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Obligatory Toast
Mar 19, 2007

What am I reading here??

Hedrigall posted:

Basically you read the book and have the site open at the same time. You provide status updates about what chapter you're up to, and it unlocks more content (mini games, encyclopedia type stuff and so on).

I will probably use it the next time I do a readthrough of the series, just to see what all the new stuff is like. In fact it might prompt me to start a new readthrough when it launches in October!
Ditto. I'll probably piddle around on the site for a couple of months though before I drop off of it. :\

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thrawn527
Mar 27, 2004

Thrawn/Pellaeon
Studying the art of terrorists
To keep you safe

Brinstar Brew posted:

I wonder how much the audiobooks will be, considering Order of the Phoenix is €80 on itunes

Also, which audiobooks will they be? I may be in America, but dammit if I want to buy the British versions with Stephen Fry they better let me. I only own book 7 by Fry, but at some point I'd like to own them all.

Bizarro Kanyon
Jan 3, 2007

Something Awful, so easy even a spaceman can do it!


Considering the twilight books range from 7.99 to 9.99 per book on Amazon, I am guessing that the books will be more than $10 on this site (probably 11 to 13)

Midorka
Jun 10, 2011

I have a pretty fucking good palate, passed BJCP and level 2 cicerone which is more than half of you dudes can say, so I don't give a hoot anymore about this toxic community.
The e-books and audiobooks are a huge let-down. If you really wanted them you could have gotten them. Sure they weren't official, but you could have gotten them. Hopefully the site adds something to me re-reading, rather than pointless information.

KidDynamite
Feb 11, 2005

Midorka posted:

The e-books and audiobooks are a huge let-down. If you really wanted them you could have gotten them. Sure they weren't official, but you could have gotten them. Hopefully the site adds something to me re-reading, rather than pointless information.

Piracy isn't cool dude.

Midorka
Jun 10, 2011

I have a pretty fucking good palate, passed BJCP and level 2 cicerone which is more than half of you dudes can say, so I don't give a hoot anymore about this toxic community.
Is it considered piracy though if you own the books and want a mobile version that isn't available? I consider it the same thing as ROMs of games I own. I don't consider it piracy. Either way now that it's going to be official though you can bet I'll re-buy them for my Kindle.

Jiminy Cricket
Feb 5, 2008

Flight Suit Up!

thrawn527 posted:

Also, which audiobooks will they be? I may be in America, but dammit if I want to buy the British versions with Stephen Fry they better let me. I only own book 7 by Fry, but at some point I'd like to own them all.

The audiobooks are all on youtube; I've been listening to them recently.

Obligatory Toast
Mar 19, 2007

What am I reading here??

Midorka posted:

Is it considered piracy though if you own the books and want a mobile version that isn't available? I consider it the same thing as ROMs of games I own. I don't consider it piracy. Either way now that it's going to be official though you can bet I'll re-buy them for my Kindle.

Downloading ROMs of games you own is still piracy, fyi.

Even if you don't think it is, you're also still supporting piracy.

reflir
Oct 29, 2004

So don't. Stay here with me.
You know what a thread about Harry Potter needs? Piracy discussions!

Obligatory Toast
Mar 19, 2007

What am I reading here??

reflir posted:

You know what a thread about Harry Potter needs? Piracy discussions!

Harry Potter would have really hit that "monkey cheese" audience if it had included pirates. Then Rowling could afford that island people keep assuming she wants.

Circle Nine
Mar 1, 2009

But that’s how it is when you start wanting to have things. Now, I just look at them, and when I go away I carry them in my head. Then my hands are always free, because I don’t have to carry a suitcase.
With all the information that she's been "hoarding" over the years there very well may be something about magical pirates in there. :rolleyes:

reflir
Oct 29, 2004

So don't. Stay here with me.
No, there won't be, because JK Rowling is not retarded.

IRQ
Sep 9, 2001

SUCK A DICK, DUMBSHITS!

Obligatory Toast posted:

Downloading ROMs of games you own is still piracy, fyi.

Even if you don't think it is, you're also still supporting piracy.

When I want to pirate books I go to my county's piracy system, they have a whole bunch of buildings so they're close to you and let you have any book you want FOR FREE!

Obligatory Toast
Mar 19, 2007

What am I reading here??

IRQ posted:

When I want to pirate books I go to my county's piracy system, they have a whole bunch of buildings so they're close to you and let you have any book you want FOR FREE!

There is at least one author that I know of that does regard libraries as piracy, but she's a huge nobody, so.

