Baby Boomers vs. Generation X vs. Millennials

"Harry Potter also gave young millennials the idea that everyone has a superpower that only has to be discovered. Hence the rudderless waiting."

and that superpower turns out to be the power to tell the author of your favorite books to go fuck herself

a majority of the people i know haven't read harry potter and don't know anything about it. born in 84.

'85 here. I don't know anyone who's read it either, although several of my friends have seen the films. I definitely felt too old for that shit when it came out and even as a longtime high fantasy enthusiast it was off-putting to me because its core cast of characters consists of kids. I didn't care for kid protagonists in these kinds of settings when I was a toddler so I obviously wasn't going to change my mind at the age of 12-13, which is when I first got wind of the franchise. Chalk one up for 'I never liked Rowling anyway' (I'm very good at living up to this particular cliché).

'Harry Potter? Oh you mean that kids' film?' is an effective declaration of war which I like to employ on occasion

'Harry Potter? Oh you mean that kids' film?' is an effective declaration of war which I like to employ on occasion

― doorstep jetski (dog latin)

as someone who is not unfamiliar with rather more literal effective declarations of war of late, i would question your approach here. first, dismissing something as being "for kids", or "infantile", or "babyish", or whatever, is not a good dismissal because there is nothing wrong with children's entertainment. second, even if that was a good dismissal, telling people something they love is shit... if you think someone is shit, and you can't think of better reasons why they're shit than the entertainment they enjoy, perhaps you don't have very good reason for thinking they're shit.

also just like, not that fun of a conversational gambit.

born 81 here, got into the Potter books while working at a bookstore in 2000 (the local paper photographed me in Harry getup promoting the midnight launch of Book 4), enjoyed them thoroughly with some reservations towards the end. i do get the sense of slight distance from the kids who *grew up* with them, for whom the characters are universally known archetypes and references (as Star Wars was for, yeah, my older siblings' generation) --- "that guy was such a Horace Slughorn" etc. but that's just how time works. some of the same youth have told me they're jealous i was a teen in the 90s, when music was great. same ol story!

but c'mon, they're very very entertaining boarding-school adventure/mystery books plus a fun melange of magic tropes with a generous dash of Matilda to kick things off. as harry ages they trend more towards lore-heavy, long-term payoff YA melodrama, which also works well. there are some interesting ideas sprinkled around, and a nice eye for everyday types of villainy and cowardice; if The Youth learned from these books to be bolder and braver, then right on.

they also turned *bajillions* of kids into lifelong readers. immeasurable effects there imo. i steered SO many parents towards dahl, l'engle, lloyd alexander, and i can't even remember what else, based on their descriptions of the things about harry potter that their kids responded to. some of that i'm sure just turned into sales of shlock for adults! but idk i think they helped raise reading's profile as a popular and not-just-for-weirdos activity.

Born in the early 70s and I think everybody my age I know has both read HP, is very familiar with the characters/mythos, and was so before we all had kids! Maybe there's a kind of valley effect where people in their 30s can read kids' books but adolescents / recent college grades can't or won't?

born in early 70s, has never read Harry Potter, seen any Harry Potter movies or Lion King -- though a few years back I was in a band with a millenial who once brought a grade school friend home to watch their VHS of the Lion King after school and half-way through they discovered his dad had overdubbed porn onto the tape -- and that is my Lion King story

no that's how the actual lion king goes

Rule 34.

born in 90, basically everyone i know has read the potter books (well, everyone who read books at all) with varying degrees of love/obsession. i have a friend who re-reads all seven books every summer.

born in 86, nearly everyone i know has read the potter books (well, everyone who read books at all) with varying degrees of love/obsession. I have not read them nor seen the movies, and recoiled from the whole phenomenon while it was still new. I wish I could say it was for better reasons than simple kneejerk elitism but hey sometimes that pays off in the long run

tbh I was very much pushed into a certain track and was also a weird little punk kid. I got arrested for the first time for protesting when I was 15. Deeply weird and obsessive and opposed to what i termed "mainstream culture."

avoiding all art is a good way to make sure you don't have any problematic faves

Born in 1971. Never saw The Lion King until this year. Was turned off to everything Harry Potter by an asshole co-worker circa 2000-2005 who was obsessed with the books. Nobody I've met IRL since who's heavily into that stuff has come off like anyone I'd want to hang out with or talk about...anything, really.

spoken like a true gryffindor

born in early 70s, has never read Harry Potter, seen any Harry Potter movies or Lion King

same. i was working in bookstores when the first few came out, though, and it was pretty cool to see all the kids fucking stoked to read these increasingly huge books

i find the 'which school/house/whatever they're called would X get sent to' stuff tedious but tbh i come across HP references far less often than stupid star wars references

everyone i know has read the potter books (well, everyone who read books at all)

Ime HP clicked with the 'I don't really like reading but I like this' crowd above all.

also lol at table using rejection of harry potter to establish teen punk cred

I was born in '75 and have read a few HP books and seen Lion King, although I attribute both to parenthood. Most everyone I know has also read these godawful books.

whats harry potter

Born 1979. I saw the original Star Wars movies as a kid on VHS but didn't develop any attachment to them and, even though I knew the movies were a big deal, I'm not sure I truly understood until college that they were objects of obsessive interest to some of my peers. They just weren't really a part of my immediate world.

