Remove ads

Unpopular opinions we have on fiction

"Let's go! open up, it's time for Unpop!"
Alright, time for my mandatory Unpopular Opinions Post. Let's get this over with.
"You're late. You know the deal. You can Omelaspost for a Funny, or you can make an interesting post for an Insightful."
Here in Unpopular Opinions Poster Civilisation, no one chooses to make interesting posts. It's better to make the one joke everyone knows for the Funny, rather than risk your entire life for just one Insightful rating.
"Tomorrow you better not be late, or I'll have you posting for Informative reactions as punishment."
"Yes sir, sorry, I won't be late next time."

Down here, us Omelasposters only get one Rating a day. One Funny rating is just enough to get your post:reaction ratio to the next day. But that's the life of Unpopular Opinions Poster Civilisation. If you wanna survive, you have to Unpopular Opinions Post. Every Omelasposter has the same goal, and that's to make it to the top thread, where all the Brothers Karamazovposters live. Except, most Brothers Karamazovposters are born on the top thread. If you're an Omelasposter, there's only one way up, and that is through the Temple of Unpopular Opinions. The Temple of Unpopular Opinions is the only structure on SV that combines the bottom thread to the top thread. To make it up, you have to post an impossibly hard Unpopular Opinion Reply that no Omelasposter has ever completed. And that's assuming you even get the chance to post the reply in the thread. The inside of the Temple is protected by a barrier and the only way an Omelasposter gets past the barrier is if they've earned a gilded post. I've never even tried getting a gilded post before, but if I'm going to rank up to a Brothers Karamazovposter one day, I'm gonna have to.
 
If I put aside everything I know about JKR as a person or the implications of contemporary British politics, HP is a series with some cool concepts and mid execution with occasional cracks whenever the story encounters a concept JKR didn't care to think through. As a kid I ate that shit up and became sentimental about it. Even today, I would be willing to read a comparable book to kill time on an airplane or something and then immediately forget about it. The politics (incl house elves and JKR declaring bizarre wizard facts online) is easily the worst thing about HP, the rest is just regular boring at worst.
 
Renewal said:
I think the sticking point is that it's HP is popular, not JKR. Most casual fans of HP don't give a single thought to JKR other than the name on the cover of the books they like.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
Or movies.

I honestly have watched all the movies, except reading the books. I'm more of a tv/movie guy than a book reader.
 
Fourthmatchflame said:
god, it really does suck that jkr is still so popular. terf is a slur to silence you? wow, i sure wish it worked.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
Is JKR popular? Harry Potter is popular but that does not mean that Queen TERF herself has widespread support. Hell, even Harry Potter isn't automatically popular. Fantastic Beasts has bombed hard. It's pretty clear that what people love is the original series, media close to it like Legacy will do well while abysmal garbage like Fantastic Beasts does not. That certainly isn't the same thing as people loving JKR as an author, if it was her shitty detective series might've had a boost in popularity when it came out that she wrote it.

It's extremely possible that normies don't have much of an opinion about Rowling and are purely here for the IP. I wouldn't assume otherwise without hard evidence.
 
Yeah I feel like I'm camp 4, that the early adventures were better and more 'fun' because they got to be lighthearted kids being kids.
When things got serious because Voldemort was officially back and doing thing, it became much less fun and much more dark.
And I suspect that's kind of the trick-
The troublesome elements could be ignored because they were mixed in with all the surgery fun of childhood. But as that fun faded- whether the in-story things getting darker or the author casting a shadow over her work…
 
DanZapman said:
I can confirm, most of my family was big into HP, only cared about the books/movies, and have never given a thought to JKR, her personal statements, or the spinoffs.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...

And that's fair. The biggest problem really is the woman herself howling to her followers on twitter. But I suspect the vast majority of people who like her books don't really want her opinions.

Edit : It's why I've told my sister that if she wants a harry potted themed gift, I'll make one, I've got access to 3D printer, engravers, CNC mills, and a decent miniature/diorama making setup. but I won't give any money to JKR through official merch.
 
Last edited:
hghwolf said:
And that's why there are over a million HP fanfics.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
It's essentially a RWBY situation (or rather RWBY is a Harry Situation :V), you have a series with mediocre to actively offensive writing that has a strong enough core premise and cast that it manages to be successful and due to those strengths spawn a billion fan fics.

I can't say I begrudge it, I don't like either work but if people are able to make lemonade from those lemons more power to them.
 
Soft camp #1 here leading to my own unpopular (here) opinion: I think we're all just going to have to acknowledge that bad people can, nevertheless, in spite of, or even because of, being bad people, make compelling, entertaining, or otherwise good art. Which is not to say that them being a bad person can't sabotage it for a reader, but also like.

Miller redefined Batman (yes I know it's more complicated than that, but don't try and hit me with O'Neal right now).
Bob Kane stole credit for shit he did not do.
HP Lovecraft was HP Lovecraft.

