Harry Potter was a smash hit about a boy discovering he’s a wizard and going to school in a magical world full of wonder and adventure. Twilight didn’t hit quite that high a note, but the story of a teenage girl who learns her classmate is a vampire and falls in love with him did quite well. The Hunger Games popularized the dystopian genre with a bow wielding teenager stepping up to survive death games, have angsty romances, and fight the power.
As far as I can tell, nothing has quite hit that same kind of high since and it may be awhile until the next truly big wave. But if it were up to you, what would the next big thing be about?
I feel like with this you’d have to hit something involving schools like with HP. Like half the magic of HP was in Hogwarts… this magical school, where Harry was the hero, surrounded by great friends, and a feeling of family, etc
I feel like the setting is very important. idk
I think a very unknown masterpiece is The Deadly Education series by Naomi Novik. I feel as though it could be the next Harry Potter… The magic system is so cool. And terrifying.
I would honestly love to read about another normal set of friends and their experiences across all 7 books!
It’s categorization. Basic tribalism.
I fully believe Harry Potter wouldn’t have had as lasting a fandom as it has had without the 4 Houses to be sorted into.
Even though the books/movies make it seem like Gryffindor are the good guys, Slytherin are the bad guys, and Ravenclaw and Hufflepuff are just filler, having basic, desirable traits makes it so everyone can pick their house and feel like they’re on a team.
Hunger Games and Twilight didn’t really have that, so while they were hits for other reasons, they didn’t have the staying power of HP. Or, for another example, Avatar: The Last Airbender. Aang is the protagonist and an Airbender, but the show goes out of its way to show interesting, likeable characters for each bending style, and even non-bending (Sokka).
The next big thing needs an interesting premise, likeable characters, and a way for people to pick their team.
Nevermoor trials of Morgan crow is a good book like that and it has a tragic backstory and all that it’s super good
I agree. The other magic of Hogwarts is the houses and how much room there is for “ordinary” wizards. It’s so perfect for self-inserting, in a way other escapist works can’t replicate.
The other thing that allowed for Harry Potter that we also see in other YA lot is factions. People love identifying with groups
It took me longer than expected to find this comment!
Indeed, people have a fascination with being part of groups, especially when those groups are assigned based on their personalities. Many individuals, particularly teens, are in the constant process of self-discovery. The allure of a magical sorting hat that unveils insights about oneself and aligns with like-minded individuals is irresistible! Even after 26 years, online tests still thrive, helping people determine ‘what Harry Potter house they belong to.’ Tell me someone is a Ravenclaw or a Slytherin, and I can instantly tell the type of person they are.
People are truly wild about this stuff!
If you’re into it, Scholomance by Naomi Novik should be right up your alley. Leagues better than HP (yeah I said it).
How is it leagues better lmao? It’s a good book, but nowhere near the cultural phenomenon and for a good reason.
The world is more fleshed out, the magic system is more clearly defined, the characters are nuanced, the stakes feel more real…
Lots of things are cultural phenomenons, that doesn’t mean they’re the summum of quality in their genre. Harry Potter was the birth of YA, but since it has been written, much better books have been published - Scholomance trilogy among them.
School settings are really popular for YA media. You give kids the familiarity - they relate to mean teachers, school bullies, that bond of friendship you make with people you see every day, boring stuff like homework. You put the characters in a setting that’s comfortable - school, where bad things have a hard time getting in - while still giving them independence (since it’s a boarding school so they can do stuff that you wouldn’t be able to do at an American public school). So then you can throw in the whatever to make readers be like “wow this is so relatable yet I’m enthralled by the fantasy aspects!”
The trouble is I can’t think of a lot of school-set stories that were successful in utilizing the setting, except Degrassi which was a little magical since people just kept disappearing off the face of the planet there. But that wasn’t a book series. Except when it was.
Like someone else said the problem with a magic school these days is it’s inevitably going to draw “Oh, like Harry Potter?” comparisons, and just like Rowling got accused of ripping stuff off just for doing totally normal school tropes, you would get accused of ripping her off for having the mean teacher, the friendly teacher, the weird teacher everyone but the bully liked, stealing from classrooms, whatever.
BUT I think there’s some potential in having a magic school that’s just… not modern. I mean I’ve been super interested to know how the fuck Hogwarts worked when it was built, when you could be executed if people thought you were a witch, and people living in the south of England wouldn’t have the funds or means to travel to Scotland and would have no good way of explaining where Ivy the blacksmith’s daughter was for 9 months of the year for 7 years.
