"Dumbledore is Gay" sez Rowling

probably worth noting that Hitler was a big fan of Karl Friedrich May who was sort of the JK Rowling of that era, but his famous characters were rugged German cowboys!

― calzino

fuck karl friedrich may, that fucking terf

I am also reading these with my kids and have also had many thoughts, which have nowhere else to go apart from this thread.

* After book 3 she seems to have been too important for an editor to intervene, huge books aren't a bad thing, when they have less content than short, better books, like the first one, that should be a clue.

* Yes, the worldbuilding is really sloppy and not well thought-through, the interaction between wizards and muggles could have been a strength, instead it's almost wilfully stupid and makes no fucking sense. These muggles live among them, many are from muggle families, why then do they understand them so little? what do they make of films? or all the culture of the last 100 years for that matter? and the food is obviously english food of the 20th century, what is the reason for this? also a hundred other things, so obviously a rich seam of ideas, neglected completely.

* one of the big themes is class but it's handled so badly throughout, the moral seems to be that public schools should accept a few poor and / or foreign students but they must conform to the school's traditions, as a former teacher she has very old fashioned ideas about education.

* and related to this in terms of politics, there is a decent effort made towards showing their government to be corrupt and their media completely compromised, but the obvious baby step from that to advocating systemic change is never once attempted, it's like she feels a need to defend this often horrible world she has made, because questioning its logic means questioning her own poorly thought through concepts.

* the relationships stuff is both icky and prudish, she does not want any sex in there at all but feels for some reason that it should be covered anyway. hermione and ron is foreshadowed in TGOF and THBP but it never convinces at all. in TDH the story naturally comes around to a place where harry and Hermione feel like they are about to pair up, but she never lets the story tell itself and these moments are always wasted.

I have lots of other thoughts too, but main one is that I will try to get younger son into something else if possible.

Get your children into Earthsea instead of Harry Potter imo

^^^

These books are amazing. Harry Potter is the Star Wars prequels.

i always found the potter books incredibly claustrophobic. and magic is the matter of learning a latinate word.

whereas earthsea is climactically various and expansive, and magic is earned at the cost of experience and pain.

yes, why does magic = Latin? This is never explained or justified, were the Romans wizards?

I have many issues with the Potter books but the key one comes down to something Tove Jansson said - “Every children’s book should have a path in it where the writer stops and the child goes on. A threat or a delight that can never be explained. A face never completely revealed.” Rowling never, ever does this and it's a real drag.

Earthsea's greatest feature imo is Le Guin's own changing attitudes on full display

I keep waiting for JK Rowling to announce that the JK stands for "jk"

I also love that they make fun of Muggles for approximating magic, meanwhile they have to wait for an owl to show up to get a message from someone

the truly amazing thing about the stupid world she created is that everything she’s added since makes it even more nonsensical and offensive

Xpost oh...my...god....

I had no idea.

Just..wow

https://i.kym-cdn.com/photos/images/newsfeed/001/480/743/2c0.jpg

which one was the book that after reading it, it was obvious that she cribbed the emotional denoument from Spider Man 2, which had come out not long before? book 5 maybe?

I will say this for Rowling, getting the two first books for christmas in 98, after just turning 12, knowing nothing about them, and reading the first fifty pages that night on the floor of my kid brothers room, as the house was filled with family, is one of my fond christmas memories. They're addictive, the world building is fascinating, incoherent as it finally ends up being, and growing up with them for a few years was fun, and there were so many satisfying twists in books three and four. When book seven came out I couldn't remember who half the characters were, they seemed to die as if they were ticked off a list, and I really didn't get the epilogue.

I think it's too easy to say, that because Rowling clearly is an idiot and a bigot, that all her writing must be bad. Nah. The good parts are really really good. And I suspect kids will still pick it up and be captured by it, if she can stop making shitty films, and being an asshole.

One hopes that children who begin with the Potter books later move on to books which will teach them life lessons of greater value. But discovering that books can be engrossing and entertaining is a necessary first step.

One hopes that children who begin with the Potter books later move on to books which will teach them life lessons of greater value.

It's been 20 years, doesn't seem to have happened yet for many of them.

xps to Neanderthal

Hogwarts didn't always have bathrooms. Before adopting Muggle plumbing methods in the eighteenth century, witches and wizards simply relieved themselves wherever they stood, and vanished the evidence. #NationalTriviaDay

— Wizarding World (@wizardingworld) January 4, 2019

I started reading these when Goblet of Fire first came out (I was staying at someone's apt who had them). I still really like the entire series and have very fond memories of that time. But I also will re-read stuff like Nancy Drew or VC Andrews, even though it aged terribly, if I see it lying around someone's house.

