this post was submitted on 06 Apr 2025
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As I recall the story, Rowling designed that feature of the game specifically to annoy her sport-loving husband. It's a feature of a fictional sport designed in spite. So really, it performs it's function admirably...
She does seem to be mainly powered by spite.
Doesnt that diminish the world building? I know it did for me. As an adult, I cant appreciate HP the same way I did as a kid. I can still appreciate Lotr just fine, as an example. She should have put her differences aside for a better story, but shes not better than that anyway.
What world building? Rowling' wizarding world is the epitome of nothing makes sense and can only be explained by "a wizard did it".
Hogwarts was built in the 10th century, but uses far more modern Muggle technology for their sewage and sanitary system rather than some established form of teleportation/relocation.
The economy is a joke as they use fixed exchange rates between gold and silver can be abused for arbitrage trades with the Muggle world. It can only be explained by all wizards and witches stopping their primary education as ten-year-olds but even then it would take only one to figure it out and break the system.
Why on earth use owls to carry letters and packages? The practicality of using owls over other birds aside, why not use established instant transportation methods like the floo network? The only explanation we get is that the floo network and apparition are blocked in Hogwarts but does this one school dictate the rules for the entire world? And even then, wouldn't it be easier to set up a post office in an exempted area or just outside Hogwarts?
I could go on as there are countless other flaws and then just as many again once you consider the implications of the time turner. Having a sport with nonsense rules is one of the lesser issues when the world is inherently broken
For anyone who enjoys this type of deconstruction, check out the old but gold fanfiction Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality. Fun read, very high quality.
This is almost verbatim a plot point in the fic. It takes the rational 'Harry James Potter Evans-Verres' (the alternate reality protagonist) all of three seconds in Gringotts to devise an infinite money glitch, among other ways to break the system, though he still faces the obstacles of being a child.
The theme explores how Wizards take advantage of clearly superior muggle technology, but magically delude themselves into a false sense of superiority that crushes intellectual curiousity at a young age and isolates and inducts muggleborn wizards into a cult of ignorance.
It's hard to learn and respect newtonian physics and thermodynamics when your brooms operate on Aristotleian physics (point forward = go forward) and you violate thermodynamics by the age of six.
Now imagine trying to learn arbitrage rates when you're taught to fly by age 11, and can instead choose to spend the next 7 years learning how to break reality with your voice and mind. Then graduate wizarding school at age 18, never to pursue education again ~~for some reason.~~ because most teenagers learn how to teleport at will and how much education do you need beyond that?
https://hpmor.com/chapter/4
Really, I couldn't stay interested past Dumbledore's death knowing there was like a hundred ways he might not actually be dead. The whole deathly hallows thing even acknowledged that, it's good that Rowling very intentionally chose not to do a C.S.Lewis there. But the problem was the inherent brokenness of the world, which was just unsuitable for a serious story.
I respect that, but I hate the fans who love it, it’s like they have never played or watched anything competitive before.
Monopoly was also designed to annoy people, yet somehow people play it hoping it will be fun.
Children play it for fun because they get to play make-believe about money, play the banker, etc. Just handling fake money makes it fun to them because they are interested in the world on that level. The game itself is not fun to anyone, and I don't think adults ever actually play it without children...
Last I played was as an adult with 3 other friends. To make it tolerable we had a rule that, on landing on someone else's property, we could either pay up or drink a shot of rum. Mistakes were made.
I used to and still play with my friends over and what we do is save the game state in writing for the properties, status cards, money, houses/hotels and we use rubber bands to keep games going for years.
New people mean new game, same people we just continue the last state
It is fun when you're winning and it's turned into a drinking game seeing how many rounds everyone else can last. It usually ends because everyone ends up piss drunk and wanders off.
Man, it sounds fun until I consider drunken Monopoly rage...
Or they did, didn't grasp the game, and it felt entirely arbitrary and boring, like that game of quidditch.
Well that just makes me like her a tiny little bit.
Or -- you know -- dislike her a little bit less.