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Comment on Harry and Ron were always bored in class because Rowling's magic system is boring as hell

In Sanderson’s super school book, there are 10 kids and only one of them is uninterested in flying spacefighters. But he is interested in engineering, so he’s still able to be a big nerd about the book’s subject matter. Everyone else is either a great pilot who likes piloting, or fucking dies in a tragic scheme emphasising the brutality and pointlessness of war.

Sanderson doesn’t write characters who just drift along without an interest in anything, because Sanderson writes books about topics that he makes interesting.

Rowling is only able to create characters who think Divination or History of Magic are boring, because she makes them boring. Sometimes on purpose!

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JudahBenHur@lemm.ee ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago
Rowling is a fucking idiot.

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TheresNodiee@lemm.ee ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago
Rowling was writing about grade school kids going to school. Grade school kids get bored at school. If they live in a world where everyone uses magic and it’s not that special they’re going to get bored of learning about magic sometimes. It’s like if in grade school our teachers spent a bunch of time teaching us how to use computers, phones, and other technological devices. Sometimes it would be cool and interesting and a lot of the time it would be pretty damn boring.

Plus Rowling wanted the grade school kids reading her books to relate to her characters, so she gave her characters a schooling experience they could relate to. And as much as I hate Rowling, there’s something inherently kind of comedic about a bunch of kids being bored silly learning about magic because it’s something that seems like it should be exciting to us, the reader.

The boredom of the characters isn’t a failure of the writing or magic system, it works perfectly well for its intended effect.

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