this post was submitted on 06 Apr 2025
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Harry Potter
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This is what happens when an author designs a sport where the protagonist is the single most important player.
Specifically, when a hack of an author designs a sport.
The thing is, the seeds of something great are right there.
Ditch the stupid seeker role, and you have a game that's both entertaining and narratively useful.
Harry could have learned how to be a team player, and eventually a leader.
Instead Rowling wanted Harry to be super special boy in the laziest way possible.
It's honestly hilarious how much being the seeker isolates Harry from the rest of the team. He doesn't have any team plays besides the occasional interaction with the beaters. It would have been so much more interesting if the position were removed, the game lasted a set amount of time, and Harry was a chaser.
You don't have to ditch it, just make it so it's not a guaranteed win under normal circumstances. Make it so the snitch isn't released until a certain amount of time has passed, or points have been scored. And instead of having it be worth a ton of points, have it be worth a small enough amount that it could make a difference in a close game but not the only deciding factor. Then it's a strategic position. A position that requires timing instead of just speed.
Just make it so that catching the snitch ends the game. As in, the scores from either side get fixed. This way the losing team would have an incentive to stop the winning team from getting it, but themselves wouldn't be interested in doing so. It's not game breaking, just another angle.
The mechanic of catching the snitch immediately ending the game is a pretty good one, and there's several ways you could go about it.
Adds no points to either side: you want to catch it when your team is up, but if you find it when your team is down, you want to misdirect the other team's Seeker
Adds a small number of points to your side: you want to catch it when your team is within striking distance of a win
Adds a small number of points to the opposite side: you only want to catch it when your team is up significanty
My favorite would be a random or rotating points penalty. Like say every 3 minutes the points given to each side upon grabbing the snitch is randomized. It still allows for that stupid main character syndrome special boy causing the win thing, but it doesn't completely break the strategy of the game.
I also feel like half the reason he won all the damn time is because he literally just had the best broom in existence for most of the matches from his rich godfather. He's also annoying af with all his angst in the later books (especially OotP) with "nooooo my friends don't understand meeeeee I can't talk to anyoneeeee lemme just be an impulsive idiot".
Rowling had some really sinister cultural programming embedded in her brain that comes out in these books, regardless of the trans stuff that surfaced later. The entire magical governing system is hugely corrupt, based on family wealth, and obviously full of fascists, but the focus of the books was that there were bad actors abusing the system, rather than the system being broken from the start.
You could argue that's done for realisms sake, and sure maybe it is, but if the characters never actually meaningfully tackle those issues then you're re-enforcing complicity for the sake of it, rather than enacting change in a corrupt system when you have the power and ability to do so.
That is exemplified specifically by the “rich godfather buys Harry Potter the bestest broom stick” scenario.
Like, I’m pretty sure in Book 2(?) it’s a big deal that Evil Lucius Malfoy evilly outfits the Slytherin team with new broomsticks. Evil when Lucius does it because he’s evil, but okay when Sirius does it because he’s good.
Just like how slavery was bad when Lucius Malfoy did it to Dobby, but okay when Harry had Kreacher as a slave (who he also treated like shit, but it’s fine, Rowling wrote him to be evil and deserve it anyway)
Just like her worldbuilding, morality is whatever Joanne thinks is most convenient for the story she wants to tell.
Ugh yeah the way Sirius treated Kreacher annoyed me so much. Apparently it was completely fine for Harry to have him as a slave as long as he gave him some locket and made poor brainwashed Kreacher feel like he was the best treated slave ever.
JK Rowling's lack of critical thinking is glaringly obvious in everything she has ever written.
There's an old 4chan post about J.K. Rowling and how they only believe in protecting the status quo system.
https://www.reddit.com/r/COMPLETEANARCHY/comments/g0qtew/harry_potter_and_the_limits_of_liberalism/#lightbox
Fuck me if that doesn't describe the issues in those books perfectly.
Umbridge feels like she was based on a woman Rowling personally knew. Don't know much about Rowling past but I wouldn't be surprised if she had a weird messed up childhood
How did they get rich anyway?
Harry's grandfather is supposed to have invented Sleekeazy's hair spray / potion or something to tame people's hair since the Potters have crazy hair lol. It's such a cartoonish reasoning.
It's J.K. Rowling. I expect nothing and she still dissapoints hahaha
Yeah, that's just bollocks. (No offence) (okay a little offence).
Harry had already saved the world when he was eighteen months old. He was already a super special boy given THE ENTIRE MAGICAL WORLD KNEW HIS NAME before he did.
So the idea that making him a seeker was a way to make him special?
That's just crap.
She isn't a bad author, just a bad person. The reason I regret reading her work isn't because of the work itself...
She can't keep consistent with her dates and how long ago things were
She had good ideas but is a bad author
Not wanting to defend Rowling, since she's an evil and hateful person, but there's many great authors who fall foul of basic arithmetic. I would argue that they are completely separate skills; TV Tropes has a good list. (Also, I'd argue that most of her good ideas were taken from someone else.)
https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/WritersCannotDoMath
She’s not a bad person, she has an opinion that’s different from yours
That opinion is "this group of people is worth less than another group," so yes she's a bad person
Having an opinion that people don't deserve to have rights for being who they are does in fact make you a bad person.
You're on the wrong site to have garbage viewpoints like this.
Perhaps, but I posit that her opinions run objectively bad.
Funnily I'm not very fond opinions that entail treating me and my loved ones like dangerous subhumans
Those books are wonderful, and my children delight in them, even as they both outgrow being the original target audience
The books are average. I read them all, I enjoyed them. The warm feelings of an 'orphan' finding friends and a new family combined with having a fun time in a magical setting carry the series. The actual writing doesn't amount to blasé. She built a world that seems fun. She built a world that falls apart with gentle pokes.