/lit/ - Literature

>>15812661
>>15812661
It's not bad for a kids book, or at least the first few aren't, but the fans are insufferable manchildren.

The movies and books are unspeakably wonderful. It is unfortunate that it all gets a bit convoluted and silly in the final two books, but it is still a remarkable literary achievements. Edgelords may tell you otherwise.

>>15812766
>final two books
The fifth book was the worst tho

>>15812661
I really like it.

>>15812801
filtered

>>15812661
It was bad because it made every adolescent into a manchild who cherishes a fantasyworld. Previous fantasy novels (e.g. LOTR) carried much more mature and realistic themes of hardship and suffering, not just participation certificates from the Wizardry Department for being a good boy.

>>15812661
The author hate trannies

>>15813213
>>15813213
based time to read hp now

>>15812661
The writing isnt exactly stellar, and the plot is a bit silly, but it is a fine childrens book.
The problem is that it is to childrens books what My Little Pony is to childrens cartoons

>>15812661
The first one is not. It's a comfy adventure in a whimsical world. It only gets bad in later books when Rowling starts fleshing out her world and reveals she is actually pretty shallow, though I can't quite point a single moment where it definitely gets bad.

>>15812661
It isn't.

>>15812661
Fun distraction without any merits beyond fun distractions.

Rowling fails to say anything.

"No"

>>15812661
It isn’t bad though, it’s a perfectly good series of children’s books. The problem is the adults fans who act like it’s the pinnacle of literature.

The pacing is abysmal.

>>15813175
this

>>15814335
That last paragraph hit me pretty hard. Not about my liberalism or anything but of another personal problem. I limit myself too much.

STRETCHED

>>15812661
I only need three words: "stretched his legs"

>>15812661
excellent plot, mediocre execution. Fine for kiddos, not for adults.

>>15814433
>excellent plot
What makes you think this? No one reads it for the plot, they read it for the setting and self-inserting.

>>15812661
Because it tries to grow as 'literature' as its protagonists age. If Rowling had throughout stuck with the same half-fairy tale feel of the first two books then its sins would be less because its aims would've been less. But when it begins masquerading as mature, serious, dark, and whatever words people want to apply to it then it drags down the sensibilities of everyone who, for lack of knowledge otherwise, reads and processes it on those terms.

>>15812661
NIGGA WATCH OUT YOU ABOUT TO GET HIT BY A TRAIN

>>15814478
>Because it tries to grow as 'literature' as its protagonists age. If Rowling had throughout stuck with the same half-fairy tale feel of the first two books then its sins

Not sure if had a good point because this was all I read

>>15812661

>>15814474
Good point, I misspoke.

>>15812661
it isn't, it's good for what it is
the problem is going from letting it hold a place in your heart to stopping at it in your literary evolution

>>15812661
I read some of them as a young teen and can't really complain, I am just fascinated as to why so many adult women absolutely adore the HP series

>>15814335
cringe

>>15812661
>why this series of books is bad
Lets take a different approach to this and ask: 'Why is it good?'

It's a children's book promoting magical thinking, so rejection of responsibility. And it's English English, English English is a corruption of good English. I hate smug Englishmen. I hate em so much.

>>15816836
its entertaining

>>15817361
So is a car crash.

>>15814335
Damn. Liberalism really is a necessary evil.

>>15812661
It's so mundane. It's just typical British boarding school nonsense with a thin layer of 'magic.' So instead of bullies giving you a wedgie by hand, they cast a spell that wedgies you. Wow, so wonderful, bravo Rowling

>>15812661
We didn't know she was so based

>>15814118
I stopped reading this response after the word ‘she’.

>>15812661
It isn't. It's effective at what it does.
The worldbuilding is shallow, but it captures real-world patterns to be casually believable and captivating.

>>15812661
It's not, they're great for the age group they're targeted at, and still enjoyable by adults. The issue is when adults obsess over them

They are good up to and including Prisoner of Azkaban. After that the writing suffers from just another school year lets pack it full of shit. She already knew the plot ending at this stage so just pumped out the last four by including all the usual tropes. It's not a coincidence that the word count exploded for book four onwards, phatter than Hagrid arse. It also introduced the ridiculous love triangles, each character needing some convoluted love interest, and the notion that Harry was some perma virgin when at 14 he should have been tapping every chick at Hogwarts

It's good until book 5. Basically it falls into "chosen one bullshit" after Voldemort returns and it loses all the whimsy the earlier books possessed.

Harry Potter is popular in the west for the same reason the Japanese can't get enough of isekai self-insert stories.

>>15812661
It is not. Just basic. The quality oscilates. I wish people engaged in my boring ass hobby with a little more variety in mind othen than YA bread-and-butter.

>>15813175
Aragorn's tax policy

>>15812801
this

>>15813213
based

>>15820188
don't you mean hog every chick at ... oh i forgot

>>15813175
This is actually true.
Why is it that the deaths in Harry Potter felt so cheap and insignificant?

