(same anon that asked about YJ Phantoms) I'd love to read a critic on Harry Potter one day because you'd have a lot of interesting things to say.

(follow up from this ask)

Good to hear from you again nonnie!

I’m very flattered that you’d like to hear my comments on Harry Potter but… I don’t think I’d have a lot to add? 😅  I wrote most of my Young Justice meta-analyses because I’d noticed some specific structural and writing patterns that weren’t being discussed in the wider fandom critiques, and I wanted to change that.  (A lot of people were pointing to the time-skips and specific characterisation issues but not many seemed to be touching on Thematic Contradiction, Scope Management or the Side Quest problem, for example.)  Meanwhile, Harry Potter has been dissected to the moon and back with a fine tooth comb – there isn’t much I could say that hasn’t already been said better, more eloquently and in more detail elsewhere.

If you put the Harry Potter books in a bubble, my takes are actually pretty mild.  The books were important to me.  I was a 90s kid who read alongside releases throughout primary school.  I was a pretty big Potter-head at the time - I was daydreaming Potter fanfiction before I even knew what fanfic was.  I think it certainly had an influence on my modern taste in literature; there’s a reason I gravitate towards fantasy and mystery as my comfort genres (I’m currently having quite a bit of fun with The Dresden Files). 

On a technical level, Joanne Rowling was a decent writer.  I think she’s strongest at emotional and character-writing, and she kept a consistent theme of love/grief/family/loss going throughout the series.  Her use of mystery as a secondary structure to add pull makes the stories engaging and satisfying to “solve” on re-read.  Her prose and dialogue was quite snappy – it flows and reads well, and there are some very quintessentially British-humour lines that made me smile each time.

Where she was weakest, in my opinion, was sociological storytelling and worldbuilding.  There are some unquestioned biases and blind-spots in her writing (especially around stuff like the house-elves, the goblins, certain character descriptions and how she treats the status quo).   I generally agree with the sentiment that her worldbuilding wasn’t necessarily the most original – not as derivative as Eragon (which I also liked) could be in places, but nothing especially new – although that’s more of a subjective note than a great artistic sin, and Harry Potter was a good execution of that well-trodden ground.  There are definitely times when you can tell she was figuring things out as she went – some of her dates don’t line up and there are a few moments in early books where characters break “laws of magic” that she would later retcon-in (Mrs Weasley shouldn’t have been able to make sauce pour out of her wand in Book 2 according to the Principal Exceptions to Gamp’s Law of Elemental Transfiguration introduced in Book 7 and, based on the rules introduced in Book 6, Hagrid shouldn’t have been able to disapparate away from the station platform when Harry wasn’t looking in Book 1).  And of course, the infamous “vanishing poop” tweet.  In a bubble, pretty average, for-their-time 1990s fumbles from a debut children’s fiction author.  Flawed but in a mostly harmless, kind of charming way. 

I’m also pretty iffy on the movie adaptations, which have been generally… okay.  They showcased some good practical effects work and cinematography, but I never really felt they captured the magic (pun intended) or nuance that I enjoyed, due to the cuts and changes needed to fit the screentime.  That’s kind of my general vibe with a lot of adaptations, though – with a few exceptions I generally prefer to experience stories in their original intended medium.

However, we do also have to take the books out of their bubble and discuss the context of Rowling’s current politics.  I think it is not appropriate for people to try and erase her authorship of the books, or the way her largely open and accepting stance towards fan-content (in comparison to more litigious predecessors and contemporaries) contributed to the current state of modern fandom.  Their popularity and widespread influence makes them an important cultural touchstone and point of reference for their time period, and I think we do a disservice by pretending them away or acting like there’s nothing to be learned from their success just because we disagree with the author now. 

That being said, however, in the present Joanne Rowling is using the clout and funding she receives from the Harry Potter franchise to push policies and rhetoric that actively make life harder and more dangerous for transgender people (and has dragged in the neurodivergent community as a rhetorical device).  She has also expressed that she considers support for Harry Potter to be tacit endorsement of those politics.  Unlike past problematic-but-influential authors like Howard Phillips Lovecraft, Rowling is alive, politically active and benefiting from fandom engagement - and so the relationship between her work, her work’s fans and her current politics has tangible impact on real people.  I think it is up to every fan to decide how they personally want to navigate that difficult and at-times painful environment.

Personally, my decision (and this is just my decision) for handling that has been to pull away from Harry Potter as both a franchise and a fandom until such time as Joanne either revaluates her stance on transgender people, retires from public politics, passes away (provided she doesn’t will ongoing profits to anti-trans causes), or her books become public domain.  I still have the books I was gifted in the 90s, but there is a reason I generally haven’t shared or promoted Harry Potter content (even fandom stuff) to my blog for a few years.  Hopefully that will one day change, but until/unless that happens, I probably won’t be doing that kind of deep dive.

Instead, here are some videos that I found particularly interesting when thinking about the writing, implications and adaptations of the series:

Just Write: Construction of Mysteries in Harry Potter | Fantastic Beasts: Revisiting Mystery Construction

Quinn Curio: What Went Weird With Ron in Adaptation | Does Draco Need Redemption? | Why Does Slytherin Still Exist?

Pop Culture Detective: Newt Scamander and Empathetic Masculinity

Dominic Noble: Lost In Adaptation – The Harry Potter-athon [Playlist]

And here are a couple on Rowling’s current politics:

ContraPoints: JK Rowling and the Sociopolitical History of Transphobia | The Witch Trials of J.K. Rowling

SuperGeekMike: How Creators Become Their Villains

Dominic Noble: A Harry Potter Fanboy's Response To J.K. Rowling

If you’re looking for other fantasy book recommendations I would heartily suggest Tamora Pierce.  Specifically the Song of the Lioness series (4 books), its sequel Protector of the Small (also 4 books) and the unrelated the Circle of Magic universe (2 sets of 4 books plus an epilogue and 2 side-stories).  Pierce writes to roughly the same reading-level as Rowling, and her books are a mix of magic, character- and mystery-driven. I would say she’s overall stronger at original magic systems and worldbuilding.  She also has her own interesting relationship to fandom (being a former fan-writer herself) and a feminist streak, with books that focus on young heroines without being dominated by romances.   They can be a bit hard to find in print these days but if you can they’re well worth your time.

For sassy British kids and urban fantasy, also consider Jonathon Stroud’s Lockwood & Co (recently adapted to a Netflix series) and his slightly-older Bartimaeus Sequence.  Again really fun worldbuilding, snappy prose and dialogue, and a generally good romp.  Lockwood is a ghost-hunting story and Bartimaeus uses demon summonings as its core worldbuilding conceit so if you like a little more horror in your fantasy then these will be a good time for you.

Hopefully that makes up for yet another doughnut! 🍩