This is actually addressed in the books. There’s a part when Harry is whining how nobody believed him when he said Voldemort was back and Hermione basically goes “Dude, you convinced Cedric to touch the cup at the same time you did, then you both disappeared and you came back with his dead body screaming about an evil wizard who has been dead for more than a decade. I only believed you because I’m your friend.”
It’s a huge plot point in the fifth book/film as well. Lots of people including the ministry don’t want to believe him.
Yeah but the movies specifically frame it more as “the ministry has been infiltrated” and less as “Harry, your story is shady af”
Probably an unpopular opinion, but the stories don’t hold up under scrutiny, and that’s apparent even from the first book. Then again, that’s not how one enjoys children’s books.
She can tell a decent story. But she’s awful at world building beyond the “what would be cool to have” step and the moment she has to consider the ramifications of things she introduced coming up again. Like she can tell a story just fine, but the moment she needs to care about continuity it all goes out the window.
Probably an unpopular opinion
Not really. Even big potter fans acknowledge that the books have giant plotholes
Huge potter fan here (that won’t consume any potter media because JKR is a self-owning ass clown that deserves to watch her empire crumble), and yeah, even well before the Twitter nonsense she started spouting, it wasn’t like a secret or anything that the books weren’t perfect. I still stood on like at midnight for prisoner of Azkaban as a kid, though. But I remember thinking the Voldemort/death eaters thing was a pretty clear WWII/Hitler/Nazi analogy and googling it only to find an interview with her stating it absolutely was not, and people who thought it was were “reading politics” into a children’s story. She’s always been a dumbass, and she’s wrong about her own work. Also, the whole house elf thing was… Really, really rough to read as a kid. I could never understand why no one was on Hermione’s side, and how no one could see that elves didn’t want to be free because their condition would be that of an outcast, and in a world where only wizard’s were allowed wands, nonhuman humanoids were veru clearly subjugated to the point of delusionality.
Which is to say, yeah, the books got problems, even if you love em. I love those books, because the world felt real, even when it was shitty, it felt real. But there are major problems in them, both in the plothole sense, and in the politics (or lack thereof) of the author shining through the cracks
Nobody is on the side of the house elves because Hermione is the pet leftist. Ever watch Downton Abbey? Pretty good show tbh, but if you have, then Tom Felton is the Downton Abbey Hermione. Why is Downton Abbey, of all things, relevant? Because it’s conservative apologia for the way things were, just as HP is conservative apologia; these types of media will often include a zany leftist that they can soften and win over to show how their conservative agenda is good actually. Think about it, HP isn’t left vs right, it’s old conservatism (Dumbledore and his muggle-loving ways) vs batshit insane ultra conservatism (the Death Eaters). If you swap wizarding blood for noble blood, being a wizard for being a noble, etc. it works almost perfectly. Hermione is new nobility that the old nobility doesn’t respect; Harry is from a good pedigree, but was raised by his peasant aunt and uncle and doesn’t know how to act the part, etc etc. The left (Hermione) wasn’t supposed to win (and didn’t), that W was meant for the old conservatives all along.
HP and Rowling have always been conservative, it was just that we misread the struggle being portrayed there.
This makes too much sense
I searched for her denying the Nazi analogy and only found the opposite
Q: Many of us older readers have noticed over the years similarities between the Death Eaters tactics and the Nazis from the 30s and 40s. Did you use that historical era as a model for Voldemort’s reign and what were the lessons that you hope to impart to the next generation?
It was conscious. I think that if you’re, I think most of us if you were asked to name a very evil regime we would think Nazi Germany. There were parallels in the ideology. I wanted Harry to leave our world and find exactly the same problems in the wizarding world. So you have the intent to impose a hierarchy, you have bigotry, and this notion of purity, which is this great fallacy, but it crops up all over the world. People like to think themselves superior and that if they can pride themselves in nothing else they can pride themselves on perceived purity. So yeah that follows a parallel. It wasn’t really exclusively that. I think you can see in the Ministry even before it’s taken over, there are parallels to regimes we all know and love. [Laughter and applause.] So you ask what lessons, I suppose. The Potter books in general are a prolonged argument for tolerance, a prolonged plea for an end to bigotry, and I think ti’s one of the reasons that some people don’t like the books, but I think that’s it’s a very healthy message to pass on to younger people that you should question authority and you should not assume that the establishment or the press tells you all of the truth.
