Love her or hate her (and my opinions are mixed), I must confess, JK Rowling was a huge influence on why I didn’t become a regular author. No shade on people who get what they paid for, but the young reader crowd is just so gimmicky, and not in a good way, and you see that with a lot of works like Percy Jackson and Twilight (but also predominantly with Rowling’s work). How do you compete in such a no-rules game?
So then let’s talk about one of the cores of the issue. People often have an epiphany when divulging into Harry Potter, and they think “huh, what’s the deal with this if that thing is how it is”. While noting that conflicts in literary analysis don’t always reflect something that doesn’t add up and that it could be a hiccup in details/semantics, the questions themselves don’t go away. And there’s nothing that matches the amount of those having to do with Harry Potter. What example of which strikes you as the most overlooked?
If Rowling herself ever notices that I’m bringing this up, let it be known I do think of her work as a reskinned Brothers Grimm in the universe of The Worst Witch and that I’m collaborating with another author (Samantha Rinne) whose work I would argue deserves Rowling’s prestige if Rowling’s work deserves it. Thanks (and here is where I run for the hills).
Dumbledore is quite sure the Defense Against the Dark Arts job is cursed, at least by the time of HBP. Sooo… why didn’t he figure out how to break the curse?
Being able to retain a skilled teacher would be pretty compelling. Is Dumbledore really so inferior to Voldemort in regard to curses that he couldn’t remove it? Or, if not, couldn’t he have created a new position with a new name, and new classes to go along with it? Call it Protection From the Dark Arts or Magical Defense or something.
I don’t think he meant that kind of cursed.
Probably more important is why Dumbledoor wasn’t able to get even ONE fitting DADA teacher, meaning without something making him unfit for the job, seemingly or inreality, after Quirrel (and we don’t know if Quirrel was a good teacher before he got Voldy in his brain).
Lockhard was an obvious fraud, Lupin was a great teacher but unfortunatly a werewolf, Mad Eye was mad/a disguised deatheater and Snape was a bad teacher all along. (Umbridge was bot chosen by Dumbledor, so she doesn’t count).
Hell, what is he even doing all day? Couldn’t he just do the DADA classes himself, if he didn’t find anyone fitting for the job?!
JK Rowling just kind of improvised vis a vis the price of things over the series. Ie. in one book a galleon is a fortune where you can afford the entire snack cart and Ron has never seen that kind of money before with his own eyes, but then the next book the school books cost 5 galleons.
To be fair, I have bought textbooks that cost twice what I spend on my weekly grocery bill lol.
Yes but how could Ron never have seen a Galleon in his life and in the next book he has to buy textbooks worth like 40 galleon at the beginning.
You aren’t wrong there. Almost every book had some form of continuity error like that.
There’s no fucking way that a kid raised from infancy like Harry was, in a abusive hateful household that treated him like dirt, would have enough strength of character to pull shit like the “Give it here, Malfoy” scene after having been out of the Dursley household for less than a couple weeks. Think about how the Dursleys would have reacted every time young Harry tried to stand up for himself. It would have been nonstop physical and mental abuse, all aimed at making him more subservient. It would take a miracle for a kid like that to be even vaguely functional as a person, and he certainly wouldn’t have the ability to stand up for himself, let alone others.
Harry’s character is larger-than-life strong, but that’s fictional heroes for you.
Wizards are just built different. In Harry’s case, he comes from a line of wizards that basically stood up to the metaphorical concept of death itself
Shits wack yo
This one can actually be known, since you’re just talking about human nature. I do think it’s possible to come out of the situation strong willed. He’d need other strong parental figures, such as teachers. It would also require a great amount of resilience, and would no doubt leave with a fair share of mental health issues. But you could totally be emboldened even after a traumatic upbringing like that.
Yeah it’s actually a weak criticism. Such strength of character is rare but there are still many examples in real life. Oprah Winfrey and Drew Barrymore come to my mind right away.
Oprah’s strength of character gave us dr oz and dr Phil. She’s a con artist not a hero.
