefore directly suffered from Thatcher's policies. Rowling has generally supported Labour, at least until recently. Again, I wish you had given a reason for your claim. I generally agree that the wordbuilding in Harry Potter is pretty bad and am not defending Rowling in any way.

[@gunkulator1]

There's a lot of revisionism now with HP straight out of 1984. JKR has always been an evil Nazi, even if we have to change history and make things up to prove it. Real actual people are rarely simple black or white paragons.

[@MovieEggman]

Rowling is a Social Thatcherist, in the sense that she very much worship the same group Thatcher walked on when it comes to the LGBTQ.

[@comediancircus]

I think that some of the POC representation you mentioned was not in the original edition of the HP books and only later added, if at all. Dean Thomas, for example, is only explicitly stated to be black in the US version of the books, the UK version does not state his skin colour. Edit: just tried to look for confirmation of this, and apparently the chapter where Dean is introduced in the UK version was heavily shortened by UK editors, which is why the line doesn't show up in the UK version but there in the US version.

[@federerlkonig330]

In addition, many of those POC, while not that well developed, are still far above being racial stereotypes. Cho Chang likes both Quidditch and stereotypically "girly" things, the Patil twins are different enough to be in different houses...

[@jojobookish9529]

People who suffer under a system are not inoculated against belief in the ideological underpinnings of that system, nor does their struggle necessarily engender greater empathy and kindness in them. Sometimes it makes them harsh and rigid-minded. I know far too many people who grew up under totalitarian regimes and talk often about how awful it was, but are fully supporting politicians who espouse authoritarian ideas today. Like, portrait -on-the-wall level support.

[@zacharybosley1935]

I personally feel like Animorphs did more for my childhood development than Harry Potter ever did, and in the wake of YA Fiction becoming so aggressively popular that it has its own associated tropes by now, HP can pretty comfortably be left in the shadow of history. Magic is handled better in other places, friendship is handled better in other places, hell, I feel like PJO even handles the voldemort storyline better with the way Luke was disenfranchised by demigod society, and retaliated. A lot of what is good in Harry Potter has the taint of a world where abolishing slavery is a bad thing.

[@themythosarchives7520]

Percy also recognizes the flaws with the system that led to Luke turning and acting to reform it. Change is slow yes, but improvements are made and Trials of Apollo elaborates on this even further.

[@zacharybosley1935]

@@themythosarchives7520 God, could you imagine just how much worse that universe would be if Percy accepted the classical reward of Godhood?

[@eneyavorodecky]

People forget that barely 10 years have passed since the actions of Voldemort and even Snape is barely 30 in book one. The movies in a way reinforce the "no change, utter stasis" because of the actors that portrayed the characters. Old. Respectable. Middle-aged. For kids, people who are immutable and stuck where they are. No change.

[@Crxwned_Alex]

I honest to god thought this was Charlie Slimecicle making a prank video on joking about Harry Potter and getting coins thrown at him for talking about gooping through the slime universe

[@Crxwned_Alex]

i was surprised, but not disappointed, very interesting and detailed study sir.

[@wywrd_mtnt]

you're so right the resemblance is kinda uncanny

[@kenderareawesome]

The plot of the Harry potter books is basically an endorsement of the British class system.

[@andresmullerbeck2427]

Honestly, Harry Potter was amazing in context. It came out at the right time and the series aged with its target fans. And Mr. Bloom's opinions are honestly poison. As a kids book there being depth is far less important than just catching the kids' attention, hopefully enticing them to read better books. Its the gateway drug of the reading world, if you will.

[@vapx0075]

It was for my sister. She couldn't read till my dad got her the audio book of the Philosopher's stone. Now I deeply regret it as she is entrenched in #centrist idealisms and actually bought a game her potato can't play just to line the pockets of somebody who, to her own words, wrote a 'trashy fan fic of her own writing' (The cursed child). To repeat, my sister thinks she can write better than the person who inspired her to read and also believes the LGBTQIA people are militant or something.

