#if anyone wants to rant about fb in my inbox go ahead i'm in the mood lmao

[battlestar-royco]

What are some flaws you've noticed in HP and how would you improve them?

This is a question I’ve been thinking about more as I get older. When I was first reading the books it was hard for me to see any flaws, so this question is hard for me but it’s been getting easier. First of all, we’re pretending Cursed Child doesn’t exist lmfao. Moving on. I’ve always wished JKR had done better with the side characters. I really like Ginny as a character and Harry’s endgame, but I understand why people found her rushed and underdeveloped. I’ve always wanted her to be more central throughout the books. Same goes for Luna and Neville. Luna had the misfortune to be introduced in book 5 of 7, but she’s so sweet and I love her as a foil for Hermione and as someone who’s super confident in herself. I also love how Neville doesn’t fit into the typical Gryffindor mold and he shows streaks of unconventional courage here and there. So, more of that would have been great. Honorable mentions for Seamus, Dean, Lavender, Parvati etc!

Better Slytherin characters. As stated above, over the series we get a bunch of Gryffindors who show bravery in different ways, and even Gryffindors who turn out to be horrible cowards. Ravenclaw similarly has a nice range of characters who exhibit both academic and emotional knowledge. Hufflepuff suffered from a relative lack of characters, but you can still pull out Tonks, Cedric, and now Newt. I would’ve loved to see more Slytherin characters who aren’t evil, bullies, and/or blood purists.

The Time Turner and the wand allegiance plot holes. Tbh, I don’t consider the TT thing to be as much of a plot hole as others do (using the “if they could time travel, why didn’t they kill Voldemort as a child?” argument). To JKR’s credit, she DID destroy all the TTs in OotP, she never specified how far back in time the TTs could go, and she clarified that meddling with time is generally not done. I also just don’t see time travel as a solution any of the characters would have used to deal with Voldemort. That said, it would have been so easy for her to just say “they only go back 12 hours/3 days/1 year” or whatever in PoA. The wand allegiance thing is waaaay more egregious. People have been stupefying and disarming each other since CoS, but now apparently that causes wands to change ownership, thus making Draco the owner of the Elder Wand at the end of DH? I think this could have worked if JKR had established an intentionality/willpower system with the wands maybe? Like the wand chooses the wizard after all, so maybe the wand and/or the wand owner have more agency over their loyalty? I don’t know. I’ll probably have more defined thoughts on this after I get to DH in my reread; it’s been a long time since I read the last book!

Um, FANTASTIC BEASTS?! Newt should definitely not be the main character. Like. Even if we were ignoring the whole werewolf registry thing x, he’s still only okay as a protagonist imo. Tina is meh at best and stupid at worst. I loved Queenie and Jacob in the first film, but the love potion thing (ESPECIALLY played as a joke) and Queenie’s nonsensical defection really ruined that entire relationship for me. The concept of a character doing bad things for a reason they think is good and slowly becoming Dark is very interesting, but Queenie isn’t the right character for that story. JKR completely botched the arc, doesn’t even seem aware that Queenie did something wrong to Jacob, and made a Jewish witch join a N*zi coded organization. Besides, the FB story’s center is, or at least it definitely should be, Dumbledore and Grindelwald (hereon D and G) and Obscurials. We were already invested in this conflict and these characters because of the books, we already know a bit about Obscurials because of Ariana, and all the main tension comes from D and G’s past dark dealings. Keeping Newt as a protagonist just forces more unnecessary and fake-looking beast chase scenes when the most interesting part of the series (at least to me) is D and G’s movements toward and against each other in this chase for Obscurials. So if I were to rewrite FB, I would make someone like Dumbledore or Credence the main character, I’d cut Newt and Tina (probably keep Queenie and Jacob), make Dumbledore explicitly gay, keep the canon consistent with the books, and build on whatever happened with D and G. Also, J*hnny Depp can eat shit and die.