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Tbh, between the author and the fandom, I am not really much of a fan of "Harry Potter" no more. It makes me want to write fantasy that is completely different because I feel we need more genre fiction that is different.
Write more stories challenge so "Harry Potter" fans can read literally any other book 2020
Tbh, this 4chan post nearly summarizes several of the issues I have with the series, and how it has impacted the thoughts of people brought up on the series to the present day.
Full disclosure: I was also brought up on these books and the movies, but I always felt like something was a bit off about it. I never got into it to quite the same degree as other family members did though, and I think it was the status quo maintenance ending that ruined it.
Fantasy as a genre should allow us to explore something bigger and better than what we have, or to imagine what it's like to use fantastic powers to forge a world better than what we had at the beginning of the plot. "Harry Potter" doesn't really do this in my mind.
I kind of want to see what it would have been like if Harry Potter actually believed in something instead of only having the simple aspiration of being part of the wizard FBI. Someone brought up in the world of "Muggles" could have really shaken things up in new ways.
Like, for fuck's sake, Rowling wrote a world where literal chattel slavery is legal and dismantling it was treated as a joke. And while I'm at it, Hermione was by and away a more interesting character than Harry Potter and I think her story would've been far better to follow.
Like, no joke, I would seriously read a story where a Hermione-like character is a protagonist in some urban fantasy where the magical world maintains "The Masquerade" of trope fame, but she shakes shit up and either breaks the masquerade or otherwise breaks the status quo.
Sadly, I am more into settings where everyone knows what magic is and has some general idea of how it works, even though not everyone is a mage. I am not sure how I would even begin writing this kind of story.
I've already begun a different sort of story based on some fucking around with worldbuilding that I have done while prompted by the idea "what if something resembling syndicalism, but in a world of magic?"
Obviously I've got to make an interesting character-driven story in the middle of this world and work on "show, don't tell" lest I end up writing the syndicalist equivalent of the "John Galt" speech.
Fun fact: I actually keep the copy of "Atlas Shrugged" that my AP English teacher gave to me so that I have a reminder of how not to incorporate your political views into your writing. Fundamental disagreements aside, the writing quality suffers for the inclusion of Rand's views.
Rowling isn't quite as hamfisted as Ayn Rand is with respect to the inclusion of her personal politics in writing, but when you have the awareness of Rowling's own political views it's hard not to see how they manifest by how the characters are written and how the world is built.
Perhaps one of the more notable things that has ruined the series for me was the goblins that work at the bank. Young me reading the "Harry Potter" books had literally no idea about how Jews had been caricatured by Christian European media for decades.
Then when I am coming back to this portrayal later in my adult years aided by the knowledge of Jewish stereotypes I cannot unread the Gringotts Goblins as anything other than Rowling's twisted Calvinist take on the "Jew as controller of all wealth" stereotype.
I could probably write a whole essay or several on how Rowling's Blairite political positions and Calvinist religious beliefs influence on the "Harry Potter" series, but that is an exercise that I really don't have enough fucks to give towards the completion of it.
As enjoyable as it would be to to tear into the books like that, that would also involve the act of opening the books again so I could do a textual analysis, and I don't think Rowling is worth the effort.
Anyways, going back to thinking about politics in writing, since art is always political it's important to recognize that important fact and then proceed to make it so that your writing isn't some barely disguised political tract.
In my opinion, there is a time and place for political tracts, and there are a few that are true masterworks of writing. I don't think fiction is the place for that. I think fiction has a different role in exploring politics than a political tract does.
You can certainly have characters give political speeches, have roles in political structures, comment on the world's political struggles, and even be politicians. You just have to make sure you aren't making everyone and their dog be a mouthpiece for the author.
Also, your own politics are going to shape how you are going to write your story, and the astute reader is going to pick up on it and analyze it line by line. People are also going to become more astute readers than they once were and pick up on it later in life.
So I guess to sum it all up: We could all use more stories that are not "Harry Potter" because we need to see more of a different sort of politics shaping art, because we need more people reading more (different) books.