Hedrigall
Mar 27, 2008

by vyelkin
:aaaaa:PIRATED:aaaaa: from Leakynews.com:

JKR during press conference:
"Pottermore has been a really great way to give back to the Harry Potter readership, who made the books such a big success. I am still receiving countless, a huge amount of mail - I thought it would really drop off by now. Stories, drawings, suggestions I write prequels, sequels, every week.
"This site is just a fantastic way for all that fan creativity to continue. It’s been an amazing experience for me to be able to be creative in this medium that iddn’t exist back in 1990 when I had the idea for the books. And it will be a wonderful way to introduce the digital generation to the books.
"It’s just been a phenomenally exciting project. We’v been working on it for a couple of years and I think it’s miraculous that so few clever fans twigged to what we were up to. A few did and they were really nice about not giving us away early. It’s just been a very exciting project to work on with a great team."

On Sorting:
"The Sorting was some of the best fun I’ve had on this project. I was writing the potter books for sixteen years and during that time I had just had this real sense of where people belonged, in what house they belonged. It was something I was unconsciously doing a lot of the time when I met people.
"So, developing these vast pool of questions that are randomly selected for a user - so you wont get the same questions as your friend necessarily - I thought it was quite important that people didn’t get to second guess what meant Gryffindor, for example. But the exciting thing for me is that if you’re not sorted into Gryffindor, if you’re sorted into one of the other three houses you will effectively get an extra quarter chapter because you will go off to your on common room. If you are sorted into Gyrffindor you just follow Harry. But if you’re sorted into Hufflepuff, Ravenclaw or Slytherin, you go to your own common room, you meet your own prefect, who will tell you about famous people who were in your house and what the true nature of your house is.
"In the main narrative you only ever see the other houses through the eyes of the three, my three heroes. What I’m basically saying is that it’s not a terrible thing to be in Slytherin. And in fact I have always seen Gryffindor and Slytherin as the two closest houses. I think that Harry himself could have goneeither way very easily. I don’t think it’s very guessable. Yo must be answering honestly. YOu just get one shot at this, it’s like a Mensa test, there’s no going back, you’ve got to do it properly the first time.
"We’ve tested this out. I tested it on my family and everyone was where I thought they would be, and when the team did it, you [to Tarek Nseri of TH_NK] said most people were in Ravenclaw. The only two people who were in Slytherin were dressed all in black. So it works."

Q: How did the idea come about, and how much new material is there?
"I would say that I have had more than half of the new material already written - and I’ve also generated some new content, particularly the introduction to the houses. That was a fun opportunity to go back, rethink how it might have been if Harry followed a different course. So I’ve generated quite a lot.
"[The idea] came out of a discussion between us, between Neil [Blair] and myself. We knew there was a big demand for the eBooks but I wanted - if it was going to be done I wanted it to be more than that. Obviously we’d had a lot of requests for all sorts of games and online interactive games and so forth. I wanted to pull it back to reading. I wanted to pull it back to the literary experience, the story experience, and this is what emerged from those discussions. So we started working on this seriously a couple of years ago."

Q: Will there ever be a printed encyclopedia?
"Will there ever be a book, I don’t know at the moment. The world has kind of outstripped me in the sense that back in 1998 I generated a lot more material than would ever be put in the books. It was simply ridiculous that anyone - to me at the time, I thought, who would ever want to know the significance of these types of wand woods? This was all in my head. So the only way I could imagine I could get that material out there was in the form of a printed book.
"Now, you can go and look and see what the significance of the wand wood once what you’ve got your wand. You have to read it all, but it’s such a rich experience to do it this way.
"Will there ever be an encyclopedia? Possibly. I would say two things about the encyclopedia: firstly, I’ve always said and I stand by it, whenever I do do a printed encyclopedia I would like all the proceeds to go to charity. Back in 1998 I never dreamt I personally I would be in the position that I could set up a large charitable foundation and personally do things for charity, and I’ve done other charity books already.
"The other thing is, this is free. You don’t have to buy anything to access what you’ve seen today. You don’t have to pay to get the extra material, you don’t hve to buy a single thing to go onto Pottermore and have the whole experience you’ve just seen. That was really important to me. This was about the give-back. The technology now existed to do something outside the books and the films for existing fans."

