return2ozmaThere is no ethical consumption of HBO’s Harry Potter series
LaserI’d pirate it but I find the story just not interesting or worth my time.
I read Philosopher’s Stone about 25 years ago as a teenager and wasn’t impressed. Didn’t read any other because that one already felt like wasted time. Went to a movie in 2007 (no clue which one that was) and again forgettable. Not bad, in fact I still remember Die Hard 4 that I also watched back then because it was so bad. That HP movie? No idea about plot or anything. Another one? Thanks, I’m good.
Even if Rowling wasn’t a disgusting person, I feel like what I’ve seen of her work is just not great. It’s not terrible, but I don’t care for it at all.
But also, she can get fucked.
Hoimo2007 was Order of the Phoenix, which is the most boring and also does not make any sense at all out of context. Strangely enough, that movie was also my first experience with Harry Potter, because a friend invited me to go see it. I did read the books later, which were decent enough, but like all global phenomena, it’s not really about being the best of the best, but being in the right place at the right time.
The fandom was fun though, the discussions on Tumblr, the theories, the fanfics, the comic cons. I never see a wizard robe these days, even though it’s such an easy costume. I think Joanne killed the fandom.
wonderingwandererBehold! I give you: woman.
A featherless biped with egg laying equipment then
atomicorangeJust pluck her
And broad flat nails.
Do I need to pluck the hen? Cause I can pluck the hen.
Technically, chickens are hatched, not born. So not “born with egg-producing equipment”.
Still doesn’t rule out literally every female mammal except for platypi and echidnas…
Also a few rare reptiles and fish that give live birth!
That includes goldfish, doesn’t it?
blitzen
neuracnuRemember: Even piracy doesn’t offer absolution.
These properties rely on popular / universal awareness to achieve network effects and cement themselves within modern culture. When this happens, the memes and concepts from the property worm their way into everyday language (“he who cannot be named”, “10 points for Gryffindor”, etc) and help keep everyone else buying.
The only answer is to treat people talking about Harry Potter as you would someone who keeps talking about the greatness of R Kelly’s music or Bill Cosby’s comedy.
Thank you! It’s been super disheartening to see people get excited about Harry Potter all over again, just as it was to see friends buy the video game a few years back. Many people who want to ostensibly call themselves allies are more than happy to engage in Nostalgia over solidarity.
I read the Harry Potter books as a child. I enjoyed them a normal amount. I think I dressed up as HP for Halloween one year. But then I grew older and I “graduated” to other fantasy, as I would generally expect someone to do.
Now when I think about Harry Potter, I always think of Ursula K Le Guin’s comments:
Q: Nicholas Lezard has written ‘Rowling can type, but Le Guin can write.’ What do you make of this comment in the light of the phenomenal success of the Potter books? I’d like to hear your opinion of JK Rowling’s writing style
UKL: I have no great opinion of it. When so many adult critics were carrying on about the “incredible originality” of the first Harry Potter book, I read it to find out what the fuss was about, and remained somewhat puzzled; it seemed a lively kid’s fantasy crossed with a “school novel”, good fare for its age group, but stylistically ordinary, imaginatively derivative, and ethically rather mean-spirited.
Ursula K Le Guin is a great author! And as far as I understand, a pretty good person, too.
bonenodeI’ve been reading across her catalogue, interspersed with books from Isaac Asimov. I like both but the style is so different and Le Guin is just amazing at the cultural world building parts. Her books on the Ekumen and all the challenges at contacting a different culture, aside from language, are a fantastic read.
I actually got bored at the later Foundation books from Asimov where the main characters are so above everyone else in their abilities, its almost like a teenager wrote it. The first ones are really great though, up to the Gaia revelation.
She was a philosopher who specialized in Daoism, and I like how she incorporated that into her worldbuilding
This reeks of virtue signaling. Let me get this straight, your proposition, rather than holding the author accountable, is to demonize everyone who has ever enjoyed the stories as children?
Dolores Umbridge called, she wants her authoritarian moral policing back.
