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

[S.P.E.R.G]

Yeah...this series needs to be put to rest. I was never the biggest Harry Potter fan to begin with, and I was the about the age of the target audience when the books first came out. I understand their appeal and why it holds a special place in people's hearts, but it's also, in my humble autistic opinion, very overrated.

Rowling never really amazed me as an author. She has a brilliant imagination, but when it comes to the depth of her characters and fleshing out their world I always found it strangely lacking. I know it's aimed at younger readers, but I don't really think that's an appropriate justification considering the amount of praise this series gets to THIS DAY.

Rowling herself was an odd figure to me. The amount of success her books received would be hard for anybody to process but I think she felt this enormous pressure to appease her crazed fans which is probably why she is going mad with all this SJW shit.

 

[Duncan Hills Coffee]

I know it's aimed at younger readers, but I don't really think that's an appropriate justification considering the amount of praise this series gets to THIS DAY.

This is what bugs me about the series, and I actually grew up reading it. I don't think it's necessarily bad that people are reading children's books into their adult years (hell, I still read The Hobbit and that's an actual children's book), it's just that people refuse to let it go and find something else to read.

There's an actual Harry Potter class at the college I go to, which is honestly kinda disconcerting to me. Harry Potter being discussed? Sure, it's a large part of many people's childhoods and a lot of people can make connections with other literature from it. But a whole class? I can't say I agree with that.

The amount of success her books received would be hard for anybody to process but I think she felt this enormous pressure to appease her crazed fans which is probably why she is going mad with all this SJW shit.

The funny thing is even the really liberal people I know who love Harry Potter hate this too, because it's clear she's just trying to pander. Not to mention absolutely none of the SJW shit is in the text itself, so people see right through it.

 

[Agent Wet]

There's an actual Harry Potter class at the college I go to, which is honestly kinda disconcerting to me. Harry Potter being discussed? Sure, it's a large part of many people's childhoods and a lot of people can make connections with other literature from it. But a whole class? I can't say I agree with that.

I can't believe that how would anyone actually make a class like that in the first place I never seen a book having such high praise to the point it might as well be the equivalent to the Bible to these people the book is okay what little I read when I was young but its not that great.

 

[Puddleduck]

There's an actual Harry Potter class at the college I go to, which is honestly kinda disconcerting to me. Harry Potter being discussed? Sure, it's a large part of many people's childhoods and a lot of people can make connections with other literature from it. But a whole class? I can't say I agree with that.

Meh, without knowing much about it, it's hard to really react.
There are degrees "about" Beyonce and David Beckham but I'm pretty sure they're just labels, and the course content is about the respective industries, and uses the titled people as illustrative examples.

 

[Glad I couldn't help]

I should also point out much of Harry Potter is actually very derivative. The books were based on a popular and over-saturated genre of books in England, boarding school mystery novels.

To me, the Introductory, pre-Wizarding, boy-under-the-cupboard chapters of Philosopher's Stone were influenced by Ronald Dahl.

 

[MadDamon]

Meh, without knowing much about it, it's hard to really react.
There are degrees "about" Beyonce and David Beckham but I'm pretty sure they're just labels, and the course content is about the respective industries, and uses the titled people as illustrative examples.

There's a guy who headed a Beyonce program on kiwi ,, Kevin something. He is gay as hell and a huge twitter obsessed liberal, and his program is well, bad.

 

[The best and greatest]

A little late on this but it occurred to me that Snape being an asshole was really only in service to him being a red herring in the first book. It wasn't necessarily part of some greater character arc. The funny thing is that JK herself actually relishes in this misdirection in the actual book itself almost seeming to take a crack at the readership over it.

"You thought it was Snape, but it was me! Professor Quirrel!" or some-such.

 

[Puddleduck]

I wonder if the "JK Rowling reveals that (auto type rest of sentence)" trend made her think she should stop...

 

[MW 002]

Remember that time when Stephen King brown nosed JK Rowling while bashing Stephanie Meyer?

Stephen King rubbishes Twilight author Stephenie Meyer

In an interview with USA Weekend, Stephen King rubbished the writing abilities of fellow bestseller Stephenie Meyer, comparing her to Perry Mason mystery writer Erle Stanley Gardner, who "was a terrible writer, too"

www.theguardian.com

I don’t think stuff like this really helped with curbing Rowling’s ego.

 

[Tasty Tatty]

This is what bugs me about the series, and I actually grew up reading it. I don't think it's necessarily bad that people are reading children's books into their adult years (hell, I still read The Hobbit and that's an actual children's book), it's just that people refuse to let it go and find something else to read.

"Back in the days", most people who discussed HP were also adults from 20s to 50s discussing the morals of the characters from an adult perspective, especially considering that Rowling had very good adult characters, albeit secondary.