Will check the link a little later (just woke up to pee. Lol). But this was years ago, like around the time PoA came out, or maybe halfbood prince? Either way, it was ab article, not s video. I’ll try to find it later today
It’s a transcript from a Q&A session she did in 2007, around the time of the last book and the OotP film, so a few years after PoA (book and film).
Edit: And here’s an interview with a dutch newspaper from 2007 where she says Voldemort is kind of a Hitler https://archive.is/Pi45t (warning, it’s in Dutch)
Maybe I’m misremembering, but I promise I didn’t just make that up! I can’t find the article I saw when I was young, but it was, like, openly hostile to the idea of it. Maybe it was someone else and I attributed it to her or something. :/
I’m not saying that she didn’t say it, she said a lot of stuff over the years. I assume she changed her mind, given you said it was around the time of PoA. If I’m not mistaken she had quite some influence on the films and in the last two films you literally see people running around in what look like Nazi uniforms.
Also, the whole house elf thing was… Really, really rough to read as a kid. I could never understand why no one was on Hermione’s side, and how no one could see that elves didn’t want to be free because their condition would be that of an outcast, and in a world where only wizard’s were allowed wands, nonhuman humanoids were veru clearly subjugated to the point of delusionality.
The motivation behind the idea was a good one, the execution of the idea was absolute cringe.
Let me explain. The intention was to highlight that the wizarding world has its own logic, and trying to apply the morality and philosophy of the mundane will end in failure, but Hermonie can’t see that being too smart for her own good in this area…
Unfortunately JK picked FUCKING SLAVERY as the way to make this point, because she is a dumbass. No, that’s underselling it: She’s a fascist who only had Voldemort be evil because the book needed a villain. JK Rowling legitimately believes that some groups of people are perpetually below “The normals”
Like take the concept of Royalty (Some people are better than others because they are of Noble Blood) and turn it onto its head, that there are people who are lesser than others because they are of dirty blood. (To JK these include the Irish, transgender people, and anyone who isn’t white)
“Mudblood” being a slur in the HP Universe is just JK’s way of projecting her worldview onto perceived enemies.
Oh and one last thing. JK did the “Wizard morality is different because it’s wacky and whimsical” a second time, in the Fantastic Beasts movies, where the worst crime in Wizard History was… drumroll Trying to stop the Nazis from coming into power… (You see why Harry Potter just doesn’t work with serious stories?: JK herself is impossible to take seriously, and infact is outright dangerous because there are those who attempt to do just that.)
It’s not even a plot hole here (though there are a million plot holes in the books). They literally use the truth serum on Barty Crouch Jr and he fesses up.
Yup, and in the same book too.
Yeah, plus iirc after this pretty much everyone except his friends and senior Hogwarts staff is deeply suspicious of Harry and no one wants to believe Voldemort is back. Don’t get me wrong, there’s lots wrong with the series, but I can’t say this is one of them.
I only like the first three Harry Potter books, when Scabbers goes, so does the book having any credibility it seems.
People don’t like Harry Potter for the story, so when it tries too be serious it falls apart. The part of Harry Potter people enjoy is the whimsy of the wizarding world, that’s it.
You don’t speak for all people. No doubt what you said is true for some. My favorite books were 4 and 5.
Book 4 is great, but honestly, what is there to like about book 5? Nothing fucking happens in the entire thing. In my opinion it has always been the absolute worst of the series.
I bailed on the series halfway through book 5. That was a slog.