MediumGrayThat’s really not what they’re saying at all; I get the feeling that you may be taking this too personaly. It’s a reasonable argument that engaging with the cultural phenomenon, even if not financially supporting it directly, still signals support or at least tolerance of the controversies so closely associated with it these days. You may disagree of course but I think calling it “a demonization of everyone who ever enjoyed the series as a child” is a gross misrepresentation of their position. It is, at most, a condemnation of those who would continue engaging with it since then. (And, ironically, likening them to Dolores Umbridge is engaging in the very type of cultural normalization that they were arguing against. Although if you disagree with them I don’t suppose you’d feel that matters anyway.) Anyhow, that’s enough arguing on someone else’s behalf for me today. I just can’t stand seeing arguments misrepresented like that.
ImADifferentBirdWhat makes you think they’re not holding the author accountable?
And the fans should be held accountable. Without the money and the cultural clout you give her, she would be nothing. She would be unable to act upon her genocidal fantasies against trans people. You enable her not only with every cent you spend on her franchise, but with every comment like this you post
The only ethical consumption of the original Harry Potter Movies is to watch it with the gleefully unauthorized Wizard People Dear Reader soundtrack/overdub.
Anyway, we were at a bar and were getting a good laugh at a guy who was playing pool all by himself while wearing a hoody over his hat, sunglasses under that and headphones on the outside of all of it. So we started riffing on “What could he possibly be listening to?”. Someone who I don’t think was me said that he was listening to a book on tape of Harry Potter. And out came the Wizard People narrator. I joked that night that I was going to rush home and record an entire misinformed book on tape of The Sorcerer’s Stone, because I had not and have not ever read any Harry Potter books. Once I started making notes for it I realized that an audio track alone could get boring, so I decided to sync it with the movie. Then I took a week or two and made the damn thing. I love it.
Chloé 🥕I’m so over HP. It was a popular book decades ago. I’m 41 (5 years older than the first HP actor) and I remember the “controversy” over the fourth book being so much longer than the others. I’ve read many other books since then that were better.
If you want grown up magic school stories check out The Magicians. One of the rare cases where the show is better than the books.
I’m a massive fan of the audiobook versions of the Magicians series, which I consider to be among the best narration performances from the hundreds of audiobooks I’ve listened to. I gave up on the tv series halfway through episode 1. Should I give it another shot?
It’s different, it’s more of an ensemble show whereas the books are more Quentins story. It got a bit silly towards the end but it was still a fun watch. I suggested it to my BF (huge Buffy fan, mild HP fan) he binged the whole thing in a week.
Sometimes you bounce off shows the first time. It isn’t a faithful retelling of the books but it’s got most of the major notes.
Thanks!
The Magicians is a book series!?
No this series deserves to be boycotted simply because he refuses to finish it. Authors should never ever start a series that requires an ending if they haven’t already sketched out that ending.
underiskI mean, in this case there’s quite a few reasons to avoid it. The charity scam for one, and the second book being almost total dog shit that basically rehashes the first book.
spoilerHope you like cringey self insert fantasy erotica where a virgin sexes a fae sex goddess so well he fully comprehends her entire existence then metaphysically dominates her.
If you want good fantasy read the First Law series or hell even The Wandering Inn
I’ve always found Harry Potter universe to be quite campy. But I also never got into Lord of the Rings and thought Game of Thrones was awful so my opinion on television media may not be average or popular.
Lord of the Rings is second to none. The amount of development that went into it is staggering. It’s as grand and epic as any of the ancient works of mythology, and that’s what it was intended to be.
Yeah I get it and I dont deny that.
Having never read the books though, I find the movies to be somewhat difficult to follow and with the exception (probably) of the first movie, I simply dont find them memorable or ranked high in my own mind as something I want to re watch.
I highly recommend the books, if you can find time to read. I know a lot of people have trouble settling down to read these days (myself included). I wish I read more!
Time to read yes
For me its the attention amd focused I’ve got time, just not tje attention and motivation (I fantasize but procrastinate)
I have been the 3rd or 4th dune book for about a year now (I have been on the last 50 pages or so for probably 6 montjs)
I have resd the first half or so of Don Quixote about 3 times
I habe now started to read Herodotus Histories for the 2nd time (didn’t finish last time stopped around half way thru Book 2)
And I made the (fortuitous?) mistake of starting Hitch hikers Guide to the galaxy twice now and I did really enjoy it right off the bat, so that one might rise to the top of the list lol
I have also begun reading Amadis of Gaul due to interest in Medeival Chicalry novels and I’ve yet to finish King Arthur (Mark Twain) whereat I only have maybe 100pgs left. (Not a good book, TBH but it gives some background to Quixote as does Amadis of Gaul
LOTR is definitely also in this ridiculous list of want to reads. As is
Divine Comedy Aeneid Decameron Pilgrims Progress Infinite Jest Grapes of Wrath Something by Ishiguro Metamorphosis etc etc etc
I should make a post about this so.I can properly.vent instead of ‘hijacking comments’
The story in the movie was good but lacked the ethereal fae quality and a lot of the quiet beauty in the book.