>>15812661
It's a derivative of the works of better children's fiction writers like Dahl and C.S Lewis. This is especially apparent in the first couple of books and gets worse the farther she gets away from that whimsical style. Even then, the other authors are better. I reread The Magician's Nephew the other day and was pleasantly surprised by how well structured it was. Rowling is really good at pacing but her stories have a very episodic structure which makes them feel like an amalgam of interesting ideas instead of a seamless whole. Consider how well the characters in The Magician's Nephew are "orchestrated" around the main premise of the book and the transformation of its main character all without being overtly preachy. You can read that book to a child and he'll come away with something--a model for how to live, or a moral lesson--that the HP books cannot provide and only later tries to achieve. The HP books are about love obviously, love saves Harry, false love ruins Voldemort's life, unrequited love motivates Snape, guilty love ruins Dumbledore's life, etc. Yet the morality of HP is so ultimately nebulous that it might as well be non-existent and places where it isn't just seem ridiculous and very much something that only a lower class single mother could conceive (clinging onto an unrequited love from high school is good? Harry's mother's love is the only one that can save lives? the final defeat is once again determined by a mother's love?).

>>15812661
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ursula_K._Le_Guin
Its contender.

>>15812661
Ties magic down with enough rules to make it useless, all too make some tired 80's Labour Party manifesto points about how wealth and racism are bad.

>>15814335
Harry being an anti-Voldemort that destroys wizard Britain out of pure spite for being shit on constantly with his merry little gang of autists would've been much more enjoyable than whatever the fuck Cursed Child was.

>>15812661
Anyone know any fanfics that are actually good?

>>15812661
The first book is good, for a kids book of course, i have fond memories of reading it as a child, but after the first book it gets progressively worse and becomes generic dogshit ya fiction.

>>15812661
Doesn't go into any depth. Sets up this grand world and DOES nothing with it. Limited due to being stuck with the gang's perspective the entire time.

>>15812661
Never read the books, but saw 4 or 5 of the movies (can't remember exactly, they all blur together). Got sick of how twee it all was, and the repeating pattern of Voldemort returning in some guise each movie, only to be temporarily defeated at the end.

>>15814149
Harry Potter books inspired the imaginations of an entire generation. There's already merit in that. Kids are supposed to be thinking about knights and wizards without any bigger picture.

Greatest credit they have, is reading difficulty increases with each book, making it a good choice for learners.

>>15821673
>Harry Potter books inspired the imaginations of an entire generation.
It inspired a lot of young women to write gay porn. I'm not seeing the benefit.

Neville Longbottom

>>15812661
>>15813213
You know, I remembered when /lit/ fucking HATED potter with a passion, I came back because I wondered that now that all of 4chan is just unironically /pol/ if /lit/ would suddenly like Potter because rowling hates trans people.

Guess I got my answer.

>>15813175
Nigga LOTR is just a different form of escapism.
Potter is "You are a bit of an awkward nobody but what if you were secretly a super rich and famous magical superstar?" escapism and LOTR is more typical "good always wins over evil" fantasy escapism.
Bot have their pros and cons. If you're into reading endless lyrics to made up songs, lotr is gonna be your jam, if you prefer becoming the number one sportsball player despite having literally never touched a ball then HP is gonna be yours.
If we want to be ciritcal we can invoke R. R. Martins critizism of LotR, sure he loves them (and who doesn't) But shit's so simple. The good folks are good and that's why they reign good and pure and everyone is happy and the bad guys are purely bad and evil because being evil is just what you do as a villain.
At least in Harry Potter the bad guys are not just bad because they are the bad guys, they have an actual belief that they stand for, aka being thinly veiled wizard nazis with wizard hitler being evil because he literally can't feel or understand love.

That's not to say the potter works are some literary masterpiece either, in my personal favourite book they introduce time travel, which while fun at the time opens the entire series up to the question of: "why not fix literally everything with time travel?" to the point that she was forced in a later book to write in an accident that conveniently destroyed the time traveling machinery in existence.

>>15812766
They are nice but I feel like some of the "whimsy" of the books get lost. In the books everyone is wearing robes, everything is a bit weird and wacky. Specially the fact that Wizards can't just grasp the concept of muggle clothing was something I always enjoyed. Every time a Wizard would try to go "undercover" in the normal world, he would wear the most outlandish mish-mash of weird clothes that looked like a toddler tried to dress themselves because they had absolutely no concept of muggle fashion.
That got thrown out in the movies pretty damn quickly, heck in fantastic beasts everyone is wearing smart suits and dressed quite snappy.

>>15812661
It isn't bad so much as over-rated. The first 3 are solid childrens stories. The later 4 are over-long for no real reason, and suffer as a result.

>>15816881
You don't need to call "English English" that. Just call it English, because it is English. You speak American English. Your version is the derivative, and your version gets the prefix.

>>15822393
Okay reddit

>>15822750
>ok site poster doesn't browse
Smoothbrain

>>15812766
I can’t tell if you’re trying to bait really poorly or if you’re a newfag Redditor who actually believes this

>>15822949
Obviously it's bait. Imagine thinking Harry Potter is convoluted kek

It makes one a spiritual boomer. There was a pertinence green text.