So like, if someone wanted to do a magic school series and not feel super Harry Pottery, you could just… set it in medieval times. Since obviously Rowling cares more about other things than explaining any of that stuff.
I could see the wrong writer really horribly dropping the ball on that too. Just nonchalantly explaining it away with some convenient excuse (not unlike Rowling) for why the non-magical folks didn’t get it.
“Luckily for Thom the blacksmith his daughter was a witch, and she’d enchanted his forge to always keep the perfect temperature so long as he was the one using it. He missed her while she was away at school, and things could sometimes get confusing for him. It was a challenge, not talking about her for the months that she was away, but she’d clearly explained to him that the magical charm that kept the rest of the village from remembering her while she was away could be disrupted if anything pushed them to remember. So it was that Thom spent 9 months of the year pretending he never had a daughter, and the remaining 3 months attempting to hide his joy at her return lest someone in the village suspect her of witchcraft”
Now all of a sudden something that could be an interesting and nuanced problem to overcome is just a “teehee they did a memory charm on the silly muggles”
IMO students at a secret magical school is such a high potential but underutilized genre. Unfortunately I think Harry Potter’s incredible success sucked the air out of the room and Hollywood has settled on super heroes instead.
Please see the Scholomance series by Naomi Novik for a very different take on a school of magic. Basically, young witches enter the school, and if they survive to graduate four years later, they are both lucky and skilled.
There’s three or four shows on netflix with this and probably that number on amazon and disney as well in the last decade.
Dark academia is a whole thing, so I wouldn’t say underutilized.
That’s not to say I wouldn’t take more.
Aren’t there life five secret magic school shows on Netflix right now?
I don’t know, Netflix original series don’t get attention like they used to.
I mean this is kind of an unfortunate mindset that I think has developed over the last century. Basically, these hyper popular works of fiction arose, Lord of the Rings, Star Wars, Harry Potter, and ect. The have become so universally known and shared downward to next generations that they have almost become these untouchable genres, and everything gets compared to them and always falls short. Like if I try to make some kind of Sci-Fi world that includes magic, I will get compared to star wars. It’s forcing us into this remake culture, where we can only remake star wars, or make sequels to it. Instead of just leaving it where it is and making other stories in totally different universes with similar tropes. I could also go on a rant about Canon and how that has destroyed a lot of modern franchises.
I forget what its called exactly, but there’s a few version floating around about how there are only 7 story structures or what have you, and at their most stripped down it could be argued as true. There’s little novelty to things at their most basic. For example, if you reduce them down to their frame both Star Wars and Harry Potter are telling basically the same story. The heroes journey. In fact, take it further than that, both of those are mostly the same as The Belgariad.
All are a boy/young man, orphaned, with a secret origin. Guided by their magical father/grandfather figure, they learn about their past and forge new friendships. There is a prophecy about them specifically, and they are destined to battle a “great evil” with their wits and magic. They’re surrounded by: the big burly one, the comedic relief, the sarcastic hardcase with the heart of gold, etc.
Just like with people, its not the bones that bring the novelty, but the dressing on them.
Warhammer 40k is inspired by multiple franchises, with Star Wars also being a big inspiration and while it does get compared to it, a LOT of people will encourage you to look past it and it’s massive fandom would give you huge explanations about how it’s not magic yadda yadda yadda. I’d say this argument doesn’t work as well for Star Wars as well as it does for Harry Potter.
And there are plenty of sci-fi concepts and technologies in sci fi media that aren’t explained at all, kind of like the Force which could be likened to magic. But nobody compares that to Star Wars. No one compares The Expanse to Star Wars even if both have elements that break physics completely repeatedly without any explanation(ie protomolecule) and many consider The Expanse antithetical to Star Wars.
LOTR/Star Wars/Harry Potter nothing, we’re still comparing to and falling short of the Bible. This phenomenon is exactly as old as art
A lot of that is a direct result of copyright extensions. Disney and other copyrights holders have distorted copyright from an intentionally limited duration monopoly intended to promote the creation of works into effectively infinite duration “intellectual property” that stifles the creation of works.
What should have happened/should happen to these genre defining works is that they should have lost their copyrights and become public domain after at most 28 years. At which point anyone would have been able to make their own “Star Wars”, “Lord of the Rings”, etc. works which would allow the works to become genres of their own. Instead we get perpetual “intellectual property” franchises.
