So what's the point of keeping magic society hidden from the muggles?
>>7729865
Bullets > magic.
Also, Rowling did not think that far into ot.
>>7729865
Because muggles are greedy and would use magic for war and so on and so forth.
Same reason why we try to keep plebs off /lit/
Because plebs ruin everything. And muggles are the plebs of HP
Or maybe wizards are just racist.
>>7729877
Unlike the wizards in HP, amirite?
>>7729865
Because the Wizarding community is much smaller.
>>7729876
>Bullets > magic.
>Ava...
>BANG!!!
I see your point.
>>7729899
Not to mention the only killing spell is taboo.
>>7729865
Because Rowling is shit writer and don't worked on world building at all?
I mean you can grow bones with magic go back in time and other shit, dont you think they can help people with some world problems
What's happening is part of a phenomenon I wrote about a couple of years ago when I was asked to comment on Rowling. I went to the Yale University bookstore and bought and read a copy of "Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone." I suffered a great deal in the process. The writing was dreadful; the book was terrible. As I read, I noticed that every time a character went for a walk, the author wrote instead that the character "stretched his legs." I began marking on the back of an envelope every time that phrase was repeated. I stopped only after I had marked the envelope several dozen times. I was incredulous. Rowling's mind is so governed by cliches and dead metaphors that she has no other style of writing.
But when I wrote that in a newspaper, I was denounced. I was told that children would now read only J.K. Rowling, and I was asked whether that wasn't, after all, better than reading nothing at all? If Rowling was what it took to make them pick up a book, wasn't that a good thing?
It is not. "Harry Potter" will not lead our children on to Kipling's "Just So Stories" or his "Jungle Book." It will not lead them to Thurber's "Thirteen Clocks" or Kenneth Grahame's "Wind in the Willows" or Lewis Carroll's "Alice."
Later I read a lavish, loving review of Harry Potter by the same Stephen King. He wrote something to the effect of, "If these kids are reading Harry Potter at 11 or 12, then when they get older they will go on to read Stephen King." And he was quite right. He was not being ironic. When you read "Harry Potter" you are, in fact, trained to read Stephen King.
Our society and our literature and our culture are being dumbed down, and the causes are very complex. I'm 73 years old. In a lifetime of teaching English, I've seen the study of literature debased. There's very little authentic study of the humanities remaining. My research assistant came to me two years ago saying she'd been in a seminar in which the teacher spent two hours saying that Walt Whitman was a racist. This isn't even good nonsense. It's insufferable.
>>7729899
with all of their smoke and mirrors spells though wizards could be extremely formidable covert foes
imperius curse makes for unlimited utterly loyal muggle armies and a dragon would probably take a cruise missile or something to take it down.
would read that story to b h
I thought the point of magic was to surpass human limitations.
But in the harry potter world, being a wizard seems fucking pointless. I mean, what CAN you do?
Nothing. Everything the wizards can do the muggles can do just as well if not better.
The few "impossible" things are either forbidden or simply ignored, like no one even thought of sending Polyjuiced Aurors amongst the Death Eaters or using the Time Turned like the God Tier artifact it really is.
Fuck this shit world building, and people eat it up.
>>7729939
Very interesting post and I agree to an extent that the English language is being dumbed down. If you compare any good writer from the victorian times to most modern writer's then the language is so much more fluid and beautiful to read in the older books. It's a shame.
I always thought the point was to make it more believable, like the reader is a muggle anyway so wouldn't have heard of magic, but it COULD exist.
>>7730004
This is it.
The appeal of Harry Potter is the way it taps into childish notions of wonder, and feeling special but misunderstood.
There needs to be a fantasy world lurking beneath the mundane that will swoop the child away into the life they always believed they deserved.
I imagine most who read the books when they were about Harry's age hoped (if not downright believed) they would receive their acceptance letter to Hogwarts, proof that they shine brighter than the dull world they inhabit. I know I did.
>>7729951
Mass imperius curses aren't easy at all. Keeping one nigger under your control is hard enough.
who gives a shit.
they're all bad, whoopdido
>>7729865
The HP saga has so many plotholes and incongruences in its context that it's plain obvious that Rowling ended up pulling some of it out of her ass and hoping none of her readers would notice or take it too seriously.
Also, because muggles would be a pain in the ass
>>7729939
that potshot at Stephen King was uncalled for imho tbqh familia
>>7729979
>>7731271
it's bloom
https://www.boston.com/news/globe/editorial_opinion/oped/articles/2003/09/24/dumbing_down_american_readers/
that doesn't make it less accurate or worthwhile, but you should know you're responding to pasta
(stephen king is utterly without merit, by the way, and you're both reading the wrong books)
>>7731892
>without merit
Except for It, and I've always got to say this, f.a.m.
