Greentext

And now everyone pokes at it like it was ever supposed to be literature, with any serious thought behind it.

terf lady doesn't help herself by incessantly insisting that everything was planned from the very start

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.

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.

"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.

And that's why I bailed around book 5. Around that point I decided I wanted more realism, so I switched to Tom Clancy and JRR Tolkien, and I have been reading more "realistic" fiction ever since.

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.

still exist after the founder basically came out as a racist and want racist rule to be enacted

let me know how the republican party does after novemeber. IF they lose

I think nothing beat the fact Slytherin still exist after the founder basically came out as a racist

That was the most realistic part.

You would think so, but look at the US and some other countries with racists of different kinds wanting to “go back to the good ol’ days” or wanting to push the societal problems to muggles (or immigrants/POC in the case of the US).

It's even simpler than that. The author sets the rules of the world. If those rules change, are ignored, or characters behave in a way that disagrees with the rules the reader's trust is betrayed.

That's why people get a stick up their ass about plot holes. They were told things work a certain way, but characters miss an obvious opportunity or break an already established rule. Lack of effort on the author's part makes the reader feel like their time hasn't been respected.

The idea of a comfy, cozy british castle where you could fulfill your magical dreams and get sorted into a house is an incredibly fun self-insert universe, just like Pokemon, Star Trek, etc.

Which makes her a great children's book author. Her world building did exactly what it was supposed to do: encourage imagination.

Her political/social views and appeal to adult audiences are irrelevant. I think she's a fantastic children's book author because she did the thing that's most important: get kids to read.

By a lady who don't think that deep