The school was the perfect set piece for the escapist fantasy. Every book starts with Harry’s shitty life with his family and the moment he goes to school all that disappears and he becomes a hero. It’s really easy to see yourself in Harry. Just imaging going to a magical place away from all of your troubles, it’s genius.
Scholomance. The school is literally a character.
That and saving the world. Every teenager wants to escape their shitty reality and their shitty school even if their life isnt “that bad”. Thats just how you feel as a teen. I think its because youre in a phase where magic and wonder is kind of fleeting. Your imagination isnt as strong as when you were a kid. And puberty. Thats kind of a lot of shitty feelings all at once so something that makes you feel that wonder again and gets you to escape, thats what you need. Thats what most teenagers want to feel. You also have a huge sense of wanting to change the world as a teenager. Youre starting to see how bad things can really be and you have all the sense of purpose, energy, and want to make things better. Youre more idealistic and not as beat down by life as you are when youre an adult. Not that adults cant be filled with wonder and idealistic and change the world, its just a different feeling. An adult usually knows you can be part of the solution, even just something tiny. As a teen, you want to be part of or THE person who makes things better.
I really feel like if you think about it that way, put yourself in a place of what you needed and wanted as a teen to escape and feel better, you can write a great YA novel.
I do think what JK Rowling did was utterly genius.
I think the mundane parts of the wizarding world are what make it so brilliant.
Wizard exams, wizard money, banks, sports, words, government, jobs etc.
So many things that provide relatable gateways into the world she built.
It’s funny that you say that it’s easy to see yourself in Harry because I distinctly remember thinking “What would I do if I were in this situation” at various points while reading the books and determining that almost every time the answer was “I would probably cry” lmao
Harry is an interesting character, because he does have a bit of a vengeful bone in himself. He takes pleasure in seeing his bullies suffer a little, and though you don’t always see that in many protagonists, it’s relatable.
As for me, my fondest memories of reading the series was actually having to hide it. I was raised in one of those religious homes where HP was strictly off limits, because ‘witchcraft’. While I love my parents and they are nowhere near the Dursleys, sitting under a blanket with a flashlight in the hiding space under the bunkbed so my snitch little brother wouldn’t see, and reading about going off to a magical world; it was just exactly what I needed at that point in my life
Have you since revealed that your read HP to your parents?
Not just the school aspect.
The idea of a young person who is mistreated in their day to day life escaping to a fanciful world where the normal rules don’t apply and they are accepted and loved by their peers. A world they enjoy and like, that sounds like a place they could belong.
Kids and even Adults want that, they want to put themselves into that character, they want to be that character. Look at the grown adults you see wearing “Still waiting for my letter from Hogwarts” t-shirts.
That is the appeal of Harry Potter. It’s escapism from real or imagined hardships in the reader’s day to day life into a world they WANT to be part of.
My wife suffered horrendous abuse growing up and Harry Potter was one of her few escapes, she wrote to J.K. Rowling to thank her for her means of escaping from the abuse, albeit mentally (although for various well documented reasons she now feels a bit differently about Rowling)
100% totally agree
Naomi Novik’s Scholomance series is an excellent response to this theme.
Magic school is violent. Very few students make it out alive.
It’s not cosy, at all.
Loved this series so much! It left me really wanting to find more “magic is dangerous” and “there’s a cost to magic” books (obvs le guin covers this but I’ve already read those).
I feel that the majority of magic school stories end up kind of same-same?
Isn’t Harry the shitty wizard? Mind you I haven’t read the books or watched the movies but I’ve heard that
No not really. He is pretty talented, its just you don’t feel his talent much, in the same way as other characters. Because you see things through his mind.
Compared to Hermione he’s not that good of a student. He’s not a Dumbledore level talent or anything
But he’s pretty great at defense agaisnt dark arts, gains lots of dueling/fighting magic experience, able to pull off difficult spells like that Patronus that wards of Dementor monsters, and he’s an extremely talented broom flyer, making him the star of Quiditch(the wizard’s sports team)
So it isn’t that he isn’t talented, its that whenever he’s in a combat situation, he doesn’t feel powerful, he feels like he’s doing what he must to survive and escape being killed.
Ah okay cool thank you for the explanation. I suppose I should read the books or watch the films at some point