Examples? You can't go on a rant and then not give examples.
this post was submitted on 14 Sep 2023
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Sirius' death is a pretty obvious example
Hey look, there it is again in the one I’m at now. Hermoine to Potter: “What’s wrong with your hand?” Potter: “Nothing.” (This was the Dolores torture). Hermoine actually finds out, which is refreshing. "You've got to tell Dumbledore." Harry: "No. Dumbledore's got enough on his mind right now." Freaking stupid, Harry.
This “is anything happening?” “No, nothing.” exchange with Potter is constant in this series.
Dude the ball tops of my thigh bones were literally sliding off the bones (they failed to fuse for me) in middle school. I was limping and would have insane attacks if pain when they moved a fraction of a millimeter.
Parents, teachers, friends: what's wrong? Me: nothing
Kids hiding bad things is the most real part.
People hide important things for dumb reasons in the real world, but it's unsatisfying, lazy and overused in fiction. Especially in HP.
Oh no no.... I was the opposite. I was a whiny little bitch. Broke a finger nail? "Moooooooooom!!!!"
Most kids don't hide blatant injuries or health problems people are just trying to cope with bad writing.
Hate this fucking site it's full of contrarian bullshit just like reddit
Most healthy kids. Kids who grow up in supportive homes. But abused kids? They hide injuries all the time. In fact, they'll hide anything that has a chance of putting them in the spotlight of adults they think even might potentially abuse them, let alone the adults who actually do.
I think people forget that Harry was physically at times and definitely emotionally/verbally abused for the first 11 years of his life. He has a lot of responses that are conditioned into kids who grow up with abuse. He doesn't want to be a bother because he's psychologically predisposed to believe that doing so will make them care less about him and that's the last thing he wants. It's a lot of the reason Hermione and Ron both have such a decent relationship and friendship with him. They both in their own way go out of their way to show to Harry that they do care. And that they aren't going anywhere (despite some growing pains during the GoF, and the bit in the Deathly Hallows where Ron storms off and gets caught by the snatchers. Despite the few times they don't see eye to eye and argue they do show that they value each other.
But when you're conditioned to think you aren't valuable you go out of your way to protect the people who see value in you, even in misguided ways like saying nothing is wrong when everything is.
I cannot overstate how much not only does Harry do it every movie, but all the other characters as well.
"Kids hiding bad things is the most real part".
You're watching a story set from the kids point of view. We (the audience) aren't privvy to what the adults/teachers are doing, just like the kids.
And from Harry's perspective, he's got a lot going on, and this is just "another removed teacher". Keep in mind this is a Brit story - ask a Brit what their schooling was like (had some insightful discussions 20 years ago with my older Brit coworkers).
JK was what, 30-40 when she wrote this? So went to school in the 70's.
Lol, I love the "removed" bot. It almost makes things taste better!
Give me a break man. I was sick for most of my childhood. You know what I did? I told my parents when I was getting sick. I guess that must be a shock to the morons in this thread trying to pretend that kids are utter dumbasses so they don't have to criticize a story.
Who said kids are dumbasses? Project much?
My experience, as a kid, was that asking adults about things, or trying to tell them anything, was pointless. They were a bunch of thickheaded idiots. This was my experience with practically every teacher too, through college (which was 30+ years ago for me).
We're all flawed, imperfect. Effective ommunication is hard.
Can't say it any better than Marcus Aurelius:
"The substance of [life] is ever flowing, the sense obscure; and the whole composition of the body tending to corruption.
[...] To be brief, as a stream, so are all things belonging to the body..
Our life is a warfare, and a mere pilgrimage."
His point is that everyone contends with the apparatus of a quite imperfect, continually breaking down physical being, on top of anything going on in our heads, making everything that much more difficult.
Kids don't grok this yet, so can't comprehend what being old like Dumbledore (or hell, even 45) is like.
Plus, Harry would naturally have a distrust of authority figures due to his upbringing. I'm sure he got used to hiding stuff from the Dursleys.
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Dumbledore thought Harry was a Horcrux mate, he was avoiding him since the start of the year.
I couldn't finish book 6 because there was too much of harry whining in capslock for no appreciable reason, and I remember skipping over a lot of scenes with his uncle for the exact reasons OP highlights.
He had PTSD, he watched a kid get murdered and nearly got murdered!
Fair point. But I can't remember it all at once. I didn't exactly stop and take notes every few seconds throughout the movies like a proper reviewer xD
But if you say that "most of bad things" I would imagine it wouldn't be too hard to name a few
I'm autistic. Big hard drive, small RAM. And that RAM is being used right now to absorb this next Harry Potter movie while I also try to manage funds with my housemates in a crisis and prevent homelessness
I'd basically have to go and rewind right now, or go back to the movies I watched in the last week, and... blegh, I don't want to stop in the middle of the first third of Order of the Phoenix. It's already way better than Goblet of Fire (movies, not books. People say the GoF book is great, and I tend to believe them)
Edit: Hey look, there it is again in the one I’m at now. Hermoine to Potter: “What’s wrong with your hand?” Potter: “Nothing.” (This was the Dolores torture). Hermoine actually finds out, which is refreshing. "You've got to tell Dumbledore." Harry: "No. Dumbledore's got enough on his mind right now." Freaking stupid, Harry.
