Quidditch makes no effing sense.

Cafe Society
41

Incidentally, I should point out that I enjoyed the first Harry Potter book, and to a lesser extent the second and third (after that, IMHO, they’re ghastly) so I’m not trying to be nasty to Rowling. The first book was sensational.

What made The Philosopher’s Stone so good, though, was the character of Harry, not the mechanics of the wizarding world, which by necessity has about seventy-eleventy bazillion logical holes. If you re-read Philosopher’s Stone (Sorceror’s Stone, whatever) what jumps out at you is how much of the book is not about the silly mechanics of the wizarding world, but Harry’s desperate and very understandable need to be wanted by someone. Throughout the book he is terrified that he will be expelled or rejected by the wizarding world and sent back to a world where he has no friends. Despite all the amazing luck that piles up on him - he’s rich, famous, and a natural at the school’s premier sport - there’s a constant undercurrent of terror in his heart that somehow he’s a fake, that it will all be taken from him and he’ll be back to having nobody. Getting money and fame and Quidditch skills don’t seem to be terribly important to him; what is important to him is that he doesn’t want to be alone. That, more than anything else, is why the book works so damned well; it touches on the most basic emotional need we can have, and hits the 9-to-13 crowd right where it counts, in the I-hope-I’ll-be-popular weak spot.

The scene where Harry looks into the Mirror of Erised (boy, there’s an original name) and sees only himself with his parents is profoundly heart-rending; he’s won a lottery, and he still can’t have what he wants so badly, and so understandably. He’d give back all the money in his vault a hundred times over to have his Mom and Dad back. That’s the kind of stuff that tells a story.

With such a good story going on, the silliness of the wizarding world falls into the background. Quidditch makes no sense, but then a LOT of things make no sense. It’s absolutely baffling as to why anyone in the wizarding world is poor. The centrality of the school in the wizarding world makes no sense. How do any of these people learn to read, write or do math past a 10-year-old level when they don’t take any classes in reading and math? Why is the school so insanely dangerous?

If you have a good story, you don’t really care. IMHO, the story was stretched about four times longer than it should have been and THEN it started irritating me. But within the limits of Book 1, Quidditch making no sense didn’t bother me.

42

Within the limits of Book 1, I thought it was actually appropriate that I didn’t quite grok the game from the description. It made Harry’s confusion and overwhelm with this new culture really hit home with me. I’m not sure even he understood the nuances of Quidditch in his first year.

The oddities became more apparent in the later books, when Harry felt more at home in the Wizarding world, and also when we’d just read so many Quidditch games that it was no longer Weird New Stuff but old familiar retreads.

I don’t mind that I don’t get cricket and it seems really bizarre to me. It’s foreign, and I expect not to understand foreign sports. But after more than 3 decades living in America, baseball makes sense to me. I’d expect Quidditch to become similarly familiar and better elucidated as time goes on. But it really wasn’t.

43

Yes, it doesn’t’ make any sense as a sport, and was clearly thrown together trying to make something cool and weird, and to give Harry an opportunity to be a hero. ‘It’s like football,(soccer) polo AND cricket! ON FLYING BROOMS!! Isn’t that COOL?!’ (I’m going to have to say no)

That’s the type of weakness that it’s really the editor’s job to catch. But the editor probably didn’t expect it to be read by adults, and probably didn’t think the series would end up being such a long-runner. There were too many details for it early on, and it had been given too prominent a role to forget about. So she was stuck with it.

Rowling’s strength wasn’t in world building or plot, or really even characterization. What she WAS amazing at was at writing non-idealized children and teens, without talking down too the audience. Which is something very few writers can do well.

Ender’s Game had a similar problem. The setup was absurd, and the finale was ridiculous, but it didn’t matter. The book wasn’t about the plot; it was about what it felt like to be an isolated, lonely early-teenager.

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To be fair, making up games isn’t easy. The only fictional one I can recall that looked like a real sport was ‘The Game’ from Wrath of the Jugger AKA Blood of Warriors. Which at one point had Joan Chen biting a guys ear off. It’d watch that if it was on ESPN. So would you.

44

I don’t think Cricket is illogical, it’s just odd.

Ridiculous terms like Silly Mid Off, Leg Bye, Maiden Over, Sticky Wicket, and Leg Slip; Test Matches that last five days; Innings that can last over a day; The fact that if you watch any given five minutes of any match, the chances are good that nothing interesting will happen at all during that time; and the commentators talking about seagulls on the pitch, or the pretty girls in the stands.

