You must log in or # to comment.
My mom taught high school English for decades and she used to tell her students that JK Rowling is a great storyteller, but a terrible author. She dreamed up a really cool world that really resonated with people, but her execution in that world is awful. The biggest place you see this is to lift the curtain on anything, and it crumbles instantly. Time Turners? Unnecessary plot device with massive implications. American wand? Kills Voldemort immediately. Sex ed at Hogwarts? No sex, only snog?
JK Rowling hasn’t helped herself with this either, by continuously editorializing. Hermione was always black. Dumbledore is gay for wizard Hitler. Wizards didn’t need bathrooms and would just magic away their shit, except wizard bathrooms are a central plot point for the second book. When she was starting out, she didn’t have the money for a real editor. When she made it big, it was by the strength of her own bootstraps, so she didn’t need one. It shows. She shat gold once, and in her eyes, it’s now gold every time.
Avada Kedavra is dumb. Wizard duels essentially have to follow the be first, best, or cheat rule. The definite death spell makes being best pointless and cheating too slow. You have to go nuclear first and fastest. Also, the defining characteristic is the green flash and no marks on the dead body. In the world of Harry Potter, if nobody sees the flash, and nobody finds the murder wand, every heart attach and brain aneurysm is indistinguishable from the universes ultimate crime.
But, I think things like this are a reason why people love Harry Potter. It’s why I did. When you’re presented with a world so incredible with an execution that’s lukewarm at best, it allows your imagination to take over. I love reading cheap, bad, free-on-Kindle sci-fi and fantasy, because oftentimes the central idea can be really unique, cool, and interesting. The execution can be awful, or sometimes not, but the core idea is usually a diamond. I get to be an archeologist, uncover it, and re-imagine it as I see fit. That’s why so many Harry Potter fans get defensive. It resonated so strongly because people had to invest their own imaginations so deeply to make sense of a story that fundamentally doesn’t hold up to scrutiny.
Not only that, but Rowling didn’t even dream up the world by all accounts. Just a bunch of plagiarized shit and racist stereotypes that happened to be the one which got extra popular.
I tend to stay away from the plagiarism argument, just because you can make a strong case that real human originality is exceptionally rare and most art is minimal transformation of a wide array of source material. Everything from the Illiad to Star Wars is derivative.
That said, her treatment of minotiries in Harry Potter is straight plagiarism of Confederate and Nazi ideology on slaves and untermensch. It surprised me that people were shocked at her “some people can’t be women” stance when she continuously played the “some people aren’t people” angle for laughs.
and the “but they want to be slaves. they are happier” bullshit. at least it was house elves and she didn’t have it be the castle brownies or something like that. her editor (read: dog) probably talked her out of that one
There is that, but her plagiarism was kinda close to Vanilla Ice saying that he didn’t sample Under Pressure. A little aggressive, especially for her inflated ego and billions of dollars.
Absolutely agree about the other part though. She didn’t need the money to make her a shitty person, that was all original.
I catch your drift. I always thought that wizarding duels and the death curse itself could’ve been far more interesting and exciting if, once successfully cast on someone, the curse will go on to kill the person…eventually. Like, you cast the spell, green flash or whatever, doesn’t matter. Then, soon afterwards but not immediately, something atrocious or unlucky would happen, health wise or not, that would kill the person. Which means the victim knows they were cursed, but they can still fight back, making it not a duel ending spell, but a mutually assured annihilation kind of nuclear option. So, wizards would have to strategically choose if and when to use it.
The toll on the body and mind of the curse user should have also been way steeper. Like, each curse should’ve made the user lose a finger, rot the skin, drive them to insanity, sink them into a manic or depressive crisis, lose eyes, go bald, etc. Reflecting the corresponding corruption of the soul. So that using the curse would have to be carefully considered by everyone, even the antagonists. Voldemort used the curse thousands of times and all he had to give in return was melatonin, keratine and cartilage.
