Harry Potter is mediocre at best and I will die on this hill.

“[The Harry Potter series is] stylistically ordinary, imaginatively derivative, and ethically rather mean-spirited.” - Ursula K. Le Guin, a better writer

Title says it all.

To be clear, I have no problem if someone simply like Harry Potter while recognizing its flaws and the bigotry of its author. To Ava's point in the episode, it's a children's book at the end of the day and one shouldn't take the world-building of a children's book too seriously. People are allowed to like things that other people don't appreciate and I myself love several books and series that won't hold up to scrutiny.

But that's not what Harry Potter apologists do. The issue I have with them is their insistent that Harry Potter is objectively good and above criticism. They are not content to simply say "I know it's has issues, but I personally enjoy it". Go to a Harry Potter forum and it won't be long before stumbling on some truly desperate rationalization.

Full disclosure, these opinions are formed mainly by my researching of how to write fantasy/fiction. I am not a Harry Potter fan. This is my observations from hours of trawling world-building advice forums (in which Harry Potter was used an example of what not to do), Harry Potter forums, fan-fiction forums, and various related essays. I have four points on what the Harry Potter apologists say when defending the series.

1) If an explanation requires conjectures by the reader, it is not good world-building.
Every time an logical inconsistency is pointed out, these apologists are quick to come up with explanations. However, often these explanations requires theorizing and occasionally outright speculating by the reader. If the explanation for a logical inconsistency is not addressed directly by the text, then it is poor world-building and the fault of the author. This doesn't even cover the cases where JK Rowling provided an inadequate or illogical explanation. A poor explanation is arguably worse than providing no explanation at all, as it doesn't even allow the readers to speculate (which, again, isn't great either).

2) The "it's a children's book" defense only works if it is universally applied.
Similarly to how some christian will cherry-pick certain parts of the bible to interpret "literally" and other parts to interpret "metaphorically", these apologists will selectively apply the "it's a children's book don't take it too seriously" to the series. In addition, this argument crumbles as the series progressed to later books where it engages with clearly mature themes (torture for example).

3) The magic system cannot be a deus ex machina, hand-wavy, invent-as-I-go device.
From a fantasy world-building perspective, Harry Potter has one of the worst magic systems ever conceived in print. The magic has no particular consistency and at many points is blatantly an arbitrarily inserted plot device to move things along but have no lasting consequences on the rest of the story. The explanation of "it's magic" can only be used a few times before it loses all weight and meaning.

4) "How can it be poorly written when it's so popular."
Popularity and quality are separate concepts. You can find examples in every space. TV, books, music, movies, podcasts. Actually many popular things aren't good. Fifty Shades of Grey is a best seller.

The points I made above doesn't even cover the far more egregious transgression the Harry Potter franchise make. The list is long, including eugenics, slavery, racist stereotypes, gender biases, lack of representation, casual discussion of date rape and abuse, etc. This is purely from a writing perspective. In other words, the series is not just (definitely) problematic but also (arguably) poorly written.

To be fair, these Harry Potter apologists are not unique. There are several fan bases of other series who engage in the same type of desperate rationalization to protect their own beloved stories from critiques. I'm particularly frustrated by Harry Potter apologists because they are defending a problematic franchise with a problematic author. They simply do not need to do this. Several communities of Harry Potter fans have vocally denounced the bigotry of JK Rowling, going as far as making sure they are no longer financially supporting the intellectual property in any way. Entire groups of fan-fiction writers started taking the world-building into their own hands, writing a better, more compelling, and less problematic story inspired by the source material. Even simpler, many Harry Potter readers accept that the series is full of flaws, but because they read it as children and grew up with the characters their view of it is biased. It is entirely possible to enjoy the world of Harry Potter, without being a Harry Potter apologist. Frankly, it's concerning for anyone to defend something this ethically compromised with anything longer than a short passing comment.

Anyway, TERFs suck.

MJ