Does Harry Potter have any redeeming qualities as literature?

Does Harry Potter have any redeeming qualities as literature?

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what the hell is wrong with Hermione

It ended literature

twitter.com/jk_rowling/status/678888094339366914

>very clever
>white skin never specified
What did she mean by this?

....Isn't Hermione a ginger? And isn't she brothers with the other redhead, who is white in this?

I can tell this is gonna be a really good thread

It produced the Bloom pasta.

S T R E T C H E D

"No!"

Jordan Peterson cites it a lot when making a point. So I think it's pretty good.

For a young man in the 21st century, J.K. Rowling embodies just about everything that he hates about his own mother, but can't outright say to her. An aging neoliberal single mother with an inflated sense of self-importance using twitter to cope with her increasing irrelevance. The sort of woman who hasn't seriously thought about any of her opinions, but feels the need to push them on to others and condescend to anybody who might think differently.

She is an archetype. Neither insightful nor funny nor controversial. She is a consummate mediocrity basking in the praise of similar mediocrities the world over who have projected their own aspirations on to her, satisfied that somebody like them is a billionaire. Her Christianity is an accessory. She takes everything that she's been taught by public school and daytime television and fashions a god out of it.

She conceives of public affairs in the nebulous terms of "love" and "hate". The fact that an action might fall outside of either of these two categories, or that something she deems "hateful" might in fact be the wiser choice has not occurred to her. Despite this, she is shockingly easy to bait into a bitter, spiteful rage. Furthermore, her generosity only extends as far as her personal comfort. At the end of the day, it's little more than virtue signalling and if social opinion undergoes some vast sweeping change then she'll fall in line.

In many ways, she's already missed the boat. Her brand of comfortable feminism has already fallen out of style. She just doesn't know it yet. The second wave man-hating sexual phobia that sees rape everywhere. Its frigidity is evident in her writing. Then the bizarre merger with proud slut queer positivity. The post-hoc declarations of characters' sexual proclivities. The rationalization of racial retconning. It's like she discovered a Harry Potter fan tumblr, followed a couple links, and incorporated whatever she saw, resulting in an incoherent schizophrenic worldview. That's probably exactly what happened.

Her name is fucking Joanne. Need I say more?

And one more thing. She has a surprisingly nice pair of tits that I'd really like to suck on.

She looks a lot like my own mother, but with nicer hair and way nicer tits. In fact, she's basically a more attractive version of my mother, which is great since the only thing that really held me back from fantasizing about my own mother is that she just wasn't good looking enough.

Rowling really seems like the kind of woman who'd suck her teenage son's dick. I mean it.

She gets back from le ebin GIRLS NIGHT OUT XD!!! Plastered out of her mind from sipping too much shiraz or perhaps pinot grigio. Maybe she and THE GIRLS even passed around a blunt at Samantha's house. I always find it funny when Gen X women think they're being SO BAD smoking weed. Mouth full of the most expensive cheese available at Tesco and whatever crackers Georgia had to get rid of. She's cackling with laughter and sobbing as she lurches in through the front door. She has zero self-awareness when it comes to her emotions, but defends them with religious fervor.

Clumsily, she makes her way toward the living room where her son is playing video games. She sits down on his lap, suffocating him with her embrace and exhaling the stinking fumes of cheap wine right into his face. For a couple minutes, she rants about what a BITCH Leslie at the office is, before muttering the he's the only on who understands her. Briefly, she looks into his eyes, trembling all over. Then she locks her mouth with his and begins to kiss him passionately. At first he is paralyzed, but his mom is kind of hot and he'll probably never have another chance like this. He's thought about it before. He kisses back and before long she's between his legs, pawing at his penis like the cats she collects. She takes it in her mouth and sucks it like she's back in college. She's STILL GOT IT.

The next morning, she pretends not to remember anything, but blames him for the incident, finding subtle ways to punish him.

Nice pasta. Where's the first one from?

>ginger
right letters, wrong order

>tfw you realize your fond childhood memories of magical movies filled with brilliant Williams' score will inevitably one day be ruined by a shitty affirmative action adaptation where every other character is demiqueer genderfluid somethingkin of colour and hermione is played by a sassy fat black girl saying lines like "Oh no, you deedn't! It's lay-vee-OH-sah, not lay-vee-oh-SAH, white boi. M-hm." to the tune of dirty rap in the background

She drew most of the characters herself, hermione was white, she didn't create any black character except that background character but I think he was made by warner not her.

here i believe

gering? i suppose she is little, my dutch brother.

>Ponyfucker is this delusional
lmao

He's not wrong, based retardbro.

keke

I've read it in Russian, as a kid, and only first five books - so the opinion below might be somewhat uninformed.