[@TheNerdWithASuit]

One of these days I want to do a video about what I view as better Harry Potter alternatives. BUT the kicker is that it's not just limited to books about characters in a magic school. I would consider any fantasy series made during or after the nineties that is accessible for both kids and teenagers to be a contender for a Harry Potter alternative. And it all depends on if the writing does a better job of tackling political topics, worldbuilding, character exploration, lore, etc. What I have now from most obvious to least obvious would be: > Owl House > Percy Jackson > Little Witch Academia > Kiki's Delivery Service > How To Train Your Dragon > Animorphs > She-Ra and the Princesses of Power > Avatar: The Last Airbender > The Legend of Korra > One Piece

[@agramuglia]

I have an additional alternative in this video that's substantially older.

[@aureliodeprimus8018]

I would ask if i can add Skulduggery Pleasant to the list, but then again SP is definitely not for kids.

[@zebraylonwoodruff6773]

Mashle

[@charlieboone1298]

Groosham Grange. Set in a remote British boarding school for witches and warlocks. Rowling, to put it charitably, definitely peaked at Anthony Horowitz's homework.

[@TheDCbiz]

​@@charlieboone1298but Hogwarts isn't a boarding school is it? I've only seen the films and I think read the first book but Hogwarts especially in the films feels more like a milita recruitment center

[@meakimon]

I'd like to suggest "the worst witch" I think you'll find there's a lot of fun to be had. It's a far better children's book, also about a magic school, with three friends, a fun and quirky headmaster, a cold but secretly caring potion professor, and lots of fun and at times scary adventures.

[@jessawall3510]

That YOI reference made me a subscriber. I feel you with the mappa rage. Awesome video!! I can’t wait to go through your previous work and I WILL be here for future videos.

[@Tacom4ster]

I already watched like 4 Breadtube essays that says no, Owl House will age better and be appreciated by future generations unlike Wizard Cop

[@agramuglia]

I agree with that, though I surprisingly never mention Owl House here.

[@TheAdarkerglow]

I never got through book one of Harry Potter. I had already read too much Dragonlance, The Hobbit, Lord of the Rings, and even a bit of the Drizzt saga. For me, trying to 'come down' from High Fantasy, to a rather niche and limited world of a single Wizarding School, where relative strengths couldn't be measured, no one tried to stretch or break the boundaries of magic (all of the magical ideas felt incredibly generic to me, or poor translations of myth) had no appeal. It all felt very quaint and novice to me. I'm very glad that after years of saying they weren't very good, people are finally starting to believe me, and not just try to equate what I'm saying to a distaste for J.K. Rowling herself. Who, to be honest, I never paid any attention to anyway.

[@annafdd]

Same here. It was a small world with horrible people. Give me Lord of the Rings any day.

[@beemcbuzz7354]

I had read the books when I was younger, but the fanfiction that expanded on the worldbuilding and characters interested me far more than the actual books ever did. To be fair, I had read series like Discworld, Artemis Fowl, Percy Jackson and kind of jumped straight into adult series (some of which my parents really should have checked before buying for me), so compared to that, the books were meh to me comparatevly even back then. Me and my best friend at the time butted heads here a ton. She adored Harry Potter, I was more into Percy Jackson. She was all over Twilight, I was reading the original Dracula and series like Anita Blake Vampire Hunter. The lack of worldbuilding and deeper themes always stopped me from really getting into the series as much as others.

[@Alice-ib4cz]

As someone who’s not involved in the fandom at all or remembers the movies, my jaw genuinely dropped when I heard ‘Kingsley shacklebolt’. Yo ???

[@blenderpanzi]

"It fails to understand that there exists a world outside of Britain." So like how most shows form the USA are about the USA. As someone from central Europe I got used to it. All the different planets in Star Trek and Stargate etc. are very very American. And in anime everyone behaves very Japanese, no matter where they come from/where the anime is supposed to take place. I gave up complaining about that.

[@Bionickpunk]

Kinda hilarious seeing him complain that the one time when US wasnt the center of the universe in a fictional work. Also why would it, write whats familiar to you. She is British so of course she would write about British stuff. The point when she tried to write about international wizard communities is when she fumbled greatly.