Q: You have been quoted about how difficult it was to say goodbye to Harry Potter. This is a way of causing you to be able to keep your boyfriend a little longer?
"It’s exactly like an ex-boyfriend. It is true to say that finishing writing Harry, I’ve only ever cried in that way and as much ever in my life when my mother died. I’ve never cried for a man as I cried for Harry Potter, ever. So, we’re not casually dating, as you can see, and have been for two years now and I’ve been keeping that quiet.
"It is surprising how easily I slip in and out of that world. I’ll be completely honest when I came to write out notes or when I generated new material which I have done in places, I just thought this is extraordinary how easily I slip in and out of it, that’s been wonderful. But I do have closure with Harry, and I think it’s important to say that I have no plans to write another novel. This has been an amazing way of staying in touch with that part of my life, but I am pretty sure I am done on the novel front. But it was fun while it lasted."

Q [regarding Jo’s mail and whether this will reignite her post bag]
"I love the mail. Not all of the mail. I like 99% of the mail.
"The books, it’s impossible to overstate what Harry Potter was to me. It completely changed my life. Creatively, I’ve loved it. It will never happen again to me anyway. It will happen again to someone else, there’ll be another series of books that’s as big. I adore my readers. I love my readers. Any writer would like to think that they will continue to be read.
"I thought a question that would come earlier but that I am going to answer spontaneously now, is that print/ebook debate: It is my view you can’t hold back progress. EBooks are here, they are here to stay. Personally I love printed paper, but very very recently, later thatn a lot of people because I’m not very technologically adept, in fact it was this year for the first time that I downloaded eBooks. And it’s miraculous, for travel and for children particularly, to carry around a thousand books in your pocket on a small device is an extraordinary thing, so I feel great about taking harry potter into this new medium. But I still love a printed paper book; I think you can enjoy both."

Q: Did you come up with the name Pottermore?
"I did. I’m quite proud of that. We had a lot of discussions about that but that was me."

Q: Can you talk about your decision to go directly to the consumers? I imagine Apple and Amazon are not happy.
"Well I can’t speak for anyone else. The decision was quite straightforward for me. Firstly It means that - I mean Harry Potter is obviously an international phenomenon and it means that we can now see that people everywhere are having the same experience at pretty much the same time. A large part of the fandom will be able to receive experience at exactly the same time, which was extremely appealing to me.
"I’m phenomenally lucky in that I have the resources to do it myself and therefore I got to do it, I think, right. I think this is a fantastic and unique experience that I can afford in every sense. To take my time and find the right people - TH_NK have been extraordinary - to make this come alive. There was really no other way to do that, for the fans or for, than to just do it myself. Not everyone could do it, I appreciate that, but I think it was right for Harry Potter. It was right for Harry Potter because, Potter fandom was one of the first, I think ti’s fair to say, there was a massive online community and that was such fun for me as an author to be able to have direct contact with my fans, and I already had a direct presence online, I had my own web site already. So it didn’t feel like a massive onwards step. It was an extension of the already existing.

Q: Can you talk more about what new content is on the site and what some of your favorite parts were?
"I’ve mentioned - I think my favorite things are the Sorting, which I loved writing, I think if you get into the other three houses apart from Gryffindor, you do end up with an extra bit of that chapter in Philosopher’s Stone. That was great to write. And then the wands, I go into ridiculous detail about the wandwoods, and what the cores mean, and why it might have chosen you and every detail on wands and some of that I already had in long form and some of it I wrote anew.
"The background on Professor McGonagall, I’ve had for years and years and years, and I think I always thought it would have somehow found its way into the story and it just never happened. Harry and Professor McGonagall just never had an interaction or a conversation where that would plausibly come out, so I was left with this life story of this character I liked so much and nowhere to put it. Now I’ve got somewhere to put it. That was so satisfying."

Q: How much is there?
"Oh god, I don’t know. Lots. There’s lots. 18,000 words at launch but I’m adding to it. I’m still digging up boxes and I will write more as well as we hit subsequent books. In fact I’ve already given material on the other six books. We’ve been working on this for about two years so this has been int the works quite a long time."

Q: Can I ask about Quidditch?
"I don’t think I’ve given all the stuff on Quidditch yet. Men always ask me about Quidditch because the number of, and I love geeky people so I do not say this in a pejorative way, but the number of geeky men who have come up to me to argue with me about Quidditch - I’d be a lot richer if I had a quid for every one. They just think it’s illogical. But it’s not illogical and I had a speech by Dumbledore in the first book that never made it in explaining why Quidditch is not illogical, so at some point I will put that on the site. Thank you for reminding me."

Farbtoner
May 17, 2011

by Y Kant Ozma Post

reflir posted:

No, there won't be, because JK Rowling is not retarded.

