Editing Harry Potter (section)

==Would you like to know more?==
The story is about an orphaned boy living with awful relatives. [[The Earthsea Cycle|He soon finds out he has magical abilites and goes to a Wizard boarding school where he makes friends, learns magic and does magical sports]]. Soon enough, learns about his family and gets wrapped up in affairs involving a Dark Wizard version of Hitler called Lord Voldemort and his associated assholes (including a Dark Wizard version of the Klan called Death Eaters and Nazgul rip-offs called Dementors). So basically the pipe dream of every disaffected teenager; this more than anything probably explains the series' breakout popularity.

The books sold really well, got a series of very popular movies which grossed higher than any other series of movies in history, probably got a fair bit of people interested in fantasy literature (given that they were mainly targeted to young adult readers) and generated a moderate amount of [[skub]] back in its day before the haters moved onto [[Twilight|things which were more uniformly panned]]. Given the target audience, it was also inevitable that the fandom created an unholy amount of fanfiction, including what's universally recognized as [https://www.fanfiction.net/s/6829556/1/My-Immortal the  worst fanfiction ever.] But it is also the source of [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2V4VxlsMuQ4 the best (and most batshit insane) fanfiction ever, as well].

Besides its reputation for producing an ungodly amount of [[NSFW]] fan fictions produced by horny and sometimes illiterate teens, the fandom (particularly the adults that most of the initial audience has aged into) also has a reputation for [[TVTropes|having their worldview constrained entirely by Harry Potter]], constantly comparing real world events to the fictional book series; any time you see a political tweet or protest sign reference Harry Potter, it’s inevitably met with dozens of people screaming “READ ANOTHER BOOK” in response. It can be truly embarrassing to witness.

In general the series has good characters, even though the main cast looks a bit lacklustre when you think about them, and the main antagonist has not much to him besides "I'm Hitler, but with a snake face and magic". Most of the supporting cast are reasonably fleshed out, engaging in their way with decent motivations which make sense and are part of the story both in the individual books and over the course of the series.

The lore and world-building is at best hit and miss. What do we mean by hit and miss? Well, [[awesome|sometimes there is lore so knee-deep in detail to an autistic degree it could give Star Wars a run for its money.]] [[fail|Sometimes, the lore is literally Rowling just throwing shit on the wall in MS Paint and calling it a day.]] So yes. Rowling ''is'' a fantastic world builder...<u>'''''IF'''''</u> she puts in the effort for it. On the other hand, sometimes you feel that the author is pulling ''deus ex machinas'' and lore out of her ass to railroad the story forward, but the series is not the worst gateway drug to the world of fantasy literature a young kid could have, even if traditionalists would favor [[Tolkien]], and of course many a writefag would argue that worldbuilding and lore are secondary at best to a consistent theme, plot, and good characterization. Indeed, Rowling is a competent book author due to how successful the franchise is. Unfortunately, this did not transfer successfully when it comes to screen writing and it shows. The Fantastic Beasts series is considered mediocre at best, despite Rowling being in charge of the writing, which really hammers home that just because you are decent in one thing, does not mean you are great in another medium. 

Similarly, as what is essentially the forefather of teenager oriented urban fantasy, it's obviously going to have the usual issues that plague other series that basically spawn a subgenre around them, and later series will learn from it and build on it. Much like how Seinfeld doesn't seem all that special today because its lessons have been so thoroughly disseminated throughout the genre that looking at Seinfeld now is like looking at a prototype of a line of products you're already familiar with.  That being said despite quite a lot of competition (the most serious being Percy Jackson though the fandoms themselves are on good terms), Harry Potter still generally holds up as one of the better examples of young adult urban fantasy literature. 

Eh, no reason you can't try both Tolkien and Rowling. Enjoy what you want, but the difference in quality of both the author and their art is plain and obvious: all Tolkien aficionados still refers to him lovingly as The Professor, while tons of fans of Harry Potter refers to Rowling as She-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named for her... let's say [[skub|debatable]]... views. That and a constant stream of embarrassment due to Rowling's [[derp|inability to get the fuck off Twitter, stop saying stupid shit and stop getting into pointless Twitter fights.]] Fun fact: she wrote another book series with the pen-name Robert Galbraith, who is totally NOT a reference to [https://www.wikiwand.com/en/Robert_Galbraith_Heath a psychiatrist who thought you could electrocute TEH GAY out of gays]

Best not to bother and roll with it.