>>7732710
King has a lot of pretty good books actually, nothing spectacular and nothing "literary" of course but neither are they the shit Bloom would have you believe.
>Misery
>Shining
>any of the Bachman stuff
>his short stories
>The Stand
>the first four Dark Tower books
he also wrote a lot of shit like Duma Key, The Dome, Dreamcatcher, etc.
Why people would read HP instead of Theunissens "The other: Studies in the social ontology of Husserl, Heidegger, Sartre, and Buber" is beyond me. Are you 14 years old or what?
>>7732741
>ironically exaggerating Bloom's perspective to make it seem ridiculous
You are using a strawman argument to defend harry fucking potter.
You don't want to sell us strawman arguments. You want to go home and rethink your life.
>>7732759
I've honestly never read Harry Potter in my life. Missed the right moment and now I'm a grown up. Read Theunissen though. Good stuff.
It's actually explained early on in HP that only a few muggles, like politicians and church leaders know about the wizarding world. The explanation given is that muggles would want magical solutions for all of their problems, and this would eventually lead to disaster, since magic is about emotions, and muggles are basically petty and miserable.
Harry Potter at its core is the antithesis of humanity, JK Rowling hated society for leaving her a pregnant single mother unemployed and without a hope of ever getting published, so she crafted a scathing attack on the patriarchy. You will notice that Harry is effectively transexual or sexually ambiguous, he is really gender neutral, and Ron represents his bumbling idiotic male side while Hermione is his strong independent feminine side.
Harry is supposed to be completely plastic so that you as the reader can mould him into any shape, he starts off as a weak pushover, down trodden orphan, a working class proletariat, and rises to be ultimately an enforcer of the NEW rules, represented by the magical world, where love and emotions defeat ambition and aggression.
These books effectively coached millions of children worldwide to accept the cultural revolution of Fourth-wave of feminism, where everyone is a victim and must attack the evils of the world from a position of moral superiority and emotion. Feel safe, Feel threatened, feel loved.
At no point during the series does any major character stop to think. Dumbledore is killed because his plans go array, Snape is killed because you must kill all men even those who defend you, Voldemort is painted as a simple villain who is just evil and wants to kill everyone. Why does he have followers? Oh they're just racists. Why does he have power? Oh he's just ambitious and exploits those around him.
Harry Potter is the ultimate "integration" book. Rolled out at the turn of the century to brainwash an entire generation that race and gender is a social construct, and there are only feelings and emotions, do what feels right, trust yourself, and all this new-age crap.
>>7732787
Harry Potter is shit but not for the reasons[1] you listed
[1] More like /pol/ tier incoherent ramblings.
>>7732793
holy shit he fucking annotated his own opinion like a reference. CRINGE. CRINGEEEEEEEEEEE
>>7732787
>>7732727
>Short Stories
People say this without going into more details. Which ones? Man in the Black Suit was a good story, as was L.T.'s Thoery of Pets, but The Finger (or whatever it was called) and Everything's Eventual was rubbish.
>>7732796
>being this new
>>7732787
I have a feeling that you haven't read the books, just spout some pol bullshit.
>>7729961
you're right. HP isn't about complex worldbulding though, it's just about telling a cozy fun story that appeals to kids' imaginations
>>7730093
this fampai
>>7732787
lmao
>>7729865
Persecution, they used to burn witches at the stake.
Persecuted wizards won't all sit down and take it though, eventually they'll be forced to completely suppress all muggle society in some form or another.
Also a big part of what made jk rowlings work attractive to children is that she avoided explaining things, a lot of genre fiction I read usually has a giant ass explanation on how magic or gods work than an MC who ignores those rules because he's so special anyway.
>>7732845
Check out the collections Night Shift and Skeleton Crew, the stories in there are pretty good.
Survivor Type is a personal favorite of mine.
>>7729939
is that a copypasta?
nonetheless, I've read the jungle book, HP, Moby Dick and Dostoevsky as a kid. HP was by far my favorite and I still like it because I'm not a c/lit/oris
>>7729961
>Nothing. Everything the wizards can do the muggles can do just as well if not better.
Except violate physics and produce infinite energy out of nowhere.
>like no one even thought of sending Polyjuiced Aurors amongst the Death Eaters or using the Time Turned like the God Tier artifact it really is.
There are spells to reveal if someone is polyjuiced and time turners are a rare artifact, most of them held by the gubbermint which can't actually change time.
It's not great, but you only think it's shit because you're an idiot.
>>7729933
Yeah, that time travel stuff was bollocks. They can use a magic hourglass to send a student back in time so she can do loads of different classes, or to rescue a violent animal and an ex-con, but they can't use it to go back in time to kill off Voldemort before he becomes too powerful?
