For the benefit of the many non-Brits complaining about how unrealistic it is: the Leaving School Grounds Unsupervised form is (when I grew up at least) a huge social divider and Big Deal in a lot of British schools. There was a whole micro industry at mine where the ~70% of kids who were allowed out would provide delivery services for sweets and pop for the 30% who weren’t.
JKR didn’t just pull this whole thing out her ass, it was something that most British kids will have instantly related to. (She’s still an awful human mind)
We had something similar, but it was for a specific reason, like going to a job (we had an OJT class) or attending classes at the local college. It was only available in the last two years of high school too.
There wasn’t a weird industry or anything, kids would just skip if they wanted to, and nobody policed the lunch hour or anything. But it’s kinda similar I guess.
I mean, in the US we have permission slips from parents to go on field trips. Not sure why people would find it unrealistic.
Also…of all the things from a book about witches and wizards and magic. They’re complaining about permission slips? lolwut
Yeah, kind of my point was that y’all are viewing it as a “field trip”, which is typically a specific event that’s infrequent, carefully organized and supervised, which is a whole different beast to the generic standing instructions of “we’re not going to supervise your kids if they wander off school grounds” slip.
For the former case it’s pretty much understood that everyone in class should be able to join a field trip, but for the latter it’s not unusual for parents to decline and therefore teachers would absolutely be expected to enforce the rules.
In all seriousness, this is what happens when you write novels without doing any world-building and just put down whatever seems “fun”. The are sooooo many things in that series that make no sense once they are superceded by later plot devices. Rowling didn’t think any of it through ahead of time and gave almost no thought to internal consistency with previous content when she wrote new things.
It’s honestly a terrible series in most regards and it’s kind of disappointing how popular it became.
Also she a trans-hating bigot. Fuck J.K. Rowling. Can’t forget that part whenever discussing her or her work.
Rule of cool supersedes making sense. Yeah there’s a ton of nonsense, but you called it yourself, it’s fun. That’s all that matters.
The issue I have with this line of reasoning is that there are equally whimsical, better written series that just didn’t have good fortune to pop off the way HP did.
It’s marketing. And cover art. And simple timing of fads. It sucks. And it funded a horrible person through pure happenstance
Horrible person?
I never met her actually. What’s she like in person?
Don’t need to meet a person to know they’re a horrible person. I know Orban is a horrible person. I know Chris Brown is a horrible person. I know Trump is a horrible person. And I know that anyone who defends them is a horrible person, for ignoring their horrible views and actions.
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Funny, I need to meet them first. Maybe you just like doing it more.
I see. So anything you have not personally experienced is to be disregarded entirely?
It seems best to disregard them entirely, since from a quick skim of their profile it looks like they really enjoy this kind of “I’m so aloof that means I’m clever” trolling.
It’s to be taken lightly.
None of us have met you, and yet…
And yet you see a golden opportunity to indulge. Grasp it!
Fun and atmospheric. Kids love it and that’s ok.
More than fun. It’s whimsical.
She’s a terrible person. I read the books to my kids but they are puarated so she doesn’t get a penny. Same for the movies.
Yeah. There’s a fan-fic I read recently (also the only HP fan fic I’ve read) called “Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality,” which is set in an alternate universe in which Harry is raised by perfectly pleasant folks with an understanding of the scientific method, and arrives in the wizarding world and immediately starts deconstructing all the bizarre nonsense going on there. It’s very well done, but it’s really hard to recommend precisely because it does refer back to a ton of the stuff that’s developed in the books, so I had to keep looking up stuff I didn’t recall, and I don’t really want to devote brain space to that stuff. (Some of the “rationality” stuff has aged a little bit poorly through the replication crisis, too, though I’m a bit more forgiving of that since it talks so much about updating your beliefs.)
But for anyone who did read the books back when and was frustrated at times by the characters behaving so irrationally, it’s kinda cathartic in that way. For those who are interested: https://github.com/rrthomas/hpmor
By an author who is also crazy and problematic, though in a very different way than Rowling.
Oh, I didn’t know about that, but it isn’t hugely surprising.
I guess I should have mentioned this, but there’s a lot of stuff in the book that kinda seems like coded libertarian stuff, and it even flirts with pro-authoritarian stuff. It’s not a book I would recommend to kids or deeply uncritical people. That’s part of why this thread seemed like a safer place to mention it.
True, but at least his version of the universe tries to be coherent.
All true, though i still found it fun to read when the books came out. At that age my critical thinking skills were not as developed yet, and since that age group is the intended target audience the popularity is not that surprising.