Props for succeeding in life in spite of childhood abuse tho. Or don’t disapproved people even get that?
I think having literal magic powers is the key difference. Though I do think he would just end up becoming the bully more realistically.
I mean… He does. Hes a huge bully.
The plot has already being discussed at length. I want to talk about quidditch.
Quick recap, in quidditch, scoring goals scores 10 or 20 points, catching the snitch scores 150 points, and ends the game. This effectively means that the only way a team can catch the snitch and lose is if they are over 150 points behind.
As a result of this, logically the seaker should not attempt to catch the snitch if the score is this unfavourable, meaning the game is always decided by the seaker, and nothing anyone else is doing remotely matters. Remember also we see the audience is rarely able to see what the seeker is doing from the stands.
Now you may say “what about the world cup in book 4, Krumm catches the snitch and still loses”. This can only be attributed to Krumm got mad at his team, or maybe bored, otherwise he should just wait and see if his team can score a goal or two. If the other team’s seaker catches the snitch you lose anyway, so why even try until it’s going to win you the game? Maybe he was showing off to Hermione.
We also know for certain that this happens very rarely, as the odds given to the twins by Ludo Bagman are very high, leading to a big payout. Therefore quidditch is entirely decided by something that happens well out of sight of the audience, and would be terrible to watch or play.
As an aside, the rules around catching the snitch leading to a draw are never mentioned, but I assume they have some penalty shootout system
It made me irrationally mad that every significant character in the books was a seeker. Like Rowling’s shorthand for a worthy adversary or ally was just they play seeker. Harry, Draco, Cedric, Cho, Ginny, Krum, Charlie, Regulus. I know we get to know other members of the Gryfindor team, but aside from that everyone of note is so impressive because they were a seeker.
Quidditch is a game designed solely for Harry Potter to be special. And it shows
It was actually designed specifically to piss off sports fans because the scoring is illogical.
Additionally there could be games where the snitch is caught within the first minute of the game. Ending it early and everyone can go back home.
For a game theory perspective that’s what every team should be focusing on, instead of faffing about with the clubs.
Isn’t this one actually addressed ? I remember them releasing the snitch after a few minutes but maybe I plugged that obvious hole in the rules myself
I’m not sure, it’s not in the wiki on quidditch, which is frankly more research I planned to do in the subject.
Even so, when it’s in play it makes sense for all players to stop doing what they do and help the seeker out.
Quick recap, in quidditch, scoring goals scores 10 or 20 points, catching the snitch scores 150 points
Idk how canon this is, but I remember a quidditch computer game I used to play (on Windows XP) where usually when you scored your team would get the ball through the hoops multiple times in rapid succession, so scoring like 5 times in a row. Like if in basketball, if your team caught the ball after making a hoop you could pass it back and shoot again. That at least makes the point value of the snitch less egregious. Everything else you mentioned is very true though.
I think I remember that, Quidditch world cup? It was like a special move for Slytherin in the training chapter.
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To be fair: With Dumbledoors measures with the mirror of erised they had kind of a trap. The philosophers stone obviously hidden behind some challenges, that are not really that strong, so an attacker would think the last one would also be easy. But there you only got the stonen if you didn’t want to use itn ruling out people with nefarious intentions (Dumbledoor didn’t know about Voldy in Quirrel at that time). To bad some first graders thought they needed to safe the stone. Quirrel would have been still thereuwhen Dumbledoor arrived, but Harry gave him and Voldy the opportunity to get the stone from him instead from the mirror. A bit of captain hindsight here. He maybe should have thought of that. Or maybe it is understandable that he didn’t foresee Harry fucking Potter
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Point taken - it really doesn’t seem thought through by Dumby. But I think its funny, that Harry is basically ruining Dumbledoors plan of protecting the stone, because he cannot stop being a hero. Yeah, thanks Harry for “saving” the stone from Voldemort -.-
Like a hundred or so teenagers of whom a large part went to some regular school and had regular non-wizard friends would suddenly either completely cut off contact as if devoured by a cult or dead or the kids are assumed to just successfully lie about not being fucking magic.
