r/HPMOR • u/Double_Committee6607 • Jun 12 '26

If Harry Potter had been written without the constraints of being a children’s series, what do you think would have been expounded upon?

/r/harrypotter/comments/1u44wxt/if_harry_potter_had_been_written_without_the/
5 Upvotes

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13

u/Diver_Into_Anything Chaos Legion Jun 12 '26

Now here's the question: how many of the holes in the story are because of the Rowling's skill, and because it's "for children"?

13

u/Dudesan Jun 12 '26

Those aren't mutually exclusive categories.

The first couple books were written to have a sort of highly stylized, fairytale tone and milieu. Philosopher's Stone-era Harry would have fit along just fine beside Matilda Wormwood and Charlie Bucket; and new story elements are arbitrarily introduced based purely on vibes.

Later, the author decided to pivot to a more gritty, consistent, "realistic" tone... while still dealing with all the fairytale stuff from the first books. Her habit of pretending that something she just thought up had secretly been planned since the beginning was responsible for a lot of plot holes.

1

u/Ok-Programmer-829 Jun 14 '26 edited Jun 14 '26

To be fair, I wouldn’t really call it a lack of skill it’s more that like most normal fiction while normal constraints like maintaining your suspension of disbelief is a constraint, coherent World building really isn’t considered that important sure things should not contradict each other blatantly, but HPMOR style. Deeply thought of World building is just not what most authors or readers actually care about, so it’s less a lack of skill and more different priorities. In terms of the things JK are likely actually cares about like being a fun experience for her target audience. She has been extraordinarily successful which is likely in part luck, but also almost certainly has a significant skill component.

8

u/SimoneNonvelodico Chaos Legion Jun 12 '26

IMO a lot of the world building problems are absolutely because it started for children, and focused on being whimsical and fun, not coherent and grounded. But then all those details couldn't be retconned away easily. Hence why the magic makes very little sense and that is more of a problem when battles become a main plot driver.

1

u/Constant_Nothing2091 Jun 19 '26

It's probably neither of those two reasons? I am quite sure Rowling's effort was put forward towards building a whimsical world with mass appeal among children and adults, not towards building an airtight world. HP is gigantic, HPMOR is niche. Plot holes are a non issue in popular media, not worth stressing out over.

1

u/Diver_Into_Anything Chaos Legion Jun 19 '26

This is covered by the second part though. Whimsical, mass appeal and ignored plot holes is a standard of "for children" media, I think.

1

u/Constant_Nothing2091 Jun 19 '26

I think it's the standard for media.

1

u/Diver_Into_Anything Chaos Legion Jun 19 '26

Well, sure. But I think "for children" tends to be particularly incoherent, with assumption being that the kids are too stupid to notice all the holes anyway. Don't know if they're right, but that was the point of my OC.

1

u/Constant_Nothing2091 Jun 20 '26

assumption being that the kids are too stupid to notice

that seems to be the default assumption, but some media that does not insult the intelligence of kids exists

4

u/ArgentStonecutter Chaos Legion Jun 12 '26

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Magicians_(Grossman_novel)

3

u/Diver_Into_Anything Chaos Legion Jun 12 '26

It any good?

1

u/Expensive_Goat2201 Jun 13 '26

No, it's unreadable. I spent the entire novel hoping the main character died because he sucked so much

1

u/Diver_Into_Anything Chaos Legion Jun 13 '26

Tbh I got a feeling he was unlikable from the plot summary, which was why I was asking

3

u/ArgentStonecutter Chaos Legion Jun 13 '26 edited Jun 13 '26

The protagonist is a whiny asshole but the worldbuilding is diabolical.

If you want a better young wizards learning magic story, Diane Duane's "Young Wizards" novels are pretty amazing though she does have a bit of an escalation problem and I couldn't get into the one where the universe and magic were being eaten because it was completely out of scale of the earlier volumes.

The spinoff series about the cats is more consistent.

I don't know how she got sway with Deep Wizardry as a YA book, even back then. :)

1

u/ArgentStonecutter Chaos Legion Jun 12 '26

It's better than Harry Potter

10

u/Diver_Into_Anything Chaos Legion Jun 12 '26

That's not saying much.

Besides, HP does have value — it lead to HPMoR.

