LogFAQs > #939842071

I_Always_Die posted...

I just want to say that Harry Potter is the most overrated series of all time.

In what regard? Just the fact that it's so massive in regard to its quality or that the quality itelf is so sorely lacking?

faramir77 posted...

Neglected kids generally don't perform as well academically as kids raised in a loving home. He wasn't a nerd because of academic interests, he was a nerd because his silence and social withdrawal was an adaptation he learned to tolerate living with the Dursleys.

He became much less nerdy as the series went on, likely due to the admiration the wizard world gave him.

Harry wasn't a nerd. Nerds are smart.

TigerTycoon posted...

Harry has never been portrayed as the intellectual type.

Even ignoring that most of the "studious nerds" are shoved into Ravenclaw, and the Sorting Hat telling him he would have ended up in up in Slytherin if he didn't oppose the idea so strongly, Harry is a guy of average (to below average) intelligence ruled by his emotions, that's more concerned about fun, and sports than reading or studying.

You claim someone in Harry's position would likely work hard to better himself, but he was experiencing the world of magic just fine without working for it. If anything, the world of magic keeps coming for him because of his relation to Voldemort.

The idea that someone coming from a poor living environment world work extra hard to escape it isn't true anyway, but this wasn't even necessary because Harry was wealthy from his dead family's inheritance money.

tbh, given that the books fit into that wish fulfillment category, making the character studious rather than average (or subpar) whose main virtue is being "the chosen one" wouldn't have jived as well with the purely-escapist portion of the readership who wishes they were special but doesn't want to put the work in to make themselves special.

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There are precious few at ease / With moral ambiguities / So we act as though they don't exist.