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.
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.
To be fair, Harry Potter is probably more logically consistent than the Bible is.
as the story is being told the magic used is awesome and just what the plot needs at that exact moment to move along
That’s bad writing.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deus_ex_machina
a plot device whereby a seemingly unsolvable problem in a story is suddenly or abruptly resolved by an unexpected and unlikely occurrence
Michael Bay movies aren’t fun to watch because they have airtight plots and intelligent writing. They’re fun to watch because there are sparkly things going boom and it looks pretty.
The Harry Potter series is effectively the same thing. A spectacular story that’s fun to experience the first time through.
In both cases, if you think too hard about it, the thin veneer giving the appearance of coherence disappears and you’re left with a logically inconsistent mess.
It’s not going to stop me from watching Independence Day or reading Prisoner of Azkaban again though.
That’s bad writing.
Eddie Valiant: You mean you could’ve taken your hand out of that [hand]cuff at any time?
Roger Rabbit: No, not at any time! Only when it was funny!
As the person before me mentioned, scrutinizing the magic expecting it to be high literature is self-defeating. I never said I would defend the story on the merits of its writing, it’s a book series written for young adults.
Deus ex machina is egregious when a story that has otherwise been consistent pulls the rug out from under you with a twist that makes no sense. The magic in Harry Potter is consistently inconsistent, as I mentioned it only makes sense when it’s directly in front of the readers eyes. It doesn’t just show up as deus ex machina that saves the characters life at the end of the book and leaves the reader feeling betrayed, the reader expects magic to save the day because since page 1 magic has been doing whatever has been conveniently cool to move the plot along in the main character’s favor.
I was about to comment- Harry Potter and the Deus Ex Machina thanks for beating me to it.
I might add Harry Potter and the Order of the Pipe Layers
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.
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.
Agreed on all points. I view fiction like this the same way I view junkfood TV shows/movies/music/etc. 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.
“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.”
“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.
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.
What’s wrong with it is that JKR is not smart enough to wing everything and have it make sense. As a result… it doesn’t, much.
It makes enough sense for kids and adults who can suspend disbelief enough to keep turning the pages. And gives all of us reason to listen to some of the many podcasts exploring the plot holes.
Side note, now that I’ve commented a few times in this thread without mentioning it:
JKR is not smart enough to
refrain from using her global platform to attack trans people. Bad Rowling, bad! I’m thankful I can separate artists from art enough to still enjoy something I grew up enjoying but do have a duty to call out her grievously public stance on this so readers know we still fancy ourselves as allies even when stooping to discuss what the now-monster created.
I’m thankful I can separate artists from art enough to still enjoy something
It must be amazing to be able to huff your own farts and have it smell like roses.
Ever see boomers writing “cRAP”?
Feels like a literary riff on that, gotta say. The whole thread’s about worldbuilding shortcomings but we’re still here discussing it aren’t we? Clearly it made an impact.
Also - made me think of seeing a Jackson Pollock
& dismissively muttering “I could do that”
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.
Not necessarily. This is what happens when you write poorly. Doctor Who’s electric screwdriver is a solve-it-all tool. But it doesn’t ruin the stories in each episode because most are well writen.
First of all, it’s a kids book.
Second of all, it’s a poorly written kids book.
Eh, I think it’s pretty well-written. It hits all the important parts of a good kids novel series:
- fun to read
- few immediately obvious plot holes (that a 10yo would notice)
- easy for a child to imagine that they’re in that world
We need more series like Harry Potter with high engagement that also promote creativity.
What about time travel? They had a pocket time travel device and they couldn’t strangle baby Voldemort? Or was there some Avengers endgame multi dimension thing preventing that?
some Avengers endgame multi dimension thing
Some in-universe Harry Potter thing!
Officially, JK says she went too far with the time turners, so she destroyed all of them:
Well at least she admitted to it.
I’ve not come across an in-universe explanation that made sense seeing as its always been “time travel dangerous.”
Considering the numbers that have died directly and indirectly because of the whole Voldemort thing, a single person sacrifice doesn’t seem all that bad.
Also, if it’s so dangerous, what adult in their right mind would give a time turner to a child so she can follow more classes? She’ll still literally age the same, spend the same time in school. Just have her take more years at school of age wants to learn more, instead of giving one of the most dangerous items ever to a child so she can use it to literally be in the same building at the same time, something easily verifiable by her classmates.
a single person sacrifice doesn’t seem all that bad.
What could it cost?
A whole phenomenon of a series!
Assuming Voldemort’s rise didn’t somehow prevent an even more evil wizard from coming to power, or in the timeline without him Arthur Weasley had too much time on his hands and started messing with nukes…
IIRC Time Turners can’t change the past. Whatever actions you do while in the past have already happened the first time around, you just didn’t know it because you didn’t travel to the past yet.
Correct.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Novikov_self-consistency_principle
Within that framework, HP timetravel is self-consistent and, say, Back to the Future and others of that type aren’t.
Very well shown in Rick & Morty snake timetravel episode. The snakes do the inconsistent time-travel and Rick only does consistent.
Time turners can’t change the past that you observed and even then it could’ve been an illusion or a trick. Dumbledore could’ve gone back in time to save Sirius and then cast an illusion making everyone believe he passed through the veil. The past didn’t change, only people weren’t aware of what was really happening.
That’s pretty much the plot of the play Harry Potter and the Cursed Child. It’s about the original protagonists’ kids and time travel (and it’s written by Rowling, so it’s canon).
Not to spoil anything I think anyone can guess that time travel part doesn’t exactly work out as expected.