Creating is a funny thing. Characters, world, theme, sometimes it's the easiest thing in the world, other times you strain and struggle with it and it feels miserable. But my oh my, we are crawling ever closer to some goals...
Had some thoughts about literature a couple weeks ago... shared them on Facebook at the time, but screw it, they'll last longer here.
Like a lot of people, I grew up with Harry Potter, and of course it inspired my own writings, though it never made its way onto my official list of inspiring things that I'm currently running down on the TAPAS podcast. And, you know, that's a bitter thing to look back on these days. Not only is remaining a fan of Harry Potter impossible to separate from being anti-trans, but people are looking more critically at aspects of the story that, well, always drew odd looks from people, and in retrospect are clear signs of Rowling's true nature.
There's house-elves; Hermione realizes midway through the series that their situation is in all senses slavery, and this defines most of her motivation from then on. At no point does any other character begin to consider she has a point; house-elves are happy with their lot, after all. Marietta is permanently disfigured for an act of schoolyard betrayal. Generally, the atmosphere and the sense of justice are all rather mean-spirited. And Harry... while we all connected to him, seeing him as a nerdy underdog and a revolutionary, on second glance he's clearly a trust-fund jock who never fights the status quo because it doesn't make any difference to his life.
So, the messaging was faulty, but what about the quality of the writing? I think the lasting impact it had there was related to the fact that for many readers, both children and adults, it was their first exposure to many of its standout features as a work of literature. The character names had tangible meaning derived from myth and history, the creatures were a wild combination of the mythical and the original, tiny atmospheric elements came back as huge plot developments later to reward you for paying attention, and the characters were both diverse in a real-life sense and examined diversity from a fantastical perspective.
And the reason most readers noticed these things? Well, that'll be because they were done with all the subtlety of a big red sledgehammer to the face. But the damage was done, in a good way: people thought about these tropes, and how neat they were, and took note when they were done more subtly, and better, elsewhere. No one can deny that Harry Potter is responsible for the current generation of readers, yeah? Readers who, in a dizzying display of irony, learned a better grasp on literary tropes and social issues from Rowling's writings than she herself ever has.
In short: her success was because she had an approach to literature that looks extremely clever if it's in the first book you've ever actually read - leading us all to a greater understanding of stories of all sorts, to grow beyond where we began.
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