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this post was submitted on 18 Jan 2026
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I'm very sad about the Harry Potter series, and i loved reading it the first time around (that was shortly before the last 2 movies came out).
On the one hand, I loved reading the books - I devoured them in record time and lost quite a few hours of sleep because i just couldn't drop them after starting with Order of the Phoenix.
On the other hand, I learned afterwards what a foul human being JKR is. I'm someone who can split the art from the artist, and normally i would just do that as long as JKR doesn't see a penny from me, not even as PR (i borrowed the books, but i was in the cinema for the last 2 movies - can't undo that).
But the reevaluation of the books after JKR's twitter tirades made some themes obvious for me that are not that visible if you don't look for them - or don't want to. The treatment of the elves, the nearly all-white-school, the only black teacher called Shacklebolt, the using of jewish stereotypes for goblins... I am pretty angry at JKR for souring something I enjoyed, and I was pretty angry at myself for not noticing many things earlier simply because i let my guard down.
Looks like i fall into the first group, even tho i was around 30 when i read the books. Only defense i have is that i am not a native speaker and read them in english.
The books definitely have many problematic elements, but IMO they're still good. But separating the art from the artist is really fucking hard when that artist is right now a prominent political activist with (some) actual sway with her national government, and she's also still earning money and producing new content based on that book series. And it's not even like the books are completely unpolitical, the plot features governments, fascist takeovers and resistance fighters - it's very apparent that she has opinions on these kinds of things and probably genuinely thinks that she's one of the good guys, despite so clearly working against her stated cause of women's rights and supporting straight-up fascists.
The books are good for what they are: children's books that take you from ~8-13 years old. I loved them when I was a kid, and now it's just hard to get through them because the writing is just average at best, and the plots are so basic they undermine the actually interesting setting and prevent it from being as mindblowing as they could have been.
I've read a lot of fantasy novels, there are a lot of bad ones. She's no Pratchett, but she easily beats average for fantasy novel series - the world is fucked up but vibrant, the characters memorable and it doesn't get boring and repetitive after the first book like so many other series.
The primary audience is definitely young teenagers, but it was really good at drawing in adults, as well.
Agreed on the number of bad ones. I just read the first book of a james patterson series, and I don't understand how it was ever greenlit. I know there was that quote about 90% of everything being trash, and it was just 'in the old days' that we never saw anything but the 10%, but I just struggle to see harry potter now as part of the 10%. I've read too many good books and series to believe it does have a place in the 10%. I know, on some level, that they aren't that bad, but I just have this whiplash from the feelings I had about them as a kid and how I read them now.
Yeah make no mistake, I'm definitely not reading them anymore, even though that's one of the series that I reread (past tense) several times and would probably keep rereading every so often if the author didn't turn out to be ... that.
Shaun made a good video about how poorly the harry potter books actually aged.
Thanks, i have to fully agree with the content of this video. It really looks like JKR didn't write this stuff with the strict intention to spread horrible ideas, but it seems she is simply not able to think of a world without horrible ideas and shows a complete lack of desire to change something about horrible ideas - only cementing the status quo is worthwhile.
Yeah I'm reading them to my son, and right now we're on book 5. Could have easily been titled "order of the toxic men"
I do hope you're pointing out to him the bad parts so he doesn't see that kind of thing as normal
Yes. He's actually figuring out some of it too before I need to say anything.
I've come into the view over the years that Harry Potter is bad writing both in terms of ethics presented and in terms of worldbuilding. Ethically, it plays off date rape drugs as comedic, and in terms of worldbuilding too much for me to even know where to begin.