When she was starting out, she didn’t have the money for a real editor. When she made it big, it was by the strength of her own bootstraps, so she didn’t need one.
I got the strong impression that by around Book 4, she’d more or less offloaded the writing to ghost writers. The length of the material combined with a real drift in writing style to the formulaic made the latter books worse and worse with each release.
By book 7, it felt like they were cramming a whole second story inside the first, for no reason other than to up the page count.
When you’re presented with a world so incredible with an execution that’s lukewarm at best, it allows your imagination to take over.
The whole early '00s Young Adult novel explosion was full of variations on Wizard High School. Lots of them were bad. Plenty of them were still beloved, for some seed of an idea or particularly compelling character that drove the next iteration of authors and screenwriters.
I like to think The Magicians is a good example of a second-order HP book (that I honestly didn’t love, but appreciated more after I got hooked on the TV show) playing with the root ideas and extending them in fun directions.
That’s why so many Harry Potter fans get defensive.
It’s just tiresome to see people call you a TERF because you enjoy a kid’s book.
A bit like screaming at someone wearing a Mickey Mouse shirt for being a fascist, because Walt Disney… was a fascist.
People take issue with giving more money to a person who has spent a good amount of her considerable wealth openly and maliciously harming trans people.
You’re not a TERF for being a HP fan, but you are directly funding TERFs if you buy HP merch or legally watch her stuff.
Same sort of problem with Quidditch. Whichever team gets the golden snitch automatically wins, so the whole game would realistically just be everyone trying to get it and ignoring everything else. JK is very bad at designing world rules. Maybe that’s why she’s so bad at comprehending reality as well.
I hate myself for remembering, and am likely wrong, but isn’t the snitch worth 150 points and ends the game? So if the opposing team was 151 points ahead catching the snitch would lose the match? I’m not going to look it up, I don’t care enough about being right in regards to Harry Potter and I’m not even sure why I commented outside of my inate need for information to be correct…
That’s correct - however, 150 points is a ridiculously high number that’s almost impossible to overcome. Every time the snitch was caught, that team won the game.
You’re definitely right about it being a poorly-contrived scoring system, but there are a few games in the books where the team lost the game but grabbed the snitch. It’s always described as a “stem the bleeding” type decision
Edit: sorry, now seeing the replies to your other comments saying this, I guess you know by now 😅
They won the game, but they may have lost the league if winning comes down to point differences.
This was a thing in the third book where Harry had to make sure they’re a certain number of points ahead before catching the snitch so that they’d not just win the match but also their school league.
Yea, I kind of remember this in book 4 where in the world cup Bulgaria (Viktor) caught the snitch, but the other team (I think Ireland) scored more points.
That’s why the Weasly twins were upset because they had placed that bet with Ludo Bagman who ran away with their money.
(Just to let you know, I enjoy HP as a kid but now, Fuck JK).
Ah, good call, I didn’t remember that! A really stupid rule regardless.
They won the bet, got the money… And the money was fake gold. (Leprechaun gold). It disappeared. So they were out the money. Not sure if gambling was legal or not, so I don’t think trying to report someone as stealing your gambling wins was feasible.
Anyways, yeah the only professional game in the books we saw was the exact scenario that people are complaining here would never happen. As in he caught the snitch to save themselves from complete embarrassment. A score of 370-10 or some shit looks a lot worse than just losing by a few points and putting off the inevitable
JK is very bad at designing world rules.
I mean, magic is inherently kinda jenky as a core concept. “The Magicians” series does a much better job of painting a magical boarding school and gets a bit meta-textual on the question of what the edges and limits of a magical world are expected to be.
I’ll happily spot you that Welters is a better wizard game than Quidditch. But it’s also more like Chess than Wizard Hockey, so it loses the narrative excitement in exchange for a more plodding and introspective exchange.
Shave down the Snitch aspect to, like, 20 points instead of 150 or whatever dumbshit Rowling originally ran with and it can create a few interesting edge cases for not catching the Snitch until the proper moment that can make the game more fun. Other than that hang up, its a very visually stunning and theme appropriate game for a bunch of kids on flying brooms to play.
