Harry Potter and why its world building is so boring? - Avada Kedavra vs M16

[Naamaleipuri]

I just finished reading the 3rd Harry Potter book for my cousins kid and it occurred to me: Why is Harry Potter so scant on its world building.
The magic is boring. The setting is about on par with a generic Japanese high school anime. And the magic is mostly just party tricks.
Why did it get so popular?

 

[Fascist Frederick]

Because children don't give a shit about world building.

 

[Naamaleipuri]

Because children don't give a shit about world building.

Oh shit, ya got me.

 

[Azovka]

My best guess would be the mystery of it.
Up until book 5, the plot of the books revolves around a mystery
- what’s hiding in the forbidden corridor and who wants to steal it?
-who opened the Chamber of Secrets and what’s petrifying students?
-third one is more suspenseful than anything ; when will the Prisoner of Azkaban strike next and why?
-who put Harry’s name in the goblet of fire and why?

I haven’t gone back to these books since I grew up (read them from like 8 to 12 years old), but I remember that it was the mystery that drew me in, not the magic.

And yes, I do agree with you. JK Rowling’s world building is incredibly lacklustre, filled with inconsistencies or downright retcons, and generally speaking, I’m sure you could find better variations of the Wizarding World in some fanfics than in her writing.

edit: again, keep in mind that it’s a book for kids / middle grade. Kids don’t tend to focus as much on details or nitpick, or think in depth about how Rowling’s wizarding society model is unsustainable and archaic.

 

[Troonos]

Agreed. There's zero depth. Rowling is a really lazy writer, which is all she needs to be, since her books are for 10 year olds.

 

[Salubrious]

I mean, it's written for the type of people that were shocked when the movies came out that Harry's girlfriend named Cho Chang was Asian.

 

[Return of the Freaker]

I mean, it's written for the type of people that were shocked when the movies came out that Harry's girlfriend named Cho Chang was Asian.

And then proceeded to autistically spaz on Twitter because her name sounds like Ching chong

 

[User names must be unique]

Because children don't give a shit about world building.

nah I read it as a kid and was always pissed off. Mainly over the question 'why the fuck are the Weasleys poor?' seriously niggas you have fucking magic, how fucking retarded do have to be not to profit from it.

 

[GrayWater]

I could really go for a tall warm mug of Butterbeer, I tell you what.

 

[raspberry mocha]

Because wizards shit themselves and magic it away. What did you expect from a book made for pre-teens?

 

[Naamaleipuri]

It's nice to see that Rowling never went to school.
She said that Galleons are traded for 5 pounds. A gold coin of that size would go for at least 25 to 60 pounds.

Edited because my phone

 

[Robert James]

1. J.K. used magic haphazardly and made a world with almost no laws were any problem would be circumvented by a spell our heroes could learn, use, and never use again. Because of that the world itself had very few rules it had to follow and made it difficult to explain how it worked.

2. The series also took a majority of it's time in one location and only occasionally left the school to show how weird and fantastic the world was, though in hindsight these sites made practically no sense.

3. The series was written for children and went by the rule tell don't show, so a lot of the world was told to us and never really shown. I.E. muggle discrimination, weasleys being poor, the students learning the limits to magic, practical application of the abilities taught. The few times it did try to flesh out the world it made little to no sense like the O.W.L.s, cause lord knows a standardized test will be able to test your magical capabilities.

4. What little world building it had was based off the real world and made no sense in the wizarding world. like the owls or how the death of a schools headmaster would be enough to convince the world to go back to being natzis.


The issue with J.K. works is that they are held up as great works of both children's and adult literature even though the story, world, and characters are shallow and the lessons taught are boiler plate and covered better elsewhere. Since it's usually the only books series people have read they like to think it's good but anyone who has read more than three series knows how poorly written they truly are.

nah I read it as a kid and was always pissed off. Mainly over the question 'why the fuck are the Weasleys poor?' seriously niggas you have fucking magic, how fucking retarded do have to be not to profit from it.

They were irish bruv, poor is just a state of being for them

 

[Naamaleipuri]

I mostly got so baffled of how the whole magic world got magic to stagnate.
You learn the basics from books and then yo.. JK Rowling isn't that smart, is she?
So we hear from the same magic from book to book.
I loved the series as a kid. And then. J.K Rowling happened...

 

[Governor Jeb Bush]

Really shitty written books. It might be a children's book - but so is THE HOBBIT and SO IS NARNIA and they are actually fun and well written enough to be fun for adults too. So that shit lame old excuse for the books being subpar is invalid completely.

Harry is a basic little fuck, he should've died in that cupboard. Hermione is a prize little bitch with the personality of a shoebox and that ginger fuck Weasley is like a parasite. Malfroy should've just blown up the school and ended the series at book one.

