"Dumbledore is Gay" sez Rowling

tbh i didn't even read JM's post before i jst assumed it was lazy and pointless

soz

xp or perhaps because there was enough payoff to ignore the cringey parts, we are just more inclined to talk about the cringey parts now.

the real lol is that if instead of doing 3 turns of the time turner ("that should do it, ms granger" says albus) they did, i donno, 5, instead of just saving sirius's life they could've captured pettigrew while he was still a rat, thus allowing sirius's name to be cleared completely - which would mean harry would be able to communicate with him freely and pettigrew wouldn't be able to help voldemort.

really, the more you think about it, the more it feels like a lot of the world building depended on a reader's good will, so once you remove it, poking holes is both easy and fun.

like, why didn't albus just use a time turner to go back in time to warn potters?

I can buy that a time turner might have a functional limit to how far back it can take you... like a week or two max, but as a plot device it's like a nuclear bomb, you can use it once and then everyone has to agree it can't be used again or the world is over

except they used in the cursed child again, and to bypass the previous plot driven limitations they had to make it "a prototype of a more powerful version of the Time-Turner"

Cursed Child so surgically excised everything I liked about Harry Potter and replaced it tedious middle-aged existential crisis I have nixed it from my personal HP canon

replaced it with

not having read these (or seen 'frozen') is killing my crossword game

the time-turner is another thing that makes way, way more sense for a series of charming little mystery/adventures - the wizardly equivalent of like, the Boxcar Children sequels. it's a cool gimmick that once revealed, explains all these odd things from earlier in the book, and lets them do a fun time travel thing to repeat the climax of the book but get the good ending this time, so long as they tie up all the loose ends and land where they're supposed to. great, cool, fun. just doesn't wash at all once the stakes are elevated to super intense epic, which tbf is already starting to happen or be hinted at with that book.

but yeah even then it's like, this seems WAY too powerful to be something that teachers loan out to overachieving kids

Prisoner of Azkaban was probably the high point of the HP novels, before Rowling got too powerful to be reined in by an editor and everything got bogged down in mytharc stuff

I agree. I was never a fan of the series, and I really lost patience with it when the books started getting bloated with mytharc, but I remember thinking Prisoner of Azkaban was much better than the first two. I think she'd gotten a little better at the nuts and bolts of writing by then, and having Sirius to focus the story on helped as well. I generally find her adults more interesting than her child characters, and troubled-hero-escapes-from-prison is always fun.

Fuck you, Noodle Vague.

As to what the rest of you are saying, fair point. I forget how long ago these things started coming out--they still have such a weird presence in the forefront of popular culture for something that ostensibly ended 13 years ago.

yeah the last book was released in 2007 but that was the beginning, not the end. movies went through 2011, then the Cursed Child in 2016, the Fantastic Beasts movie trilogy (2016, 2018, and... next year maybe?), and a couple dozen video games and then there's the toys and merch. Harry Potter is basically Agatha Christie x Star Wars, it is never, ever going away (despite Rowling's best efforts to be a stain on humanity)

tbf though most of those later items have failed to really arouse anything like the same public enthusiasm as the source material. the fantastic beasts movies in particular seem to suggest that rowling's name and "from the wizarding world of Harry Potter" isn't going to make an event out of just any old weird unappealing wizard movie. the masses got invested in the setting of Hogwarts, the familiarity of a cast of charming characters they'd come to know, and the melodrama of Harry, Snape, etc. it's not like Star Wars where you can get a lot of people actively and sustainedly amped, most of the time, so long as it's got stormtroopers and lightsabers and some plucky heroes.

I can tell you from spending time with my sister's kids that they are actively and sustainedly amped about Harry Potter, and they weren't even born in 2007

if we survive the 2020 election, I confidently predict a Harry Potter TV series by 2025 that retells the original story of the books and it'll be on par with any of the recent Stars Wars nonsense in hype terms

o no

xp i've been thinking for a while that a big TV series revive will happen but probably not that soon if rowling keeps trying to make herself the face of the anti-trans movement. that would have to die down, the beasts movies would have to finish and become completely forgotten, it'd really have to play on millennial nostalgia. from what i gather from The Youths on social media, your sister's kids aren't the norm, 30-something dorks are still driving this IP train. and their kids might not latch onto it like they always dreamt they would.

it'll be Hogwarts: The New Class

if you're reading this shit and you notice it's shit, why keep reading it?

my kids demanded it. tbf even they started quailing by the last book. it took us about two months to finish it.

as i think i've said before here, she is actually really good at writing for 'easy reading' - the sentences flow really well, the dialogue works, it's always easy to keep to track of who's saying what, and every character is given just enough of a characterisation that someone reading aloud knows what sort of voice to put on. it's impressive. it was more fun to read to my kids than a wizard of earthsea, though of course earthsea is in every way a better book.

it'll be Hogwarts: The New Class

Saved by the Spell

✓

The book series's timing was absolutely perfect for my nephews (born 1993ish?). They got all the excitement of new books coming out, not knowing what was going to happen, having Quidditch-themed birthday parties, etc.

By the time my daughter (born 2007) was reading age, the books and movies had all already happened. By then it was a global industry, complete with amusement parks with themed rides. She read the books perfunctorily because everyone in her demographic had, but it never quite approached the quasi-religious state that I saw in the early oughts.

