/lit/ - Literature

[Anonymous No.1602006]

>yfw you realize Harry Potter used to be your favorite book

[Anonymous No.1602009]

No it's still my favorite. In a sentimental way, yeah, but my favorite. Either that or Wheel of Time.

Important to remember the difference between 'favorite' and 'best'.

[Arcueid Brunestud !ARCIkc4cG6 No.1602011]

>mfw you thought it wasn't still one of my favorite books

[Cerebrate Anon No.1602013]

Actually, while I enjoyed them, I was always disappointed in her writing style and Harry's inability to deal with his shit.

Main characters being unable to deal with their shit is something that bugs me in longer narratives.

[Anonymous No.1602012]

>>1602006
I've never read it, I only read when I was a small boy and an 18 year old.

[Arcueid Brunestud !ARCIkc4cG6 No.1602033]

>>1602013

>Actually, while I enjoyed them, I was always disappointed in her writing style and Harry's inability to deal with his shit.

I apologize for nothing, least of all Potter, but he's a child. Children are, usually, unable to deal with shit. It would have been massively OOC if he was to man the fuck up at twelve or eleven or thirteen[god forbid] and just go kill Voldemort for good, or whatever you felt he could've done, instead of moping around, crying about his DEAAAAAAAD parents.

[Anonymous No.1602037]

>>1602013
>Harry's inability to deal with his shit

He was abused constantly for the first half of his life, im surprised he isnt an utterly socially inept/a twisted asshole. Ron and hermione should have their work cut out keeping him from stabbing neville in the face

[Anonymous No.1602051]

>mfw everyone is making a big deal about angst when 5th book

seriously, less than 10 lines of dialogue ruined a book for you?

[Anonymous No.1602053]

>>1602033
I think the problem is - and I say this with all love and affection for fantasy and its fans - but there's frequently a thing in fantasy and to a lesser extent science fiction where what readers really want to see is badass things, they want to see competent or more than competent people doing things that are awesome and remarkable. They don't want to see people fail; they're okay with people having emotional problems but only if they get over them quickly. It's a problem for the genre where people don't seem to really want complexity. Witness Wheel of Time, where one of the things that people hate on the series for is the amount of time that Rand spends moping - of course, he's a teenager who suddenly becomes the most powerful man in the world, is fated to die, and is literally going insane, so what do you expect? But fantasy readers don't want realism, they want Rand doing awesome shit and cutting Trolloc's balls off. I think it might go back to the extent that fantasy heroes tend to be reader identification figures but I'm not sure.

And again I say this with all love and affection because I am a fantasy fan and I understand the urge.

[Anonymous No.1602060]

>>1602037
He whined constantly for the first half of his life, he wasn't abused at all.

[Anonymous No.1602067]

>>1602060
whaaaaaaaaaaaaaat the fuck are you eventalking about. way to blame the victim, son. he was clearly abused (if not physically, then certainly in every other way possible) and "he whined constantly" does not even make sense.

[Cerebrate Anon No.1602069]

>>1602033
>>1602037
You kidding? After the second book, he should've been either A) too PTSD to walk or B) the most capable badass 12-year-old to have ever lived, wearing a necklace of Voldemort-plot-related enemies' ears and attaching a Bowie knife to his wand.

Being a sort of whiny kid isn't an option in this arena.

[Anonymous No.1602072]

>>1602060
>lives in a closet
>finds joy in receiving table scraps

[Arcueid Brunestud !ARCIkc4cG6 No.1602079]

>>1602072

SPIDERS EVERYWHERE, dudley beating him up, Vernon threatening him, Petunia working him like a slave...

[Anonymous No.1602080]

>>1602069
>Being a sort of whiny kid isn't an option in this arena.

why not. why are those the only two options. why does he have to be a ridiculous badass. was he even particularly whiny or are you reading him that way because he's not a typical ridiculous badass protagonist. sincerely yours, anon.

[Anonymous No.1602084]

>>1602072
>>1602067
>according to Harry
Which is more likely, that he was horrendously abused and nobody did shit about it, or he was a unappreciative brat that thought he could do better? He takes to the high life like a duck to water.

[Anonymous No.1602090]

>>1602084
yase no one is ever abused, harry's just a whiny liar who wants attention, god damned brat. now draco on the other hand deserves our sympathy because of his clearly abusive upbringing. peace yall

[Cerebrate Anon No.1602093]

>>1602080
Because you don't deal with 10 years of physical and emotional abuse, followed by constant ridiculous threats to your person from every direction by being a relatively normal kid.

That doesn't happen. Psychologically, he's basically got the options of going into a fugue state and being a broken shell of a boy, or becoming...well, Mad-Eye.