I always found the whole snitch thing so stupid simply from a game rules perspective. Like most team sports have you work as a team to score points. Everyone participates and are more or less responsible for the outcome of the game. In quidditch you have that and then you have one team member that is just more special than everyone else, they can just control the outcome of the game by themselves. It goes against the whole concept of team sports.
Like most team sports have you work as a team to score points. Everyone participates and are more or less responsible for the outcome of the game.
A better writing of the game would have had other players working as a team to spot the Snitch. Or alternative strategies for leveraging the extra player in the early game, when finding the Snitch was unlikely. Or even just a history of the sport, or variations of amateur and professional rules, or a pro-league that got more than a casual mention for the first chapter of the fourth book and then never again.
you have that and then you have one team member that is just more special than everyone else
You could argue the pitcher in baseball or the QB in football fill a similar role.
But yes, the need to make Harry a Mary Sue at every opportunity definitely dragged on the series. The better parts of the series were when he wasn’t the center of attention and was more just an observer of a magical world.
I love the Magicians. Just finished a rewatch not too long ago. Their approach to magic is definitely much more entertaining than the HP universe. Especially the hilarious concept of “sphincter magic” that Penny tries to learn when his hands get messed up. That show did a great job with the meta humor.
My head canon is always converting magic into sci fi. The wizards are the descendants of a civilization that created the tech but they’re so far removed they don’t know anything about how it works, or about simple spells that would shortcut all the fancy shit. Doesn’t really explain the Snitch though, other than “they’re more about tradition than logic”.
Same concept but kinda from the opposite direction, kinda like elder scrolls. Magic used to be super powerful and utterly broken but over time it’s degraded for one reason or another some things and groups still have access to the old magic but as a whole it’s pretty inaccessible. This is kinda how magic works in Elder Scrolls, the magic of the Dawn Era and Merithic Era were fucken broken world bending shit that did things like turning Solstheim into an island instead of a peninsula, but the world has since gained too much internal stability or perhaps instability to allow such things all that often, but scratching into that requires getting into Elder Scrolls meta physics which just no.
My head canon is always converting magic into sci fi.
Arthur C. Clarke will be by to collect royalties.
Doesn’t really explain the Snitch though, other than “they’re more about tradition than logic”.
Lots of sports spring out of a bunch of silly children’s games that get increasingly bureaucratic to sell tickets.
Why not end the game with a timer or at a certain score count? Why introduce a fairy trapped in a golden ball who has some kind of personality, rather than just being a buzzing semi-invisible toy? Why not yadda yadda?
Rowling definitely left a lot on the table.
Needs more explosions and an anti exploding kid spell, but otherwise a solid thumbs 45 degrees up.
I know there’s been a fair bit of discussion and I only skimmed it, but the main issue I could see is if one team actually ignored everything for the snitch, it’s feasible the other team could get 15 goals literally for free before you actually succeed. But the video game nerfing the snitch tells you everything you need to know about whether it can be balanced at all.
So the reasoning I heard about this is she did this to annoy her boyfriend who loved sports.
She deliberately made it an unbalanced rule because she knew it would really annoy him.
At the time, I doubt she knew the book would become a cultural icon, nor that most of the English-speaking world would know what the word “Quidditch” meant.
There’s a comic of someone saying “hurr durr I’m an idiot” then the group kicks them out and he says “jokes on them I was only pretending”
bro quiddich is ass.
I’ve never really thought about it, but your right if you think about it, it makes zero sense.
Not using Avada Kadavra in a wizard duel in which you intend to kill the other is like having a duel with guns with infinite ammunition and attempting to bludgeon the enemy with the stock or stab them with a bayonet instead without ever taking a shot.
There is a reason that every real fight Harry was in was just Avada Kadavra vs Expelliarmus. If you can just kill with an unbeatable curse and are willing to, you just kill. If you aren’t willing to kill, your best recourse is removing their weapon before they kill you. It may be boring, but literally any other moves in a typical duel would be the sub-optimal at minimum, suicidal at worst.
