You don’t have to ditch it, just make it so it’s not a guaranteed win under normal circumstances. Make it so the snitch isn’t released until a certain amount of time has passed, or points have been scored. And instead of having it be worth a ton of points, have it be worth a small enough amount that it could make a difference in a close game but not the only deciding factor. Then it’s a strategic position. A position that requires timing instead of just speed.
Just make it so that catching the snitch ends the game. As in, the scores from either side get fixed. This way the losing team would have an incentive to stop the winning team from getting it, but themselves wouldn’t be interested in doing so. It’s not game breaking, just another angle.
The mechanic of catching the snitch immediately ending the game is a pretty good one, and there’s several ways you could go about it.
Adds no points to either side: you want to catch it when your team is up, but if you find it when your team is down, you want to misdirect the other team’s Seeker
Adds a small number of points to your side: you want to catch it when your team is within striking distance of a win
Adds a small number of points to the opposite side: you only want to catch it when your team is up significanty
My favorite would be a random or rotating points penalty. Like say every 3 minutes the points given to each side upon grabbing the snitch is randomized. It still allows for that stupid main character syndrome special boy causing the win thing, but it doesn’t completely break the strategy of the game.
I also feel like half the reason he won all the damn time is because he literally just had the best broom in existence for most of the matches from his rich godfather. He’s also annoying af with all his angst in the later books (especially OotP) with “nooooo my friends don’t understand meeeeee I can’t talk to anyoneeeee lemme just be an impulsive idiot”.
Rowling had some really sinister cultural programming embedded in her brain that comes out in these books, regardless of the trans stuff that surfaced later. The entire magical governing system is hugely corrupt, based on family wealth, and obviously full of fascists, but the focus of the books was that there were bad actors abusing the system, rather than the system being broken from the start.
You could argue that’s done for realisms sake, and sure maybe it is, but if the characters never actually meaningfully tackle those issues then you’re re-enforcing complicity for the sake of it, rather than enacting change in a corrupt system when you have the power and ability to do so.
That is exemplified specifically by the “rich godfather buys Harry Potter the bestest broom stick” scenario.
Like, I’m pretty sure in Book 2(?) it’s a big deal that Evil Lucius Malfoy evilly outfits the Slytherin team with new broomsticks. Evil when Lucius does it because he’s evil, but okay when Sirius does it because he’s good.
Just like how slavery was bad when Lucius Malfoy did it to Dobby, but okay when Harry had Kreacher as a slave (who he also treated like shit, but it’s fine, Rowling wrote him to be evil and deserve it anyway)
Just like her worldbuilding, morality is whatever Joanne thinks is most convenient for the story she wants to tell.
Ugh yeah the way Sirius treated Kreacher annoyed me so much. Apparently it was completely fine for Harry to have him as a slave as long as he gave him some locket and made poor brainwashed Kreacher feel like he was the best treated slave ever.
JK Rowling’s lack of critical thinking is glaringly obvious in everything she has ever written.
It very neatly describes the way liberals see the world and political struggle. Lots of people complain about the anti-climactic ending, but really I don’t think it could any other way. I’d like to imagine that there’s some alternate universe where Rowling actually believed in something and Harry was actually built up as the anti-Voldemort he was only hinted as being in the beginning of the books. Where he’s opposes all the many injustices of the wizarding world and determines to change their frequently backwards, insular, contradictory society for the better, and forms his own faction antithetical to the Death Eaters and when he finally has his
showdown with Voldy. Harry surpasses by adopting new methods, breaking the rules and embracing change and the progression of history. While Voldemort clings to an idyllic imaging of the past and the greatest extent of his dreams is to become the self-appointed god of a eternally stagnant Neverland. Harry has embraced the possibility of a shining future and so can overcome the self-imposed limitsVoldemort could never cross, and Voldemort is ultimately defeated by this.
