Is the 'Harry Potter' series overrated?

A

Actually, it is a bunch of time traveling miscreants who try to put the right people in the right place after they made a mess of history who "choose" (implant) "chosen ones."

 

I wanna be The Chosen One.

 

Well, there's your problem. Even Tolkien knew those who wanted it would never be the chosen.

I suggest try not wanting to be the chosen one.

 

You probably can't afford it. On the other hand, if you can sweet-talk Bill Gates into writing you a check, you might be able to bribe Dr. Who and the others @Garball was talking about to acquire that status. You'll probably have to offer some kind of quid pro quo, though. Like, once you save the world, you'll probably have to do an ad to promote their shows, sell DeLoreans equipped with flux capacitors, etc.

 

Hahaha! I love you guys.

 

Just as a side note: Helga Hufflepuff is my favorite founder because everyone else was "I'll teach the ones with the pure bloodlines", "I'll teach the super smart ones", "I'll teach the ones who are brave and death-defying" but she was like "I'll teach anyone who wants to learn" and that's how you do education and hence, why I am House Hufflepuff. We also have the coolest name. (I love all the houses though.)

 

That's why I think Harry should've been in Hufflepuff. Plus, didn't the whole thing scream segregation? I mean, you have a bunch of kids who want to learn magic, and you split them off into four houses based on what? Whether they're smart? Brave? Smug and egotistical? Sorry, Hogwarts, but I'm here to learn, not to be judged based on my personality when I hadn't even proven anything yet. So what if I can get a little arrogant, it doesn't erase the side that's actually brave and death-defying. That's what a human is. It's all the houses in one. Smart, brave, willing to learn, and arrogant with a healthy dosage of stupidity and ego. We are defined by what we do; not by our basic personalities when we were eleven! You could even argue that the Sorting Hat believed that what we were at eleven is what we shall always, forever be. I can assure you, I am not the eleven-year-old Link the Writer. I may still have the same flaws as I had when I was that age, but I would like to believe that I've changed in the decade and four years that followed since. People change, people learn. Whether they can forgive themselves for their past mistakes and move on, that's another question entirely. But no, Hogwarts, no, I don't buy into that drivel. Draco should've had some qualities of a Gryffindor, and Harry should've had some qualities of a Slytherin. That's how the real world works.

*ahem*

Sorry, went Preacher-Mode there. That's a new thing that's been happening lately.

 

Yeah, that always bothered me as well.

I also think there should have been a good Slytherin. The Slytherin "personality" does have some good points. I imagine them as fiercely loyal to family and close friends and that they would never cheat on a person they dated, be honorable to the family, etc.

And Hufflepuffs may not be especially "smart" or "brave", but they're supposed to be resilient, and in the end, I think that matters more than a few moments of genius or heroics.

 

a gryffindor will die for you

a slytherin will kill for you

a ravenclaw will figure out a solution where no one dies

a hufflepuff will be sitting next to you in the after life going “could have been worse”

 

All well and good...

How, exactly, is this helpful?

And, of course, a Writingforums.org member will tell your story in exciting, prize-winning prose!

 

It's not!

 

Well, it's probably better than the way Rowling put it: where Gryffindor was this pure, noble house that would fight and die for you while Slytherin would stab you in the back and give you to your worst enemy so they could live. In the final battle, the entire Slytherin house stood up and was willing to give Harry to Voldemort. A not so unreasonable request, all things considering. I mean, if he were banging down your door saying, "Give me this one person, or else I'll kill everyone", what would you do? I could see myself swaying from trying to compromise, to outright attempting to fool him into thinking I was Harry Potter and I welcomed a challenge from him.

 

Not just because it's my house, but I have trouble seeing a bad Hufflepuff, but I could see a bad Ravenclaw or Griffindor. I don't know why Slytherins are the only ones that go bad.

 

Who knows, and it's a shame. She had the chance to show that not everything was good vs. evil/black and white, and she blew it. She made Slytherin out to be that everyone was potential could-be Voldemorts, and Gryffindor to be pure-hearted icons of goodness and justice. Hufflepuff and Ravenclaw? She probably forgot about them, mostly. They were just there because it was established that they were two of the four houses of Hogwarts.

 

I think the reason she forgot (or chose to ignore) Hufflepuff and Ravenclaw is because of the scope of the series. There's just so much going on that trying to incorporate extra stuff would have made the series even longer. So in a way, I'm glad she only focused on certain things. Otherwise the series would have ended up like GRR Martin's A Song of Ice and Fire, which is too complex for its own good.

 

I'm in House Lemex, it is to teach those who want to PPAARRTTYY! Sadly everyone was hungover the day the different houses were to register, so we are not in the official books, but that gives us hipster exclusivity.

 

I'm in House Minstrel. Leave your wands at the door. Here we practice music, which is magic that moves souls instead of things.

 

One point. Rowling is female. "Her" not "his" .

 

Oh, wow, you have good English! It's OK, I understand.

 

You can quote like that by clicking the +Quote button at the lower right of the post you wish to quote and then Insert Quotes on the lower left of the reply box.


In my opinion Slytherin being 100% evil and Gryffindor being 100% good was partially because the series was focused on the pov a 11-17 year old. Peter Pettigrew can't have been the only Gryffindor to ever do the wrong thing. There are numerous Slytherins who did the right thing even when it cost them everything, Regulus and Snape being the examples from the books. I always read the black and whiteness of the houses to be more of an indication of Harry being very young and naive than actual fact.

 

If I had to choose it would be either House Stark or House Lannister.

 

Interesting. I've always assumed it was because the readers (preteens when the series began) are young and naive. A morally ambiguous main character probably wouldn't have been as popular or easy to sympathize with. Come to think of it, I don't even think the concept of an anti-hero is fully explored in YA literature, but I could be wrong about this.

 

With all this talk about the Houses of Hogwarts...

Though I am fully aware that this system of intra-institutional division dates easily to the founding of the traditional public schools in the U.K. (what Americans would call private or prep schools), I have to wonder if the ease with which young Americans digested and embraced this dynamic in HP isn't rooted in the anime phenomenon. Anime, in accord with Japanese culture, is riddled with divisions, levels, sections and hierarchies. It's a concept you see everywhere in anime and manga. Great emphasis is placed on the idea of cyborgs belonging to Section 9 (Ghost in the Shell) or ninjas belonging to the Toyotomi clan (Ninja Sword) and the intricate and sometimes strange groups and clans of shows like Naruto and Dragonball Z that continued to apply layer on layer of this focus of team/house/clan/species division that one sees continuously evolved and made more intricate in later shows and franchises. As a kid in the 70's and early, pre-anime-invasion 80's, this feature wasn't present at a culturally relevant level in America that I can remember, which doesn't surprise given the semblance the dynamic has to traditional concepts of classism.

It's interesting to me how parallel it seems to run with the progress of divided political and social issues of the nation across the same span of time. Just an observation....

 

Sounds like maybe some roots of the failed (IMO) "Divergent" story are in this divided/competing houses concept.

 

House Targeryan. Dragons + Valyrian Steel + insanity >>>>> kids with wands and brooms. Any day of the week.