If you're reading this, chances are you've read the Harry Potter books or watched the films as a child.
Whether you queued for hours for the latest edition, or went to watch one of the seven films on their release day in the cinema, the Harry Potter franchise has played a special part in millions of lives across the world.
However, if you've never seen them or haven't watched or read them in forever, one author has made a bold claim about experiencing the Wizarding World as an adult.
JK Rowling's smash-hit series is apparently a very different experience for those watching or reading it as an adult for the first time, compared to children experiencing it.
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Many Potterheads will disagree with this take, and let's just say it's not a flattering one... We'll have to wait and see how the new TV series fares, too.
Author Jason K Pargin, who wrote John Dies At The End, shared his thoughts in a TikTok video about the stories.
"If you go back as an adult and watch or read Harry Potter, you will notice something fascinating," he explained.
"Not a single plot twist in the story makes any sense at all!" he claims. "Not a single deus ex machina, where they use a magical item or spell to get them out of trouble, makes any sense at all, and I do not mean that it's unrealistic because magic isn't real."
"I mean that very time they introduce something like this, you immediately can think of dozens of instances where they could have used this before and for some reason just didn't," he continued.
"This is not an accident, it is extremely important if you want to understand how storytelling works. Everybody gets mad when I say this but it's objectively true, audiences do not care if a story makes logical sense."
"Audiences do not care if the storyteller is 'playing fair' with their twists or the logic of their story," he stressed, over a backdrop of text showing how many hundreds of millions of copies the books sold (some 600 million).
"The films have made billions of dollars, and every single plot twist, every single shocking story reveal, they all completely disregard what happened in the previous books or films."
"If you try to just replay the entire series from Dumbledore's point of view, by trying to figure out what he knew and what his plan was the whole time, it's just ridiculous!" he slammed.
"The author absolutely knows this. In the books the characters joke about the fact their sport, Quidditch, makes no sense."
And he didn't stop there, going on to add: "The currency in the wizarding world is nonsense on purpose. Their coinage is called sickles, galleons and knuts, and there are 493 knuts in a galleon."
He accused Rowling of 'bad storytelling' for giving Harry a potion that 'just makes good things happen', or that 'time travel is easy' and 'would have solved every single one of their problems.'
The author insisted that his point isn't to call Harry Potter fans 'stupid', but says it's the fact that every storyteller knows that storytelling is misdirection and magic in and of itself.
"The part of the human brain that we use to follow stories is not the same part that we use to do math," he insists.
He said other fantasy stories, such as The Lord Of The Rings, also rely on this, but says the Harry Potter series puts it 'front and centre'.
One fan agreed, writing: "Lord Of The Rings when they could have just used birds to fly from the start."
"I’m obsessed with the lack of logic in how dangerous time travel is… and they just… gave Hermione a Time-Turner, a THIRD YEAR STUDENT, so that she could double-up on classes," added another.
Others defended the Wizarding World, though, with one saying: "The world building Is still good, that's what makes Harry Potter popular."
Well, it's safe to say that Harry Potter is one of the most successful and best-selling series of all time, which means that Rowling certainly did something right when she wrote all six of the books!
Topics: Harry Potter, JK Rowling, Books, Film
Jen Thomas