But that would require a Harry that believed in something, and since Rowling is a liberal centrist Blairite that doesn’t really believe in anything, Harry can’t believe in anything. Harry lives in a world drought with conflict and injustice, a stratified class society, slavery of sentient magical creatures, the absurd charade the wizarding world puts upto enforce their own self-segregation, a
corrupted and bureaucracy-choked government, rampant racism, so on and so forth But Harry is little more than a passive
observer for most of it, only the racism really bothers him (and then, really only racism against half-bloods). In fact, when
Hermione stands up against the slavery of elves, she’s treated as some kind of ridiculous Soapbox Sadie. For opposing chattel
slavery. In the end. the biggest force for change is Voldemort and Harry and friends only ever fight for the preservation and
reproduction of the status quo. The very height of Harry’s dreams is to join the aurors. a sort of wizard FBI and the ultimate
defenders of the wizarding status quo. Voldemort and the Death Eaters are the big instigators of change and Harry never quite
gets to Voldy’s level. Harry doesn’t even beat Voldemort, Voldemort accidentally kills himself because he violated some obscure
technicality that causes one of his spells to bounce back at him.
And this is really the struggle of liberals, they live in a world fraught with conflict, but aren’t particularly bothered by any of it
except those bit that threaten multicultural pluralism. They see change, and the force behind that change, as a wholly negative
phenomenon. Even then, they can only act within the legal and ideological framework of their society. So. for instance, instead of
organizing insurrectionary and disruptive activity against Trump and the far-right, all they can do is bang their drum about what a
racist bigot he is and hope they can catch him violating some technicality that will allow them to have him impeached or at least
destroy his political clout. It won’t work, it will never work, but that’s the limit of liberalism just as it was the limit of Harry Potter.
Umbridge feels like she was based on a woman Rowling personally knew. Don’t know much about Rowling past but I wouldn’t be surprised if she had a weird messed up childhood
Harry’s grandfather is supposed to have invented Sleekeazy’s hair spray / potion or something to tame people’s hair since the Potters have crazy hair lol. It’s such a cartoonish reasoning.
It’s honestly hilarious how much being the seeker isolates Harry from the rest of the team. He doesn’t have any team plays besides the occasional interaction with the beaters. It would have been so much more interesting if the position were removed, the game lasted a set amount of time, and Harry was a chaser.
Yeah, that’s just bollocks. (No offence) (okay a little offence).
Harry had already saved the world when he was eighteen months old. He was already a super special boy given THE ENTIRE MAGICAL WORLD KNEW HIS NAME before he did.
So the idea that making him a seeker was a way to make him special?
Not wanting to defend Rowling, since she’s an evil and hateful person, but there’s many great authors who fall foul of basic arithmetic. I would argue that they are completely separate skills; TV Tropes has a good list. (Also, I’d argue that most of her good ideas were taken from someone else.)
The books are average. I read them all, I enjoyed them. The warm feelings of an ‘orphan’ finding friends and a new family combined with having a fun time in a magical setting carry the series. The actual writing doesn’t amount to blasé. She built a world that seems fun. She built a world that falls apart with gentle pokes.
Specifically, when a hack of an author designs a sport.
The thing is, the seeds of something great are right there.
Ditch the stupid seeker role, and you have a game that’s both entertaining and narratively useful.
Harry could have learned how to be a team player, and eventually a leader.
Instead Rowling wanted Harry to be super special boy in the laziest way possible.
You don’t have to ditch it, just make it so it’s not a guaranteed win under normal circumstances. Make it so the snitch isn’t released until a certain amount of time has passed, or points have been scored. And instead of having it be worth a ton of points, have it be worth a small enough amount that it could make a difference in a close game but not the only deciding factor. Then it’s a strategic position. A position that requires timing instead of just speed.
Just make it so that catching the snitch ends the game. As in, the scores from either side get fixed. This way the losing team would have an incentive to stop the winning team from getting it, but themselves wouldn’t be interested in doing so. It’s not game breaking, just another angle.
The mechanic of catching the snitch immediately ending the game is a pretty good one, and there’s several ways you could go about it.
Adds no points to either side: you want to catch it when your team is up, but if you find it when your team is down, you want to misdirect the other team’s Seeker
Adds a small number of points to your side: you want to catch it when your team is within striking distance of a win
Adds a small number of points to the opposite side: you only want to catch it when your team is up significanty
My favorite would be a random or rotating points penalty. Like say every 3 minutes the points given to each side upon grabbing the snitch is randomized. It still allows for that stupid main character syndrome special boy causing the win thing, but it doesn’t completely break the strategy of the game.
