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

[Pope Fucker]

Because it's for children, it's not supposed to be complicated.

 

[NerdShamer]

The only good thing that came out from Harry Potter is Umbridge and what those centaurs did to her. Kinda shocked that nobody got triggered by it.

 

[Constellationzero]

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.

I have serious doubts as to whether JK actually wrote these toddler books. For one, her foray into adult writing (Casual Vacancy) was a fail. Kind of what raised my doubts initially.
Besides the lack of world building, the words used to describe things are just so fucking LAZY!

* muggle
* Quidditch
* Hufflepuff

It's like someone was asked to write a quick fantasy story in one class period and hand it in at the end. And the person who wrote it doesn't care for fantasy and doesn't like the time constraint so they decided to troll everyone with sheer lazy ass words right out of a bad Brady Bunch TV commercial.

And yes...it's a toddler book. Yet every day I see grown adults (many middle aged) who CANNOT reference anything outside of Harry Potter. Really tells me where their reading comprehension skills are.

 

[Orion Balls]

I still have a soft spot for them. They're good for what they are, children's books. The lack of world building allowed me to create my own mind palace. Harry Potter for Christmas; Narnia at Easter.

 

[Dr. Henry Armitage]

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.

Neither do the adults who are still obsessed with Harry Potter. I met a woman once who told me one of the most traumatic experiences of her life was when she turned 11 and did not get a Hogwarts acceptance letter. She was dead serious.

I still have a soft spot for them. They're good for what they are, children's books. The lack of world building allowed me to create my own mind palace. Harry Potter for Christmas; Narnia at Easter.

I agree I really like Harry Potter in elementary and middle school. It was a great escape for me and the lack of world building allowed me to build my own escape. But that's precisely the reason I cant relate to them as an adult. I may go back and read them later for the nostalgia.

 

[Troonos]

I have serious doubts as to whether JK actually wrote these toddler books. For one, her foray into adult writing (Casual Vacancy) was a fail. Kind of what raised my doubts initially.
Besides the lack of world building, the words used to describe things are just so fucking LAZY!

* muggle
* Quidditch
* Hufflepuff

It's like someone was asked to write a quick fantasy story in one class period and hand it in at the end. And the person who wrote it doesn't care for fantasy and doesn't like the time constraint so they decided to troll everyone with sheer lazy ass words right out of a bad Brady Bunch TV commercial.

And yes...it's a toddler book. Yet every day I see grown adults (many middle aged) who CANNOT reference anything outside of Harry Potter. Really tells me where their reading comprehension skills are.

That's pretty much what I was trying to say. Her entire writing style is "<Comically British Fantasy Name> adjusts the glasses perched on his glinting nose and raises his wand, carefully sipping a <Whimsical Children's Fruit Punch Name> and patting the bag of <Whimsical Children's Candy Name> in his pocket, and with a flick of his wand, he chants <Vaguely Latinesque Catchphrase That Sounds Like The English Description Of Its Effects> and casts a <Lazily Written Spell Name> charm on <Generically Evil Name Involving Death Or Teeth Or Cutting>!"

Here, let me write some Rowling:

Nigel Phoenixflight adjusts the glasses perched on his glinting nose and raises his wand, carefully sipping a Mistress Wormguts' Misty Magical Mango Swirl and patting the bag of Mathilda Featherfire's Tongue-Tingling Choco-Fingers in his pocket, and with a flick of his wand, he chants removus vestimento and casts a Disrobing Charm on Mortigaunt Blackfang!

There. Now I'm JK Rowling. Good on her for being based and redpilled on the tranny question, but yeah... generic, tedious trash writing for infants.

 

[Polyboros2]

It's escapism fantasy for children. Just around the time kids start having to face the reality of being a functioning person, they get delusion bait of a magical world hidden from them. And there are people twenty years later that still refuse to grow up cause is it.

I hated the 5th book even as a kid and never looked back at the franchise after finishing the last one.

 

[Naamaleipuri]

Nowadays I just think of the houses as;
Good Guys
Bad Guys
So called smart Guys
Mentally handicapped

That's how Rowling wrote them, until she started screaming of them shitting and pissing on the floor.

 

[Orion Balls]

It's escapism fantasy for children. Just around the time kids start having to face the reality of being a functioning person, they get delusion bait of a magical world hidden from them. And there are people twenty years later that still refuse to grow up cause is it.

I hated the 5th book even as a kid and never looked back at the franchise after finishing the last one.

The fifth book was full of puberty (divorce). But Umbridge is really fun on a superficial level, and Sirius dying is great. (Though the details are shit.) Don't want an orphaned kid to get too attached to anyone like a real family, yeah? Also, Ron sticking his hand into the jar of tentacle brains. Greatest scene in the series.

 

[Absolutego]

I'm grateful the worldbuilding is so bad, it's hugely entertaining watching Potterheads in their 30's seethe over it. Imagine building your identity around a children's boarding school mystery (with a magic twist), and realizing, years later, that the kind of creative spirit behind your favorite franchise also put the one East Asian wizarding school in Okinawa, and just named it the google translate results in Japanese for "Magic Place".