Seriously, this kid's gone through shit that would stagger the most iron-willed war veterans, and he's not even a teenager, yet. I would honestly have accepted him having a ridiculous breakdown in the fourth book and using Avada Kadavra on Death Eaters.

I mean, shit, he used both of the other Unforgivable Curses and got away with it. Why the hell not?

[Anonymous No.1602106]

>>1602009

WoT is still my favorite... but it isn't very good.

[Anonymous No.1602108]

>>1602093
His existence isn't that threatened though? His first year at Hogwarts is pretty relaxed until the very end; he's in danger for a very brief time and then immediately gets sent to the hospital room. His second year there's somewhat more danger but the whole school is in the same danger until the end at the episode with the basilisk. I agree that he did go through some shit but I don't see why that means he has to either go crazy (and be awesome) or just be awesome. I don't see how that precludes him from being a basically normal kid - one with some issues, yes, which do come out in the later books - but a basically normal kid. Uncommonly brave but it's a fantasy book.

Like, I'm not sure where your insistence that he MUST be badass comes from.

[Cerebrate Anon No.1602110]

>>1602106
Hey, the new books are ramping up the badassery.

Egwene's got all her shit together, now. Rand's working on it. Lan's raising an army. Mordeth/Fain/Ordieth is...loitering in the Blight?

[Anonymous No.1602109]

>>1602090
Well, abused kids get like beaten, need counselling, get raped etc. He was abused in the sense young teens think they are when they threaten to phone child line when they can't have their way. Which I suppose appeals to the demographic.

tl;dr Growing up with hardship =! abuse.

[Anonymous No.1602112]

>>1602090
The whole House system seems pretty questionable, if youre soring all these kids straight into Awesome, Mediocre, Mediocre, Evil. Way to promote cohesion in wizarding society Hogwarts

[Anonymous No.1602113]

>>1602106
I don't really want to get into a long argument but I think they're pretty good for fantasy. But not without their flaws!

>>1602110
lol. Request: Please read >>1602053

let me know what you think because you seem bent on confirming my theory

[Cerebrate Anon No.1602116]

>>1602108
I'm not saying that he must be badass. I'm saying that, after 10 years of blatant abuse, one of his teachers going crazy and having a mutant unicorn-eating reincarnated Magic Hitler on the back of his head, then a year of believing that he might be subconsciously murdering people with a basilisk only to find that his best friend's sister is possessed by Magic Hitler through a book she found and having to fight seventy-foot-long magic snake ought to have screwed with him more than it did.

Badassery may come out (like Mad-Eye), but he genuinely should have been messed the fuck up. Trust issues like you wouldn't believe. Paranoia. Possibly aversions to enclosed spaces. Flinching whenever people make sudden movements.

All he ends up getting is...I dunno, being kind of pissy with his friends in later books? Running off to play hero when he thinks his only family's life is in danger? He drew pretty damn lightly from the PTSD pool.

[Anonymous No.1602119]

>>1602116
>you are know aware this indicates Harry is an emotionless psychopath

[Anonymous No.1602123]

>>1602112
Well yeah. Nothing in Harry Potter makes sense if you think about it for more than five minutes. The Golden Rule...

I particularly didn't like the seeming link between house and morality. Fucked up shit.

[Cerebrate Anon No.1602126]

>>1602113
Part of the thing I like about WoT is that people have to deal with their shit. Perrin's spent 12 books now dealing with the fact that he can talk to wolves, and I liked it all. Personally, I thought Rand's claustophobia was an amazing addition to the character.

The truth is, though, that this is a series about a messiah doing monumental things to defeat an evil that predates reality itself. You can't have that without a certain amount of disregard for your problems in the face of multiversal-level threats.

For every thing there is a season.

[Anonymous No.1602130]

>>1602109
so living in a cuboard, being constantly ignored and belittled when youre not, fed on a diet of leftovers and then beaten and raped by the dominant fat kid and his friends =/= abuse or trauma?

[Arcueid Brunestud !ARCIkc4cG6 No.1602133]

>>1602130

Boys will be boys. Little Dudders was just playing with Harry!

[Anonymous No.1602135]

didnt even like the movies

[Cerebrate Anon No.1602138]

>>1602123
>>1602112
I always thought she missed the boat on that one.

Make Harry a Slitherin. Make him show that ambition and evil don't go hand in hand. Make it a story of redemption, with Harry going so far as to be friends with Gryphindors (Ron, Hermione, etc), thus fostering inter-House cooperation.