It's well-structured and manicured to glossiness, yet shows little distortion artifacts from the compression. In this way, HP may be a prefect product - appealing as if pandering but without the usual disasterous feedback loop of design by audience. Like it was written by a genious market research expert, making what people want from the data of what they think they want.

There is no world/theme/character dissociation - nowhere do you see either patchwork of facts and lore wherein the cast just get thrown, or many similar symptoms. However uninspiring in many respects, it's definitely not the Reddit's idea of fantasy.

It doesn't bloat. The plot arcs are tightly nested in a fractal pattern, and in general you feel that narrative is dynamic and moves along its straight path; narrative is not a soup, but a flying arrow.

Basically there's a mechanical beauty to it, a fluidity of motion, you get a feeling that a bunch of neural networks can appreciate the text just as well as a kid. What's the theme here? Vocabulary clearly suggests CHOSEN ONE COMES TO TERMS WITH HIS ROLE. Pinpoint 'the lowest moment' page? 226 - IF YOU WANT, I CAN EVEN PROVIDE A LINE. What am I, as a reader, supposed to feel here? APPRECIATION OF KNOWLEDGE/SMARTS, AS A CONSEQUENCE OF THEIR PRACTICAL UTILITY.

But he is.

>I had a lecture about LSTMs last week
Nice blog.

Sorry, I don't actually know anything about neural networks, it just seemed better than writing 'a computer'. But thank you - considering that there's not much personal in the post, that being the only reason the word blog has a negative connotation, blog-quality posting is something we should all aspire to.

It's a very good summary of most mythological stories that humans have been telling for as long as we've been telling stories. Full of archetypes, if you take it more seriously.

You're welcome, бpaтишкa.

I have to admit if I'm being honest with myself, of all the childrens literature series I read as a kid (HP, a series of unfortunate events, philip pullman's his dark materials, LOTR, eragon, chronicles of narnia, artemis fowl, a couple others im forgetting), harry potter was among the most memorable. although you have to wonder, is that because the books are memorable or because of the films that came out a few years after, and then the continuing afterlife in the culture.

Too much leg-stretching IMO.

This is way better than DULLEST FRANCHISE.

Don't remember jack shit about what happened in Harry Potter except for a few key points like Sirius dying and there being a huge fight where everyone dies at the end. But I remember every single detail of LOTR, His Dark Materials and ASOUE.

kek

>Sirius dying

now i feel dumb for saying that - I don't remember Sirius at all. But in any case I'm 90% sure i only remember a bit more HP than the other childrens series I read because a) the films and b) HP is ubiquitous in popular culture - you're constantly being reminded of it

fun fact:
rowling never uses that specific phrase
bloom was bsing

As childrens literature, yes.
Teaching children about the value of friendship, standing up for yourself, not looking down upon others due to their social standing or race
or letting the ambition of power unchained by moral principles consume you are important corner stones for any young reader.
If you have ever read most stuff made for the 9-13 year old reader, it's usually fantasy garbage that doesn't bother to enlighten, or to imagine.

Harry Potter has great quality in literature as it simplifies the process of explaining every day social and political events to liberals who you might encounter.

Let's say you're having trouble explaining something to some liberal friend of yours. If you were to try and lay out the issue rationally—weigh the pros and cons of the topic, consider its significance in a historical context, use logic to deduce what the solution might be, etc—your arguments might fall on deaf ears. Turning the topic in question into an analogy about Harry Potter allows your friend to better understand what you're getting at. Instead of trying to persuade your friend of the validity of your argument through traditional methods of discussion (lets say in this case the topic is the harmful economic effects of a certain type of new tax), you would just say something like

>"This new tax is just like Voldemort."

and your point would be received much more effectively than had you spend half an hour of time explaining the issue more rationally and in greater detail—which likely would have been lost on your friend anyways.

Alternatively, if you want to explain the quality or goodness of something (say "X") , you would just switch between characters from the plot and say

>"X is just like Harry."

or if it's some conflict where 'X' is combating something generally bad for society—maybe the lionization of mentally ill men chopping their genitals off—you would instead say

>"X is just like that time that Harry fought Voldemort."

Hope this helped.

It's hard to find redeeming qualities in one of the dullest franchises in the history of movie franchises. Seriously each episode following the boy wizard and his pals from Hogwarts Academy as they fight assorted villains has been indistinguishable from the others. Aside from the gloomy imagery, the series’ only consistency has been its lack of excitement and ineffective use of special effects, all to make magic unmagical, to make action seem inert.

Perhaps the die was cast when Rowling vetoed the idea of Spielberg directing the series; she made sure the series would never be mistaken for a work of art that meant anything to anybody, just ridiculously profitable cross-promotion for her books. The Harry Potter series might be anti-Christian (or not), but it’s certainly the anti-James Bond series in its refusal of wonder, beauty and excitement. No one wants to face that fact. Now, thankfully, they no longer have to.