On some level, asking it to have continuity and make sense is beside the point - like, you are okay with wizards and witches and magic and reincarnation and immortality and time travel, but you're displeased with how the series handles... toilets? Or if somehow there was a slipup between west Africa and Madagascar (while talking about a minor detail of a fiction that is, at root, a voluntary leisure activity? Ok nerd.

At the same time, sure, Rowling either was lazy or became lazy. No argument there. And her utterly shit opinions now don't make anything better. At first, people understandably loved her rags-to-riches story, but she has used up that goodwill.

And, as has been pointed out upthread, she could just disappear onto a private island and go count money, letting people be happy with the pleasurable aspects of what they've already been given.

But some perverse impulse of massively famous and influential persons is to never quite be done, and to eternally wish to kick the beehive. I dunno.

like, you are okay with wizards and witches and magic and reincarnation and immortality and time travel, but you're displeased with how the series handles... toilets? Or if somehow there was a slipup between west Africa and Madagascar (while talking about a minor detail of a fiction that is, at root, a voluntary leisure activity? Ok nerd.

I really loathe this kind of argument - there's such pleasure to be had from a really well crafted, consistent and unique secondary world, whether fantasy or SF. When you read a lot of authors who put so much time and care into creating theirs, it can be fairly enraging to read one (a highly feted one at that) who can't really be arsed to do so. Sorry if that makes me a nerd.

Having said that, I did read and mostly enjoy all the Potter books for the first time as an adult, and they definitely have plenty of redeeming qualities, particularly the third one, as pointed out upthread. But she's not a serious fantasy author by any means.

Sorry, that was snarkier than I meant to sound, it's just--if you're reading this shit and you notice it's shit, why keep reading it?

― Tsar Bombadil (James Morrison), Thursday, October 1, 2020 7:38 PM (yesterday) bookmarkflaglink

Well, her world building may be shit, but JKR's prose is so elegant that it doesn't really matter.

This is a very good piece on fandom, the writer, and the last few years.

Rowling had never been a particularly controversial figure. Her books sold hundreds of millions of copies, they inspired films that brought in billions of dollars, and she used the money she made to save children from orphanages. In 2012, she gave enough to charity and paid enough in taxes to knock herself off the Forbes billionaires list. In 2020, she was tweeting links to a store that sold pins that said F*CK YOUR PRONOUNS.

i will read that gyac, but my eye keeps getting magnetically drawn to the line from PBKR in the post above that says

but JKR's prose is so elegant that it doesn't really matter.

no wish to inflame tempers or anything, but genuinely is that a joke?

(i don’t mind people’s love of HP, and frankly who cares if i did, people have got real enjoyment out of the books, but my god the writing is like telephone hold music)

I hadn’t seen that either before I came back to post but I agree entirely, I have to assume so? I will read literally any old shit but I have never thought this of her prose even at its most enjoyable.

yeah my comment was unnecessarily troll-y but i was genuinely interested if someone did find her prose elegant what it was they saw in it.

i don't find it elegant but as i've said before here it is exceptionally easy to read out loud, and you never really lose your way in all the proper nouns and potions and corridors and whatsits - which i reckon is not very easy to do on a technical level. as for characterisation.. plot.. the sense of the world.. it's risible - so my view is that the easiness with which her prose goes down is what makes it 'work' to the extent that it does

you never really lose your way in all the proper nouns

brb gonna make some “F*CK YOUR NOUNS” pins

Sorry, yes, it was a joke (part of which is it's a statement that not even HP-defenders usually make).

^^is yr DN a direct Loud Family reference btw or have you stumbled across the same pun 22 years later :P

Not familiar with the Loud Family - I've just been playing a ton of Cortex and Neil Young lately.

It's possible all my jokes/puns are 22 years late.

JKR sentences are usually ok, it's the overall pacing that blows dead bears

like, 400 pages of "OMG what's going on?!?!?!?" followed by 40 pages of "now Exposition Guy will explain everything in a tedious extended monologue."

The first three books, written before she was a superstar, are ok I guess. The last four have 200-page stretches where nothing really happens, not even character development. Order Of The Phoenix / Half Blood Prince are the worst, no idea how I got through these with the kids.

Ive re read like Robert Jordan multiple times so let me not serve as someone with #notions but no, even on a sentence level rowling is a poor writer id have said

yes her dialogue writing is fucking irritating as shit. I read all of these books and enjoyed them to varying degrees but I've said many times before her reliance on a certain type of speech patterns makes me insane. "it's xxxx, isn't it?" each character says something like that three times a chapter.

also I know the british overuse the word 'brilliant' but I'd be interested in knowing exactly how many times things are described with that word in her books. My guess is four hundred million.

in the UK we call a hundred million a "brillion"

Ha

In the UK, they say "Bra"

and "ooh ah cantona"

worst pacing/edit remains Goblet of Fire for opening, with 200 pages hanging around at the world quidditch finals before fucking anything happens whatsoever. but i remember it fondly, as i was working in a bookstore at the time, and dressed up as Harry for the midnight unveiling of pre-sale copies... it made the local paper!

i was also working in a bookstore when goblet of fire came out (and share your view of its pacing). i did not dress up, having had to dress up as a christmas elf when i worked in woolworths left me traumatised.

I got a big emotional reaction over the Boyhood scene where they're in a lineup for something and it turns out to be a new harry potter book. Massive anticipation over a book launch is something that doesn't happen often.

wow more like gobshite of dire

xp

I was working in a call centre on the publicity campaign for the Hogwarts express

...when I met you