Probably an unpopular opinion, but the stories don't hold up under scrutiny, and that's apparent even from the first book. Then again, that's not how one enjoys children's books.
this post was submitted on 05 Jan 2025
776 points (100.0% liked)
Greentext
5916 readers
1077 users here now
This is a place to share greentexts and witness the confounding life of Anon. If you're new to the Greentext community, think of it as a sort of zoo with Anon as the main attraction.
Be warned:
- Anon is often crazy.
- Anon is often depressed.
- Anon frequently shares thoughts that are immature, offensive, or incomprehensible.
If you find yourself getting angry (or god forbid, agreeing) with something Anon has said, you might be doing it wrong.
founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
Probably an unpopular opinion
Not really. Even big potter fans acknowledge that the books have giant plotholes
Huge potter fan here (that won't consume any potter media because JKR is a self-owning ass clown that deserves to watch her empire crumble), and yeah, even well before the Twitter nonsense she started spouting, it wasn't like a secret or anything that the books weren't perfect. I still stood on like at midnight for prisoner of Azkaban as a kid, though. But I remember thinking the Voldemort/death eaters thing was a pretty clear WWII/Hitler/Nazi analogy and googling it only to find an interview with her stating it absolutely was not, and people who thought it was were "reading politics" into a children's story. She's always been a dumbass, and she's wrong about her own work. Also, the whole house elf thing was... Really, really rough to read as a kid. I could never understand why no one was on Hermione's side, and how no one could see that elves didn't want to be free because their condition would be that of an outcast, and in a world where only wizard's were allowed wands, nonhuman humanoids were veru clearly subjugated to the point of delusionality.
Which is to say, yeah, the books got problems, even if you love em. I love those books, because the world felt real, even when it was shitty, it felt real. But there are major problems in them, both in the plothole sense, and in the politics (or lack thereof) of the author shining through the cracks
Nobody is on the side of the house elves because Hermione is the pet leftist. Ever watch Downton Abbey? Pretty good show tbh, but if you have, then Tom Felton is the Downton Abbey Hermione. Why is Downton Abbey, of all things, relevant? Because it's conservative apologia for the way things were, just as HP is conservative apologia; these types of media will often include a zany leftist that they can soften and win over to show how their conservative agenda is good actually. Think about it, HP isn't left vs right, it's old conservatism (Dumbledore and his muggle-loving ways) vs batshit insane ultra conservatism (the Death Eaters). If you swap wizarding blood for noble blood, being a wizard for being a noble, etc. it works almost perfectly. Hermione is new nobility that the old nobility doesn't respect; Harry is from a good pedigree, but was raised by his peasant aunt and uncle and doesn't know how to act the part, etc etc. The left (Hermione) wasn't supposed to win (and didn't), that W was meant for the old conservatives all along.
HP and Rowling have always been conservative, it was just that we misread the struggle being portrayed there.
She's a classic neolib. Pretending to be progressive while actually pushing regressive, conservative bullshit.
I got sort of an inverse impression of Downton Abbey. For me, it was about inevitable change, since practically every single truth held by the most conservative characters is at some point bent or entirely overturned, often by themselves. Literally all of the gentry are huge hypocrites.
It also spends a good amount of time creating parallels in the lives of the different classes that, for me, underscored how there was nothing fundamentally special about the aristocracy besides their wealth. Wealth that they never earned and only held onto because a peasant Irish driver who banged their daughter forcibly removed their heads from their assess.
It just doesn't seek to accomplish all this by making the upper class into Disney villains, since that's rarely how people actually are. But I never got the impression the show was trying to say this is how things should have or had to have been.
This is a great counterpoint, thanks for taking the time to write this thoughtful response. Imo, Downton paints a rosy picture of the gentry, one of kind, intelligent people who are willing to change with the times if only they understood the need; one where there's a healthy mutualism between the gentry and those under them (house servants, tenants, etc). Maybe that really is how it was, idk, I'm American and all of our gentry equivalent seem to feel little responsibility to those upon whom they depend.
That's fair. The rosiness I always attributed to the fact it's basically a fancy soap opera with a huge budget.
The Crowleys are definitely depicted as kind lords, though the show contrasts them several times with other less humane counterparts. I don't have the education to rate its historical accuracy, however.
batshit insane ultra conservatism (the Death Eaters)
Death Eaters are revolutionary wizard supremacists.
I searched for her denying the Nazi analogy and only found the opposite
Q: Many of us older readers have noticed over the years similarities between the Death Eaters tactics and the Nazis from the 30s and 40s. Did you use that historical era as a model for Voldemort’s reign and what were the lessons that you hope to impart to the next generation?
It was conscious. I think that if you’re, I think most of us if you were asked to name a very evil regime we would think Nazi Germany. There were parallels in the ideology. I wanted Harry to leave our world and find exactly the same problems in the wizarding world. So you have the intent to impose a hierarchy, you have bigotry, and this notion of purity, which is this great fallacy, but it crops up all over the world. People like to think themselves superior and that if they can pride themselves in nothing else they can pride themselves on perceived purity. So yeah that follows a parallel. It wasn’t really exclusively that. I think you can see in the Ministry even before it’s taken over, there are parallels to regimes we all know and love. [Laughter and applause.] So you ask what lessons, I suppose. The Potter books in general are a prolonged argument for tolerance, a prolonged plea for an end to bigotry, and I think ti’s one of the reasons that some people don’t like the books, but I think that’s it’s a very healthy message to pass on to younger people that you should question authority and you should not assume that the establishment or the press tells you all of the truth.
Will check the link a little later (just woke up to pee. Lol). But this was years ago, like around the time PoA came out, or maybe halfbood prince? Either way, it was ab article, not s video. I'll try to find it later today
It's a transcript from a Q&A session she did in 2007, around the time of the last book and the OotP film, so a few years after PoA (book and film).
