"the ones I spied for weeks"
Words hard, apparently.
this post was submitted on 25 May 2025
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I think that's just how British brain rot wording works. They all talk this way. Read some of their news paper headlines.
Great teachers are constantly, and exponentially victims of overbearing administration. School administrators tailor to the worst, most immature parents who (I hope) don't realize they are causing a situation where kids can run rampant and completely ignore their education. We do that because the school administrators aren't there because they like kids or see the value of education. They are there because they have a high paid job that they don't really need to work at if they can placate a small handful of very vocal parents and mostly keep up on paperwork and meetings. Those parents are going to figure out just how shitty they've been when their children get to college... College does not have to give a fuck. We've known this for a while. We keep removing rights from the teachers so that administrators don't have to deal with any harsh situations. That might be specific to Ontario but honestly the sheer amount of people working in education here while people in need get denied access to the MANY programs we have makes me think like they're just ignoring us and then bragging about having summers off and going home at 3pm.
I am not being harsh toward teachers. Quite the opposite. It's those involved in education that have little to no experience in it that are clinging to cushy administrative jobs that I take big issue with.
What was her problem? She was badly-written.
She didn't want to undermine parental rights for, you know, reasons.
This implies that the students are insured in some way and that the legal system of the wizard world recognizes the same legal guardians of the muggle world AND that wizardy insurance companies are okay with students learning dangerous spells that can result in serious injury without guardian's explicit permission, but does not approve of field trips to safe villages without explicit permission. Or that the crazy, racist, homophobic and transphobic J. k is also dumb.
100% this. The Dursleys have zero clue what's happening there, and everyone knows they don't care. These kids get into mortal danger every year and they don't tell the Durselys about that.
Meaning that Rowling probably got screwed out of a field trip when she was 9 because of a lost permission slip, and this is her resentment embodied.
I did wonder why they needed permission from the people forced to let him go in the first place
The doom is not doomed.
Awesome guitar riff starts in the background
In all seriousness, this is what happens when you write novels without doing any world-building and just put down whatever seems "fun". The are sooooo many things in that series that make no sense once they are superceded by later plot devices. Rowling didn't think any of it through ahead of time and gave almost no thought to internal consistency with previous content when she wrote new things.
It's honestly a terrible series in most regards and it's kind of disappointing how popular it became.
Also she a trans-hating bigot. Fuck J.K. Rowling. Can't forget that part whenever discussing her or her work.
This is what I tend to say to people about Harry Potter as a series. It was the first series like it to become popular, and that's its only merit. Overall it's very tame and bland, but it got lucky and became popular. I didn't like it because it was too same-y. After book 3 or so, I don't care about Harry Potter anymore. Explore someone else that's more ordinary. It makes a much better setting for derivative works, which to me as someone who writes textbooks of lore for RPGs is more important than just making a series sell well.
Yeah. There's a fan-fic I read recently (also the only HP fan fic I've read) called "Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality," which is set in an alternate universe in which Harry is raised by perfectly pleasant folks with an understanding of the scientific method, and arrives in the wizarding world and immediately starts deconstructing all the bizarre nonsense going on there. It's very well done, but it's really hard to recommend precisely because it does refer back to a ton of the stuff that's developed in the books, so I had to keep looking up stuff I didn't recall, and I don't really want to devote brain space to that stuff. (Some of the "rationality" stuff has aged a little bit poorly through the replication crisis, too, though I'm a bit more forgiving of that since it talks so much about updating your beliefs.)
But for anyone who did read the books back when and was frustrated at times by the characters behaving so irrationally, it's kinda cathartic in that way. For those who are interested: https://github.com/rrthomas/hpmor
By an author who is also crazy and problematic, though in a very different way than Rowling.
Oh, I didn't know about that, but it isn't hugely surprising.
I guess I should have mentioned this, but there's a lot of stuff in the book that kinda seems like coded libertarian stuff, and it even flirts with pro-authoritarian stuff. It's not a book I would recommend to kids or deeply uncritical people. That's part of why this thread seemed like a safer place to mention it.
Rule of cool supersedes making sense. Yeah there’s a ton of nonsense, but you called it yourself, it’s fun. That’s all that matters.
Fun and atmospheric. Kids love it and that's ok.
The issue I have with this line of reasoning is that there are equally whimsical, better written series that just didn't have good fortune to pop off the way HP did.
It's marketing. And cover art. And simple timing of fads. It sucks. And it funded a horrible person through pure happenstance
Horrible person?
I never met her actually. What's she like in person?
Don't need to meet a person to know they're a horrible person. I know Orban is a horrible person. I know Chris Brown is a horrible person. I know Trump is a horrible person. And I know that anyone who defends them is a horrible person, for ignoring their horrible views and actions.
there are equally whimsical, better written series
Which ones can you recommend? I mean, my reading list is already too long but...
There are some great recommendations in other replies already!
IMO the best YA content right now is actually coming out of Japan (where they're called Light Novels)
Some series worth checking out:
- Re:Zero - Starting Life in Another World from Zero
- Spice & Wolf
- Ascendance of a Bookworm
- World End - What Will You Do at the End of the World? Are You Busy? Will You Save Us?
- Is It Wrong to Try to Pick Up Girls in a Dungeon?
Don't let the titles fool you (especially that last one). A silly title will often lead to a deep and complex story only loosely related to the title.
The first three I named are some of my absolute favorites.
