J.K. Rowling needs to stop messing with Harry Potter - A general STFU J.K. Rowling MegaThread <3

[Tasty Tatty]

It's genuinely so fucking weird to me. Out of everything, why did Harry Potter gain this kind of stubborn hold on pop culture? I read through the series in the second grade and largely forgot about it until I met a girl who was completely fucking obsessed with it. Had little scarves and jackets and posters of it, just Harry Potter shit. I thought it was so weird until I started working and realized there were grown women in their 30s and 40s and beyond who were still fucking obsessed with Harry Potter. Bizarre.

Harry Potter allowed people to build the first online communities. It's not like they didn't exist before, but it happend during a time when the internet became more and more available to people with simpler ways to interact. I mentioned Usenet above, and I'm sure most people don't know what that is, but they do know what message boards are.

on top of that, HP appeals to people's sense of tribalism: you are sorted into a House full with people like you while you compete with other houses, this in a time when kids have been told everybody is the same, everybody should be accepted and everybody's a winner. It appeals to something they were denied while growing up but was very important.

 

[ShortPoppy]

It's genuinely so fucking weird to me. Out of everything, why did Harry Potter gain this kind of stubborn hold on pop culture? I read through the series in the second grade and largely forgot about it until I met a girl who was completely fucking obsessed with it. Had little scarves and jackets and posters of it, just Harry Potter shit. I thought it was so weird until I started working and realized there were grown women in their 30s and 40s and beyond who were still fucking obsessed with Harry Potter. Bizarre.

At least a part of it might be because the first 3 or 4 books in the series were solidly-written, actually quite good books for the genre. Fascinating environment, interesting characters, engaging mystery/adventure plotlines, plus cultural/historical details and Big Themes that appealed to adults as well as kids. I started reading the books in my late teens, so mostly an adult, and yes I was obsessed with them too.

But with the last 3 books the series devolved into garbage. Overstuffed with trivial details and inconsistencies, formerly interesting characters dumbed down into lackeys for one side or the other, to serve a plot which turned into a kind of literary Godwin's Law where all the bad guys are cast as literal Nazis just to drive home the point of how bad they are.
There was the stupid prophecy plot too, which was arguably completely unnecessary except to make Harry the wizard Messiah. Even though he was an incompetent, bumbling scumbag of a hero who finished the series casting Unforgivable Curses and liking it, and still failing to accomplish anything without Hermione's brainwork, and only won the final showdown against Voldemort due to a dumb loophole in the laws of magic and because Draco Malfoy happened to be standing in his (Harry's) way earlier in the book.

... Yeah, yeah, I've got a chip on my shoulder, but I got over it. I still like the first 4.5 books in the series. What really bugs me about this "J.K. Rowling is a TERF" saga is how people are overwhelmed with what a terrible person she is rather than the fact that her books are crap. Anyway, as far as I recall she's been pretty belligerent and aggressive on social media ever since she became a celebrity and decided that made her opinions on everything matter. It's only now she's perceived as attacking a protected group that she cops some backlash, but unfortunately for the backlashers she is beyond too rich to care what they think.

 

[Letora]

The thing that I love about J.K. Rowling is how she started off as a super-woque lefty, trying to make her characters into something they were not and weren't written as, which made a lot of the fans angry, and then at some point she flips and becomes the Queen of TERFs. She got fucking peak-transed at some point. She's a very public example of how some rational people get taken in by far-left ideas and then realize, wait a minute, this is fucking stupid, and develop a hardened and angry stance against these "progressive" ideas. It's great. I wish I had "fuck you" money like she does.

 

[Don't Tread on Me]

Harry Potter allowed people to build the first online communities. It's not like they didn't exist before, but it happend during a time when the internet became more and more available to people with simpler ways to interact. I mentioned Usenet above, and I'm sure most people don't know what that is, but they do know what message boards are.

on top of that, HP appeals to people's sense of tribalism: you are sorted into a House full with people like you while you compete with other houses, this in a time when kids have been told everybody is the same, everybody should be accepted and everybody's a winner. It appeals to something they were denied while growing up but was very important.

Houses are based on vague personality types, so they appeal to women in the same way that astrology does.

 

[draggs]

At least a part of it might be because the first 3 or 4 books in the series were solidly-written, actually quite good books for the genre. Fascinating environment, interesting characters, engaging mystery/adventure plotlines, plus cultural/historical details and Big Themes that appealed to adults as well as kids. I started reading the books in my late teens, so mostly an adult, and yes I was obsessed with them too.

