When I was a kid I loved Heinlein, Asimov, Piers Anthony, Howard, Lovecraft, among dozens of other then popular scifi and fantasy authors
Heinlein is some weirdo libertarian fascist
Asimov hates women and was a notorious sex creep
Zanthony is a pedophile and his books are full of creepy shit
Howard was staggeringly racist
Lovecraft is also famously racist.
And that's just the ones off the top of my head.
At some point I learned that all these guys were creeps, came to terms with it, and moved on with my life. Like an adult.
So all these people whining that "oh no I can't let go of my childhood!!!!" fill me with contempt. Many of the great shit-head scifi/fantasy writers of the 20th century made great contributions to the field of fantasy and sci fi. Our conception of robots wouldn't be the same without Asimov. Heinlein changed military sci-fi forever. Howard's Conan had a lasting impact on fantasy fiction far beyond what was merited by his mediocre writing. Lovecraft introduced the notion of Cosmic Horror that continues to push back the borders of science fiction today.
Rowling can claim none of that. Her wizard books are extremely mediocre with poor plots, flat characters, and no new ideas. Their popularity is the result of a then unprecedented marketing campaign, not any particular artistic merit. They're entirely pedestrian and forgettable and there's no reason to read them except as a historical curiosity or a case study in successful marketing of children's literature.
I gave up many genuinely influential and talented writers when I realized that they were jackasses. There was nothing riding on it. No one is using Lovecraft to justify violence against Inuit people or something. I just found out they were jerks and said "Well shit. Guess I won't recommend these to kids anymore".
And all these jackasses have the audacity to say that we should respect their love of the mid wizard book beause it's so important to them?
It spread like wildfire because of the aggressive advertisements.
But the early installments were generally good storytelling. The characters were compelling. The mystery was intriguing. The setting was fun.
The material sold itself. You didn't need to work hard to get kids to turn the next page.
Until Rowling got in bed with Warner Bros and the books started getting written by committee, because she was too busy doing junkets and tours to actually do it herself. Then she was just a brand.
Similarly, the movies get worse as their budgets go up. Disnefication, more than anything, ruined the franchise.
Honestly it was up until the third book at which point the quality fuckin plummeted for me. In all honesty the movies did far better and cutting down on the useless fluff of the books and other problematic issues (the removal of SPEW which was just a chunk punching down on Hermoine advocating house elf liberation). All in all though Rowling really did nothing with her setting when it came to the idea of "new age magic" or "urban magic" i.e. the separation of the mundane from the magical (i.e. Dresden Files stuff).
She kinda flirted with technomagic, via Ron's dad, then just forgot about it.
Ugh, another great early series that just kinda flopped midway through. Haven't even bothered with the latest books. They read like a bunch of Redditors did the copy editing.