Yes, I liked it too but I’m not under the false impression that’s it’s a genius work. It’s a kids book that kids like and many adults enjoy too.
She’s a hateful awful person. Many people are.
I mean, I totally get it. There is just better stuff out there and it sucks that she got lucky when otherr, better authors don’t
Way back, years ago, and if memory serves…
There was short story about Harry Potter in a Disney Adventures magazine one month and I think that was supposed to be all there was as far as the story. The popularity of it may have had JKR rushing to build a more in depth story and throwing anything in it that seemed whimsical and fun to a kid, regardless if it made sense.
My theory, the first three/four books were written well enough, but the movies carried the rest of the series. She came really close to game of thronesing it too, but apparently average fans didnt mind the dieing baby voldemort in an all white train station ending.
Books 5-7 were awful in my opinion. I hated Harry through the entire last book, which I can’t imagine is intentional.
Book four was great. It was downhill from there as she couldn’t maintain the level. She also couldn’t keep it consistent. However, people were co paring it to literature. It’s kids books.
This is what I tend to say to people about Harry Potter as a series. It was the first series like it to become popular, and that’s its only merit. Overall it’s very tame and bland, but it got lucky and became popular. I didn’t like it because it was too same-y. After book 3 or so, I don’t care about Harry Potter anymore. Explore someone else that’s more ordinary. It makes a much better setting for derivative works, which to me as someone who writes textbooks of lore for RPGs is more important than just making a series sell well.
Im pretty sure its because they were trying to keep him on campus to keep him safe and used that as a bs excuse and he didn’t realize it until later cause he’s a kid. Idgaf about Harry Potter, haven’t picked up a book in 20 years, but I remember this.
Yes, as there was a killer on the loose, suspected to be super crazy and in the area. In which case, would it be safe for the other kids?
It’s not logical whichever way you look at it.
It’s because they thought Black was going for retribution on Harry so they probably figured that he was largely laser focused on him. Though he did blow up a bunch of folks in their eyes so that logic doesnt really hold water.
TLDR: Rowling dumb and doesn’t even think things through within the same book.
Yes, but they also thought he was a crazy psychopath, on top of blowing people up. So, still not the kid friendly environment that would be suitable, if logic is used.
But they are kids books, so it’s not a big deal. However, she’s not a genius author. She struck it lucky. Like many, she thinks it’s merit based, now that she’s a billionaire. And she uses that big brain to trample on the rights of others. If she wasn’t a billionaire, she’d be the crazy psychopath she wrote about (who in this case turned out to be a good guy in the books; she wouldn’t ).
Spot on. Sirius Black escaped an inescapable prison for the sole purpose, it was widely believed, of murdering Harry. The permission slip was just a convenient excuse to keep Harry protected.
RE: idgaf, you’re allowed, you know. You can love the art but dislike the artist. Or like the artist if you wish. I’m personally indifferent to Rowling but consider the Harry Potter series to be clever and highly entertaining. I find it much more engaging than The Silmarillion.
Also, people are too eager to cast judgement on each other, and too often forget that people have layers, like onions. Or a parfait. My dad was a Fox News, AM talk radio, Facebook propaganda cult follower whose politics were buggered beyond repair. He occasionally spouted racist or bigoted or otherwise insensitive bullshit. He was also a model father and husband, selfless, generous, kind, soft spoken, and loved by everyone who had ever met him. To know how eager much of the world would be to cancel him for his political beliefs breaks my heart, and I’m grateful he was horrible with technology, well-shielded from the summary judgement of social justice warriors.
I find it much more engaging than The Silmarillion.
That is understandable. Silmarillion is like a collection of extended footnotes and a cosmology rulebook.
talk about reaching deep to find that strawman
if my parfait or onion has a shit flavored layer in it, I’m throwing the whole thing into the trash
especially if that parfait then uses it’s vast wealth to make more of the world shit flavored
She literally funds transphobic hate groups the fuck you mean to egear to cast judgment.
I think the castle is really neat and cool and fun to explore in the video games
This implies that the students are insured in some way and that the legal system of the wizard world recognizes the same legal guardians of the muggle world AND that wizardy insurance companies are okay with students learning dangerous spells that can result in serious injury without guardian’s explicit permission, but does not approve of field trips to safe villages without explicit permission. Or that the crazy, racist, homophobic and transphobic J. k is also dumb.