But with the last 3 books the series devolved into garbage. Overstuffed with trivial details and inconsistencies, formerly interesting characters dumbed down into lackeys for one side or the other, to serve a plot which turned into a kind of literary Godwin's Law where all the bad guys are cast as literal Nazis just to drive home the point of how bad they are.
There was the stupid prophecy plot too, which was arguably completely unnecessary except to make Harry the wizard Messiah. Even though he was an incompetent, bumbling scumbag of a hero who finished the series casting Unforgivable Curses and liking it, and still failing to accomplish anything without Hermione's brainwork, and only won the final showdown against Voldemort due to a dumb loophole in the laws of magic and because Draco Malfoy happened to be standing in his (Harry's) way earlier in the book.

... Yeah, yeah, I've got a chip on my shoulder, but I got over it. I still like the first 4.5 books in the series. What really bugs me about this "J.K. Rowling is a TERF" saga is how people are overwhelmed with what a terrible person she is rather than the fact that her books are crap. Anyway, as far as I recall she's been pretty belligerent and aggressive on social media ever since she became a celebrity and decided that made her opinions on everything matter. It's only now she's perceived as attacking a protected group that she cops some backlash, but unfortunately for the backlashers she is beyond too rich to care what they think.

Yeah the first half of the series 'muh prophecy, Harry is the child of destiny' shit was shown, not told, by Harry's adventures. And it was implied that prophecies aren't such a big deal they're pretty common in the magical world and just another part of life. That was one of the big draws to me, all this fantastical stuff is hum-drum to wizards, it's just what they live every day. Harry was treated with awe not because he was the Chosen One, it was because he was the only person ever to survive a direct hit from the strongest spell ever, ggnore you DED kedavra, delivered by the strongest dark wizard ever.

Then it devolved into standard young adult fated hero schlock.

 

[Scarlett Johansson]

I would have loved a novella or something about Narcissa and Bellatrix's relationship growing up.

 

[TurkishOreo]

I would have loved a novella or something about Narcissa and Bellatrix's relationship growing up.

You forgot the sister who married Tonks!

I thinks ppl made a fanmovie called Sisters of Black on YT.

 

[CWCissey]

You forgot the sister who married Tonks!

Didn't Tonks get married to Lupin?

 

[TurkishOreo]

Didn't Tonks get married to Lupin?

Tonks dude married a Black.
His daughter married Lupin

 

[Tasty Tatty]

Tonks dude married a Black.
His daughter married Lupin

I totally forgot that's actually her last name not her first name and I also thought for a moment this was more inclusive than I remembered...

Nymphadora Tonks married Lupin,
Andromeda Black (her mom) married Ted Tonks (her dad).

 

[ShortPoppy]

Amidst my spergout about the decline of the series I realise I didn't directly address @Massoccur 's question about why adults are obsessed with Harry Potter.
I remember getting to the end of Book 5 and thinking, "OK this didn't feel quite as well put together as previous books but I still loved it." I felt the same about Book 6. When you've vested enough emotion/energy into something you're less likely to be critical about it.
There is also, as I said, a lot that appeals to more mature readers. There were all kinds of clues about potential character arcs and plot developments in little details like names, elements of folklore, supposed alchemical colour symbolism, etc. that gave nerds on the internet ample material to nerd over. The mystery/puzzle style of writing also rewards readers who are discerning enough to pick up on patterns and small details: e.g. anyone who remembered that Scabbers the rat had a toe missing in Book 1 would get a massive payoff when Book 3 revealed that he was actually an animagus who blasted off his finger to fake his death.

On the other hand, the people who bought all the scarves/posters etc. and cried their way through Book 7 probably aren't 'mature readers' no matter how old they are. I put the blame on whatever infantilised my generation.

 

[Tardar the Barbarian]

Well, this happened:

 

[niqlo]

I read Harry Potter when I was like 8 and thought it was alright. I think JK Rowling just intentionally makes troons mad on Twitter because she craves attention and desperately tries to make people talk about her in any way possible.

 

[6MillionCoofs]

I hope she continues screwing with things just to mess with. I swear the people still into the series now are not the same people that grew up with it. They misunderstand the books so much and show an obviously lack of knowledge of what the fandom was like.

 

[Fetish Roulette]

It's genuinely so fucking weird to me. Out of everything, why did Harry Potter gain this kind of stubborn hold on pop culture? I read through the series in the second grade and largely forgot about it until I met a girl who was completely fucking obsessed with it. Had little scarves and jackets and posters of it, just Harry Potter shit. I thought it was so weird until I started working and realized there were grown women in their 30s and 40s and beyond who were still fucking obsessed with Harry Potter. Bizarre.

When I saw your comment, it made me think of this: