And it really irks me a lot.
Update: Man, I have gotten tons of great responses here and a lot of activity. The comments section turned out way better than Reddit. Thank you all! <3
I thought it was all so far fetched that they just kept on allowing obviously evil people, people who were opposed to the very ideals of the school, continue with their plots unchallenged. Then 2020 rolled around and I was like “oh… Well this feels familiar”.
This one bothered me pretty early. But I don’t feel like the context given in the Harry Potter series would allow for anything like the corruption we see in real-life politics. For one, a couple people are professors of Hogwarts for power, but most are in it because they care about their jobs. There’s no reason nobody stood up to Dolores— all students and professors hated her (except her new toady Filch, and maybe only a few Slytherin after she offered them power?) and Dolores was exerting power over the school that she simply didn’t have. Any one of them could have just effed her up anytime for her literal, no joke Nazi rules and her torture. Let alone a full disgruntled school.
Wasn’t she empowered by the ministry of magic, which was in turn controlled by money?
Position, yes. Actual power to stop a bunch of angry, tortured teenage wizards— especially ones that have been learning to use defense magic in direct defiance of her— no. Also she pissed off all the professors, and they didn’t stand up to her either, which is stupid.
That all comes back to the institutional power of the system. She was backed by what they all considered to be the legal government entity, so tolerated her, even though they could have physically overpowered her, despite knowing that what she was doing was wrong. Just like a lot of Americans in 2020.
“Wrong” isn’t even a fraction of it. She kicked everyone off the grounds, changed all the rules, tortured students (and others knew it) and literally started hanging up Nazi rule plaques. It was a hostile takeover where she silenced, banned, and abused everyone. And you’re going to tell me nobody— no students, no professors— are going to stand against her? Being appointed won’t mean shit when you are literally torturing, backing into a corner, and banning an opposition with this much power and unhappiness. In any reasonable situation, they would fight back. She was just one stupid, powerless woman with no soldiers at her command against hundreds of powerful wizards and witches, many of them adults.
And stop comparing it to “2020”. I don’t even know what the eff that means.
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These aren’t adults who need food and housing. These are a bunch of teenagers including rebellious sorts against a single asshole with very little actual power besides a title. Also they have (probably angry) parents?
If they fight back, they’re go to Azkaban.
JK was writing about how evil happens is it comes from top. As such if the professors fought back, they’d be an enemy of the state and sent to Azkaban.
She was powerful because the system backed her. Had the anyone attacked her, aurors would have come to save her.
The 2020 reference is a lame attempt to attack Trump. The two are not comparable. Everything worked as it should have. So it’s the exact opposite of what JK was writing about.
Examples? You can’t go on a rant and then not give examples.
Sirius’ death is a pretty obvious example
Hey look, there it is again in the one I’m at now. Hermoine to Potter: “What’s wrong with your hand?” Potter: “Nothing.” (This was the Dolores torture). Hermoine actually finds out, which is refreshing. “You’ve got to tell Dumbledore.” Harry: “No. Dumbledore’s got enough on his mind right now.” Freaking stupid, Harry.
This “is anything happening?” “No, nothing.” exchange with Potter is constant in this series.
Dude the ball tops of my thigh bones were literally sliding off the bones (they failed to fuse for me) in middle school. I was limping and would have insane attacks if pain when they moved a fraction of a millimeter.
Parents, teachers, friends: what’s wrong? Me: nothing
Kids hiding bad things is the most real part.
People hide important things for dumb reasons in the real world, but it’s unsatisfying, lazy and overused in fiction. Especially in HP.
Oh no no… I was the opposite. I was a whiny little bitch. Broke a finger nail? “Moooooooooom!!!”
Most kids don’t hide blatant injuries or health problems people are just trying to cope with bad writing.
Hate this fucking site it’s full of contrarian bullshit just like reddit
Most healthy kids. Kids who grow up in supportive homes. But abused kids? They hide injuries all the time. In fact, they’ll hide anything that has a chance of putting them in the spotlight of adults they think even might potentially abuse them, let alone the adults who actually do.
I think people forget that Harry was physically at times and definitely emotionally/verbally abused for the first 11 years of his life. He has a lot of responses that are conditioned into kids who grow up with abuse. He doesn’t want to be a bother because he’s psychologically predisposed to believe that doing so will make them care less about him and that’s the last thing he wants. It’s a lot of the reason Hermione and Ron both have such a decent relationship and friendship with him. They both in their own way go out of their way to show to Harry that they do care. And that they aren’t going anywhere (despite some growing pains during the GoF, and the bit in the Deathly Hallows where Ron storms off and gets caught by the snatchers. Despite the few times they don’t see eye to eye and argue they do show that they value each other.
But when you’re conditioned to think you aren’t valuable you go out of your way to protect the people who see value in you, even in misguided ways like saying nothing is wrong when everything is.
I cannot overstate how much not only does Harry do it every movie, but all the other characters as well.
“Kids hiding bad things is the most real part”.
You’re watching a story set from the kids point of view. We (the audience) aren’t privvy to what the adults/teachers are doing, just like the kids.
And from Harry’s perspective, he’s got a lot going on, and this is just “another removed teacher”. Keep in mind this is a Brit story - ask a Brit what their schooling was like (had some insightful discussions 20 years ago with my older Brit coworkers).
JK was what, 30-40 when she wrote this? So went to school in the 70’s.
Lol, I love the “removed” bot. It almost makes things taste better!
Give me a break man. I was sick for most of my childhood. You know what I did? I told my parents when I was getting sick. I guess that must be a shock to the morons in this thread trying to pretend that kids are utter dumbasses so they don’t have to criticize a story.
Who said kids are dumbasses? Project much?
My experience, as a kid, was that asking adults about things, or trying to tell them anything, was pointless. They were a bunch of thickheaded idiots. This was my experience with practically every teacher too, through college (which was 30+ years ago for me).
We’re all flawed, imperfect. Effective ommunication is hard.
Can’t say it any better than Marcus Aurelius:
"The substance of [life] is ever flowing, the sense obscure; and the whole composition of the body tending to corruption.
[…] To be brief, as a stream, so are all things belonging to the body…
Our life is a warfare, and a mere pilgrimage."
His point is that everyone contends with the apparatus of a quite imperfect, continually breaking down physical being, on top of anything going on in our heads, making everything that much more difficult.
Kids don’t grok this yet, so can’t comprehend what being old like Dumbledore (or hell, even 45) is like.
Plus, Harry would naturally have a distrust of authority figures due to his upbringing. I’m sure he got used to hiding stuff from the Dursleys.
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Dumbledore thought Harry was a Horcrux mate, he was avoiding him since the start of the year.
I couldn’t finish book 6 because there was too much of harry whining in capslock for no appreciable reason, and I remember skipping over a lot of scenes with his uncle for the exact reasons OP highlights.
He had PTSD, he watched a kid get murdered and nearly got murdered!
Fair point. But I can’t remember it all at once. I didn’t exactly stop and take notes every few seconds throughout the movies like a proper reviewer xD
But if you say that “most of bad things” I would imagine it wouldn’t be too hard to name a few
I’m autistic. Big hard drive, small RAM. And that RAM is being used right now to absorb this next Harry Potter movie while I also try to manage funds with my housemates in a crisis and prevent homelessness
I’d basically have to go and rewind right now, or go back to the movies I watched in the last week, and… blegh, I don’t want to stop in the middle of the first third of Order of the Phoenix. It’s already way better than Goblet of Fire (movies, not books. People say the GoF book is great, and I tend to believe them)
Edit: Hey look, there it is again in the one I’m at now. Hermoine to Potter: “What’s wrong with your hand?” Potter: “Nothing.” (This was the Dolores torture). Hermoine actually finds out, which is refreshing. “You’ve got to tell Dumbledore.” Harry: “No. Dumbledore’s got enough on his mind right now.” Freaking stupid, Harry.
This “is anything happening?” “No, nothing.” exchange with Potter is constant in this series.
I would like to highlight Harry’s character development throughout the series. Although he made several questionable choices in GOF, OOF, and HBP, we should consider that he is a teenager throughout most of the series. Teenagers, umm, well, aren’t great decision-makers. As a teenager, I mostly acted mainly on impulse instead of rational thinking.
And talking about individuals defending themselves, not all perspectives find a receptive audience. A perfect example is in OOF, when Dumbledore testifies before the Minister of Magic about Voldemort’s return. His statements are met with scepticism and disbelief, mirroring a similar experience Harry had trying to convince others at Hogwarts.
If you want to share counter-examples, I’d be happy to hear them.
Nobody ever explained anything more than the likes of “Voldemort’s back! You have to believe me!” If anyone actually gave account or explained anything at all, the good guys would have a lot more allies than they do. Hell, actually talking is how they convinced a bunch of people to let Harry teach them dark arts defense in Order of the Phoenix. It seems that actually talking is how every good event happens, and that not talking is how every bad event happens.
I call it “plot by stupid” but TV tropes calls it idiot plot. https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/IdiotPlot
Tbh, it’s always kinda confused me why hp got such acclaim. They’re decent books! I enjoyed reading them several times. However, I wouldn’t call them hallmarks of fiction or anything.
Yep! It’s basically a form of bad writing.
There’s something called an idiot plot, where the plot only works because the characters are idiots. If they just did the obviously correct thing, the tension would resolve too quickly.
It’s a much harder task to create drama and tension from believable, likable, sensible, consistent characters. If your characters just CAPSLOCK ANGST DRAMA in every situation, it’s way easier to keep tension. Annoying, badly written tension.
Well, kids, especially pre-teen to teen, are idiots. I know, because I was one. And my friends and classmates were too.
are idiots
It’s true that people do dumb things, but it makes for annoying fiction. The real world doesn’t always translate well into a story.
Hell, does anyone perfectly explain everything to each other all the time in the real world?
No, so this argument fails there too.
In the story we just don’t know why things aren’t disuccessed “perfectly”. Like why does Hermione not explain to Ron that she likes him, instead she has a fight with him. Wasn’t that an issue for OP? (It wasn’t for me, because I understand emotions challenge us to communicate well, and I’m an old fart without the hormones of a teen).
Kids world and adult world are separate. Kids very often don’t want adult involvement in their world - they see it as an intrusion. There’s also a general distrust of adults: “you just don’t understand”, or “things are different now than when you were my age” are the refrains we hear every generation. Again, I’m old enough to have seen this several times.
And the adults are busy with their own responsibilities, so won’t always catch on to what’s happening in the kid’s world.
Most importantly, the adults have to allow kids room to figure things out on their own, to struggle with difficulties. Always being there means the kids never learn to solve problems themselves, to build their own relationships, to figure out how to identify good people, etc.
Also, people are human, warts and all, communication is hard.
As a kid, getting explanations for things out of adults felt nearly impossible. I’m sure part of that was my phrasing as a kid, I just didn’t know how to formulate a good question, plus adults surely thought I was often a smart ass or just asking dumb questions with obvious answers.
As a Robin Hobb fan I am highly offended by this comment
I felt the same way by the end of the series.
What bothered me even more was the number of situations that could have been solved with a cell phone or computer.
Like the world-building is absolutely busted. They even have these big-ass libraries and put all this emphasis on learning, but they haven’t even started to digitize.
Never once saw a middle-school or teenaged student in a standard math or science class. Weasley’s dad was the only one that even thought “muggle stuff” was interesting, but he understood about as well as Ariel understood forks.
Bunch of illiterate magic-dependent isolationists that can’t do math or use Google Search. Dumbledore would shit a brick if he found out Hogwarts was on Google Earth that whole time.
The books are set between 1980 and 1998.
I wonder how old Mr Poopy is? lol.
I see the joke, but honestly I could only tell be rereading the third paragraph. The rest sounds authentic.
It’s one way to increase engagement on Lemmy lol.
Harry Potter happened before Google even existed. Google Earth would probably just look like a mundane splotch and people would look at it and suddenly remember they left the oven on. They learn their basic studies before they turn 11 and go to Hogwarts.
You have to be joking, right?
I’m not a fan of the series, and I haven’t even read or watched it.
I do remember some “flying car” scene, which I’m guessing was flying by magic. But the model looked like from the 1950’s.
So if the series happened in that era, there was no “digitizing books” happening anywhere.
Edit: I just read your whole comment. Yeah, you’re joking. Funny!
Ya’ know, maybe voldemort would have maybe been able to take over at least one high school if he realised he could owl-mail a pipe bomb instead of all these cartoonish ritual shit.
EDIT: Or just portkey two subcritical halves of an enriched uranium weapon from two seperate places into destinations right next to each other so it forms one supercritical mass when they arrive. Where to get the uranium? Transfigure it of course.
You know what, just get ron’s creepy manrat pet to transfigure the whole thing on site. For bonus kek don’t tell him about the explosion that usually follows.
That issue is common in literature (my spouse and I call it “Shakespeare’s Disease”), as it gives a simple excuse for plot to happen.
Happens in a lot of media unfortunately
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There are a few gems here and there. Avatar: The last Airbender is one of those, Star Wars Andor is another.
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Yeah, there are a lot of movies and shows where people talk like human beings. Hell, as a writer, nobody in my novels holds the idiot ball nor fails to talk like a normal person, just because that would be convenient for the plot to move along.
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It wouldn’t be a young adult story if everyone made wise, well thought out decisions.
I say this with as much respect as possible – which is very little (if I am honest) – but do you not understand how fiction works?
If characters in a story – any story – reacted how most people would it would be BORING AS FUCK.
The entire point of heroes, or protagonists, or whatever they are called, is that they don’t react like normal people would.
If they did they wouldn’t be heroes. And then we wouldn’t have a story.
If Romeo and Juliet had behaved like sensible adults then no one would ever have heard of them because they would have waited until they were grown up and then run away together. But that wouldn’t have made a good story.
If Luke Skywalker had any fucking sense he would have stayed home and not got involved. But then he wouldn’t have been a hero. Also he’d have been killed by The Empire. But that’s beside the point.
Anyway.
- You don’t have any imagination
- Why the hell are you attributing your claim to heroes specifically? What does that have to do with anything?
- Man have you not seen a lot of fiction. People react realistically in a ton of them all the time, including kids shows like Avatar: TLA and Steven Universe
- My novel has people reacting realistically the entire way through, and it’s a science fantasy
- Luke Skywalker acted realistically. He wanted to leave and join the fucking resistance like his friends. Just like a lot of real-life people would, especially the oppressed. Hell, how many people did 9/11 cause to join the military? Hell, how many people join the military without having suffered tragedy?
1 – I have a surprising amount of imagination. More than I need, to be honest. 2 – Because villains CLEARLY don’t react to events with the reactions of “normal, sensible people”. If villains reacted with common sense, then they wouldn’t try to blow up the fucking world every two minutes. They would talk it through. They would sit down with the good guys, or go to therapy. 3 – See 1, but substitute “fiction” for “imagination” 4 – Good for you. I am sure your parents are very proud of you. Unless you’re an orphan, then I apologise for bringing up your parents. 5 – Luke wanted to join The Empire, not the resistance. What do you think “Transmit my application to the academy” meant? He was signing up to be a good little fascist just like all the other fascists.
Okay, so all your stupid points are not worth addressing, but you should definitely know that Luke’s goal was to join his friends Biggs and Wedge in the resistance, and he finally did. And everyone on Earth who paid attention enough to know he was trying to join the military knows whose side he was trying to join. Not to mention his goals in the first movie constantly align with rescuing the rebel princess and spiting the Empire. You seem to like to make shit up.
But also remember it is fiction and fiction for kids into teenagers. Don’t take it too seriously.
That is a terrible argument every time it is brought up. OP clearly likes Harry Potter enough to wanting to immerse themselves into the story, but are stopped short by what they perceive as inconsistencies or contrivances.
We have media, even ones aimed at kids, that suffer less to not at all from those. We should not excuse bad writing. You can still like something badly written. I like Tron: Legacy, I will die on the hill that it is a great movie. But it is not a perfect movie. It still has flaws. I’m not making excuses that it is built on a movie with even worse plot holes. I accept that it is flawed, but I like it just the same.
Well-said, and I make this argument all the time.
Steven Universe is a show for kids (and everyone). Nobody in that entire show’s running time fails to talk like a normal person would or “holds the idiot ball”. Everyone is smart and communicative, and the show respects its audience a ton. Avatar: TLA is in the same boat, and that’s for kids too (and also everyone).
It’s only a children’s card game!