But there will be an Asian school of magic with ninjas! :unsmigghh:

thrawn527
Mar 27, 2004

Thrawn/Pellaeon
Studying the art of terrorists
To keep you safe

Hedrigall posted:

Q: Can I ask about Quidditch?
"I don’t think I’ve given all the stuff on Quidditch yet. Men always ask me about Quidditch because the number of, and I love geeky people so I do not say this in a pejorative way, but the number of geeky men who have come up to me to argue with me about Quidditch - I’d be a lot richer if I had a quid for every one. They just think it’s illogical. But it’s not illogical and I had a speech by Dumbledore in the first book that never made it in explaining why Quidditch is not illogical, so at some point I will put that on the site. Thank you for reminding me."

I would like to see that speech, because right now, Quidditch absolutely is illogical.

The rest of that post goes back and forth between mildly interesting and just plain silly. I'm not sure how well this site is going to work out, but I'll be checking it out for sure.

Paragon8
Feb 19, 2007

The website is going to make it or break it. If it's some unusable flash heavy "interactive" story type thing I could see it getting old real fast.

Fortunately I'm sure an enterprising wiki will mirror the content.

Presto
Nov 22, 2002

Keep calm and Harry on.

thrawn527 posted:

I would like to see that speech, because right now, Quidditch absolutely is illogical.
It's completely logical if you start from the axiom that pretty much everyone in the wizarding world seems to be an idiot. See also: the money system.

reflir
Oct 29, 2004

So don't. Stay here with me.
Bitch please, if you don't use a base 493 number system for your money you can just get the gently caress out of Diagon Alley

TheBigBudgetSequel
Nov 25, 2008

It's not who I am underneath, but what I do that defines me.

reflir posted:

Bitch please, if you don't use a base 493 number system for your money you can just get the gently caress out of Diagon Alley

And go where? Knockturn Alley? Fuccck that.

IRQ
Sep 9, 2001

SUCK A DICK, DUMBSHITS!

TheBigBudgetSequel posted:

And go where? Knockturn Alley? Fuccck that.

It's been like 2 years since the last book? Wal*Mart has moved in and put everyone else out of business by now.

Van Dis
Jun 19, 2004

reflir posted:

Bitch please, if you don't use a base 493 number system for your money you can just get the gently caress out of Diagon Alley

Haha, is that really the lowest common denominator for her stupid money system? God, Rowling is terrible.

reflir
Oct 29, 2004

So don't. Stay here with me.
17 and 29 are both prime, so yes.

TheBigBudgetSequel
Nov 25, 2008

It's not who I am underneath, but what I do that defines me.

IRQ posted:

It's been like 2 years since the last book? Wal*Mart has moved in and put everyone else out of business by now.

Who knew they could find something more evil than Borgin and Burkes?

Tartarus Sauce
Jan 16, 2006


friendship is magic
in a pony paradise
don't you judge me
Are the more illogical and absurd aspects of Wizard custom and culture a commentary on the more illogical and outdated customs and traditions of British culture, just as Hogwarts is a mirror of a standard English boarding school?

HelixFox
Dec 20, 2004

Heed the words of this ancient spirit.

Tartarus Sauce posted:

Are the more illogical and absurd aspects of Wizard custom and culture a commentary on the more illogical and outdated customs and traditions of British culture, just as Hogwarts is a mirror of a standard English boarding school?

Some of them are, yeah. For instance, the poo poo the Daily Prophet pulls in books 5-6 is the sort of stuff we get in our tabloids all the time.

Some stuff is just retarded, though.

Edit: Would love to see a Daily Prophet headline generator akin to this thing.

DOES CASTING WINGARDIUM LEVIOSA GIVE YOU SPATTERGROIT?

HelixFox fucked around with this message at 18:03 on Jun 25, 2011

reflir
Oct 29, 2004

So don't. Stay here with me.
No, I think it's done to make the Wizarding World distinctive, very much not wherever you just came from. So instead of there being 100 pence to a pound, there are [random number] [noun]s to a [different noun]. It becomes pretty obvious Rowling thought about it like this when you consider that one witch clamouring about an ounce of dragon liver costing '17 sickles' instead of 1 galleon. She just picked a random number again and accidentally created a scene that would never happen in real life.

edit: Though the stuff with Umbridge for example is a pretty explicit slam against what was happening in British education at the time.

keefin and kel
Aug 27, 2010

by Y Kant Ozma Post
Harry POtter.

Paragon8
Feb 19, 2007

Yeah, Rowling does introduce a lot of britishisms and critiques of British culture in Harry Potter. The Ministry is a good example of that. I'm also not sure if she intends the critique on standardized testing or was just trying to make it accessible to GCSE and A-level takers.

The Daily Prophet was super obvious.

