I mean, the whole thing is this big fever-dream written for kids; yanno, a fairy tale. At the same time, our author is someone whose internal moral compass is pretty twisted up. So, logical consistency left the building long before pen was put to paper.
Also, fledgling authors take note: this is what happens when you flagrantly defy thermodynamics over and over again. Nerds will rip your work to shreds.
southsamurai@sh.itjust.works 3 months ago
Let’s be real.
Rowling started out making a fairly bog standard magical kids book. It was all about the fantasy of being a wizard, and relied on tropes so old they get found in La Brea.
This isn’t a bad thing. There’s nothing wrong with that kind of kid lit.
But she wasn’t a good writer. She was mid tier at best. So the eventual success of the series got beyond her abilities. While the last book was much better overall than the first few, it still relied on shoddy world building because she had chased sales.
She tried to turn a kid’s light fantasy into a YA fatasy-adventure. To an extent, it worked. And I don’t mean that it wasn’t successful, she had a hit on her hands because the idea behind it all was brilliant. It pulled from a long history of British youth fiction, and added in fantasy and magic and a ton of tropes.
But from the perspective of a coherent story in a coherent world, ignoring the success in terms of sales, it was cobbled together without a plan, and it shows. It wasn’t until maybe order of the phoenix that she had a plan for how the story would end, and she had to do a lot of hand waving to make it happen.
Again, that’s okay. Nothing wrong with a bit of light fiction. But, it had cultural impact way beyond its original scope. So it draws the same kind of analysis that something like LOTR does, and it just can’t compare. It barely holds up to comparisons with Narnia, and Narnia at least kept things vague and mystical without trying to get into the mechanisms under the hood.
For whatever reasons, Harry, in the books, long before the movies, resonated with kids. So the series exploded. And now everyone pokes at it like it was ever supposed to be literature, with any serious thought behind it. It was all broad brush strokes on construction paper from the beginning, expecting anything in it to hold up to scrutiny is like expecting politicians to be honest and up front. It is what it is.
Donkter@lemmy.world 3 months ago
I always say - to defend the series (which doesn’t need too much defending, it’s the most successful book series after the old testament > new testament > Quran trilogy). The magic of Harry Potter is that all of the fantasy magic works exactly as well as it needs to right at the moment that it’s directly in front of the readers eyes. As you mention, as soon as it leaves the view of the characters in the story, it literally blows up into nonsense. However, as the story is being told the magic used is awesome and just what the plot needs at that exact moment to move along.
pennomi@lemmy.world 3 months ago
To be fair, Harry Potter is probably more logically consistent than the Bible is.
KevonLooney@lemm.ee 3 months ago
That’s bad writing.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deus_ex_machina
bobs_monkey@lemm.ee 3 months ago
Let’s be real here, she started off just writing a fun story, think nothing of it, and it became a cult. There’s two ways to go about this; 1) milk it for everything it’s worth, or 2) let the fans go apeshit on fanfic without providing anything more. She chose option 1. Cause money.
greenskye@lemm.ee 3 months ago
Arguably I think all the flaws combined with its popularity is why there are so many HP fanfics out there and they are at least part of the popularity of the work.
It’s like confidently posting a wrong answer on the Internet, people can’t help but want to correct you. Same with her story, which fuels a good chunk of the dialogue and discussions about it.
If it was bad or unpopular no one would care. If it was extremely well written, with little to no plot holes, people would like it, but that’s kind of it. Harry Potter just seems to have the right mix of good ideas and poor execution while remaining popular enough to be relevant to generate seemingly endless efforts to fix or improve it.
bassomitron@lemmy.world 3 months ago
Agreed on all points. I view fiction like this the same way I view junkfood TV shows/movies. Yeah, it’s often brainless, but if you shut your brain off and go with the flow, it can be enjoyable. Just don’t consume too much of it, because then you’ll start to actually think it’s something more than it really is.
CoCo_Goldstein@lemmy.world 3 months ago
“But she wasn’t a good writer. She was mid tier at best. So the eventual success of the series got beyond her abilities. While the last book was much better overall than the first few, it still relied on shoddy world building”
Excellent explanation. The first HP book is excellent. It really sucks you in. After book 4, the quality declines and they become slogs to get through.
mindbleach@sh.itjust.works 3 months ago
You open the hood and it’s just C.S. Lewis crouched in the engine bay, smiling gently and saying “the lion is Jesus.”
ladicius@lemmy.world 3 months ago
To say it more bluntly: That whole story ark was cobbled together by an amateur and is barely hobbling on crumbling crutches. In regards of storytelling and consistency it’s one of the most shitty dilettantic book series I’ve ever encountered. And the characters aren’t coming alive, they are just bland and boring.
Really bad books.
feedum_sneedson@lemmy.world 3 months ago
She’s a billionaire.