All at best complicated, at worst terrible-- but if you try and tell me Year One isn't GOAT Batman, you're lying.
 
Renewal said:
My thread unpopular opinion is that HP's perceived terribleness is a frankly very online opinion.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
There's a difference between "the work is lacking in artistic quality," "the work can be criticized for excellent and compelling reasons," and "the work is unpopular."

Birth of a Nation was a wildly popular silent film.

It included some significant advances in cinematography, in the art of "how to tell a story in a video recorded format."

It was also a solid slab of pro-KKK propaganda from end to end.
 
Last edited:
Personally got mixed feelings of SPEW arc. On one hand, yeah. House slaves are functionally slaves. If they could leave if they wanted it would basically delete all the complaints, but since they are bound to household they are effectively slaves. Which is bad.

But there is also element of House Elves (mostly) liking their situation, and outside of Dobby most elves don't want to be freed. So Hermione coming in and trying to impose her will on clearly unwanting people feels like White Savior Complex.

Although with hindsight, it's pretty clear where Rowling landed on the topic when she made Hermione's project a joke with literaly name of SPEW.
 
Voikirium said:
Soft camp #1 here leading to my own unpopular (here) opinion: I think we're all just going to have to acknowledge that bad people can, nevertheless, in spite of, or even because of, being bad people, make compelling, entertaining, or otherwise good art. Which is not to say that them being a bad person can't sabotage it for a reader, but also like.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
I have to take some issue with the implication that everyone who thinks Harry Potter is bad hold that opinion because they don't like Rowling. I for one have no problem loving works written by bad people. I love the Cthulhu mythos, I love Enders Game and its sequels, I love Blizzard's games, and so on. I for one live Death of the Author and I'm just fine with.

You're right that sometimes bad people can create great art, but a necessary addendum to that is that sometimes bad people make awful art. Sometimes the noxious people spawn equally noxious or incompetently made stories. I would strongly argue that Harry Potter is one of those times.

I'm sure there are people who hate it because JKR is a terrible human being but I would argue that just as many people at worst were allowed to examine it more critically because she was terrible and have completely valid criticisms of it.
 
Last edited:
True, but even HP doesn't come into the worst of its politics until the latter half of the series, when Hermione caring about house elf rights continues to be a point of mockery and the solution to all the problems with government is to put the right people in charge instead. In general it "just" has an undercurrent of nastiness against fat/ugly/etc people, compared to JKR's evolution into Queen TERF. The series, by itself, is more like... 4/10 overall.

EDIT: No, actually, the more I think about it the more I remember things I had glossed over at the time either because I was a kid or I hadn't yet realized how the series would end up handling things. It actually is pretty bad in a lot of ways, and the redeeming features hinge on you already being emotionally invested in it, personal tastes aside.
 
Last edited:
Simon_Jester said:
There's a difference between "the work is bad" and "the work is unpopular."

Birth of a Nation was a very popular silent film. It was also a solid slab of pro-KKK propaganda from end to end.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
And I think the casual fans I'm speaking of would say HP is good. Like yeah, HP is problematic af, but I think trying to evaluate HP as undeniably bad is a very online opinion. There's a lot in the series that worked and was good or it wouldn't have succeeded. Goodness and popularity aren't wholly divorced metrics.
 
Mandemon said:
But there is also element of House Elves (mostly) liking their situation, and outside of Dobby most elves don't want to be freed.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
i...

There's a lot to unpack there and I'm not even going to start lest I get my blood boiling and bring down the wrath of Mod.
Fourthspartan56 said:
I'm sure there are people who hate it because JFK is a terrible human being
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
Now now, the Man is quite literally rotten, but he doesn't have the brains to write anything half as controversial as HP.

well, anything at all tbf.
 
Fourthspartan56 said:
Personally I'm a hard #3 so I agree with your overall point but I feel this specific "issue" is more on the audience's side then the story's. Past a certain point if one cannot or will not employ suspension of disbelief it's kind of on them. Citing anime school plots is a good example of this, a absurdly powerful student council is no more sensible then HP's inexplicably hands off faculty. If one accepts the former but not the latter that says more about them then the story itself.

I don't think HP was ever good but this isn't a strong criticism. Allowances have to be made for genre regardless of story quality, a hypothetically actually good HP would be just as vulnerable to these kinds of critiques.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...

It isn't, but like, the point of an absurdly powerful student council is to reset the expected power relationship between students and staff. It answers the question "but why don't teachers do something" by suggesting that staff are no better placed to Do Something than students are.
 
Mandemon said:
But there is also element of House Elves (mostly) liking their situation, and outside of Dobby most elves don't want to be freed.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
It doesn't seem like House Elves actually like their situation and are simply volunteering their services to whoever they want to work for. It seems like House elves are magically compelled to obey and to hurt themselves if they disobey.
 
You must login or register to reply here.
Remove ads
Back
Top