And this is just the fantasy stuff. If you're looking for sci-fi or rom-com, or something a bit heavier/darker, there are plenty more recommendations I can provide :)
If we’re talking ‘young adult’ (which I think is a silly book classification group), the Enchanted Forest Chronicles by Patricia C. Wrede always gets my top pick—shorter, sassy, fun, with well-written female protagonists. (All her books are pretty good, really.)
Another of my top choices in the Fantasy YA category are the Tiffany Aching books by Sir Terry Pratchett. Great fun and Sir Terry’s wonderful brand of biting wisdom.
If you like the ‘kids go to boarding school, have magical adventures, save the world’ formula, Mercedes Lackey did a pretty good series called the Shadow Grail. Although the kids are older (and more sensible) than the Harry Potter protagonists.
The Castle Books by John DeChancie are another fun romp of a series. Younger me loved the idea of a castle filled with 144,000 portals to adventure. Although the technology in it is a bit dated—at this point in time, rather humorously so.
Gail Carriger’s book series are all a good read; my favorite she’s done so far is the Finishing Series. Not as much magic as other books on this list, but still a well-thought-out system. Her books are really more steampunk-fantasy with a sprinkling of magic on top.
China Mievelle doesn’t really write series, per se, but all his books are fun and well-written, with interesting twists and ideas. I’d say they are the very definition of whimsical.
If your requirements are ‘good books by authors as awful as JK Rowling’, well, that’s tougher, but fortunately David and Leigh Eddings decided to throw their hats in the ring! Horrible child abusers, but their writings are genuinely good, way better than what Rowling writes.
Discworld
IMO there isn't a whole lot in the kids/young adult space but The Magicians by Lev Grossman is good (and one of the few cases where the TV show is better than the book)
Not books, but the Misfits and Magic TTRPG show from Dimension 20 is everything that HP isn't. It's fun and whimsical and the characters are lovable and the writing is great and the world building is astounding and it never misses a chance to take the piss at the many problematic aspects of HP it's satirically lampooning. I think the first episode is free on YouTube.
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My theory, the first three/four books were written well enough, but the movies carried the rest of the series. She came really close to game of thronesing it too, but apparently average fans didnt mind the dieing baby voldemort in an all white train station ending.
Books 5-7 were awful in my opinion. I hated Harry through the entire last book, which I can't imagine is intentional.
Book four was great. It was downhill from there as she couldn’t maintain the level. She also couldn’t keep it consistent. However, people were co paring it to literature. It’s kids books.
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Im pretty sure its because they were trying to keep him on campus to keep him safe and used that as a bs excuse and he didn't realize it until later cause he's a kid. Idgaf about Harry Potter, haven't picked up a book in 20 years, but I remember this.
Spot on. Sirius Black escaped an inescapable prison for the sole purpose, it was widely believed, of murdering Harry. The permission slip was just a convenient excuse to keep Harry protected.
RE: idgaf, you're allowed, you know. You can love the art but dislike the artist. Or like the artist if you wish. I'm personally indifferent to Rowling but consider the Harry Potter series to be clever and highly entertaining. I find it much more engaging than The Silmarillion.
Also, people are too eager to cast judgement on each other, and too often forget that people have layers, like onions. Or a parfait. My dad was a Fox News, AM talk radio, Facebook propaganda cult follower whose politics were buggered beyond repair. He occasionally spouted racist or bigoted or otherwise insensitive bullshit. He was also a model father and husband, selfless, generous, kind, soft spoken, and loved by everyone who had ever met him. To know how eager much of the world would be to cancel him for his political beliefs breaks my heart, and I'm grateful he was horrible with technology, well-shielded from the summary judgement of social justice warriors.
She literally funds transphobic hate groups the fuck you mean to egear to cast judgment.
if my parfait or onion has a shit flavored layer in it, I’m throwing the whole thing into the trash
especially if that parfait then uses it’s vast wealth to make more of the world shit flavored
I find it much more engaging than The Silmarillion.
That is understandable. Silmarillion is like a collection of extended footnotes and a cosmology rulebook.
talk about reaching deep to find that strawman
Yes, as there was a killer on the loose, suspected to be super crazy and in the area. In which case, would it be safe for the other kids?
It's not logical whichever way you look at it.
It's because they thought Black was going for retribution on Harry so they probably figured that he was largely laser focused on him. Though he did blow up a bunch of folks in their eyes so that logic doesnt really hold water.
TLDR: Rowling dumb and doesn't even think things through within the same book.
Yes, but they also thought he was a crazy psychopath, on top of blowing people up. So, still not the kid friendly environment that would be suitable, if logic is used.
But they are kids books, so it's not a big deal. However, she's not a genius author. She struck it lucky. Like many, she thinks it's merit based, now that she's a billionaire. And she uses that big brain to trample on the rights of others. If she wasn't a billionaire, she'd be the crazy psychopath she wrote about (who in this case turned out to be a good guy in the books; she wouldn't ).
But as an extra layer, weren't Dumbledore and Co in on Sirius being framed? I thought it was low key known that Sirius "being a bad guy" was just Ministry propaganda or whatever.
His legal guardians do not consent to him even attending the school in the first place, to the extent where he needs to be broken out to attend every year. But no field trip.
He liked a pro trans meme once.
You'd think a woman who can literally transform into an animal would be pro-trans
She would have been if she wasn't written by a massive piece of shit.
looks like the magic world's lawyers were just as bad as their muggle counterparts, tbh.
way worse, in fact, when one reads about all the wizengamot proceedings.
The plot demanded a reason for him to stay behind.
Nearly. The story meant it made sense for him to remain safely at school. The plot had to take that in to consideration.
You and your reasonable explanations! We came here to be mad about the author!
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