>a-at least the books were good though
"No!"
The writing is 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. 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.

Get back to /tv/.

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Ironically the black woman was the best part of that movie, except for maybe Hemsworth. Only fucking one of those whores who turned in anything a resembling a real performance.

>watching feminist garbage

for what reason is grapes of wrath below 1984

Underappreciated post

...

how rude, maybe he was attracted to the sideshow, maybe he liked the original and wanted to see what suffering was like

I actually like her but I don't understand why she refuses to fix her fucked-up hair.

/tv/>>>

The Harry Potter generation will defeat Donald Trump

>any redeeming qualities
Yes, outstanding fan-art.

>listening to twitter and /tv/ bullshit
I heard there was a new Ghost busters movie and I liked the first one. I don't follow internet drama so I didn't see any reason to avoid the movie until I had actually seen it.

>heh I don't listen to bullshit drama
>*teleports behind you*
>nothin personnel, playbeians
>*wastes 2 hours of his life on irredeemable garbage*

daily reminder that in a world of her own creation, the "most powerful" spells in a 7 book franchise, in order of power are:

1) counterspell
2) terror
3) lich phylacteries
...
9999...) goyle summoning flame dragons one time that do nothing

>consuming any entertainment media outside of obscure 1 season anime

Rowling loves whatever will endear her to the hoi polloi.

>...and very clever.

So...not black is what she's getting at?

>I didn't see any reason to avoid the movie until I had actually seen it.

Lost opportunity costs.

Exactly.

It's just 'hoi polloi' senpai. "The" makes it redundant...

...but yes.

>the hoi polloi
>the

nice

kek

There's the pasta

True or false there are only about seven different types of stories that are 'good' to humans.

I'll agree that she was not specifically mentioning her race. But she was tacitly at least limiting her ethnic possibilities, there is a limited range of skin complexions that one can credibly describe as white when that person loses blood in their face.

If you're talking about Peterson he would probably say there's more like 1-3 types of stories, at least in terms of plot. I'm not sure what you mean by 'good' here. I'm not the guy you're replying to.

That's basically an altered version of what Bloom wrote, isn't it?

I have a hard time imagining Bloom writing the sentence "Seriously each episode following the boy wizard," but I also haven't been on this board for a while.

I've never seen a black person lose their composure so much that they turned "white," and I've seen magic tricks performed for black people, seen them presented with notarized certificates of paternity, I've even seen handed job applications.

Of course Hermoine's white. 1.) She's English, and 2.) She's a genius.

>I'm not sure what you mean by 'good' here.
By 'good' I meant a story whose structure can cause a decently sized portion of the population at large to be emotionally invested in the development of the story and it's ultimate conclusion and resolution. It is possible that any number of fictional stories could be created limited only by human imagination, but there is a finite number of them that people at large will care about.

>Since hoi polloi is a transliteration of the Greek for "the many," some critics have asserted that the phrase should not be preceded by the. They find "the hoi polloi" to be redundant, equivalent to "the the many"—an opinion that fails to recognize that hoi means nothing at all in English. Nonetheless, the opinion has influenced the omission of the in the usage of some writers.

>I've never seen a black person lose their composure so much that they turned "white,"
Yeah I agree. And I suspect that JK Rowling had always imagined Hermoine as being a white character. Hermoine is supposedly partially based on the childhood version of Ms. Rowling. Ms Rowling was obviously a white child. There is also early artwork Ms. Rowling had commissioned for her work that she approved, and it depicted Hermoine as a white girl. Also JK. Rowling was apparently very involved with the casting of the film versions of Harry Potter, and Hermoine ended up being portrayed as a white girl in the movies.

I suspect the confusion arose because JK Rowling didn't want to get dragged into a racial thing online, and one can't put forth a nuanced position nowadays without offending someone.

My guess her actual truthful response to someone asking if Hermoine was white would be something like, "Well I didn't specifically create her chosing her to be white. But I always did imagine her as white. This is in part because she was at least partially based on me growing up. However, I will note that her being white isn't an important characteristic of her character, her important qualities are her intelligence, precociousness, and moxie. This is what defines how she deals with the different obstacles she and the other children face in the series, not the color of her skin."

But the public eye is not a good venue to make that argument when dealing with a billion dollar empire. Also I don't think the British use the word moxie. I think it is a peculiarly American word.

No, it's just a popular fantasy series for pseuds , brainlets, and plebs to enjoy.

You want a good fantasy series? Read Tolkien or actual mythology like the story of Hercules or Snorri's Eddas

Same reason Hypersphere is above Ulysses- it's a joke chart.

> She's English
She could be Paki, then.

Anyway, white people aren't actually white. They're more either pink or fleshy colored.

No one is actually white.