Also, funny enough, most people moved on when the series ended. Especially after the "Dumbledore is gay" announcement. I remember one very smart person saying things would go down from there and he was right. It's the younger generations who can't give up Harry Potter for some reason. I think they're more in love with the brand and the experience than with the books and the story itself. That's a pattern among millenials: they don't love the product but what the product represents.

 

[friedshrimp]

It's why there's so much "nostalgic" properties out nowadays: remakes of every single entity known to man, and people still make hordes of merchandise of old IPs. Look at all that Nicktoons merch that's been out for a few years, yet the classic Nicktoons I guess haven't been on air for years.

 

[Ponderous Pillock]

Rowling herself is trapped utterly in the monster she created.

When she went off to write Cormoran Strike novels she did so as "Robert Galbraith" to see if she was any good as an author without the Rowling name attached.

The end result?

Just 500 books sold for The Cuckoo's Calling.

it got so frustrating for her agent that they were the ones which let it slip, seeing the book sales rocket to nearly 140,000.

 

[Sinner's Sandwich]

She fell into the same trap as many sucessful people: Her ego became incredibly bloated.

There is a great book called ego is the enemy. The author explains how to avoid becoming an arrogant prick and has many examples of famous people who utterly ruined their reputation and career.

Rowling is now another name on the long list of egomaniacs. She destroyed her reputation and is destroying her life's work as well.

 

[AsbestosFlaygon]

Rowling herself is trapped utterly in the monster she created.

When she went off to write Cormoran Strike novels she did so as "Robert Galbraith" to see if she was any good as an author without the Rowling name attached.

The end result?

Just 500 books sold for The Cuckoo's Calling.

it got so frustrating for her agent that they were the ones which let it slip, seeing the book sales rocket to nearly 140,000.

I'm curious, can someone that's read Rowling's other works explain in detail or point me somewhere that explains where they go wrong in comparison to Harry Potter? I know other's have mentioned they have issues but from what I can remember none really go into much detail.

 

[Someone in a Tree]

Rowling herself is trapped utterly in the monster she created.

When she went off to write Cormoran Strike novels she did so as "Robert Galbraith" to see if she was any good as an author without the Rowling name attached.

The end result?

Just 500 books sold for The Cuckoo's Calling.

it got so frustrating for her agent that they were the ones which let it slip, seeing the book sales rocket to nearly 140,000.

My understanding is that she wrote The Cuckoo's Calling under a pseudonym just so she could write and release the book without having to worry about the scrutiny and pressure she would have endured had the publisher released it as the next JK Rowling book. Say what you will about Harry Potter and The Casual Vacancy, but those works had an ambitious scope and following them up with a straightforward detective story would probably be viewed as underwhelming. It'd probably be called a potboiler if it weren't for Rowling's wealth.

But if she went with a pseudonym because she wanted to see if her work would rise without her name attached to it, that's just stunningly naive. The only way most authors can even get shelf space at a retailer is because of their name.

 

[Inigo]

I'm curious, can someone that's read Rowling's other works explain in detail or point me somewhere that explains where they go wrong in comparison to Harry Potter? I know other's have mentioned they have issues but from what I can remember none really go into much detail.

What works in Harry Potter doesn't really work in the Cormoran Strike novels.

For example, Rowling has a tendency to foreshadow the conclusions to her novels way ahead of time. In Harry Potter this works really well because it is a fantasy setting with all sorts of fantastic details and red herrings implemented into the plot in a natural, believable way. Seeing weird shit in Harry Potter is normal, and this leads to first time readers generally having no idea what to expect.

Cormoran Strike is supposed to be a typical detective series, and this kind of approach in that setting makes most of the mysteries kind of straightforward and obvious. There are other things I like about them (The leads are actually super great) but this is kind of a buzzkill for a mystery series. Honestly reading these books gives me the impression that Rowling really wants to bang an older, grizzled detective.

 

[JULAY]

Harry Potter is fucking gay, and anyone who likes it is a lolcow.

 

[Sinner's Sandwich]

It's only a matter of time until she claims certain characters are poly and belong to the other letters if the lgbtqxyz alphabet.

Snape is bisexual!
McGonagall is a lesbian and the whole turning into a cat thing was a hint!1
Luna is nonbinary!1

 

[CWCissey]

Snape is bisexual!

I fucking dare her to say that, Snape's character hinged on him loving only one woman.

 

[AsbestosFlaygon]

I fucking dare her to say that, Snape's character hinged on him loving only one woman.

She won't say that, she isn't this stupid.

What will happen is that she'll say that Snape was gay for Harry's father, but repressed those feelings. Oh, what about those memories in Deathly Hallows you say? Part of the way Snape repressed his memories was by flipping Lilly and James' roles in the story, mind, blown!