Post B6cJXH8XdlZ92w0PUu by rail@flufftech.net
 (DIR) More posts by rail@flufftech.net
 (DIR) Post #B6cJXH8XdlZ92w0PUu by rail@flufftech.net
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       okay so like i knew that Harry Potter books were kinda shit and had some very morally questionable concepts but i didn't look into that too much, didn't read them myselfand now YT started recommending me video essays about just how bad JK Rowling's writing is ON TOP of really nasty unredeemable moral corruption that was seeping through her writing all the way back then without her being openly a fascist:neofox_woozy:​ how the fuck did we get convinced that it's good kids' fiction actually, wtf
       
 (DIR) Post #B6cJXHKwtdUTfPoJpw by IngaLovinde@embracing.space
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       @rail especially when there are so many good contemporary books for children, like "His Dark Materials" for example
       
 (DIR) Post #B6cN8LCdmkOAEaHxyK by aens@transfem.social
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       @rail@social.flufftech.net I've been watching here and there video essays of someone rewriting them to be better, and like there's a lot of stuff wrong with them. One of the things he fixed in the first book was the message that crying is shameful. In a book for 12-year-olds. And also just trying to make the side characters actually do anything that matters. Honestly thinking about it more it kinda reminds me of bad isekai.Honestly I think success comes down mostly to them being the first books that were at all like this (Staring kids, adults mostly irrelevant, you get to run away from your shitty life and it turns out you have magic powers). At this point there are a lot of other books that achieve something like that, but there weren't in the 90's. Also it's like the only significant cultural export of Britain since the Beatles, if you don't count all that really good 70's music because that was too busy criticizing Thatcher to talk about how great and perfect and wonderful the UK is. Which I imagine led to a bit more promotion, as well.
       
 (DIR) Post #B6cN8LtBEaPsMWBwHI by IngaLovinde@embracing.space
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       @aens @rail but there are so many other books about kids and magic, with adults being mostly irrelevant.The most prominent example in this context is "His Dark Materials" by Philip Pullman, with the first book releases two years before the first Harry Potter book, and it's also from UK.But there are plenty of others, e.g. "So You Want To Be A Wizard" was published in _1983_; "The Neverending Story", in 1979. My childhood was full of books about kids and magic getting introduced in their shitty lives; and by the time Harry Potter got published in Russia, it just felt so very meh and underwhelming compared to all these other books from 1980s.