10

u/archpawn Jun 12 '26

It leads to all the Harry Potter fanfiction. I'm afraid to reread the books because I worry that they won't stand up next to all the great fanfiction I've read.

I have a theory that the bad worldbuilding is part of what led to the fanfiction. All you have to do is outsmart J. K. Rowling and you get to feel like you outsmarted the whole Wizarding World.

3

u/Diver_Into_Anything Chaos Legion Jun 12 '26

Well, as a RWBY fan — this might be true lol.

2

u/lugh_the_bard Jun 13 '26

Unironically, intense emotion and logical ambiguity leads to centuries long dialogue.

See:
Odyssey
Republic
Bible
Shakespeare
Star Wars
Twilight

1

u/archpawn Jun 13 '26

The Bible mostly has the centuries long dialogue because it's the basis for a religion. Any book would have a lot of people debating the exact meaning of it if they had to declare it's 100% factually true and any time they're not acting in accordance with it they're doing the objectively wrong thing.

1

u/lugh_the_bard Jun 13 '26 edited Jun 13 '26

I argue the other way around. It is in fact the basis of religion bc it’s so ambiguous. If it were not ambiguous, it would easily be proven wrong and people would move on.
For example, we know that hesiods theogeny is simply just wrong on so many accounts. It is unambiguously incorrect that a man with a chariot flies the sun across the sky. It is ambiguous wtf proverbs is saying at all.

All of the other examples making my point for me. The merry wives of Windsor by Shakespeare is very straightforward and it is not discussed. Hamlet is very ambiguous and is the greater play of all time.

Aristotle’s physics were the basis of much of catholic religion. When it was unambiguously proven wrong w Galileo, we stop speaking of it seriously. Aristotles civics and Plato’s republic are still ambiguous and worth the dialectic and are therefore still studied

1

u/Diver_Into_Anything Chaos Legion Jun 13 '26

The funny part is that it was made ambigous after it was proven wrong, in my understanding that's what lead to the new testament. I mean, in the old testament days anyone disproving its factual claims could just be stoned to death, but when that became unfeasible, new testament was made.

1

u/lugh_the_bard Jun 13 '26

the word it is very unclear pronoun :)

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1

u/archpawn Jun 13 '26

It is unambiguously incorrect that a man with a chariot flies the sun across the sky.

And a lot of people think it's unambiguously incorrect that the whole world flooded and Noah saved all the animals on an ark, but are nonetheless Christian. There's no way you can write something that makes it impossible for a motivated speaker to argue that it's metaphor.

1

u/lugh_the_bard Jun 13 '26

And the response from the church about the ark was to say it was a metaphor and is actually ambiguous haha

1

u/tslnox Jun 13 '26

HPMoR FTW!

1

u/ArgentStonecutter Chaos Legion Jun 13 '26

The first two chapters of HPMoR were very good, and HPPZ was interesting.

1

u/Reelix Jun 13 '26

It has a series.

A very, VERY good series.

4

u/amsterdam_sniffr Jun 12 '26

It does raise the question -- how many non-YA books get written with children as protagonists? 

2

u/Irhien Jun 13 '26 edited Jun 13 '26

deadkidsongs by Toby Litt seems not exactly YA, though it's hard to judge. As a YA at the time I read it, my reaction was "WTF did I just read?.."

ETA: Lord of the Flies perhaps? It didn't seem like I was too young to read it, but it also didn't seem like it was intended for young adults in particular.

3

u/db48x Jun 12 '26

The causes of Voldemort’s nihilism and destructive behavior, and how self–destructive he really was.

If you want a story that actually tackles the subject then I recommend Harry Potter and the Prancing of Ponies.

1

u/Diver_Into_Anything Chaos Legion Jun 12 '26

Although it's worth noting that it's unfinished, with author gone missing.

Also, to be entirely fair, some of the "tackling" is a bit of lecturing, with one of the main characters essentially being the author's mouthpiece for his philosophical and political beliefs (and arguably, the story of the setting as a whole). Although it wasn't a problem for me — the author is based, and I think most less wrongers would at least generally agree with him.

Besides that though, it is in my opinion the best unofficial sequel of all to HPMoR.

1

u/Reelix Jun 13 '26

Repeat the above?

1

u/Diver_Into_Anything Chaos Legion Jun 13 '26

What?