HelixFox
Dec 20, 2004

Heed the words of this ancient spirit.
One of my favourite little details in the books is that massive shithead Vernon Dursley's paper of choice is the Daily Mail :laugh:

That and that he was apparently telling an anal sex joke to his potential clients in book 2.

spixxor
Feb 4, 2009

HelixFox posted:

One of my favourite little details in the books is that massive shithead Vernon Dursley's paper of choice is the Daily Mail :laugh:

That and that he was apparently telling an anal sex joke to his potential clients in book 2.

Haha holy poo poo. I love learning tidbits like this.

Death Bot
Mar 4, 2007

Binary killing machines, turning 1 into 0 since 0011000100111001 0011011100110110
So..... how is Quidditch illogical?

Tartarus Sauce
Jan 16, 2006


friendship is magic
in a pony paradise
don't you judge me

Paragon8 posted:

Yeah, Rowling does introduce a lot of britishisms and critiques of British culture in Harry Potter. The Ministry is a good example of that. I'm also not sure if she intends the critique on standardized testing or was just trying to make it accessible to GCSE and A-level takers.

The Daily Prophet was super obvious.

Well, and I'd say I understand the rules of Quidditch better than I do the rules of cricket, which just looks like people running around and yelling "hotbox" to me.

But, I'm a Yank, and I don't get sports in general, so it may just be me.

Tartarus Sauce fucked around with this message at 05:59 on Jun 26, 2011

Panzerfaust
Jul 8, 2006

Just when you think that there's nobody around to kill you, BOOM, remote controlled Panzerfaust outta nowhere.

Death Bot posted:

So..... how is Quidditch illogical?
As I understand it (and I may be wrong), it's because it's basically constructed so you can have Harry be the only player that matters: the Seeker. If the Snitch didn't exist, you'd basically have a simple game of scoring a ball through a hoop with some lethal spheres of lead flying at you. When you add in the Snitch, the Chaser and Keeper become irrelevant 99% of the time because catching the Snitch is worth such a huge amount of points and also ends the game. I mean, you may as well just remove the Quaffle and point scoring entirely because unless one team's Chaser and Keeper are far better than the other's, the deciding factor is always going to be the team that gets the Snitch and all the hard work of those two positions doesn't matter at all.

Ormi
Feb 7, 2005

B-E-H-A-V-E
Arrest us!
Unless one team manages to score 16 goals more than the other team before the Snitch is found, securing their victory even in the event of a Snitch capture by the other Seeker, in which case the other team will have to avoid grabbing the Snitch until they make at least two goals!

...still pretty ridiculous.

bitterandtwisted
Sep 4, 2006




The wizard money thing is a joke about the old British money system. Before decimalization in the 1970s, the UK had pounds, shillings and pence. Twelve pennies to a shilling, twenty shillings to a pound. 2 shillings and sixpence was a half-crown, one pound and a shilling was a guinea. A sixpence is worth two and a half new pennies.

bobkatt013
Oct 8, 2006

You’re telling me Peter Parker is ...... Spider-man!?

Ormi posted:

Unless one team manages to score 16 goals more than the other team before the Snitch is found, securing their victory even in the event of a Snitch capture by the other Seeker, in which case the other team will have to avoid grabbing the Snitch until they make at least two goals!

...still pretty ridiculous.

aka the Bulgarian team in the world cup

Decius
Oct 14, 2005

Ramrod XTreme

bitterandtwisted posted:

The wizard money thing is a joke about the old British money system. Before decimalization in the 1970s, the UK had pounds, shillings and pence. Twelve pennies to a shilling, twenty shillings to a pound. 2 shillings and sixpence was a half-crown, one pound and a shilling was a guinea. A sixpence is worth two and a half new pennies.

Which was set by Newton. If it good enough for Sir Isaac...


Quidditch does make more sense if you accept games lasting for several hours or days. Because when the score is 2230:1950 the Snitch counts a lot less all of a sudden.

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Paragon8
Feb 19, 2007

The Quidditch world cup is really where everything falls apart for me.

It indicates that Ireland and Bulgaria in addition to a number of other random countries Rowling selected without rhyme or reason which are mentioned as being in the semi-finals are as magically powerful as Britain and have a population that supports a professional Quidditch team.

This makes the threat of Voldemort really localized in the global magical world. Why isn't the Ministry and the Order of the Phoenix petitioning to the huge numbers of other wizards internationally for help? Perhaps Britain to the broader magical community is as quaint and marginalized as the real britain is in global politics - with tradition as the only reason of its inclusion and nobody really gives a poo poo about Voldemort.

I'm sperging incredibly hard about this.

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