 

[melty]

You're also comparing it retroactively. The first book came out in 2001. There wasn't nearly as much anime back then, much less stuff that was translated. There weren't a billion isekai or "middle school but it's dedicated to fighting/magic/gambling/whatever" shows. There weren't cinematic universes. The Nintendo GameCube had just come out. So yeah the worldbuilding was actually pretty good for the time.

 

[Baguette Child]

another popular series for young readers - Goosebumps,

I defy anyone to try and convince me that Goosebumps isn't a more quality book series than Harry Fucking Potter. Goosebumps was the shit when I was a kid and if I am ever cursed to have demonspawn of my own I sure as fuck would be more likely to give them a boxed set of Goosebumps than Harry Potter. Hands down.

 

[Governor Jeb Bush]

You're also comparing it retroactively. The first book came out in 2001. There wasn't nearly as much anime back then, much less stuff that was translated. There weren't a billion isekai or "middle school but it's dedicated to fighting/magic/gambling/whatever" shows. There weren't cinematic universes. The Nintendo GameCube had just come out. So yeah the worldbuilding was actually pretty good for the time.

the first book came out in 1997....

back when the Spice Girls were a thing (trash) and the Beatles had just released a new single a year prior. the 90s was a whacky time.

 

[Doctor Placebo]

Rowling was obviously making shit up as she went. It started as a very simple British boarding school for witches and wizards concept, and a lot of the early world building stuff was supposed to be very whimsical and comical. A lot of the rules of Quidditch are so ridiculous they're more like a parody of sports than a serious magical sport. A lot of the history of the wizarding world is clearly supposed to be a joke too.

The only really serious thing in the early books was Voldemort and the other baddies who worked for him, and that's because they were ruthless killers, not because they were magic Nazis. But then as she went on she started getting more and more serious about the personal drama and history of the wizard wars and shit, and it clashes horribly with all the silly, whimsical stuff, resulting in a setting with a schizophrenic tone where the nobody's actions make sense.

 

[Pickle Inspector]

I defy anyone to try and convince me that Goosebumps isn't a more quality book series than Harry Fucking Potter. Goosebumps was the shit when I was a kid and if I am ever cursed to have demonspawn of my own I sure as fuck would be more likely to give them a boxed set of Goosebumps than Harry Potter. Hands down.

The Goosebumps books even got even Chris to voluntarily read so that’s got to count for something.

Also he wrote some joke books under a pseudonym, one of which features in not one but three RLM videos!

 

[2021Murder]

the main reason is that it was before the YA boom where people expected kids to read 600 page books. even 200 pages was considered pushing it when it came to what middle schoolers had to read. once the books took off around book 4 in 2000 the page count doubled and suddenly you had worldbuilding out the asshole.

HP is better read as 3 separate trilogies, you have the first 3 books filed with whimsy and nothing making much sense or needing to, fun light reads that are more about the story than quality. you have the 4th book with a whole summer arc, than the weird tournament, some ball, and the villian returning. as well as the first death with more plot and world building than the whole 3 other books put together. then you have the last 3 books which fit together and read like proper YA novels, 2300 pages of plot, with lines and prophesies and relationships that form and continue and grow.

And the best way to read HP is to imagine that wizards are the european equivalent of redskins, like the reason nothing makes sense and why despite all this potential they dont do shit, is because they're just lazy alcoholics. if you've ever been to a reservation, especially the yaqui one, you'll always find just one or two people like dumblerdore who are the only people alive that are capable of doing anything useful so they literally do all the jobs, and everyone else just goes through the motions.

like its much easier to understand how the wesleys are poor when they're from a long line of substance abusers and despite having magic/welfare they still can't get their shit together and properly take care of their 7 kids. like if you run the numbers JK give theres only like 3,000 wizards in the uk and like 200k worldwide. that also explains why when tom riddle comes back and takes over it quick and easy, the whole uk wizarding population is roughly the size of the town from road house. that also explains why we dont see or know many jobs besides teacher, cop or goverment employee. some non-wizard takes care of banking and prison guarding and most other functions of their reservation-esque society. And somehow most locations that aren't government owned are bars or government related. like the ones in diagon alley.

 

[melty]

the first book came out in 1997....

back when the Spice Girls were a thing (trash) and the Beatles had just released a new single a year prior. the 90s was a whacky time.

You're right, I was using the movie date. Where I lived it was catching on in 99-2000 I think? There was one point I was the only one in my class who had ever heard of it and within a few months almost everybody had read it.

 

[Governor Jeb Bush]

You're right, I was using the movie date. Where I lived it was catching on in 99-2000 I think? There was one point I was the only one in my class who had ever heard of it and within a few months almost everybody had read it.

Speaking of the movies - i think they are quite fun...

 

[Ughubughughughughughghlug]

The Virgin Harry Potter vs the Chad Chronicles of Narnia

 

[Emperor Julian]

I mean you're talking about a world where an inept sociopath with no nose is able to overthrow the goverment but can't succesfully overun a school where a 1/4 of students are already on their payrole. How good is the world building really going to be?

Although watching them ignore the fact neville had evolved into chad thundercock in the last films was really funny by accident