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I guess some people are interested! So this is the official REASONS I HATE HARRY POTTER THREAD. Buckle up friendos, I'm gonna yell https://twitter.com/ellle_em/status/1245423759831568384
I guess some people are interested! So this is the official REASONS I HATE HARRY POTTER THREAD. Buckle up friendos, I'm gonna yell https://twitter.com/ellle_em/status/1245423759831568384
1. The entire plot of the massive seven-book arc hinges on the fact that one character has all the information necessary to prevent bad things yet never tells a single person any of it
2. There's literally no good reason for characters to not be told important things except that if they WERE told these things, the whole plot would collapse. It's such a weakly-constructed narrative that it has to be propped up by characters just....not doing things
3. You have a limited 3rd person POV which can work but only if that POV belongs to someone who actually is interested in learning about the world around them and the MC is studiously uninterested in all but the most basic, plot-relevant details
4. The worldbuilding is so bad that if you expand the narrative beyond one story about one character it utterly collapses into nothing
5. The books ardently and insultingly reinforce the awful trope of fat characters being bad
6. The narrative arc and the stylistic goals of the books end up being entirely incompatible because, unlike Roald Dahl, JKR never figured out how to do subtle darkness
7. Literally no one asks questions ever, even the character who is meant to be the "know-it-all"
8. The idea that lycanthropy = AIDS is inherently one of the most offensive and insulting things in a serious filled with offensive and insulting things because werewolves are portrayed canonically as child-eating monsters
9. The only way JKR can make her story work is by creating characters who make bad decisions at every possible moment despite the fact they're generally written in a way that makes them seem like they should be competent and intelligent and logical
10. The first book on its own is actually a fairly passable silly whimsical Dahl-esque MG fantasy; the second book is also acceptable in that context. I think if JKR had stuck with that aesthetic/tone, the series wouldn't have ended up so awful tbh
11. The first three books establish a tone that, when shifted to a more adult, more violent sort of narrative, just doesn't work. It's like trying to fuse "Row, Row, Row Your Boat" with "Freak On A Leash" and come up with something that makes aesthetic/thematic sense
12. Because it's ok in a whimsical MG story to name your werewolf "Remus Lupin" but when you're trying to tell a "darker," more adult story "Remus Lupin" and "Cornelius Fudge" and "Albus Dumbledore" create too much dissonance to work
13. Like look--Roald Dahl managed to make books with disturbing elements while remaining silly and whimsical because he established a tone and stuck with it from the beginning. Dahl didn't attempt to like....graft two incompatible story-types together
14. Dahl is generally who I compare JKR with because Dahl did what I believe she attempted to do and he did it very well. He, of course, shares a lot of her flaws--having appearance be shorthand for a character's morality--but he manages consistency and depth which JKR does not