Edit: And here's an interview with a dutch newspaper from 2007 where she says Voldemort is kind of a Hitler https://archive.is/Pi45t (warning, it's in Dutch)
Maybe I'm misremembering, but I promise I didn't just make that up! I can't find the article I saw when I was young, but it was, like, openly hostile to the idea of it. Maybe it was someone else and I attributed it to her or something. :/
I'm not saying that she didn't say it, she said a lot of stuff over the years. I assume she changed her mind, given you said it was around the time of PoA. If I'm not mistaken she had quite some influence on the films and in the last two films you literally see people running around in what look like Nazi uniforms.
It’s not even a plot hole here (though there are a million plot holes in the books). They literally use the truth serum on Barty Crouch Jr and he fesses up.
Yup, and in the same book too.
Yeah, plus iirc after this pretty much everyone except his friends and senior Hogwarts staff is deeply suspicious of Harry and no one wants to believe Voldemort is back. Don't get me wrong, there's lots wrong with the series, but I can't say this is one of them.
She can tell a decent story. But she's awful at world building beyond the "what would be cool to have" step and the moment she has to consider the ramifications of things she introduced coming up again. Like she can tell a story just fine, but the moment she needs to care about continuity it all goes out the window.
This is actually addressed in the books. There's a part when Harry is whining how nobody believed him when he said Voldemort was back and Hermione basically goes "Dude, you convinced Cedric to touch the cup at the same time you did, then you both disappeared and you came back with his dead body screaming about an evil wizard who has been dead for more than a decade. I only believed you because I'm your friend."
It's a huge plot point in the fifth book/film as well. Lots of people including the ministry don't want to believe him.
Yeah but the movies specifically frame it more as "the ministry has been infiltrated" and less as "Harry, your story is shady af"
The movies also frames Dumbledore as a hard boiled unhinged detective who slams people against walls and shakes them down for information, whereas the book totally missed out on that great aspect of his personality. Swings and roundabouts
Definitely, Dumbledore is much better in the movies. I think the books overexplore his relationship with Voldemort and he comes off a bit daft. All of his interactions with Voldemort are like:
Voldemort: Genocide is cool, right?
Dumbledore: No, it isn't
V: You're right. Anyway, theoretically, how can I become more stronger?
D: Are you gonna do a genocide?
V: high pitched Whaaaaat...?! Naaaaaaaah! I would never do that!
D: Ok, here's how you become more powerful...
Dumbledore is much better in the movies
This is a hot take I’ve never heard before
A turd is better when you can both see and smell it rather than when you can only smell it
He's a man of ACTION in the films, and not a man of giving fools a second chance.
Dumbledore in the books has my heart, but Dumbledore in the films has my sword
DIDYOUPUTCHANAMEINTHAGOBLETOFFIYAAAAHHH
It's been a long time, but I very much remember it being played as the powers that be are simply afraid to acknowledge that V is back. They do attack Harry's story some to help justify keeping their heads in the sand, but that didn't seem like the point to me.
For an intelligent take on Harry Potter I can recommend https://hpmor.com/ I found it better than the original books.
I personally found HPMOR to be self aggrandising garbage that throws around scientific terms to try and be rationalist but uses them all wrong anyway.
Also the authors a cult leader. Somehow.
I thought that it used up all its good insights covering the first couple of books, and then limped to the ending.
Also the authors a cult leader. Somehow.
is he ?
Fair warning: what this is, is, Elizer yes-that-guy Yudkowsky wrote a one-and-done Harry Potter novel, and it is everything you would expect. Some aspects are fantastic! Others... yikes. Within two chapters, it goes from spotting Umberto Eco's Ur-Fascism in the Death Eaters' whole pitch, to declaring Hermoine an NPC unless she can pass a gatekeeping knowledge-check about quarks.
A detail I love that's not a spoiler: Crabbe and Goyle are well-characterized to act exactly the way they are in canon. They've been molded as bodyguards since they were little, and now they're in wizard middle school getting to play tough-guy bruisers on Draco's behalf, so of course they're tryhard doofuses that he finds mildly embarrassing. But when Quirrel invites one of them to spar, demonstrating the ancient mystical defense known as... judo... Goyle quietly asks what belt he has. Quirrel says "seventh dan." The tough-guy act comes right back up, and Goyle throws himself into it, because he knows he's about to get his ass kicked, safely.
The whole thing is ultimately about modeling people on these layers of facade. A lot of it gets overly analytical and kinda up-its-own-ass. Certain characters call that out and condemn actions at face value, so some of it's deliberate writing for the protagonist and antagonist. But only some.
Even with abundant benefit of the doubt, figuring 'this guy wrote Harry like a know-it-all child,' any recommendation would be complicated.
My spouse has been relistening to the books on tape recently and so I have been hearing it by proxy.
The narrators really put in the work to make some flimsy writing seem engaging. Like in one of the later books there's this significant scene where some evil magic makes an evil visage of Hermione. In the subsequent chronological scene the real Hermione is super angry at Ron and not once does the writing reference or make a connection with any of the imagery between the two.
Eh, read Diana Wynne Jones instead.
Just literally any books other than Harry Potter instead. Joanne had a generation locked in. Every form of media, spin-off, merch, a effing section of Universal Studios, etc. with unlimited money, and she could’ve just disappeared to do whatever she wanted to. Instead, she gets online and mouths off incessantly, alienating a good chunk of her base, and revealing what an awful human being she actually is. She could’ve been illegally racing panda bears in go-karts around her back yard and no one would ever have known. Just doing eccentric rich person stuff. It’s one of the biggest disappointments.