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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.
 
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. So Hermione coming in and trying to impose her will on clearly unwanting people feels like White Savior Complex.
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So when JKR first introduced House Elves to the setting it was with Dobby. People had questions about how wizards apparently kept slaves on the fairly regular.

She badly adressed this in the following books - as she does with other elements that she introduces without much forethought, like Time Turners - by first having House Elves be happy to dress in rags and work all day and then, when that probably wasn't enough for people cause how the fuck could it ever possibly be, she introduced Winky, who was freed and then spent the rest of her life as a depressed, non-working, alcoholic.

(If you have any, any knowledge of how racial slavery was 'justified' then there are probably some giant fucking alarm bells ringing right now.)

And yet, how does that justify the enslavement of an entire sentient race as a matter of course ? Even if House Elves are totally fine with their situation, even if Dobby is an outlier among outliers - gee, wonder how that might have happened with the slave race - seeking freedom, fair wages and, y'know, RIGHTS for House Elves is still the eminently moral choice.

It's similar to 40K; the universe bends over backwards to justify fascism - or slavery - and it still cannot actually do that.
 
The thing is that leaving house elves to be happy in slavery is a problem most prominently because there's no out for the abused ones, like we saw with Dobby. There's no real reason Hermione couldn't free house elves who then turn around and willingly do free labor if they want to, but have the freedom to voluntarily leave forevermore. The largest problem isn't the work without pay, really, it's magically being trapped in that situation. Like, the elves Hermione frees don't have to start charging, except maybe in Rowling's head.

I guess Rowling just thinks the best solution is to leave the structures unchanged and just deal with the problem bad people who would do abuse. It's at best a weird fucking bed she made, and I would say evident of some nasty ways of thinking. Like, just expecting people to be okay with this system that sounds awful and is awful in almost every case we specifically see, because it's only the bad guys who mistreat their magic slaves, guys! (And she did make that bed, it's not something that can be chalked up to folklore.)

Actual brownies and hobs and such would do work because they wanted to, and leave if people in that household offended them. Giving them clothing didn't break a contract, it pissed them off, as did most attempts to pay or reward them. (Specifics, of course, depending on the tales and the exact sort of fairy/creature and the location and time of the tales.)
 
Renewal said:
My thread unpopular opinion is that HP's perceived terribleness is a frankly very online opinion. Hogwarts Legacy's massive success demonstrates that there's a huge segment of people who are not plugged into JKR's terribleness and are still casual fans of the series, enough to drop $60 for the game.

Like, I'm not a diehard, I didn't buy Hogwarts Legacy, I don't even consume Harry Potter fanfic much when fanfic is my primary media consumption nowadays, but HP still has considerable cultural cachet.
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Being popular doesn't actually make something good though. Michael Bay's transformers was some of the most popular content in the world at the time.

I'm not saying anything about how bad HP was I didn't say when HP was new and I didn't know that I was trans or JK rowling is a reactionary. It's bad. It fails to balance the "children's magical adventure" aspect with the "School story" aspect. Also it's insanely fucking twee. It's so twee that if you could power something by twee particles you could solve climate change with just that book series.

Edit: like, Rowling is someone who even at the time could think of no worse aspect of being poor than having teenagers break your door lock. That was the reason she wanted to support labour. Not the near starvation. Not the having to get food litterally from supermarket leavings. It was crime that always concerned Rowlings.

It's not particularly surprising given that and her dislike of schoolgirl activism that she ended up a reactionary.

hghwolf said:
It's similar to 40K; the universe bends over backwards to justify fascism - or slavery - and it still cannot actually do that.
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TBQH in 40K's face I think the idea that fascism is fully justified is mostly a fan thing rather than a setting thing. There's some writers that say it is but we actually see lots of polities, including human ones, who aren't fascist but don't fall to chaos or whatever.
 
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Renewal said:
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.
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There's also a lot of stuff that gets skimmed over, or which the books actively try to ensure you don't think about.

Like "if the wizards can teleport (In two different ways even!), why does everyone use a mail system delivered by natures slowest bird?"

And sure, that's a minor thing, but it's indicative of the real issue with the books - the owl postal stuff is a big aesthetic part of the stories, but it's 100% pure whimsy. The second you realise that even leaving aside the teleportation, owls make TERRIBLE delivery birds, it becomes really, really hard to ignore.

And a lot of HP stuff is like that - easy to put in the mind-hole to focus on the whimsy and Magic-School, but the second you see the cracks, they become harder and harder to ignore, and it increasingly adds up.

Edit: the biggest thing that people liked about HP wasn't the plot, or the characters - though people do like those things. It was the Aesthetic.
 
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hghwolf said:
It's similar to 40K; the universe bends over backwards to justify fascism - or slavery - and it still cannot actually do that.
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I would actually argue that 40K is not fascist. Authoritarian, but not fascist. Mainly because it lacks ability to be fascist, the Imperium can not maintain itself the way fascist would, so instead it ends up being neo-feudal hot garbage. Some places are nice and very democratic, and then you get Forge Worlds.
 
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This discussion* runs into the rather large problem that "good" is not a measurable quality in any way and what constitutes "good" fiction varies greatly from person to person.

The closest things we have to objective metrics, sales and popularity, have holes so giant an underutilized giant squid could swim through them.
*The general HP one, not the one about non-Isekai slaves
 
BiopunkOtrera said:
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.
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Is it? I figured it was to create a theater for politics, bureaucracy, and/or hierarchy to be in play without crossing the adult/child interface.
 