For a major sport, it needs a shake-up.

45

How about a Chesterfield sofa and two men appearing out of thin air? :smiley:

46

Yes. I suspect that some of the early description (three kinds of balls!, the goofy names) was invented for simply this purpose, to make it come off as completely foreign and strange.

I think the following qualifies as standard suspension of disbelief in an imagined world, not fanwankery:

The wizarding world is on a gold standard, but it’s somehow a different gold standard. They have separate coinage with no cross-world transactions that I can recall. Maybe wizard gold is immune to magical manipulations, and muggle gold correspondingly valueless. Or something. I’m sure the Weasleys, or any wizards, could never be in danger of starving when they can use magic (surreptitiously) to obtain muggle money and goods–but it seems none of that is any good in the wizard economy.

I didn’t read the school(s) as being central to the wizarding world, just to the lives of the students and parents/teachers, with a subset of the latter being important personages outside the school simply by way of being great wizards.

And as magic appears to be inherently dangerous, especially in inexperienced hands–yet wizards a tough breed–it makes sense that circumstances which sound insanely dangerous to us wouldn’t be seen quite the same way by wizard parents. Recall that the cadre of experienced wizards who run the (each) school can recover students from some apparently extreme mishaps with no harm done; safer to have Junior learning his craft there.

The difference between all of that and quidditch is that, beyond the initially alien trappings, quidditch is overtly (and progressively) described as being very much like muggle sports. Aside from the equipment, there’s no magic involved, right? Direct comparison with the logic of real sports is not only appropriate, but invited.

47

Hermione’s parents change Muggle money for galleons at Gringott’s in one scene. And the wizarding community, in turn, must occasionally buy things from Muggles (even if it’s mostly just weirdos like Arthur Weasly).

48

That’s what Twenty20 cricket was designed for - 20 overs each, and a game lasts around three and a half hours.

I’ve always thought that Quidditch makes more sense over a series of games, where the total number of points is more important than win/lose. In the 3rd book, Griffindor need to win by 200 points to get the title, suggesting that it’s the points difference that gets recorded. That adds a bit more strategy to games; a team might want to rely on their Seeker finishing the game quickly if their Catchers aren’t up to scratch, whereas a good all-round team might take the risk of letting their Seeker occupy himself with distracting the other team’s Seeker with moves like the Wronski Feint, allowing the Catchers to build up a decent lead before finishing the game.

The World Cup, which seems to be decided on the outcopme of one match, makes much less sense. Really, it should be decided over a series - five games, say, and then tally up the points.

49

Have you read Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality? It’s a fanfic which starts with the premise that Harry was raised in a loving household by secular humanist scientist parents, and goes from there. The quality of the character writing is uneven at times, but the story does a good job of exploring some of the many ways that the wizarding world makes no damn sense.

50

But only on a Tuesday.

51

If this happens regularly, it would certainly reduce spectator interest, since the fans can’t see the only action that matters!

Unless there’s like a Snitch Cam on the jumbotron.

52

The mere existence of the Snitch and the absurd number of points it gives have always bothered me. Even more so, however, is that fact that these kids are flying around unattached to their brooms and with minimal protective equipment. I’d expect to see a lot more serious injuries from falls from the broom at height and speed, and more a couple of deaths.

Rowling could have told us that there were protective spells to keep players from bashing their heads in speeding up to and running into a spectator tower. Or fro breaking their neck in a fall from 50 feet up. But she doesn’t. Quidditch players wear less protective equipment than American high school football players, while taking much greater risks.

53

Yeah, a bare link with no description. I even went to that site and couldn’t find anything about quidditch being banned.

54

I read parts of that link. After reading a few chapters I thought her version of Harry should have been drowned at birth. He’s a snot nosed psychology professor pretending to be an eleven year old. The author found him a better brain and left out his humanity in the process.

55

The professors can and do cast spells to slow the fall of students, and what injuries they do take can be patched up completely in a day.

56

While it’s a reasonable supposition, I don’t recall anything saying this in any of the books, or in the movies.

57

I agree with the OP. Quidditch’s point-scoring system is flatly stupid.

58

Dumbledore slows Harry’s fall from the Dementor attack in book 3.

In book two Harry’s broken arm could have been almost instantly fixed by (what’s her name?) the school nurse, but Lockheart accidentally removes the bones so it takes a whole night to re-grow them.

59

From Star Trek? Didn’t Kirk make that up on the spot with rules designed to be confusing?

60

Not just confusing, but arbitrary and unfathomable.