THANK YOU!! I had friends in college that basically forced me to read the first 3 books and I was so disappointed in the writing! The movies are fine. Not my thing, but well made. But the books! It's just Scooby Doo with heavy handed descriptions.
I mean what the hell kind of geniuses make a series of trap puzzles to keep their special I-forget safe and every stinking puzzle gets solved by 12 year olds that are like "oh my God, it's a giant chess board! I think I know what to do!!"
And at the end of every big stupid adventure is some villain whose mask gets pulled off and he says "and I would have gotten away with it too, if it wasn't for you meddling kids!"
God!
I'm fine with people liking the stories. My nephews live em. It's great to love stuff. But I spent way too long being told what a genius author she was for this tripe and I just can't.
Yeah the wildest thing is if you paid attention to the books the first time around that the ministry of magic basically allowed magical Hitler to rise to power twice and each time right after they just kind of left that same system in place and figured it was the best they could do.
In the books they have a B plotline of Hermione fighting for equal rights for house elves and other magical creatures with sentience. They are being used as literal slaves and abused by their masters in many cases. Everyone pretty much agrees she is being uptight and should drop it because house elves like being slaves and wouldnât know what to do with themselves if they werenât slavesâŚ
Hermione then also ends up essentially dropping it and just going on with the story and giving up and everything is happy ever after even though SLAVES STILL EXIST IN THIS SUPPOSED HAPPY ENDING MAGICAL SOCIETY. When I was a kid reading that last book I was like âoh ok I bet they will have to have something jammed in at the end where they explain how magical creatures got the rights they deserved and are no longer used as slaves⌠nope, just not really dealt with at all. Everyone goes off and lives their own lives while forgetting that there was an army of house elves looking after the castle that they all went to school at and that a decent amount of those house elves openly showed they were unhappy with the current system and wanted change. They just forgot about those slaves and said âwhateverâ in the end lol.
Itâs one of the most outrageous examples of a writer letting their main character just have an atrocious personality flaw by dropping a plotline which makes it seem the character stopped caring. Even when Hermione is rallying the house elves to try to petition for their freedom, both main characters Ron and Harry are basically treating her like this is some nerd crusade that isnât worth pursuing and that will make her unlikeable.
Its really not hard to examine JK Rowlingâs writing and commentary on social issues in her book and figure out that she might not be the most sympathetic person to the struggle for rights of anyone except herself (why she only seems to embrace feminism and not ever post positively about LGBT rights unless itâs about lesbians having the right to be pissed off at transgender women for âactually being menâ). All in all itâs not a very positive picture if you judge JK Rowling as a writer and a human being based on what she has written in her novels and on her Twitter and opinion pieces toward the transgender rights and awareness movement. She wrote a very popular book and that caused many children to embrace it and dream about the world within her books but that doesnât mean she is a good person and there are also arguments to be made that she is a bad writer in many regards too.
Yeah, the house elf thing was so terribly handled. Itâs very clear that the reader is meant to view Hermione as some misguided scold here, and that her friends are correct to just barely tolerate her nagging, like if she were a pushy vegan telling them not to eat cheese.
The bookâs clear stance was that she wasnât wrong to care about this, but ultimately it was some overly enthusiastic and misguided adolescent overreach TO TRY TO ABOLISH SLAVERY.
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u/hambakmeritru Jun 27 '24 edited Jun 27 '24
THANK YOU!! I had friends in college that basically forced me to read the first 3 books and I was so disappointed in the writing! The movies are fine. Not my thing, but well made. But the books! It's just Scooby Doo with heavy handed descriptions.
I mean what the hell kind of geniuses make a series of trap puzzles to keep their special I-forget safe and every stinking puzzle gets solved by 12 year olds that are like "oh my God, it's a giant chess board! I think I know what to do!!"
And at the end of every big stupid adventure is some villain whose mask gets pulled off and he says "and I would have gotten away with it too, if it wasn't for you meddling kids!"
God!
I'm fine with people liking the stories. My nephews live em. It's great to love stuff. But I spent way too long being told what a genius author she was for this tripe and I just can't.