100% this. The Dursleys have zero clue what’s happening there, and everyone knows they don’t care. These kids get into mortal danger every year and they don’t tell the Durselys about that.
Meaning that Rowling probably got screwed out of a field trip when she was 9 because of a lost permission slip, and this is her resentment embodied.
Great teachers are constantly, and exponentially victims of overbearing administration. School administrators tailor to the worst, most immature parents who (I hope) don’t realize they are causing a situation where kids can run rampant and completely ignore their education. We do that because the school administrators aren’t there because they like kids or see the value of education. They are there because they have a high paid job that they don’t really need to work at if they can placate a small handful of very vocal parents and mostly keep up on paperwork and meetings. Those parents are going to figure out just how shitty they’ve been when their children get to college… College does not have to give a fuck. We’ve known this for a while. We keep removing rights from the teachers so that administrators don’t have to deal with any harsh situations. That might be specific to Ontario but honestly the sheer amount of people working in education here while people in need get denied access to the MANY programs we have makes me think like they’re just ignoring us and then bragging about having summers off and going home at 3pm.
I am not being harsh toward teachers. Quite the opposite. It’s those involved in education that have little to no experience in it that are clinging to cushy administrative jobs that I take big issue with.
He liked a pro trans meme once.
You’d think a woman who can literally transform into an animal would be pro-trans
She would have been if she wasn’t written by a massive piece of shit.
I know shes a bigot and hates trans people, but i do think people are overlooking the fact that this was a kids series. This wasnt meant to be read and deconstructed and analyzed by adults.
When I read the books as a kid I really enjoyed the world. Some things made me pause or think, but for the most part it was a fun adventure. When I read it again in college, I couldn’t get through the first or second book because of how poor I found the writing.
But again, it is a children’s book. I dont reread Famous Five or Noddy anymore either. I used to love the Redwall series, but when I went back to read a couple last year I found I couldn’t get into it as much as I did when I was 10.
Are they the best books or even the best kids books in the world? Definitely not. Is she a brilliant writer? Definitely not. But were the stories engaging and fun and did they give a lot of children an intro to reading and fantasy? 100%. They became popular because even kids who hated reading enjoyed these stories. She might be a miserable awful person now but that doesnt change what these books did for a lot of good people too.
I’d argue that the series had WAY too much death, war, sexism and slavery to get a pass on being children’s books that are beyond scrutiny, that’s just my opinion though.
The last 2 books had definitely grown past children’s labeling. Neither the writing nor the worldbuilding has grown alongside them, though.
I think that’s part of what made the series so popular though. She did a great job at letting the characters in the books grow up alongside the readers. Someone who read the first book when they were 7 could enjoy the last book when they were 14.
I haven’t re-read the books since I finished them sometime around that age, so I won’t comment on the world-building or writing outside of recalling that I was completely absorbed and fascinated when I read them.
Exactly! As they go on, they get more and more young adult, which is fantastic.
Still a better love story than Twilight.
And it’s a terrible love story.
What was her problem? She was badly-written.
His legal guardians do not consent to him even attending the school in the first place, to the extent where he needs to be broken out to attend every year. But no field trip.
I did wonder why they needed permission from the people forced to let him go in the first place
She didn’t want to undermine parental rights for, you know, reasons.
looks like the magic world’s lawyers were just as bad as their muggle counterparts, tbh.
way worse, in fact, when one reads about all the wizengamot proceedings.
The doom is not doomed.
Awesome guitar riff starts in the background
“the ones I spied for weeks”
Words hard, apparently.
“only reason the doom is not doomed”
he am good word man
I can empathize.
I’m a native speaker and sometimes even my words refuse to English right.
Genuine question from a non native English speaker here: what’s wrong?
We would usually say “the ones I spied on”. English is the only language I’ve ever spoken and although it sounds weird to not include the word “on”, I really dont see why its necessary either.
Because “spied for,” and “spied with” are both options.
“I spied them” is a legitimate sentence, but it doesn’t mean covert surveillance in that sentence, only to have seen then, generally through some difficulty.
They left out the word “on” and the best that m137 has to contribute to the conversation is someone did a typo.
It’s supposed to be “the ones I spied on for weeks”.
The ones on whom I spied for weeks. 😂
I think that’s just how British brain rot wording works. They all talk this way. Read some of their news paper headlines.
unlike those American headlines
Those last two are definitely intentional.
It wasn’t an American who wrote “Foot Heads Arms Body.”
yes but that is an incredible and brilliant piece of writing, one I’d argue outstrips Baby Shoes Never Worn
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