It’s utterly ridiculous. Imagine if it was hidden from the Dursley’s somehow and that Harry spent summers there bullied by Dudley. That he would never snap and tell or do magic?
Or that people like Dudley would keep their mouth shut for their entire lives?
Nah.
I mean I don’t think that’s a plot hole at all actually. That’s just like how the world works. People change schools. There’s tons of people I knew in one school and then when I moved to another I lost contact with completely. That’s how life works.
As for the dursley’s keeping their mouth shut, there were you know threats involved. I’m in a multiple times they’re threatened by a giant who mutilated their child at one point. Plus there’s the whole institutional Threat Level involving being able to make you forget who you are. Also pretty sure Harry does snap a couple times.
Who would believe him? If Dudley or his family started claiming there were wizards out to get them they would go to the Looney bin.
They can also mind wipe people. In Fantastic Beasts Newt obliviates all of New York City with the Thunderbird.
In Fantastic Beasts Newt obliviates all of New York City with the Thunderbird.
“Looney bin”
Sounds like you’re really read up on current terminology.
We’re not talking one single person. We’re talking all the muggle-borns or half wizards. There’s dozens every year. And all them magically vanish, never to be seen or heard or when they are, they have no excuse for where they have been. And if someone asks too many questions, suddenly they act like they’ve had a stroke and can’t remember things. But proper journalists have backups.
Do you think none of the muggle-borns would want to show off to their former non-wizard friends, even with “don’t tell anyone”?
You don’t think there’s a single wizard desperate enough to utilise magic to make real world money and that they’d never caught?
NY obliviating? That’s some extra convenient writing considering how obliviating works in the books. (read = shit writing) They even almost hang a lantern on it for that reason, out loud questioning will it even work and them saying “
ofc it’s a deus ex machinawe’ll hope for the best”That movie highlights the kind of shenanigans one slightly awkward but extremely moral and “want to hide the magic” wizard can get into. Even if we imagine the tiny group of people the Ministry has could be able to address some, the head of the Muggle things in the ministry doesn’t know what a lightbulb is. How would they ever understand the nuances of video-surveillance?
Maths study shows conspiracies ‘prone to unravelling’
A few thousand people can’t sustain a conspiracy. There’s 100 000 wizards in the Quidditch finals.
This is genuinely the most glaring and moronic flaw in the whole series and you just got to accept it. Despite there being hundreds or thousands of people like Petunia who were jealous as fuck and know about the existence of magic for sure and just don’t do anything about it. OK. Like if you had a brother who had been invited to Hogwarts, you’d just not even talk or think about magic, ever.
Petunia is even shown to cry to Dumbledore themselves that they want to go as well. Because it’s the natural reaction. All the characters act naturally but the story world couldn’t exist it that behaviour was assumed from other people as well. (Which isn’t hard to understand nowadays vis-a-vis who the author is; “rules for thee but no rules for me”)
“Looney bin”
Sounds like you’re really read up on current terminology.
Why use current terminology when the book was written in the 90s and was set in the 80s/90s?
Idk, to have basic human respect for people with mental disorders?
Do you think when people discuss say, hypothetically Hogwarts having trans people, they use the period terminology? Because having lived in the 90’s, I’d like to see you use that terminology while discussing a hypothetical trans-character in HP.
Bro you’re taking a children’s book, made by an asshole, way too seriously.
I’m upset at someone dismissing the struggles of the mentally ill, not at some silly conversation about HP.
Exactly. This is a silly conversation about HP. That’s my point
Considering JK Rowling is a TERF I doubt you’re going to see many trans characters…
Now. And is this JK Rowling with us in the room right now?
No.
And we’re still having a hypothetical discussion about her books, and used the argument “my language would be okay in the 80s and early 90s, so…”
We could have a fanfic with set in the same time. Would you use 90s slurs for trans people if insured this thread was about such a fanfic?