Which is why it’s bad writing.
“Unblockable killing spell” is the kind of thing that pops up on a middle school playground because every kid wants to have the trump card in make-believe and the last kid just cast Meteor.
Eragon is a contemporary-ish book and has killing magic that can kill normies by the dozens/hundreds, but other magic users have to do more than play rock-paper-nuclear-option.
I like to subscribe to the “magic makes it’s users imbeciles” fan theory. (Though the truth is that JK just isn’t all that bright).
It isn’t that the killing spell is unblockable. Harry and his mom managed to block it twice. But apparently magicians in HP universe are just completely dumb and unwilling or incapable of innovation. That was spelled out clearly in book 1 where an elementary logic puzzle was seen a good way to protect the greatest treasure on earth.
Ron’s dad, for example, lived in England. He could wander the muggle streets freely if he wanted to. He had a deep fascination of basic muggle items, yet he didn’t just go to his local library to check out a book or log on to the internet to learn about things that were his passion.
A good writer could do cool stuff with that. It doesn’t even have to be laziness, but the lack of necessity for innovation.
A fun example is Project Hail Mary. The alien species in it is highly intelligent and has invented space travel, but has no computer technology. It’s not that they lack the capacity and ingenuity required to develop computers, but because the structure of their brains that developed for extremely advanced audio processing in an environment without light made them extremely good at mathematics. They never had a need to invent calculators, so they never progressed down the technological path that would eventually lead to computers.
The wizards in HP are a weird mixture of so reliant on magic that simple logic and basic low tech solutions to problems are mystifying, but also, they forget to use magic, like, all the time. They are always doing things like getting rained on when the impervious charm exists, forgetting that the accio charm exists when they need to grab something before someone else finds it, when they bind someone in shackles instead of magically stunning or binding them, when their clothes don’t fit, when they don’t just duplicate items that dont break Gamps laws, when they make Filch and Hagrid do so much manual labor that could be accomplished with swipe of a wand, etc.
Notably, they absolutely botch the “rescue” mission at the end of Order of the Pheonix and get Sirius killed in trying to save him becuase they fail to utilize the many magical means they have to communicate and travel.
First, they forget that Harry was given a magic mirror to contact Sirius at any time for moments just like this. But let’s chock that up to human error, fine.
But then they also forget that they have a contact in the castle that can also visit the Black house, the painting of Phineas Nigellus. Even if they aren’t sure they can get to the headmaster’s office (even though he definitely could as he does later in the book), they know that the painting’s inhabitants can travel between frames and could go to retieve him. But, ok, chock that up to human error number 2.
Instead they decide to break into Umbridge’s office to use her fireplace to speak to Sirius through the floo network. Cool. But then instead of just walking through and going look for him, Harry just sticks his head in and starts yelling which allows Kreacher to control the narrative and trick Harry into Voldemort’s plot. And of course he gets caught by Umbridge because his ass is still in her office (and Hermione gets caught too because she inexplicably rmeoved the invisibility cloak).
But then, even later when they get rid of Umbridge and her slytherin minions, and they are trying to figure out how to get to London, nobody realizes that Harry’s head was just fucking in London. The fireplace is completely unguarded now and they know you can floo in directly to the ministry. Alternatively, they could just get to Hogsmeade and hail the Knight Bus, or find a sympathetic adult who can do side along apparation to get them there immediately. Or go back to the castle and get Snape’s help getting there or to the Order.
Instead they ride the Thestrals which takes “several hours” to reach London by which time they should totally have expected Sirius to already be dead. They don’t bring the cloak to the ministry either even though they are under the impression that they will have to break in too. All of this is just dumb dumb dumb.
The fanfic Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality is a fun foil to this aspect of the series. It absolutely is a bit pretentious and preachy at points, but the genuine exploration of what is possible in the established system was pretty fun imo.
