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Harry Potter fans force relocation of £430m undersea cable to avoid Dobby’s ‘grave’ (www.theguardian.com)
submitted 3 months ago by to c/nottheonion@lemmy.world
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Power cable linking UK and Ireland now passes near Bronze Age human burial remains instead of fictional grave on Welsh beach

Update: further information by @BigDiction@lemmy.world in the comments below

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[+] -6 points 3 months ago (13 children)

Harry Potter is very well written. Like leagues beyond what you typically get for youth fiction/young adult.

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  • [–] 10 points 3 months ago (1 child)

    You’ve only got “UK AKSHULLY NO IT ISNT LALALALA” responses, and I feel obligated to speak up for my late (queer fan) friend and say I’m not a fan but they are completely fine books written better then a shit ton of other books for kids. I’ve read the first four and found them to be between “serviceable” and “great”. They were no “Animorphs” to me, but at no point did I find myself thinking “this is boring and sucks”, so people saying they’re straight-up bad are nuts or just being disingenuous.

    If the author wasn’t a mad cunt, I guarantee most of the people saying they’re shit wouldn’t be saying that.

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  • [–] 5 points 3 months ago*

    If she hadn't become a vociferous anti civil rights activist the reality is a lot of us would still be tired of the books and frustrated with elements of them, but there'd be less anger when they come up. There were plenty of people getting real sick of how popular they'd remained in the mid 10s.

    I read them all as a kid and loved them, but I was definitely tired of how much cultural space they took up for so fucking long. And the criticisms are valid, the books did an amazing job of inspiring obsession in a kid of the time, they felt like they grew with me, they had so much room to imagine in, and they were also full of holes, mid prose, and the sort of issues I'm kinda shocked my parents didn't feel the need to have a conversation about.

    But also, would people be as vocal about these issues if it wasn't the largest media franchise under individual control and controlled by someone who has funded massive rollbacks in rights for a group she's bigoted towards? Obviously not, we'd just still be saying to read another book, not arguing not to continue purchasing products from the franchise.

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  • [–] 5 points 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago) (2 children)

    You should read His Dark Materials or The Old Kingdom. Both series are much, much more thoughtfully put together. Their plotting and characterization really put HP to shame.

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  • [–] 1 point 3 months ago

    I think Rick Riordan's series are a better comparison that HDM, which is aimed at a slightly more mature audience. Garth Nix is a great shout though, Keys to the Kingdom particularly has parallels to HP while being a much better series.

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  • [–] 13 points 3 months ago (2 children)

    Its pretty mid.

    I was a book kid, who grew up and was 13 to 17 during the release of the HP series.

    I read mountains of YA books and adult alike. Spent tonnes of weekend days at the library.

    HP was okay, it wasnt bad.

    But it wasnt the best either. I would absolutely say stuff like Sabriel and the Bartimaeus trilogy were substantially better.

    Oh and dont even get me started on Redwall, Jacques was an amazing writer who knew how to craft incredible worlds.

    By comparison to those, Id score HP closer to a 6 or so.

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  • [–] 2 points 3 months ago

    I love you. THE goddamn Bartimaeus Trilogy. I have been searching "bartholomew djinn adventure" "bartoman magic series" and "funny djinni soup" for SO long. Im gonna go fucking read those books again. Various forms of praise for you, etc.

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  • [–] 5 points 3 months ago

    It's really not well written, by classical standards. It's very colorful and fun and entertaining. But the story and plot constantly use "deus ex machina". Just try an summarize the actions and plot of the movie, it makes no sense whatsoever. Really the story is garbage, but the characters and adventure still makes it fun.

    I think that is a feature of a many modern "web novels" or fan fiction. A sort of liberation of the shackles of good writing. Web novels democratized authorship in a way. We really have far more entertaining authors with much more talent than was made to believe (Tangent: A bit like porn today, now that everybody can do it on their own, from their home without some creepy porn producer, we have far better and more creative porn than ever). Most people are creative and pretty good as amateur writers. They just haven't learned the craft of writing a good story lol (cannot be said about Rowlings though, she should have known better).

    Why some things become a hit and others not is an unsolved question. If we could answer that, book publishing and movie studios would work very differently. Don't ascribe to quality which can equally be ascribed to luck or marketing.

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  • [–] 3 points 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago) (2 children)

    It's not very well written, even by youth / young adult standards.

    It's not poorly written either mind.

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  • [–] 5 points 3 months ago (1 child)

    Have you actually gone back and read any of the copious amounts of ya books?

    Off the top of my head – go and reread a Goosebumps book. They are super simple. HP is downright shakespearian compared to them.

    Hardy boys, tom swift series (80s/90s versions) and countless other one shot books that I can barely remember are all super simple too.

    Yes, there are always outliers like Redwall but when compared to the whole HP was well written regardless of the trash person who wrote them.

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