Zero consistency to magic systems. I get it, having all sorts of spells in the story is fun and gives a lot of creative ways to make fights more interesting, but…

• If teleportation magic exists, why don’t people who own it teleport everywhere?

• If time travel magic exists, why isn’t everyone doing everything in their power to get it and use it? Looking at you, harry potter.

• The villains usually have spells that are supposed to be ultra powerful and can kill anyone quickly but somehow it doesn’t work against main characters and there’s no excuse for why fights drag on for so long. Imagine seeing the villain introduced by vaporizing someone but never seeing them do it again.

• Main character(s) breaking the rules of magic just because…

I’m a fan of stories like Avatar the last airbender or Witch Hat Atelier because their magic is very consistent. It makes things way more interesting when a character can’t just pull something out of their ass to save them in the middle of a fight.

Shoutout to every story that alludes to the fact that mages can run out of mana but is insanely inconsistent how and when it happens. Sometimes they spam spells for hours and sometimes it’s just “Oh no, I can’t use [spell] anymore because… Um… The plot says I can’t!”

Harry Potter was the worst culprit for a lot of these. The author was just writing a fun story that she threw together wildly. She didn’t care about consistency in magic… which is the UNDERLYING PREMISE OF THE ENTIRE STORY. But, cool it’s a Coming Of Age story with a mix of the Hero’s Journey in there, and a few odds and ends from other stories and mediums. There’s enough fun to suspend disbelief… but, upon further inspection you wish you just hadn’t inspected further.

I can give the first half of Harry Potter a slack because it’s pretty laid back and whimsical. As soon as it tries to take itself seriously it kind of falls apart for me. God, deathly hallows sucked.

I stopped reading after the 4th book at release. Never really had interest in picking up the next couple of books.

When my interest in “well, might as well give it a go again” started back up, JKR started to go insane and now I don’t want to have anything to do with the series anymore

I was reading the books religiously through middle and high school, as the movies were coming out… but, the movies finally caught up with the books for me, for some reason I didn’t get around to reading the last one before the movie. Anyway, I’ve NEVER gotten back to it. I’ve tried, but the magic is gone. The author is outspokenly uninclusive while her books, the original world she built, is all about inclusivity. I can’t fathom how separate and different her works are from her blatant bigotry. Fucking. What.