Might be a time to plug my own writing.
Possessing a gem and training with it for a decade lets you use intense elemental magic of a certain attunement. BUT…those gems are so rare and take such vast resources of an empire to formulate, that their use is controlled to just three people. Anyone else who steals one won’t even be able to use it until they’ve practiced for an extraordinary amount of time. So, they’re like nukes; and no one can just nip in and steal them.
The story is about using non-magical means to solve societal problems.
EDIT: Actually, since this has 7 upvotes, maybe it’s time to plug it more directly.
Yeah, it’s a common problem with soft magic systems in general. Eragon’s harder magic system at least defined clear(ish) boundaries, even if those boundaries were kind of a retcon after the ending battle of the first book. I definitely enjoyed the mechanics of the harder system better.
Yeah soft magic requires restraint to do well. Sanderson’s laws are a really good way to make sure you’re not writing a really boring magic system.
Not using Avada Kadavra in a wizard duel in which you intend to kill the other is like having a duel with guns with infinite ammunition and attempting to bludgeon the enemy with the hilt or stab them with a bayonet instead without ever taking a shot.
So, they do kinda explore this in the books. Book 4, when the kids learn the Killing Curses in Defense Against the Dark Arts, its implied that you really need to want to kill someone for the spell to work. Otherwise, it just kinda gives your victim a nose bleed.
There’s a secondary implication that Avada Kadavra is not just a simple killing curse, but a predicate for creating a Hoarcrux. In Book 6, Tom Riddle learns that you need to kill someone in order to create a Hoarcrux. And, as Harry Potter is a Hoarcrux created by accident when his mother shields him from Voldemort’s killing spell, there’s a presumed through-line that using the spell severs your own soul with every successful incantation.
So, the need to be fairly powerful, competent, and ruthless makes it more like going into a wizard duel with a blunderbuss than a Beretta. There are other spells that can kill (or immobilize in anticipation of a more traditional murder) with less effort. And - assuming the implications - no risk of shredding yourself internally to land a lethal blow.
Right but like, as an author you gotta ask yourself, “Hey, what if the rules of my world were conducive to interesting things instead?”
It was more like HP using expelliarmus a billion times
Except for the one time he learned the Sectumsempra curse, used it one time on Draco Malfoy, and then we never talked about it again.
You’re talking about it…
We don’t talk about rectumsempra
Joanne Rowling, folks.
Don’t use her preferred name when she’s an utter cunt destroying that right for others.
I just say “that insufferable English bitch that isn’t Margaret Thatcher”.
That still leaves that lettuce lady
Are we sure though? Have we seen them in the same room?
Joanne Karen Rowling
Same goes for genocide Benjamin Netanyahu.
I thought like, canonically, avada kedavra fucks up your soul or whatever everytime you use it and it slowly corrupts you or something
So it has a downside.
Also, to work, you have to be able to mean it and basically be a psychopath for it to even work right.
Isn’t there explanations for why people dont just use it willy nilly?
its also easily traceable and under dementor death penalty or something
Is it? Wasn’t Voldemort using it without being traced?
Snape used it on Dumbledore up the astronomy tower.
She did write/say that there was no defense versus the killing curse did she not? (Except being Harry P that is)
No defense against “Power Word Kill” either but wizards in every other setting are renowned for coming up with magical rube goldberg machines to kill, just like a guy.
C-c-c-counterspellll!!
I stand corrected
The other guy counterspells your counterspell (I hate what they did to that spell in DnD 5e).
Also there are more ways to stop Power Word Kill than counterspell. It requires a verbal component so if you can prevent the caster from speaking they can’t cast it. It’s an instant death effect so the spell Death Ward also protects you from it’s effects. Oh it only has a 60 ft range so you can just stay out of the range of the spell and just negate it.
And if you have 100+ hp, it just won’t affect you in 2014 rules. 12d12 psychic in 2024 for that case though.