I have always maintained that the only actually good thing about these books is Snape's Only A Pawn In Their Game backstory and redemption arc. Everything else is filler.

I never understood why there's no criticism of the House system; why would everyone be so tolerant of a system where one-quarter of the student body gets sorted into White Supremacist House at age eleven?

We have an education system where 1% of the nation's children are sorted into White Supremacist School tbf

My bad, more like 7%

Yea i always loved "one of our houses tends to spit out evil people at a really high rate, shame really. We were going to maybe do something about it, but...we didn't."

Perhaps they shoulda just called him Professor Dumb instead amirite

Everyone going on and on about how Harry Potter is really bad because it's not about systemic change and kids should really read this edited book of the best speeches by Jeremy Corbyn that Tribune is putting out for christmas is really boring me, but... It is kinda weird that they have Slytherin, and basically the entire house bands together in a genocidal mania that nearly kills off everyone, and then they just keep on as if nothing happened, and then fifteen years later the entire house again bands together in a genocidal rampage, and... Again nothing happens? Like, clearly Rowling is aware something is very very wrong with boarding schools, yet she is unwilling to even consider that something should be done to fix it.

Like, the moral of the story is basically 'tories are only ever one charismatic leader away from going full fascist, but eh, what are you going to do...*

Everyone going on and on about how Harry Potter is really bad because it's not about systemic change and kids should really read this edited book of the best speeches by Jeremy Corbyn that Tribune is putting out for christmas is really boring me, but...

they're just bad children's books lads

and movies and theme parks and political outlooks and

Never go full Jolyon.

One hopes that children who begin with the Potter books later move on to books which will teach them life lessons of greater value.

It's been 20 years, doesn't seem to have happened yet for many of them.

― Greta Van Show Feets BB (milo z), Saturday, December 28, 2019 2:53 PM (one hour ago) bookmarkflaglink

A friend of mine posted a FB story the other day that was a multi-part video of two of her friends (both around 30) having a heated argument about Potter arcania--pretty sure it was meant to be an "oh, how cute!" thing, but it left me fearing for our nation and ashamed of my generation.

Someone’s (fortunately) never heard of Harry Potter fandom, you’re like 20 years late on this.

I should have informed everyone itt that I am being dragged to a live showing of Goblet of Fire at the performing arts center tonight, with a live orchestra playing the score.

It's a present for my parents.

(I actually liked the books and movie, but I'm sick of Potter, living a half hour from the Potter park)

spare a thought for me, i (almost literally) work at hogwarts

Some of these dorks are dressed up.

Ugh

Another complaint is that my nearly-9-y/o son's teacher has told the class that they aren't allowed to use the word 'said' in their creative writing, and must cram in as many adjectives and adverbs as they can. I understand that this is an attempt to broaden vocabulary use, but it's still the imposition of an ugly style, and it seems like the HP books are the model for it.

Elementary school teachers never give correct or even good writing advice. Be fearful of their rules.

yikes I really made a mistake taking Fred off of killfile, fixing that now

and thanks for that great Tove Jansson quote, JoeStork!

I remember a creative writing teacher telling us we could set our film scripts anywhere except the USA and could use any topic except organised crime, that was a good example of restriction, but was at university, actually that was the only good writing teacher I've ever had, he was called Seamus Finnegan, which is also the name of a character in the HP books, he would not be impressed by this run-on sentence.

So glad I grew up in a time when children's books weren't subject to such analysis; no-one gave a shit about Jennings and Darybishire, afaik.

Yeah CaAL my daughter used to get told to use "wow words" and it was painful explaining decent prose style to her

I count among many of my students and colleagues in the university English department where I work and study a large number of people who got into reading via the HP books and then moved on to various other literary fields. These books are basically Star Wars, in that some people are going to use these touchstones as a jumping-off point towards the wider, richer world of film/literature, while others are going to remain willfully trapped in their fanboy bubble.

Star Wars is also bad though

Personally I think it's OK to chat shit about the terrible politics of children's authors who publicly flaunt their terrible politics but I guess there's more important stuff we could be doing

my nearly-9-y/o son's teacher has told the class that they aren't allowed to use the word 'said' in their creative writing

tell him that whenever he might use "said", he should just substitute "burped". that should appeal to a 9-y/o boy.

I guess there's more important stuff we could be doing

potter

fanboys?

what a poor selection of a word

Fanbutts

I had an English teacher in the early '80s who forbade the use of "get/got" or "nice". He also taught us the correct plural of "gin and tonic" is "gins and tonic". Stood me in good stead, that.

tell him that whenever he might use "said", he should just substitute "burped". that should appeal to a 9-y/o boy.