As a student of Uni High, I can confidently say that most, if not all the people I know that are around my age have read one or more books in the Harry Potter series. In the modern literature landscape of YA fantasy books, Harry Potter can be easily overlooked due to the amount of books with similar plots. Many still read the series and still find enjoyment from reading them many times from its mystical plot. While many say that Harry Potter isn’t true classical literature, I beg to differ. When did you last hear about someone who could kill another person by pointing their stick at someone and saying a few words? Compare this to a story about a sailor killing a big white whale. If I were to choose a book, I would choose the first one. While classical books may have more metaphorical meaning, who says that the silverness of a patronus doesn’t represent the sometimes struggling force of good fighting against the eternal threat of darkness?
While reading these books brings happiness and enjoyment, you would be shocked to find how persistent, clingy, and attention starved the author is. J.K Rowling continues to spout off retcons (retroactive continuation). In my humble opinion, when you’re done writing a book or series, you can give a bit more context or something similar, but you can’t just informally continue the plot. A big part of integrity in good novels and series is that cliff-hanger feel and the fact that the end brings splashes of reality back to you. Not everything can have a good ending, and that’s just how it is! Of course, in a contemporary reader’s point of view, having cliff hangers aren’t fun per se, but no one wants an author that just spouts ridiculous things years after the book was published.
As I quote from the lady herself: “[Grindelwald and Dumbledores] relationship was incredibly intense. It was passionate, and it was a love relationship”. Sure this is a *sPiCy* fact that was interesting but seriously, was it really necessary? Not only that but she retconned that fact that Hermione’s cat is… half magic. While Dumbledore being gay was a *SpIcY* aspect to the story, this is worse. WHAT IS THE POINT OF A MAGICAL CAT?!
While my opinions are my own, I find Rowling’s retcons to be obnoxious. PRESERVE THE INTEGRITY OF YOUR WRITING, ROWLING.
-Ryan
Nicely written blog. Liking the art but disliking the artist is certainly an interesting topic, and I like how you talked about her not preserving the integrity of her writing. I'm sure quite a few fans would rush to her defense, though.
ReplyDeleteI agree with your post. Although the series is very popular, the author isn't the best. It's an interesting concept, liking the book but not the author, because then sometimes you feel a bit angry enjoying the book so much when the author is kind of annoying. There comes a time when the author needs to stop drawing out the fame from the book. Nice blog post though!
ReplyDeleteFinally, someone said it. The series itself is quite an enjoyable one, but our friend JK Rowling pretends that everyone in fact likes her, and not the series, when she herself is less than a great human, to put it lightly. Excellent post.
ReplyDeleteWell worded. I completely agree with this, the author needs to draw a line at some point to stop trying to keep the series alive and popular. I think this problem is still relevant in a lot of movies and shows, especially the newer Star Wars stuff in my opinion.
ReplyDeleteWell done Ryan, you have summed up the situation very well in a relatively short post. I found the series quite enjoyable when I first read it and still do, but Rowling? Not so much. All of the random things she's added on to try to make the series more complete or just get attention are kind of random and sometimes don't even make sense. Then she had to go and try to make ANOTHER book, that wasn't even supposed to be there. From what I've heard about it, it raises more questions than it answers. I couldn't even bring myself to read it to see if it was good or not.
ReplyDeleteI agree with this post. Some things are better left alone. Instead of constantly trying to retcon existing elements of the story, she should try to expand the universe in new stories or better yet just write new books. This post only scratches the surface of what's wrong with JK Rowling.
ReplyDeleteI completely agree. The Harry Potter series is phenomenal, but the way Rowling treats it is just not good. Being inclusive towards LGBTQ+ is good, but going back on characters that have had years of development from a series that ended years ago and saying they're gay or trans in a tweet is not the right way to go about being more progressive in literature.
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