strange magic indeed

9 February 2023

Unpopular Opinion: Harry Potter is not that great

Due to the release of the video game Hogwarts Legacy, there’s currently quite a bit of controversy about Harry Potter and its creator, who now spends her days spewing hate speech against transwomen instead of writing magical children’s stories. I would like to add my two cents to this discussion. As a millennial, I grew up with Harry Potter. I started reading these books when I was around 14 years old, and they played a significant role in me acquiring the English language, as they were some of the first books I read in English. I read every new book […]

1 May 2016

The Magic of The Magicians

“Hogwarts for adults” is how Syfy’s new show The Magicians is popularly described – but it’s SO much more than that. I admit the parallels are pretty obvious; both The Magicians and Harry Potter are about a guy who discovers magic and proceeds to go to magic school. Both stories have a truly terrifying, seemingly omnipotent villain. And in both stories, the school teachers seem surprisingly unhelpful in solving problems. But compared to the complexity of characters in The Magicians, Harry Potter seems terribly flat. Actually, I would argue that The Magicians is rather the spiritual heir to Buffy the […]