I did see The Lion King and all of the other major Disney movies from 1989 to 1996, but I think I was too old to be obsessed with them. In my view, they were generally just well-reviewed movies with good songs. IIRC, I saw The Lion King with a couple of female friends (it was the summer after sophomore year), and then we probably played mini-golf or got ice cream afterwards. Haven't seen it since.

By the time the Harry Potter books came out, I was in college and had no interest whatsoever in reading anything marketed to children. (I'm not as much of a snob as I was then, but I'm still not particularly interested in Harry Potter.)

At age ~10, the narrative series I was most into was probably the King's Quest computer games.

Born in 84, by the time Harry Potter came out I had very defined tastes in sentence-level writing and HP was too clunky for me. Pushed through the first three to see what the fuss was about and then gave up. Did read a lot of Philip Pullman though.

I'd read Pol Potter tho.

Born in 81, had zero knowledge of the existence of the Potter books until the movies blew up - but it seems like people 2-3 years younger found it foundational, with almost a hard line in the middle of 1983.

Christopher Pike novels were my bad YA weapon of choice.

I have vague memories of YA novels from the 70s featuring a smart awkward female protagonist who lives in NYC and may or may not be Jewish meeting a cute, cool boy she does fun things with like attending leftist discussion groups and publishing underground newspapers -- I don't think it was a series.

no that's how the actual lion king goes

― Guayaquil (eephus!)

good teenagers, take off your clothes

I'd read Pol Potter tho.

― pomenitul

pretty sure that's just j.k. rowling's twitter

Between age 10 and 12 I read the first 20 Xanth novels so I could never throw stones at Potterheads.

The closest thing to YA novels I read as a tween were kitsch-ridden tales set in the Dungeons & Dragons and Magic: The Gathering universes, such as R. A. Salvatore's Icewind Dale Trilogy and Arena.

And does The Wheel of Time count?

After Xanth I got the first Wheel of Time book but there were no puns so fuck that.

Our local braid-tugging and bathing experts will resent that remark

Sometimes I feel like the only person in my age cohort (late eighties/early nineties) who didn't, and still doesn't, get HP. There's something about the whole boarding-school setting that I find inherently repulsive. What a terrible setting for a fantasy!

What a terrible setting for a fantasy!

One about magic, anyway.

( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°)

Pol Potter: a young man discovers he has the magical powers of genocide

So this is apparently a thing:

https://polpotter.bandcamp.com

xps actual LOL @ unperson & pomenitul

I have vague memories of YA novels from the 70s featuring a smart awkward female protagonist who lives in NYC and may or may not be Jewish meeting a cute, cool boy she does fun things with like attending leftist discussion groups and publishing underground newspapers -- I don't think it was a series.

Sounds like a great candidate for Let's help each other identify books we dimly remember reading as kids !

Is Pol Potter the only one allowed to wear glasses?

listening now -- i am disappointed ...microfascism 2 seemed so promising but it just sounds like fucking around on ipad synth apps

In high school all the girls in my class were heavily into The Mists of Avalon, which came out 1-2 years before most of us were born.

fucking around on ipad synth apps

Meant to approximate the sound of Adolf Hitler in art school iirc.

oh pol potter -- i had such high hopes 4 u

I have vague memories of YA novels from the 70s featuring a smart awkward female protagonist who lives in NYC and may or may not be Jewish meeting a cute, cool boy she does fun things with like attending leftist discussion groups and publishing underground newspapers -- I don't think it was a series.

This makes me think of Buffalo Brenda by Jill Pinkwater, but there's no main boy character in that one, just India Teidlebaum and her friend Brenda, and also it's from 1989 and they don't live in NYC. Great book though.

sarahell, that sounds like a Norma Klein novel.

Between age 10 and 12 I read the first 20 Xanth novels so I could never throw stones at Potterheads.

You're brave to admit that, milo (oh shit, me too)

I had very defined tastes in sentence-level writing and HP was too clunky for me. Pushed through the first three to see what the fuss was about and then gave up. Did read a lot of Philip Pullman though.

As someone else with very defined tastes in sentence-level writing, I would say that the Potter books hold up in quality as the series goes on better than the Pullman books are doing!

I kinda don't want to know what these books actually were ... I am more content with my vague memories.

xpost Agree that The Amber Spyglass ended up being worse than anything Rowling ever wrote. Of course I had no way of knowing that at age ten, when I read The Golden Compass and the first Harry Potter book and decided I liked Pullman's writing but not Rowling's.

Pullman definitely has some irritating verbal tics, like his habit of giving all his big dramatic scenes a Biblical flavor by starting every sentence with "and." But I think overall he has more of an ear for how words sound together than Rowling does.