Harry Potter is great for whimsy, but past that its pretty meh, and there are a bunch of questionable concepts within the series. Personally I do believe that works can't be separated from their authors, and with HP, well the books do contain things that roughly fall in line with JKR's beliefs.

On another somewhat unrelated note, I've heard that Harry Potter and The Methods of Rationality, something I'd expect to deconstruct why and how the HP world works the way it does in-universe: doesn't live up to its title at all.
 
The3rdCorinthian said:
Which probably helps explain why more people don't have yikes thoughts - the movies remove a lot of things that show exactly who JK is, like the SPEW arc.
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They also add a lot of yikes, though. Hagrid being unable to spell words is purely a movie invention. Long-nosed goblins as well.

LunaMoth said:
On another somewhat unrelated note, I've heard that Harry Potter and The Methods of Rationality, something I'd expect to deconstruct why and how the HP world works the way it does in-universe: doesn't live up to its title at all.
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Oh look, next dumpster-fire detected.:V
 
ah, the libright harry potter fanfic, not to be confused with hogwarts school of prayer and miricales witch is the authright one.
 
As a project, it seems bound up more with trying to show a specific view of "rationality" and breaks and changes the original rules of the world as suits it, in order to better showcase that, rather than being primarily an exploration of Harry Potter's world. You can't really disentangle it from the whole "rationalism" LessWrong crowd and just... the rest of Eliezer Yudkowsky's beliefs. So that's not per se something the story fails to do, necessarily, it's just not its primary aim.

(It may also fuck it up when it attempts to do that exploration on the side, but I'll leave that judgement to people who have actually read it, I never did.)
 
i would like to but the snippets ive seen arent even entertainingly bad.
 
Fourthmatchflame said:
ah, the libright harry potter fanfic, not to be confused with hogwarts school of prayer and miricales witch is the authright one.
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Libright is a baffling description, which I guess makes sense if you never read it.

I am not sure how much it is into politics as such but its power relations preference seems to lean to the odd LessWrongian science-oriented mystery cult. (I don't know whether that's still in fashion in that sphere, I only read that context briefly.)
 
Mandemon said:
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.
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The thing is, there's much better lore to land on if you want to have house spirits be a thing. Including having them be slaves to their own pride rather than anything actually compelles by wizards. Or making them creatures that are shaped by their work.

But Rowling had alreasy written herself into a corner with Dobby. She then took the boring route of making an exception rather than a represenation of something unpleasant about the Wizarding world

The same wizarding world that is sweet and magical on the surface but also, yknow, jam packed with magical fascists?

To be fair, thats a bit of the story that Rowling is being reasonably critical about. Yeah, a lot of death eaters rotted in Azkhaban. But plenty got a slap on the wrist and a place in high society.

But well, the thing about the blood from skulls drinking kinda evil folks is that they're always supported, and even need the support of people who are merely kinda shitty but through in their lot with the super evil folks because their goals werent enough of a turn off to them.

Thats the part of the wizarding world Rowling is reluctant to address.
 
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Aineko said:
Libright is a baffling description, which I guess makes sense if you never read it.

I am not sure how much it is into politics as such but its power relations preference seems to lean to the odd LessWrongian science-oriented mystery cult. (I don't know whether that's still in fashion in that sphere, I only read that context briefly.)
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yeah those people are libertarians arent they.
 
They're not really a united bloc as it comes to politics, are they? There's a libertarian subset for sure, though I couldn't tell you how large it is. But like, most of the things that they all agree on to my knowledge aren't (or at least aren't directly) political, so you can't paint them with one brush. And even where they are libertarians, they're weird compared to other libertarians, because they're... LessWrong people.

I've stayed away from the place because a lot of the things LessWrong is interested in are things I am interested in; AI, decision theory, and the like. And stuff I've seen evidenced that I disagree with them, that they have major groupthink and some dumb ideas dressed up in a lot of arguments, so I just didn't want to get suckered into arguing against LessWrong "rationalists" for a million billion years. Knowing now more about how they're sorta, well, a mystery cult, makes me very glad I did that. But whatever they are isn't exactly libertarians, whether one means libertarians in the general political sense or libertarians as in the conservative movement in the USA (and probably some other countries?) who generally aren't really libertarian in their philosophy as practiced.

I'm apparently misinformed or at least out of date on their politics, though, if they have something about how the intellectuals should be in charge of everything. ...Wait, is that where all the stuff with friendly AIs ended up going?
 
BiopunkOtrera said:
TBQH in 40K's face I think the idea that fascism is fully justified is mostly a fan thing rather than a setting thing. There's some writers that say it is but we actually see lots of polities, including human ones, who aren't fascist but don't fall to chaos or whatever.
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40k is over all things a game setting that pretty much only exists to give some flavor to people that are throwing dice at their overcosted plastic toys.

99.99% of the playerbase know it is just a game, and pretty much all of them will agree the IoM is a horrible place and that is the joke.
In fact, I would argue you are more likely to find Chaos/Ork/Tyranid* apologism than Imperial one amongst people that actually play the game.

*That's me, I'm the Tyranid apologist.
 
DoobleDeeDooble said:
I'm apparently misinformed or at least out of date on their politics, though, if they have something about how the intellectuals should be in charge of everything. ...Wait, is that where all the stuff with friendly AIs ended up going?
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I doubt you are more out of date than me - I haven't read lesswrong at all in several years, and never was speaking to their social organization.

But like the MOR ending sets Harry up as the secretive master/guru in the shadows. And when I did read Lesswrong I saw that idea played with in a few smaller pieces.
 
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