And now everyone pokes at it like it was ever supposed to be literature, with any serious thought behind it.

terf lady doesn't help herself by incessantly insisting that everything was planned from the very start

I always say - to defend the series (which doesn't need too much defending, it's the most successful book series after the old testament > new testament > Quran trilogy). The magic of Harry Potter is that all of the fantasy magic works exactly as well as it needs to right at the moment that it's directly in front of the readers eyes. As you mention, as soon as it leaves the view of the characters in the story, it literally blows up into nonsense. However, as the story is being told the magic used is awesome and just what the plot needs at that exact moment to move along.

Let's be real here, she started off just writing a fun story, think nothing of it, and it became a cult. There's two ways to go about this; 1) milk it for everything it's worth, or 2) let the fans go apeshit on fanfic without providing anything more. She chose option 1. Cause money.

"But from the perspective of a coherent story in a coherent world, ignoring the success in terms of sales, it was cobbled together without a plan, and it shows. It wasn’t until maybe order of the phoenix that she had a plan for how the story would end, and she had to do a lot of hand waving to make it happen."

"But she wasn’t a good writer. She was mid tier at best. So the eventual success of the series got beyond her abilities. While the last book was much better overall than the first few, it still relied on shoddy world building"

Excellent explanation. The first HP book is excellent. It really sucks you in. After book 4, the quality declines and they become slogs to get through.

Agreed on all points. I view fiction like this the same way I view junkfood TV shows/movies/music/etc. Yeah, it's often brainless, but if you shut your brain off and go with the flow, it can be enjoyable. Just don't consume too much of it, because then you'll start to actually think it's something more than it really is.

It makes enough sense for kids and adults who can suspend disbelief enough to keep turning the pages. And gives all of us reason to listen to some of the many podcasts exploring the plot holes.

Side note, now that I’ve commented a few times in this thread without mentioning it:

JKR is not smart enough to

refrain from using her global platform to attack trans people. Bad Rowling, bad! I’m thankful I can separate artists from art enough to still enjoy something I grew up enjoying but do have a duty to call out her grievously public stance on this so readers know we still fancy ourselves as allies even when stooping to discuss what the now-monster created.

It's even simpler than that. The author sets the rules of the world. If those rules change, are ignored, or characters behave in a way that disagrees with the rules the reader's trust is betrayed.

That's why people get a stick up their ass about plot holes. They were told things work a certain way, but characters miss an obvious opportunity or break an already established rule. Lack of effort on the author's part makes the reader feel like their time hasn't been respected.

still exist after the founder basically came out as a racist and want racist rule to be enacted

let me know how the republican party does after novemeber. IF they lose

I think nothing beat the fact Slytherin still exist after the founder basically came out as a racist

That was the most realistic part.

She realized she had made a mistake introducing time travel that's why she destroyed all the time turners in Order.

some Avengers endgame multi dimension thing

Some in-universe Harry Potter thing!

Officially, JK says she went too far with the time turners, so she destroyed all of them:

IIRC Time Turners can't change the past. Whatever actions you do while in the past have already happened the first time around, you just didn't know it because you didn't travel to the past yet.

Eh, I think it's pretty well-written. It hits all the important parts of a good kids novel series:

• fun to read
• few immediately obvious plot holes (that a 10yo would notice)
• easy for a child to imagine that they're in that world

We need more series like Harry Potter with high engagement that also promote creativity.

The mother's love protecting Harry caught Voldemort off guard. It's not like he got to try using the killing curse on Harry several times. Imagine you want to kill a baby, and you have a gun, and literally no reason to conserve ammo. You wouldn't pull out your knife in the off chance that the baby is bulletproof.

Technically with the mother's love protecting him, nothing would've worked. Also you are ignoring pride in all of this. Voldemort had a way to kill anyone he hated with barely any effort on his part, using magical abilities. He also hated muggles and all they stood for. Of course he won't be using a way muggles kill one another if he has magic that is in his mind "better".

https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/AdultsAreUseless

I don't know if this is quite the correct trope, but it's close, at least. It's common in any kid/teen story that the adults are complete screw-ups, and it's up to the brave child heroes to do anything about it. I always think of it as the Goonies plot (my first obvious exposure to the trope) but I'm sure it goes back way further than that.

“Why is everyone so dumb?”

Inbreeding. The answer is inbreeding. It makes sense of Hermione being the smartest person at hogwarts.

By a lady who don't think that deep

Naw

Would crack you all out

But it makes no sense it’s not consistently used as much as possible, exactly below the threshold for negative side effects. Anytime the good guys are fighting the bad guys. Anytime the bad guys are searching for good guys or trying to evade them. Whoever managed their liquid luck use better should’ve won.

The time travel stuff functionally doesn't change anything. It's there to let you observe, not meddle, and ultimately results in a closed loop of causality.

Some of her better writing, tbf. If every book had been as good as Prisoner of Azkaban, I wouldn't feel like I wasted time finishing the last three in the series.