Or you discuss RDR2, do you consider it okay using the n-word?
I have no idea what your talking about to be honest. Sorry if I offended
Life’s change and people move on. But people who completely vanish, come back on holidays, can’t say shit (as if they wouldn’t, they definitely do as we know from the characters) so spread the secret.
And this happens for hundreds of people. Every year. For centuries.
And one assumes those kids never return to muggle jobs either. No heir to an industrial fortune who suddenly is born a wizard and vanishes? Security can’t follow them to school. Even if they come to obliviate the private security, since the head of the muggle department at the ministry doesn’t understand what a light bulb is, they’re not going to understand what surveillance cameras are.
So yeah. It just wouldn’t work unless you make that assumption. Suspense of disbelief, sure, but that is the bit that makes zero sense and os covered with utter bullshit logic that doesn’t remotely work.
I assumed that the muggle interaction was a huge part of what the ministry of magic does. They employ a shitload of wizards and Ron’s dad specifically works on Muggle Tech… I assumed he had coworkers that do the same.
Most of the kids didn’t go to Muggle schools or interact with them. Harry’s situation was uncommon.
In Harry’s year, there were 4 Muggleborns (Hermione, Dean, Justin, Sally-Anne) out of 40 students.
That’s 10 percent.
Plus half-wizard families would also have family wondering where their nephew has disappeared to.
Also, does that mean that full wizard kids aren’t in any government register, so that they don’t technically have citizenship, and they just never interact with the world?
It’s utterly ridiculous that there would live two communities on top of each other with so Lucy much blending yet zero communication.
What, pens/pencils don’t work in Hogwarts, or even if they don’t work there, they still do their scribing with comically large feather quill and ink? Quill and ink work, but… fountain pens wouldn’t?
No wizard would be greedy enough to completely abuse the fact that their gold money is an infinite money glitch if you sell it as bullion.
And I remind you, these peoples foremost expert on muggle technology doesn’t know what a rubber duck is for. Can’t he just walk into a library and read a basic book?
One just has to make the massive leap for people’s forgetting about their relatives and what muggle-born / half-wizards might actually want to do. Like you had personality and aspirations at 11. Prolly not moreso than magic schools, but after graduating, are you really gonna go back to a world which doesn’t have pencils and doesn’t allow you to read a dictionary when the first 11 years of your life you loved everything technical.
Is your info from that time now banned? Are you banned from just returning to a muggle life? Or can’t you do magic if you do? Not even around your siblings who all know? (There’s 8 of them btw. 8 muggle siblings you have who aren’t wizards but know about magic.)
And we’re supposed to think shit like that doesn’t happen.
Small scale: The lack of constant mean pranks. You can’t tell me that shitbag kids aren’t polyjuicing everyone into dogs and donkeys 20 times a day, and thats the PG version. Ain’t no way dudes aren’t making their dicks 30 feet long for fun.
Large Scale: Wizarding culture is tremendously trite, shallow, and terrible. They are the worst of humanity with super powers, all because of …genetics? It’s still super privledge eugenics at the end of the day, and Voldemort is just making daylight decisions about everything that the non-DeathEaters blithly comply with every single day.
I always thought of the polyjuice to be a restricted substance, that you can’t easily buy. And making it yourself is not easy and takes like 2 months. That would severily limit the cases. I mean, like how often do school kids in our world put drugs in food or drinks of their classmates? I’m sure there are some cases, but probably nothing wide spread
It indeed is restricted. They had to go through a lot of trouble to brew a batch
You KNOW there’s a brothel that constantly brews polyjuice. Bring in a hair from the person you’re attracted to, and have sex with (someone who looks exactly like) them!
You can even obliviate the polyjuice’d person afterwards and leave no evidence behind. Consent in the wizarding world is beyond fucked.
Harry Potter meets Cyberpunk 2077
YOU get it. These people are depraved, lack ethics and morals, and feel owed their every whim and desire. It can easily get into a realm of stuff that’s horrific and permissive of the worst sociopathic impulses.