That’s why in 3.5 edition I had my wizard design Unfailing Missiles. She was annoyed that Magic Missile was the only “guaranteed to hit” spell. Ironically, that was mostly because she had unknowingly picked up Improved Evasion when she decided that her familiar had to be a Pseudodragon. To design it she found a scroll of (Dalamar’s) Lightning Lance, and combined the properties of that spell with the properties of Magic Missile, then pumped it up to a 9th level spell.
Unfailing Missiles Wiz/Sor 9th level. V/S Range: Medium 100ft + 10ft/ level Casting time: instant
Spell Effects: When cast Unfailing Missiles creates 3 orbs of Force/Sonic damage that can instantly hit up to 3 targets that are no more than 15° apart from each other. Each orb is barely visible and streaks towards the target. Each orb does 17d6+1 points of damage split evenly between Force and Sonic damage.
Why Force and Sonic? Because she had run into enemies that had various elemental resistances by that point, and wanted at least half the damage to be guaranteed to get through. You’d have to be wearing Epic Magic Items to be fully immune to both Force and Sonic damage at the same time.
She still had both Power Word Kill, and Mind Rape in her spell book for counter spelling purposes, because that’s how it worked back then.
Mindrape is a WILD, and fitting, name for a spell.
yeah, wild finding out that was a thing. at least pathfinder had other weird shit you could do with dispel magic, like steal their spells or inflict magical backlash damage.
I hope I never play a game where every wizard has to have a finger on the “save me from scary magic” button. no, fuck it. we ball in here
In older DnD editions it was more complex and honestly cooler. You had to expend a spell to counterspell, usually the same spell the enemy was trying to cast or a spell that negated their spell. For example you could cast Haste to counterspell a Slow spell or a Cure Wounds spell to negate an Inflict Wounds one. It made it more involved than: snap and your spell fails.
I remember that. Wizard gameplay should feel like this
If you aren’t aware of the song All Paladins Are Bastards, you should look it up. You’d like it.
ooh sounds up my alley
It can be defended against by the Noh-You spell and reflected back
She did explicitly state that it can’t be blocked or defended against, but it comes out later that this only means through magical defense of a direct hit. It can be physically deflected - so indirectly defended against. Dumbledore uses magic to move a statue into the way and protect himself and Harry. This was in the fifth book though, so it’s definitely possible she retconned it after criticism
I see HP fun or mockery. I upvote HP fun or mockery.
Frankly i think the Fiend Fire thing was cooler than AK. Also you can block AK using legalemency or even disappear & reappear in different places or moving stuff like a huge statue in front of you. The wrong thing is to say is it is non blockable
You have to be at the top of your game like Dumbledore to do those things against it though.
We have more martial art styles than i can name, and so much weaponry requiring years of training to master. Also gun.
Gives off the “Why didn’t they just fly eagles into Mordor?” vibes.
That is a fucking fairy tale book for children and teens. What did you expect? Logical structure like in 1984 or something?
Except the Eye would have seen flying eagles. Not that it doesn’t ever see Frodo, but the point of the mission is discretion so they can avoid the Nazgûl as much as possible.
The difference here is that lifting the curtain gives a reasonable discussion of why a seeming plot hole couldn’t happen. But it raises massive world implications in HP.
Also having The Eagles anywhere near The Ring would have been more ruinous than giving it to Galadriel. The Eagles are as powerful as Sauron, if not one power tier higher. Even giving it to a Human, Dwarf, or Elf would have made The Ring stronger than it was in the hands of a Hobbit that wanted to destroy the thing.
Look she’s a cunt.
But y’all just look like angry nerds screeching over the meta of a childrens book. There are planet of children’s classics that are garbage.
She can be a cunt and also bad fantasy author. An opinion I never would have had if it weren’t for good fantasy authors
How many other bad authors get a new meme each week saying the same tired shit? Every fucking week lol.
I get it, JK and stories bad.
If it’s tired then post something new?
Most children’s book authors don’t engage in Holocaust denialism :/
Nor have organized politicall movements designed to vulnerable populations.