At the end, instead of being a disgraced House-in-exile, Slitherin is recognized as a genuine part of the Wizarding community, with just as much potential for good or evil as anybody else.

[Arcueid Brunestud !ARCIkc4cG6 No.1602142]

>>1602138

Bam, you just wrote some awesome HP fanfic. The Sorting hat even told him he should have been in Slytherin, it's so fucking perfect.

[Anonymous No.1602143]

Having to live in a small room, eat food you rather wouldn't and feeling like you're being ignored because your foster parents have to make ends meet makes no such thing.

If he was being abused, why does no one do anything about it? Maybe because it wasn't happening, and what you're really getting is the perspective of an angry, confused orphan becoming a teenager/adult.

[Cerebrate Anon No.1602149]

>>1602142
I've thought about this, actually.

All you have to do to make it work is have Harry drop his ticket, so that he meets Draco before Ron. Draco honestly extended his hand in friendship at the start, and Harry only rejected it because he was a dick to Ron. If those circumstances changed, he would have been hearing "Slitherin's the best. All the greatest wizards are from there" instead of "Slitherin's terrible. All the dark wizards come from there."

He would have WANTED Slitherin.

[Anonymous No.1602151]

>>1602149
Yeah also Draco should wear leather pants because he's so HOT and totally not a bad guy at all

[Anonymous No.1602153]

>>1602130
>beaten and raped by the dominant fat kid and his friends =/= abuse or trauma
Kids will fight, but rape doesn't happen, except arguably Umbridge with the Centaurs.

[Anonymous No.1602158]

>>1602143
His foster parents are very obviously a comfortable, middle class family. They don't have to worry about money. As note Vernon's good job, the quantity of presents they get Dudley, and the fact that literally every aspect of their presentation is a broad parody of English middle-class suburban families in the 1980s/1990s. You can't claim that they didn't feed Harry because they were too poor. And he doesn't live in a small room, he lives in a cupboard when there's an empty bedroom in the house. Unless you're claiming that the account in the book is untrue, this doesn't make sense.

[Cerebrate Anon No.1602163]

>>1602158
Don't forget the summer following his first year, where they locked him in a room with bars on the windows, barricaded the door, fed him with scraps through a cat-flap under the door, and never spoke to him.

No human contact at all except to be walked to the bathroom once a day by his uncle.

[Anonymous No.1602164]

>>1602143

everyone who has responded to this has been trolled including I

[Anonymous No.1602168]

>>1602158
>you are now aware this is Harry's fantasy
Also, claiming that Harry didn't always get his way, didn't always get the food he wanted and so claims that they didn't feed him. Also, a small room magically becomes a cupboard. The presents they get for their real son, who knows the love of a parent, become so much greater, because Harry can never know this.

They're middle class, but living in the suburbs around London. House prices and living costs are rising rapidly. They have two children to feed and bills to pay.

[Anonymous No.1602173]

>>1602168

Also Ash is in a coma ever since the spearows attacked

[Cerebrate Anon No.1602174]

>>1602168
If memory serves, wasn't he home-schooled because they didn't trust him not to make friends and be magic?

[Anonymous No.1602176]

>>1602168
This is in the late 80s/early 90s, not today. Economic boom time, baby, times was good. Seriously, like, do your insane reading or troll or w/e. I find it interesting talking about this. The Dursleys were clearly well-to-do middle class, the whole atmosphere of the neighborhood and the family indicates this. They were never worried about money. Maybe they were in your crazy dreamworld but I'm not really interested about that.

[Anonymous No.1602182]

>>1602053
Then you'd just love to read some "Walker, Texas Ranger" biased novel.

[Anonymous No.1602190]

>mfw when I was 13 and preferred Forgotten Realms to Harry Potter because I thought Harry Potter was childish and poorly written.

[Anonymous No.1602195]

>>1602176
The economic boom time and the selling of council houses cause massive increases in house prices and living costs. Look at them in the 80s, 90s, and you will see insane differences. Now it's relatively stab

Why doesn't he protest more about going back if it's so bad? Why does he go back when there are suddenly so many options open for him? Makes no sense y'all! The insane reading is from whoever claimed rape.

[Anonymous No.1602197]

>>1602093
>I would honestly have accepted him having a ridiculous breakdown in the fourth book and using Avada Kadavra on Death Eaters.
>>1602138
>Make Harry a Slitherin. Make him show that ambition and evil don't go hand in hand. Make it a story of redemption, with Harry going so far as to be friends with Gryphindors (Ron, Hermione, etc), thus fostering inter-House cooperation.

>At the end, instead of being a disgraced House-in-exile, Slitherin is recognized as a genuine part of the Wizarding community, with just as much potential for good or evil as anybody else.