>She could be Paki, then.
I suppose she could be, but I doubt it. See this

>White people aren't white
*Are white , because most of them have white skin when they aren't tanned by the sun or sun burnt

Fucking newfags, see pic!

t. Bloodless corpse

Being 'Paki' isn't being English, as in ethnically English, which is what English means. Yeah some Pakis speak English, but that doesn't mean they're English, despite what the people who wish it was otherwise tell you. If I went to Japan and had children and they grew up there speaking fluent Japanese nobody would ever refer to my children as being "Japanese." What you're describing is indoctrination you've been fed by people who want to break down ethnocentric identities and convince you that "we're all the same" despite the fact that they spent countless hours harping about how we're all discriminatory against each other despite all being the "same."

As for the "white people aren't actually white" bit, I've met some pretty fucking "white" people. Your distinction about how they're "fleshy" is just you being a caviling asshole.

>OH OH GUYS I JUST LEARNED THIS.
>I LOOKED AT MY CRAYOLA BOX AND "WHITE" PEOPLE ARE ACTUALLY CLOSER TO "FLESH (WHICH IS BASED ON THE "FLESH" COLOR OF WHITE PEOPLE TO BEGIN WITH.
>THIS IS AN IMPORTANT OBSERVATION.

Now I remember why I spent a year away from /lit and instead spent my time on /k and /fit instead. Quality posting.

god if only she had a penis

You could just say "the polloi" then, retard.

>fails to recognize that hoi means nothing at all in English

Except the part where English uses a lot of Greek loan words, sure.

Nobody cares about you arguing how you use "hoi polloi" anyways because no one says it IRL conversation.

Peterson would say that despite the large number of individual stories that could be formulated most popular stories would follow one of only several plot archetypes, and that these resonate with people because peoples' lives—or the lives of people they know, or the old stories they've grown up with—mirror these archetypes to a certain extent.

>Fan art depicts black Hermione from the play (because as much as Rowling wants to score modern progressive points by claiming otherwise, book Hermione is obviously white).
>Facial structure looks like Emma Watson

oh true kek, just saw the pasta

>thread shitposting about blackmione
>not a soul mentions the ridiculous sameface on ron and harry

"Ron ejaculated"

>continuing to push his language autism after being pointed out how stupid and arbitrary it is

What's your favourite HP fanfic, Veeky Forums?

Although it isn't a very heavy or compelling book, it's a good way to transition kids from little kids book to much more complex novels. Though it in itself is anything but complex or novel.

My Immortal and HHHHHHHHHHH are classics whether they are parodies or not.

HPMOR has some strong qualities, but also some large flaws (unironic Mary Sue MC and excessive unnecessary infodumping).

All of these are significantly better than the original product, or at least books 1-3.

>Played by a white actor
>All artwork on the books has her white
>Described as pale in the books
The only way you could possibly think she's white is if you never read or even looked at a Harry Potter book.

>immortal
>MOR
>leddit spacing
figures

One of my childhood favorites. I love how the books grow up with the characters, with some rather silly writing in the first book, which becomes more mature as the series progresses. It is also an amazing fantasy world that I would love to be a part of.

Shame Rowling turned into a hypocritical cunt. Sucks when your childhood heroes turn into pieces of shit.

>not using a line break between paragraphs in electronic text like every manual of style guide will tell you to do
>MOR was shilled here a lot before the no fanfic threads rule was re-enforced
>praises a work that parodies much of reddit's beliefs "my opinion/taste is so special and going to get downvoted xD"
>post implies that HP is worse than three OK fanfics of it

looks like we have a newfag here desu

>keeping a mirror right next to your screen
queer

I like how Potterfags prided themselves in the fact that Rowling was heavily involved in the casting process with final say on everything and still claim Hermione was never meant to be white.

Why did Rowling allow a white girl be casted as Hermione, if she was always intended to be black?

Interestingly, I once found an earlier quote where he says she uses a lot of cliches *such as* the phrase 'stretch his legs' (which appears once in the first book, IIRC). Later on he seemed to absurdify that accusation by saying she used *that particular cliche* a lot, which is weird (maybe he misremembered?), but the complaint is rooted in fact.

I wish they weren't bigged up as these epic books which apparently ''got children into reading'' because now we have people who have literally never read anything but Harry Potter thinking their literatis.

This is the language board, Senpai. Maybe you should go listen to some hip hop albums if you don't care about grammar.

>any redeeming qualities

it potentially gets kids into reading

unfortunately, many of them turn into adults who never grow out of harry potter. i work with a woman in her 30s who has a phd and and is basically just always in the process of re-"reading" the series. i put "reading" in quotes since she listens to the audio books

I actually cried during the 1st novel when Harry finds the mirror that shows one's deepest desires and it shows him with his parents, and he sneaks out of his room to sit in front of it every night.

>not looking down upon others due to their social standing or race
Except when those "others" are Muggles.