The biggest plot hole is how new spells are even made. It seems all spells are pre-existing and they just study how to do them, not the “science” behind how they work.
We get no doses of “wizarding science” showing wizards testing theories for new spells and throughout the books whether you even need a wand or to say a spell out loud seems to be always in flux based on what is useful to the plot.
In other words the world has no internal consistency. There are not firmly set rules to the world of Harry Potter.
She literally made it up as she went along so it all gets pretty confused and stupid pretty fast.
It seems all spells are pre-existing and they just study how to do them, not the “science” behind how they work.
One of the many reasons why Ursula K. Le Guin’s universes are much more interesting
You might really enjoy reading HPMOR. It’s the best fanfic I’ve ever read. Technically it’s the only fanfic I’ve ever read, but it’s great.
Try five chapters and you’ll live it or give up.
What’s it about?
Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality. It’s a rewrite of book one, but Petunia was disgusted by Vernon, and married a professor of philosophy, IIRC.
Thanks for this recommendation. Also not a reader of fanfic but have very much enjoyed reading a few chapters.
I remember seeing a YouTube video, talking about all the inconsistencies and “broken mechanics” introduced on HP books, and how they are always resolved two books after, because when a book was published the next one was already going so she had to usa the next one to solve wharever problems fan had found.
I see you and I’m gonna try to pass you.
Wait, is that the Driving Crooner?
It’s from a Netflix sketches show called “I think you should leave with Tim Robinson” pretty good, the driving crooner sketch It’s from S03.
Wait, are you the Driving Crooner?
Interesting. Link to video?
Why doesn’t Hagrid, who is the largest of the characters, simply eat Voldemort?
I don’t get it. I haven’t read the books, only seen the movies, but as far as I could tell, there’s absolutely nothing special about Harry. He gets swept along, and he has himself no particular virtue to be extolled.
That’s literally what makes it a fucking Tory wet dream. This gets missed on a lot of American readers.
A uniquely special boy (gotta be a boy, this ain’t for girls!) from birth, he did nothing to achieve that specialness. Somehow, despite being an orphan, he is actually absurdly rich. Everyone knows of him even though he has done exactly nothing himself to justify it. He is somehow destined for greatness despite being a fucking fumbling, middling wizard. He will be the “hero” by banishing “evil” from the world because everything is in black and white and evil people are always evil and good people are always good and never the twain shall meet. There are never broken people who make mistakes, no, just good or evil.
A boy after Boris Johnson’s own heart.
This is why I prefer Star Trek over Star Wars. Characters in Star Trek, by and large, work their asses off for what they think is right.
Star Wars, you are born a Lord or a peasant and basically accept your lot.
This is a good read that talks about it https://www.salon.com/1999/06/15/brin_main/
I actually never got the impression he was rich from the movies. All Hagrid really says is “You dinne think they’d leave ya with nothing?” And they show a pile of coins.
To a child with almost nothing but some school expenses who lived on handmedowns, he might feel rich but he didn’t rush out and replace his broom himself when it broke each time.
His parents also weren’t old or particularly famous outside their role in Voldy’s death, so I don’t know where the richest could have come from outside his Father’s family.
And the first thing he does with that money is buying all the candy and treats on the train, so none of the other kids can have any, even though he’ll have to throw away 95%
When he said “we’ll take the lot,” I thought that meant “some of each kind,” not “all of each kind.”
Also… Does Gringots do interest? I assume not because it’s literally a vault.
Not sure about the boy comment. Rowling is a TERF, but that also means that she’s a feminist. Also she didn’t put her first name to the series because she had previously struggled to get her writing taken seriously when the publishers knew she was a woman.
It’s easier explained that this is a book series aimed at preteens, not hard fantasy fans. They got insanely popular because they captured people’s imagination but she wasn’t trying to world build like Tolkien.
TERF is to feminism as modern liberal is to socialism. They only agree on certain topics by accident.