She was moronic for including it. In fact, most series that involve time travel are just fucking themselves over.
>every student carries a potentially lethal weapon
>literally zero school shootings
such bullshit
>>7733290
According to conservatives, this is exactly what would happen if everyone in school had a gun. No school shootings.
JK Rowling confirmed for secretly browsing /pol/, all her PC stuff was just post-ironic satire.
>>7733290
Don't you remember when Harry fucked up Draco's shit with a spell that sliced him up and almost killed him?
>>7733299
Yeah but sort of accidentally.
It's a good example of why they should have taught latin at Hogwarts though.
>>7732787
I think harry was plastic so that even children could insert themselves into his shoes, not for some agenda that children wouldn't even understand. voldemort was bad because its hard for children to root for the good guy if they dont know for sure that the bad one is bad.
and to everyone itt, stop treating a simple childrens book like it should meet your reading needs as an adult. It's a (fun) story meant to teach children about friends, love and accomplishing goals, not something worth serious analysis.
>>7729939
look mum! I posted it again!!!!1
>>7730093
>I imagine most who read the books when they were about Harry's age hoped (if not downright believed) they would receive their acceptance letter to Hogwarts, proof that they shine brighter than the dull world they inhabit. I know I did.
I don't know, I disliked the idea of Hogwarts. It's a fucking boarding school and I hated school, and while the subjects may be interesting in principle who wants to have class with the likes of Snape and Binns?
I was a bit of an edgelord though so I liked all things Voldemort. The only time the idea of being in Hogwarts seemed interesting was in Chamber, where they explained the Slytherin myth and all that stuff, and even then it'd be cool to travel to Hogwarts rather than having to live in it for seven years.
Strangely enough Rowling does mock that "I wanna be special and live in Hogwarts forever" attitude. It's essentially what happened to Voldemort. On the other hanted, I just wanted to be a homeschooled muggle-born wizard or something, but screw Hogwarts mate.
>>7733276
>>7733056
The Time Turner is probably the low point of the entire story for me. I don't understand how many people say Azkaban is the best book. It's a moronic plot device on its own, it's even *more* stupid in the context of everything shown in the books, and it can't actually even change time, except when it's convenient for the plot to let it. It was just a way for Rowling to have her cake and eat it too, to show a dementor's kiss and have Harry witness a bunch of shit but also let everything turn out okay in the end.
Given her obvious plans to have the Ministry become a minor but very present antagonist, the gubbermint was a good way to never use time turners again, and their eventual destruction obviously shows she knew she had written herself into a corner with that time travel bullshit.
>>7731171
I think she hoped for the premise to not be taken too seriously, but in the later books it's clear she's afraid of people noticing that things don't make any sense. It's almost laughable how she has to retcon stuff like the horcrux diary or the Deathly Hallows themselves into the story, because characters will always repeat word by word stuff from minor conversations from years ago to make the reader go "ooh, that's what it meant", when in reality it makes no sense.
The retcons were all about the Potter/Voldemort story, though. The ones regarding the wizarding/muggle world are fairly recent, since the whole Pottermore fiasco she can't stop retconning and expanding shit about the Potter world. I'd rather she left the series be.
>>7733000
Moby Dick would be your favorite if you had actually read it.
>Harry potter
>Being regarded as anything else but children literature
>FML
But guys, how do Wizards die?
Since they can cure literally all diseases in a simple gesture, what's stopping them from just living forever?
Maybe if they just sat together with a fucking biologist with a microscope, then they could just literally cast a spell at the frayed ends of their DNA to make it stop aging. Are you telling me Wizards don't know about fucking DNA?
Fuck, wizards are so stupid.
>>7734142
>since the whole Pottermore fiasco
The what now? Can you please elaborate?
>>7729877
>muggles...use magic for war
Uhhh, they're muggles they can't use magic
>>7732787
oh this is good. this isi real good. very high pasta potential.
wizards were greatly outnumbered by muggles. only around 600 in Britain if i remember correctly.
>>7732796
wow this is a really bad post
>>7733290
killing with a wand takes a lot of power, power that students don't have yet
>>7734349
wizards have an average life span of something around 150 years because of their magic.
>>7733290
>every student could potentially strangle another with their limbs
>literally zero strangulations
such bullshit
>>7735541
http://www.dailyprogress.com/starexponent/teen-charged-with-assault-strangulation-at-culpeper-county-high-school/article_5198c080-8180-11e5-9ffc-2b6735f66f2b.html
http://myfox8.com/2015/09/24/teen-arrested-in-alleged-on-campus-rape-strangulation-at-high-point-central-high-school/