I’ve thought for a while that Tolkien was a great world builder but a meh storyteller. His big thing was breaking that new ground. Not that I would do any better, but many other authors since have.
Rowling doesn’t have the breaking new ground. I don’t get why her shit got so popular in the first place. I lost interest when the first movie was basically going down a list of pre-Tolkien fantasy tropes like it was a checklist.
I couldn’t get through Tolkien. I tried reading the Hobbit but gave up when it started talking about blue beards and gold belts. It felt too arbitrary to hold my interest.
But the LotR movies are needlessly slow. It’s Peter Jackson’s directing style, which only works in that very specific context where a large portion of the audience is ready to fill in the blank spaces, and the rest of the audience forgives it because they expect it to be a rambling epic.
Every shot is one second too long. You could cut an hour from the runtime just by cutting out the lingering reaction shots. Every time Sam or Frodo says something, it’s followed by two seconds of them staring longingly into each other’s eyes. There are so many things to love about those movies, but they’re basically unwatchable to me.
As for Rowling, I think he success is mostly due to accessibility. They’re easy reads in a way that fantasy books almost never are. The reader doesn’t have to put in any work to get to the world building.
She follows a classical plot structure. She establishes motifs early and only subverts them when subverting them becomes the obvious choice. There are many blue beard/gold belt moments, but they’re propped up by easy-to-understand structures like the house system.
But yeah, then there’s no depth to it after that. I always thought it was overrated.
What if I pirate it, talk to no one about (not by choice but still) and then destroy all memories of it through aggressive drug use?
You just want to do drugs
Brunacho
🌞 Alexander Daychilde 🌞that’s what id do.
id sure, but what ego do?^[Don’t mind me, silly joke]
Thank you kindly for the opportunity to play :)
driving_croonerDon’t go for the aggressively drug use, every 1.5 months go for an LSD or MDMA trip (3 months between each). Don’t heavily mix with alcohol (I like to have a beer mit trip but that’s all). Look up for different kind of electronic music parties, you’re going to find one that match your vibe.
Why not just skip to the drug use phase?
Congrats, you’ve found a way of having your cake and eating it too… though by eating it and vomiting it back into your hands.
JK coulda kept her mouth shut and have remained as a beloved author forever. I’ll never understand what could drive someone to taint their legacy for zero gain.
SpiceDealerHubris, mostly. The success of her brainchild went to her head and this made her open her large trap for the whole world to hear.
The clues to who she is were there all along in her writing. She couldn’t keep quiet, because she believes what she’s doing is right. Because she’s conservative.
The only major black character in the series is called “Shacklebolt”. The only Asian, “Cho Chang”. Zero LGBTQ representation in the books. Harry had the world at his feet and decided to join the police. The whole struggle of the saga is for a return to the status quo, rather than a better world. General lack of female agency, and women just being hysterical and needing to be slapped out of it. Goblins as an antisemitic trope.
I put it to you that it was inevitable that, one way or another, her rancorous bile would have spilled out into the public debate as soon as she got famous.
The only major black character in the series is called “Shacklebolt”. The only Asian, “Cho Chang”. Zero LGBTQ representation in the books. Harry had the world at his feet and decided to join the police. The whole struggle of the saga is for a return to the status quo, rather than a better world. General lack of female agency, and women just being hysterical and needing to be slapped out of it. Goblins as an antisemitic trope.
I put it to you that it was inevitable that, one way or another, her rancorous bile would have spilled out into the public debate as soon as she got famous.
Wasn’t there one Irish guy, and he had an experiment blow up in his face?
Never gave a shit about the series but remember hearing about token characters having a dose of racism to them.
Not just that, he was also obsessed with turning drinks into alcohol. As a 15 year old kid. I’m pretty sure he also tried to blow up multiple things as well, I don’t think it was a one time thing.
We Irish weren’t really bothered tbh.