I also feel like half the reason he won all the damn time is because he literally just had the best broom in existence for most of the matches from his rich godfather. He’s also annoying af with all his angst in the later books (especially OotP) with “nooooo my friends don’t understand meeeeee I can’t talk to anyoneeeee lemme just be an impulsive idiot”.
Rowling had some really sinister cultural programming embedded in her brain that comes out in these books, regardless of the trans stuff that surfaced later. The entire magical governing system is hugely corrupt, based on family wealth, and obviously full of fascists, but the focus of the books was that there were bad actors abusing the system, rather than the system being broken from the start.
You could argue that’s done for realisms sake, and sure maybe it is, but if the characters never actually meaningfully tackle those issues then you’re re-enforcing complicity for the sake of it, rather than enacting change in a corrupt system when you have the power and ability to do so.
That is exemplified specifically by the “rich godfather buys Harry Potter the bestest broom stick” scenario.
Like, I’m pretty sure in Book 2(?) it’s a big deal that Evil Lucius Malfoy evilly outfits the Slytherin team with new broomsticks. Evil when Lucius does it because he’s evil, but okay when Sirius does it because he’s good.
Just like how slavery was bad when Lucius Malfoy did it to Dobby, but okay when Harry had Kreacher as a slave (who he also treated like shit, but it’s fine, Rowling wrote him to be evil and deserve it anyway)
Just like her worldbuilding, morality is whatever Joanne thinks is most convenient for the story she wants to tell.
Ugh yeah the way Sirius treated Kreacher annoyed me so much. Apparently it was completely fine for Harry to have him as a slave as long as he gave him some locket and made poor brainwashed Kreacher feel like he was the best treated slave ever.
JK Rowling’s lack of critical thinking is glaringly obvious in everything she has ever written.
There’s an old 4chan post about J.K. Rowling and how they only believe in protecting the status quo system.
https://www.reddit.com/r/COMPLETEANARCHY/comments/g0qtew/harry_potter_and_the_limits_of_liberalism/#lightbox
Fuck me if that doesn’t describe the issues in those books perfectly.
Umbridge feels like she was based on a woman Rowling personally knew. Don’t know much about Rowling past but I wouldn’t be surprised if she had a weird messed up childhood
How did they get rich anyway?
Harry’s grandfather is supposed to have invented Sleekeazy’s hair spray / potion or something to tame people’s hair since the Potters have crazy hair lol. It’s such a cartoonish reasoning.
It’s J.K. Rowling. I expect nothing and she still dissapoints hahaha
It’s honestly hilarious how much being the seeker isolates Harry from the rest of the team. He doesn’t have any team plays besides the occasional interaction with the beaters. It would have been so much more interesting if the position were removed, the game lasted a set amount of time, and Harry was a chaser.
Yeah, that’s just bollocks. (No offence) (okay a little offence).
Harry had already saved the world when he was eighteen months old. He was already a super special boy given THE ENTIRE MAGICAL WORLD KNEW HIS NAME before he did.
So the idea that making him a seeker was a way to make him special?
That’s just crap.
She isn’t a bad author, just a bad person. The reason I regret reading her work isn’t because of the work itself…
She can’t keep consistent with her dates and how long ago things were
She had good ideas but is a bad author
Not wanting to defend Rowling, since she’s an evil and hateful person, but there’s many great authors who fall foul of basic arithmetic. I would argue that they are completely separate skills; TV Tropes has a good list. (Also, I’d argue that most of her good ideas were taken from someone else.)
https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/WritersCannotDoMath
She’s not a bad person, she has an opinion that’s different from yours
That opinion is “this group of people is worth less than another group,” so yes she’s a bad person
Having an opinion that people don’t deserve to have rights for being who they are does in fact make you a bad person.
You’re on the wrong site to have garbage viewpoints like this.
Perhaps, but I posit that her opinions run objectively bad.
Funnily I’m not very fond opinions that entail treating me and my loved ones like dangerous subhumans
Those books are wonderful, and my children delight in them, even as they both outgrow being the original target audience
The books are average. I read them all, I enjoyed them. The warm feelings of an ‘orphan’ finding friends and a new family combined with having a fun time in a magical setting carry the series. The actual writing doesn’t amount to blasé. She built a world that seems fun. She built a world that falls apart with gentle pokes.