===Main Cast===
[[File:Harry-potter-characters-book-vs-movie.jpg|thumbnail|right|400px|Dramatis Personae]]
* '''Harry Potter''': The Boy Who Lived and main protagonist. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Books_of_Magic An unassuming English kid with glasses that obtains a pet owl, and takes up his preordained destiny to enter a secret world of magic hidden in plain sight]. The Dark Lord tried to kill him when he was a toddler, but his parents loved him and the spell bounced and made the Dark Lord vanish instead (if that raises questions you've probably already put more thought into it than the author did). Went to stay with his abusive aunt and uncle and didn't notice he was a Wizard until  [https://www.wikiwand.com/en/Obi-Wan_Kenobi#Original_trilogy_(1977%E2%80%931983) an hobo came to his house and told him.] Not the smartest knife in the drawer, and for much of the series he's actually more hated than loved by the wizardry world due to him being an angsty kid and the author catering to the needs of the angsty kid audience. In-universe much of that hate stems from Harry being a very normal teenager instead of the magical titan they expect (even though that should be blatantly obvious). Also has a nasty habit to pull lucky deus ex machinas out of his own arse to save himself.  But that part is at least self-acknowledged in the books, where Harry repeatedly tries to impress on his classmates that they don't have his plot armor and most of the things he did probably shouldn't have worked. He's also a rich trust-fund kid, having received a lot of gold form his parents and inheriting more from the Blacks. Despite that he very often lives rent-free at the expensed of the much poorer Weasley family, destroys their car and never gives them even one penny because fuck you poor people. 
* '''Hermione Granger''': Smart nerd girl and probably your first erection. When she gets a magical object that allows her to travel through time she uses it to study more instead of, for example, [[Old Man Henderson|solving every problem ever]]. Out of the blue she decided to bone the Comic Relief character at the end of the last book despite treating him as a dimwit for 7 years. The author has later admitted this was a mistake, even going as far as to say their relationship would be tumultuous. In the books she tries to end the enslavement of the Elves and got mocked for it because... erhm... Slavery good? Mercifully the author decided to suddenly make the whole plot line vanish without even a throwaway line before it got ever more embarrassing.
* '''Ron Weasley''': Redhead comic relief. That's about it. Once he had a pet rat that was an old hairy man in disguise and slept with him. His brothers, due to the Marauder's Map (a magical object that shows the location of everybody in Hogwarts, [http://eggabase.com/wp-content/uploads/Easter_Eggs/Movies/Harry_Potter_and_the_Prisoner_of_Azkaban/Naughty-Marauders-Map-MI-350x300.jpg with all the unfortunate implications]), probably knew about this and was totally ok with it. Bangs a chick way out of his league due to contrived plot reasons.
* '''Voldemort''': aka Magical Hitler but with the brush moustache swapped for complete hair loss and a snake face and swastikas replaced with snakes. No, really. He wants to eliminate everyone with muggle ancestry, wizard or not. Why? Because his mother date-raped his father with a love potion, said father abandoned them after getting off the potion and she died giving birth to him.  That sucks, but no need to take out your issues on the rest of mankind. For half of the series he's in a ghostlike state until he gets himself a new body (he was noseless before, it was a side-effect of splitting his soul and putting the pieces in soul jars), thanks to the fact that he [[Lich|split his soul up into a bunch of different objects]]. Is finally killed for real when Harry destroys all the Horcruxes - himself included. WHAT A TWIST! But then Harry's still alive because he's the master of the Deathly Hallows! DOUBLE TWEEST!
* '''Albus Dumbledore:''' Headmaster of Hogwarts, most powerful wizard in the world and all around cool old coot. Initially considered a bit of an airheaded old codger who was none the less nice and supportive, but as the books progress, we learn he'd been playing 5D time travel diamond chess against the forces of Voldemort, secretly and clandestinely pulling the strings of all other characters in the series, like a noblebright [[A Song of Ice and Fire|Littlefinger]]/[[Lord of Change]]. Dies, but it’s okay, because he [[Just as Planned|planned around it]].
* '''Alan Rickman:''' As <s>Severus Snape</s> himself.  Ron Weasley's actor was legit terrified of him for the first couple movies. Once, the kid drew an unflattering picture of Rickman and got caught. Alan made him sign it, then kept the picture until the day he died because he thought it was funny.