This “is anything happening?” “No, nothing.” exchange with Potter is constant in this series.
I thought it was all so far fetched that they just kept on allowing obviously evil people, people who were opposed to the very ideals of the school, continue with their plots unchallenged. Then 2020 rolled around and I was like "oh... Well this feels familiar".
This one bothered me pretty early. But I don't feel like the context given in the Harry Potter series would allow for anything like the corruption we see in real-life politics. For one, a couple people are professors of Hogwarts for power, but most are in it because they care about their jobs. There's no reason nobody stood up to Dolores— all students and professors hated her (except her new toady Filch, and maybe only a few Slytherin after she offered them power?) and Dolores was exerting power over the school that she simply didn't have. Any one of them could have just effed her up anytime for her literal, no joke Nazi rules and her torture. Let alone a full disgruntled school.
Wasn't she empowered by the ministry of magic, which was in turn controlled by money?
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I would like to highlight Harry's character development throughout the series. Although he made several questionable choices in GOF, OOF, and HBP, we should consider that he is a teenager throughout most of the series. Teenagers, umm, well, aren't great decision-makers. As a teenager, I mostly acted mainly on impulse instead of rational thinking.
And talking about individuals defending themselves, not all perspectives find a receptive audience. A perfect example is in OOF, when Dumbledore testifies before the Minister of Magic about Voldemort's return. His statements are met with scepticism and disbelief, mirroring a similar experience Harry had trying to convince others at Hogwarts.
If you want to share counter-examples, I'd be happy to hear them.
Nobody ever explained anything more than the likes of "Voldemort's back! You have to believe me!" If anyone actually gave account or explained anything at all, the good guys would have a lot more allies than they do. Hell, actually talking is how they convinced a bunch of people to let Harry teach them dark arts defense in Order of the Phoenix. It seems that actually talking is how every good event happens, and that not talking is how every bad event happens.
I call it "plot by stupid" but TV tropes calls it idiot plot. https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/IdiotPlot
Tbh, it's always kinda confused me why hp got such acclaim. They're decent books! I enjoyed reading them several times. However, I wouldn't call them hallmarks of fiction or anything.
Yep! It's basically a form of bad writing.
There's something called an idiot plot, where the plot only works because the characters are idiots. If they just did the obviously correct thing, the tension would resolve too quickly.
It's a much harder task to create drama and tension from believable, likable, sensible, consistent characters. If your characters just CAPSLOCK ANGST DRAMA in every situation, it's way easier to keep tension. Annoying, badly written tension.
Well, kids, especially pre-teen to teen, are idiots. I know, because I was one. And my friends and classmates were too.
are idiots
It's true that people do dumb things, but it makes for annoying fiction. The real world doesn't always translate well into a story.
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I felt the same way by the end of the series.
What bothered me even more was the number of situations that could have been solved with a cell phone or computer.
Like the world-building is absolutely busted. They even have these big-ass libraries and put all this emphasis on learning, but they haven't even started to digitize.
Never once saw a middle-school or teenaged student in a standard math or science class. Weasley's dad was the only one that even thought "muggle stuff" was interesting, but he understood about as well as Ariel understood forks.
Bunch of illiterate magic-dependent isolationists that can't do math or use Google Search. Dumbledore would shit a brick if he found out Hogwarts was on Google Earth that whole time.
The books are set between 1980 and 1998.
I wonder how old Mr Poopy is? lol.
I see the joke, but honestly I could only tell be rereading the third paragraph. The rest sounds authentic.
It's one way to increase engagement on Lemmy lol.
Harry Potter happened before Google even existed. Google Earth would probably just look like a mundane splotch and people would look at it and suddenly remember they left the oven on. They learn their basic studies before they turn 11 and go to Hogwarts.
You have to be joking, right?
I'm not a fan of the series, and I haven't even read or watched it.
I do remember some "flying car" scene, which I'm guessing was flying by magic. But the model looked like from the 1950's.
So if the series happened in that era, there was no "digitizing books" happening anywhere.
Edit: I just read your whole comment. Yeah, you're joking. Funny!
Ya' know, maybe voldemort would have maybe been able to take over at least one high school if he realised he could owl-mail a pipe bomb instead of all these cartoonish ritual shit.
EDIT: Or just portkey two subcritical halves of an enriched uranium weapon from two seperate places into destinations right next to each other so it forms one supercritical mass when they arrive. Where to get the uranium? Transfigure it of course.
You know what, just get ron's creepy manrat pet to transfigure the whole thing on site. For bonus kek don't tell him about the explosion that usually follows.
That issue is common in literature (my spouse and I call it "Shakespeare's Disease"), as it gives a simple excuse for plot to happen.
Happens in a lot of media unfortunately
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