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).
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Why would owl post even exist when you have magic? Clearly just ambiance. Makes no sense.
How many millions of muggle deaths are on the hands of wizards who could have trivially healed them but didn’t? Why does no one seem to care about that? Especially the muggle borns.
Maybe the owls are a thing of the past for legal correspondence. Kind of like how we still get mail with the internet and some places still use fax for certain things.
If you created a fantasy world where people used faxes for important legal and medical documentation, I would probably say that’s not believable too.
Reality is allowed to be more ridiculous than fiction.
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.
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.
She’s terribly ableist too. She made an entire book disparaging people with invisible disabilities.
Aside from the very much sung “why didn’t they use the time turner then”, there’s a bunch of “Why didn’t they stop Voldemort then” that could be inserted at various points of the story; when you consider that:
1- Albus had a spy within the death eaters in the person if Severus Snape.
2- In “the Order of the Phoenix”, while Voldy could take Albus 1 on 1, he retreated when more people arrived, implying they could gang up on him.
3- Sure they couldn’t kill him without the horcruxes, but another important plot point is that they have a magical prison, staffed with creatures that absorb your life force. Sure, Azkaban seems like a joke considering the number of prisoners breaking out of it… But in the case of Sirius he could escape transformed as a dog because they didn’t know he was an animagus and hadn’t taken the relevant measures, and the rest were broken out from outside. Certainly, they could hold Voldy with the right measures. Albus was monitoring Voldemort and the death eaters activity the whole time. In the first book/movie, he even had him within his school, unknowingly sure, but he knew Voldemort was likely to try and get his hands on the philosopher’s stone, and was just like “don’t worry, it’s well protected”, not even trying to set up an ambush, or to pursue Voldemort once he knows he was there.
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
Yeah, but that’s only really a trap is there’s a way to keep him from escaping. Voldemort escaped pretty easily; had Harry not been there, he could’ve tried for some time, figured out the trick and then just left to re-evaluate his options.
While not explicitly stated, it’s possible that that’s actually what he did: If he’d figured out Harry, Ron and Hermione had been snooping around and had found the room with Fluffy, Quirrel might’ve willingly dropped hints so that they’d check, let the music play longer than he needed to so that they’d know someone was trying to take the stone and he could lure them all the way down.
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 -.-
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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
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
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.
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.
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.
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/
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.
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.
Also… Does Gringots do interest? I assume not because it’s literally a vault.
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.”
Why are there socioeconomic classes on a society that can literally create or at least multiply any resources at will?
Life, uhh, finds a way.
They clearly state in the books that they cannot create resources at will. The resources need to exist first
Clearly you have not been studying for your OWLS. Focus on Gamp’s transfiguration laws
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?!
Irrational soft magic system - anything can happen for any reason, so the story doesn’t matter at all.
I always cringe with the 7th book, where the trio is hiding and searching for horkruxes, and for some weird reason they don’t have enough food and are constantly hungry. From the reading perspective I understand, that the hunger is a device to generate conflict and make their time hard to endure, but it always baffles me.
- It is mentioned, that Hermione pulled out all her muggle savings, so why didn’t she think about going to a supermarket and buying all the conserved food (cans and such) she can before they got on the run? She even mentions, that food can be multiplicated, just not created out of nothing.
- When they are hiding they sometimes get to a store or supermarket. But that only brings food for like a few days max. Why not more?
- And when there where too many dementors in an area to get more food, why not going really far away. We know Hermione was at least one time in France with her parents. Why not going there? Probably the war-like situation was not spread over the complete world that seriously. At least we are not hearing any of that in the books (JKR probably didn’t even thing much about international things when writing this)
Doesn’t Hermione also have a basically infinite bag of holding? It really doesn’t make sense
She does! She could have emptied multiple supermarkets, but nah, who needs food if you have books to read. Everytime I really doubt, that Hermione wouldn’t think of stocking food in her bag. So much conflict, so easily preventible…
Why doesn’t Hagrid, who is the largest of the characters, simply eat Voldemort?
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.
Thanks for this recommendation. Also not a reader of fanfic but have very much enjoyed reading a few chapters.
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.
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?
