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#forgive typos my eyes are itchy I should be sleeping now
nowlander · 1 year
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What is your overall opinion on the Harry Potter book series? TBH I feel like the series was random and unnecessary cruel at times, Snape was a better written part of the series, probably because he was based of a real person
I understand what you mean by random. It was originally conceived as generic children media, in fact reminds me a lot of 90s made-to-television movies, like 1998 Madeline, or 1996 Clubhouse detectives, none of them supposed to be taken too seriously, so neither author or editors concerned with creating a diegesis that actually made sense, what for?
It was only later that they decided to try and sell it as a more serious saga, but the tone was already set and several details just didn't add up. It's clear that little historical research was made and the series has quite a few anachronisms.
I totally agree it was unnecessarily cruel often times. Plot-wise, and character development-wise, is very lazy that Harry has to stay with the Dursleys and that they never get better. I suspect that Rowling thought it had to be that way because in classics like Matilda or A little princess, the kids don't get away from their abusive environments until the very end, and I mean, the Dursleys are just a Wormwoods ripoff.
The house elves! 😡 Slavery apologism! I always hated it. People have acused me of making that up, that "of course I didn't care that much as a kid". I did. I don't know what kind of children these people were, but I actually was taught that slavery was evil. I also didn't like pokemon by the way, with pokemon existing just to serve humans and them unremorsefully having them get hurt. I prefered digimon frontier, with the kids transforming and battling by themselves, thank you very much.
Hagrid attacking Dudley to punish Vernon, Harry's violent attack to Malfoy in Prisoner of azkaban, Harry constantly ditching Neville and literally being embarrassed to even be seen around him (thought of course that is regular teenage behavior), "Moody" abusing Malfoy... It's as if being one of the good guys™ grantes you right to be nasty and it was magically funny when bad guys™ were tretaed unjustly. Unjustly, I reiterate because I don't oppose Malfoy, Dudley or Vernon getting consequences for what they did, but random low blows isn't that. I would feel different if it had been sone isolated incident, but it's actually a pattern.
Dumbledore's clear favoritism to Gryffindor/"subtle" despise for the other houses (especially slytherin). Dumbledore going from affectionate to completely withdrowing, leaving Harry needy, confused and thinkig he had done something, was emotional abuse. I personally think he might have been similar with Hagrid, who admires him in a way I find borderline unhealthy. Quite the father figure, Dumbledore.
Having said that (and I honestly have more to say about it) I fell in love with the series when I was little and it was HUGE part of my life and my family. I don't know if I'll ever outgrow it, even as I find more and more details that irk me 🤷🏻‍♀️
Snape is in fact my favorite characater (and was so since Philisopher's stone). More than being based on actual person -after all, all characters must have some thing or abither from real people and even Rowling herself, as much as we fight it, we really can't create from nothing; every mask is a self portrait, and I think every writing has the author's desires, fears and memories weved in the characters, settings and themes, even if the author is not aware.-- the reason I think Snape is well written is that he wasn't created neither a good guy™ nor a bad guy™, so with him more than anyone else did jkr allowed herself to create a human . She possibly didn't even get there on purpose! I've read that Tolstoi started Anna Karenina intending to mock feminist ideas, but inadvertly got himself convinced by his own character's arguments, when he had created her what he believed to be stubborn and clueless of the real world. By not trying to make Snape perfect and not trying to make him perfectly evil, she managed to dive in a complex story that she maybe didn't plan, of a victim of abuse released to the world, eager to go from abused to abuser, but who ultimately got to know the better parts of humanity, like friendship and compassion.
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