You two. Take my money. PLEASE!

>>1602112
>if youre sorting all these kids straight into "I've got balls of steel", "Evil", "Mediocre", and "120 IQ"

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fXF4JuA6tcg

Also obligatory.

[Anonymous No.1602199]

>>1602173
That also works, but the alternative (taking the events at face value) also makes sense. With HP, taking what happens at face value makes no sense.

[Cerebrate Anon No.1602201]

>>1602197
Here's the part where you shit bricks: Look at the names on those posts.

[Anonymous No.1602207]

>>1602201
By the way this is in response to something upthread but making Draco into a good guy requires basically ignoring everything that Draco does

[Anonymous No.1602219]

>implying I read more than half of the first book
>implying I even read much when I was a kid
>implying I don't read upwards of 4 novels a week now
>implying ANY of them suck.

[Anonymous No.1602227]

>>1602201
Heh, I'm impressed.

>>1602207
I'll agree with you there. Even if Harry met Draco first, he still would've probably disowned him a bit later when he realized he was a bit of a dick.

You could redesign Harry and make him also a Slitherin dickhead who becomes best friends with Draco, troll Hermione and the Weasleys, and then finds out about the whole prophecy to defeat Voldemort. Seeking glory for himself, he kills the only other contender for the prophecy(Neville), and seeks to become the most powerful wizard in the world. Basically, in year 4, instead of doing Dumbledore's Army, he does an army of students that will overthrow Voldemort and become the new Dark Lord.

Just something I came up with on the top of my head, so it probably sounds like shit.

[Cerebrate Anon No.1602228]

>>1602207
Well, you have two options, here.

Option 1 - Harry in House Slitherin has a profound effect on Malfoy. Harry's Muggle-heavy background makes Draco rethink his Magic Nazi beliefs, and he comes to several crossroads where he has to decide whether to accept the bigotry of his upbringing or broaden his horizons to accept other viewpoints so that he can keep his closest friend. In the end, Draco is the perfect example of the restorative effect Harry has on House Slitherin, going from wealthy decadence and bigotry to a genuinely accepting person.

Option 2 - Harry and Draco split House Slitherin. Half of them side with Harry's glorious path to redemption, and the other half doggedly resist his reformation. In the last book, when McGonagall declares that House Slitherin must choose a side, they finally expel the Magic Nazis and are welcomed back into the School as equal partners, as it was meant to be from the beginning.

[♥onionring♥ !Rrxa7zePwI No.1602239]

>mfw harry potter is pretty good

[Anonymous No.1602246]

>>1602239

I fell in love with that girl's accent during the olympics.

[Anonymous No.1602251]

>yfw you realize Harry Potter used to be your favorite book

>mfw I was never such a gigantic tool

[Deep&Edgy !pSkjEcB9sQ No.1602255]

I read the 1st and 3rd wheni was like 11 and that was it

[Anonymous No.1602278]

>>1602072
Harry did have a tough life, as this guy pointed out.

The problem I have with this is that his step parents have zero reason to be such dicks towards him. Its clear that Harry's life is only hard because Rowling can't think of any other way for Harry to be sympathetic character.

Want Harry to be more sympathetic? Make his step parents even bigger assholes! It's just really ham fisted characterization.

[Anonymous No.1602283]

I think I was too old by the time they came out. I never heard of it before the movies.

[Anonymous No.1602287]

I used to like the series back when I was 13.

[Anonymous No.1602301]

I was working at Crown Books (now defunct) when Harry Potter first came out. Working at a bookstore, you get to see the type of people who come in and buy a book, so you develop a certain... prejudice towards certain titles.

Harry Potter wasn't the worst, but it was bad enough that I swore I would never read it. I never have, and it was never my favorite book.

[Anonymous No.1602328]

>>1602255
oh shit, you're a little bit younger than I thought

[Anonymous No.1602337]

>mfw Bartimaeus Trilogy up in this shit

[Delta as fuck !DBMWzTh8IU No.1602386]

>>1602337
>>1602337
Holy shit they were awesome. That and the Abhorsen trilogy were the shit

[Copernicious !y0vra1p.9c No.1602391]

>>1602337
Only read the first; thought the universe and the plot were kind of silly.
I liked the deal with the footnotes, though. Works well with complicated fantasy.

[Anonymous No.1602392]

>>1602301

Care to make a rank of the worst reading audiences?

[Anonymous No.1603314]

My first favorite chapter book was Robinson Crusoe.

It remained so for years until I read Crime & Punishment. Then I stopped caring for "favorites" and just read.

tl;dr: OP fails