6 and 7 for me. It got dark in a good way
Half blood prince was my favorite
same
If magic interferes and influences electricity, which means it can be measured, analyzed and manipulated as a new form of energy.
To cover up magic on all “fronts” would be impossible by today’s standards. Harry Potter would never be as successful nower days as it was. Simply because the smartphone enters the life’s of humans as essential device very early in life.
Kind of hard to switch off all those thoughts.
To cover up magic on all “fronts” would be impossible by today’s standards. Harry Potter would never be as successful nower days as it was. Simply because the smartphone enters the life’s of humans as essential device very early in life.
Even then, Harry Potter canonically took place in the early 90’s even though it released in the 2000’s
Sounds like someone needs to read “Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality”.
Easiest explanation is: there is no electricity in hogwarts and wizards don’t have electricians nor electricity generation, so “electricity doesn’t work in hogwarts”.
If magic was electromagnetic or at least can be measured by effects that it has wizards would have been found during 20th century by general populace.
The easiest explanation is that it’s magic and we’re all muggles and therefore incapable of understanding it.
There is nothing in the books that says that people without magic can’t understand it? I think there was a plot point in 4 or 5 book where harry is on trial for using some spell to scare away dementors, and his neighboor testifies that he really did it and people don’t believe her cause she doesn’t have magic. But that’s only seeing magical creatures, what stops anyone from understanding it exactly? They do repeatable things that return repeatable results, pretty understandable.
the neighbor is a squib, not a muggle
What’s the difference? There is no half magical state, you either can do magic or can’t.
There are multiple mentions that electronics ALLWAYS malfunctions in presence of magic. So that is a new physical law in disguise. An especially interesting one that interacts with certain intelligence (like mind reading of the user, by the user of other users, memory extraction and manifestation in sentient beings).
Sentient Electromagimagnetic field confirmed?
Or that can be a bullshit by uninformed wizards with superiority complex, they have like 5 years of mandatory education. And most don’t interact with anyone but magical people in their enclaves.
And are getting mamed and inbred out of tradition in a school designed to teach them survival skills in a world the muggles already made their own.
Magic could operate differently from electromagnetism, but still interfere, such as with quantum effects. Inference doesn’t need to go both ways.
I thought about writing a magic setting with fairly hard justification for magic, and in my world, you’d control individual atoms and combine them to get the effects you want. You’d do this by gaining the respect of or instilling fear into atoms so they’d do your bidding. Spoken spells are more like tricks taught to dogs than having any power of their own, and the power derives from the respect or fear the atoms have for the caster. This explains why some wizards/witches are more powerful than others, and why learning isn’t necessarily the best way to get more powerful. The strongest magic users in my world spend a lot of time meditating, meaning communing with the target group of atoms.
The inner workings of atoms is poorly understood, so I think there’s room to insert some form of sentience.
Getting your magical SI units right could help you balance the powers. I like the idea of “Respecto Atomum”
How much respect is needed for no more movement at all (0°K) in 1m^3?
If magic interferes and influences electricity, which means it can be measured, analyzed and manipulated as a new form of energy.
Unless it does so unpredictably / always exactly the way you don’t want it to. It’s magic after all.
If some wizards of quantum mechanics can write math for… whatever quantum mechanics is… I think there could be a way or two, to manipulate magic by science.
Disagree. My kids love Harry Potter.
If magic interferes and influences electricity, which means it can be measured, analyzed and manipulated
…that would also be true if it didn’t interact with electricity.
HPMOR does a great job of making Harry Potter’s world rational and believable
This is why we invented the Internet
My spouse has been relistening to the books on tape recently and so I have been hearing it by proxy.
The narrators really put in the work to make some flimsy writing seem engaging. Like in one of the later books there’s this significant scene where some evil magic makes an evil visage of Hermione. In the subsequent chronological scene the real Hermione is super angry at Ron and not once does the writing reference or make a connection with any of the imagery between the two.
Eh, read Diana Wynne Jones instead.
