Like it's a "goofy kids' book" that gets surprisingly deep with the Mirror of Erised scene, with Quirrell/Voldemort's lines like "There is only power and those too weak to seek it", the Snape fakeout, all that good stuff
-
Show this thread
-
The issue was HP trying to fully become that dark epic fantasy adventure when it transitioned to the later books, and revealed JKR's limits as a writer and the limits of the setup she created without knowing where it was gonna go
4 replies 1 retweet 72 likesShow this thread -
That's what I mean about Harry Potter "feeling like fanfic of itself", that by the time you get to Deathly Hallows it has this rickety feeling of someone trying to do an actual dark YA dystopia about Willy Wonka's Chocolate Factory and the social implications of Oompa-Loompas etc
5 replies 2 retweets 76 likesShow this thread -
Replying to @arthur_affect
alternatively, the trouble is that she just didn't *commit.* she needed to take the books in an adult direction as both the readers and the characters aged. but that would have meant actually getting in to the *real* dark underside of the story, not the obvious "Voldemort Bad!"
2 replies 0 retweets 18 likes -
Replying to @perdricof
Unfortunately she was also already committed to having written a setting that established all this stuff like Ton-Tongue Toffees and Bertie Botts Every Flavor Beans and Platform 9 3/4 It's not that the transition was impossible but I think it would've taken a defter hand
1 reply 0 retweets 16 likes -
Replying to @arthur_affect @perdricof
Like, dark and gritty HP fanfic that I think succeeds more than the canon books does so because it's willing to *openly* be fanfic, like it has this self-aware tone of making fun of the cutesy children's stuff from before or openly distancing itself from it
1 reply 0 retweets 12 likes -
Replying to @arthur_affect
you don't have to distance yourself from any of that. it's all still there. bertie bott's every flavor beans still do have every flavor. but they're fucking jelly beans. at some point the characters need to realize that the beans were distracting them from literal slavery
1 reply 1 retweet 25 likes -
Replying to @perdricof @arthur_affect
that all this cotton-candy happiness is gilt on rotten wood
1 reply 1 retweet 20 likes -
Replying to @perdricof
Yes If she had actually had the courage to do that -- to make the euphoric joy of Book 1 turn retroactively into a vicious lie -- that would've been the correct ending to the series The series would've legit been great literature, revolutionary for its impact on culture
1 reply 2 retweets 25 likes -
Replying to @arthur_affect @perdricof
But alas, she did not That was the book she had the *potential* to write and the person she had the *potential* to become But the depressing JK Rowling story is that she simply fell short, she didn't have the gas in the tank
4 replies 1 retweet 27 likes
Harry Potter was a paradoxical victim of its success here I think Who knows what would've happened in the alternate reality where HP was only a middlingly successful series But in our world, it was a billion-dollar franchise that had a brand to maintain
-
-
Replying to @arthur_affect @perdricof
It couldn't end on "What if Hogwarts is bad, actually? What if the wizarding world is bad, actually? What if the Every Flavor Beans were a fucking stupid distraction from a rotten society, actually?" Because then you couldn't have a theme park selling the fantasy of those things
3 replies 4 retweets 32 likes -
Replying to @arthur_affect @perdricof
Much like when shitty Star Wars fans revolted over The Last Jedi and its explicit message of "Look a mature understanding of good and evil shouldn't revolve around icons and branding" Icons and branding are the business
2 replies 1 retweet 29 likes - Show replies
New conversation -
Loading seems to be taking a while.
Twitter may be over capacity or experiencing a momentary hiccup. Try again or visit Twitter Status for more information.