Dumblefag is cool though, i like that old wizard kinda character, he's wise.

 

[Stoneheart]

because its not a good book series?

 

[Pickle Inspector]

My best guess would be the mystery of it.
Up until book 5, the plot of the books revolves around a mystery
- what’s hiding in the forbidden corridor and who wants to steal it?
-who opened the Chamber of Secrets and what’s petrifying students?
-third one is more suspenseful than anything ; when will the Prisoner of Azkaban strike next and why?
-who put Harry’s name in the goblet of fire and why?

I haven’t gone back to these books since I grew up (read them from like 8 to 12 years old), but I remember that it was the mystery that drew me in, not the magic.

And yes, I do agree with you. JK Rowling’s world building is incredibly lacklustre, filled with inconsistencies or downright retcons, and generally speaking, I’m sure you could find better variations of the Wizarding World in some fanfics than in her writing.

edit: again, keep in mind that it’s a book for kids / middle grade. Kids don’t tend to focus as much on details or nitpick, or think in depth about how Rowling’s wizarding society model is unsustainable and archaic.

Yeah, the mysteries and the relationships between the main characters, it probally helps that the concept was novel to the average reader since magic adventures wasn't really in vogue for YA at the time despite similar books being written in the past.

I mean take another popular series for young readers - Goosebumps, part of the reason it was so popular is it constantly keeps the reader in suspense, at least for the reading level, Harry Potter does a similar thing.

Meanwhile her adult books were a flop until people realised she had wrote them and even then I don't really hear much about them, I tried to read one once but it was so incredibly tedious with only the two main characters being at all memorable so I just gave up, I tried listening to an audiobook version too but that wasn't much better.

 

[Jason Wynn]

Stephen King said it best. He was referring to Stephanie Meyer at the time, but it can apply to Rowling as well.

"She can't write worth a darn."

Like others have said also, the books are decent for 10-12 year olds, the intended audience who don't give a fuck about Tolkien deep world building. The books were intended for little kids, not autistic NEETS in their 40s who obsess over children's literature and haven't read anything else of value or substance to compare it to.

 

[DumbDude42]

edit: again, keep in mind that it’s a book for kids / middle grade. Kids don’t tend to focus as much on details or nitpick, or think in depth about how Rowling’s wizarding society model is unsustainable and archaic.

>kids are open carrying the magic equivalent to full auto firearms on steroids, starting at age 12
>nobody bats an eye at this, and nothing really bad ever happens
>the wizard government (ministry of magic) is basically a totalitarian all-seeing surveillance state that imposes permanent supervision on any and all magic cast by wizards anywhere, at any time
>said wizard government also routinely subjects prisoners to being tortured by literal soul destroying nightmare demons
>but they are completely oblivious to the return of wizard hitler and his wizard SS until his wizard stormtroopers literally assault the govt headquarters itself, even though it has been less than 20 years since the guy tried to take over the last time

the world of HP is absolutely hilarious in so many ways

 

[Azovka]

>kids are open carrying the magic equivalent to full auto firearms on steroids, starting at age 12
>nobody bats an eye at this, and nothing really bad ever happens
>the wizard government (ministry of magic) is basically a totalitarian all-seeing surveillance state that imposes permanent supervision on any and all magic cast by wizards anywhere, at any time
>said wizard government also routinely subjects prisoners to being tortured by literal soul destroying nightmare demons
>but they are completely oblivious to the return of wizard hitler and his wizard SS until his wizard stormtroopers literally assault the govt headquarters itself, even though it has been less than 20 years since the guy tried to take over the last time

the world of HP is absolutely hilarious in so many ways

Don’t forget the fact that:

• there is seemingly 3 schools for the entire young wizard population of Europe,
• Harry Potter was technically abducted by Hagrid as a baby from an active crime scene because Dumbledore (a school headmaster with no official connection to Harry’s parents) said so,
• nobody cared that Harry was abused for 11 years despite the Wizards having Mrs Figg literally watch him
• Dumbledore acting like Harry’s legal guardian (having access to his bank account, family heirloom) despite not having any legal basis to do so
• Dumbledore being the Supreme Chief Justice of the world (don’t remember the name), the international ambassador for wizarding Great Britain, and a school headmaster - functions that should, in any normal society, be incompatible
• everyone casually accepting that Dumbledore acts completely insane without questioning it (especially in the early books)
• imperius curse being illegal but not truth serum?
• everyone shrugging off the fact that Umbridge most likely got raped by centaurs after Hermione gave her to them in Book 5 (that shocked me even as a kid since I had read Greek mythology, and centaurs are widely known for raping women)
• Harry still having glasses despite any other condition / disease being fixed with magic

 

[NyQuilninja]

Harry Potter is popular especially amongst Millenniums and Zoomers because it's a poorly written entitlement fantasy.