Dedicated magic government doesn’t have a standing army or even an official police force branch to ensure public safety, and relies on essentially a band of mercenaries to take down Voldemort.
Twice
Also:
For me it’s always the unexplained power nerfing that authors do just to advance the plot.
Harry Potter in the first 3 books was fearless, he literally took on voldemort with his bare hands.
Then when the dumbass plan with the port key cup happens, he just stands there like an idiot as the rat dude kills Cedric and revives Voldemort as if both he and Cedric don’t have wands that allow them to cast spells.
I mean they could have maybe had like 20 wizards camping the graveyard to make escaping impossible, but nah they really tried to make the coward rat guy seem like he was now somehow more capable than all of voldemort’s previously defeated plans combined.
What do you mean by mercenaries? The magical government has its aurors, which is kind of a police force working against the dark arts. And they caught many deatheaters, though were beaten from within the ministry.
Biggest “plot hole” is that anyone still likes it. Especially now that Joanne is publicly a piece of shit. I was extremely surprised to see so many trans people and allies rush to give a person that hates them money at every opportunity.
She’s terribly ableist too. She made an entire book disparaging people with invisible disabilities.
Cool, maybe don’t ruin a perfectly good thread though.
I think hating on Rowling is much better for the thread than talking about some silly misogynistic books.
Then start a different thread.
Ron didn’t need to wear Great Aunt Tessie’s dress garments. He could have magicked something snazzier. He wanted to wear Great Aunt Tessie’s wardrobe.
Well this kind of got answered in the game of Hogwarts legacy.
I always was curious how they Imbued physical objects with magical properties.
Let’s say, the evanescent cupboards
So these are created as a pair and connected to each other in the sense that whatever you put in one, shows up in the other
It’s basically an actual functional teleporter.
Leaving aside the specific instructions for use, this thing is a massive hack.
So in the games they do sort of explain that you can add magical properties to your clothes by using magical beasts resources.
So maybe the evanescent cupboards are made of one of those beasts that teleport a short distance
Same as the paintings and such
There is zero reason for the wizarding world to have social classes. Allow me to explain.
Although food can’t be created with magic, any graduate of Hogwarts can cast the Herbivicus Charm (I think it’s called) or the Greenhouse Charm to grow plants in moments. There’s also a spell that produces fresh, clean water. They have spells that make the insides of things larger than the outside. Spells that clean dishes. Spells that levitate objects and automatically perform rote tasks.
Every wizard or witch is maybe a month or two of moderate work (at the absolute outside) away from having a private pocket kingdom with crops, furniture, fireplace, teleport pad, beds, clothing, swimming pool, pets, cattle, enchanted kitchen, self cleaning floors, and fucking golf course if they want it.
If they can’t create, craft, grow, or summon something, they can buy it with money taken from an entire world of gullible muggles. Sure, dollars and yen are worthless in Diagon Alley, but you can still buy food and an enormous range of physical comforts with it. And if you absolutely have to spend money in a magical store- muggles still have gold. Even at the extortionate exchange rates that I assume the goblins would charge, the process of turning essentially free cash (in exchange for magic tricks or conjured trinkets) into gold and then into goblin coin is basically nothing but profit. A lot of it.
Which brings me back to social stratification. Why are the Malfoys considered a powerful family? Why do people differ to government functionaries and Dumbledore? Why do witches and wizards run businesses or work at all? Social hierarchy is a result of power imbalances, and other than direct, physical force, there are no power imbalances in the wizarding world. They can take your job, but who cares? You don’t actually need one. They can take your home, but who cares? You can make another in a few weeks (and this time the hot tub will go on the balcony instead of in the backyard).
A wizard does not need anything from society or from other wizards.
I feel like this is explained by the really unclear ideas of the “power level” of wizards. What makes Dumbledore “the most powerful wizard” isn’t ever actually given context.
Yeah, I vaguely remember some sentences mentioning how incompetent some wizards and witches can be.
