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Azubah posted:The whole thing has been kind of a cluster gently caress. I was able to get into the closed beta and they've literally added no new content. Dueling works again and that's it. Thanks, that's all I needed to know. I don't see a reason to go back, then.
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Apr 30, 2012 14:44
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kittiesgomeow posted:Has anyone else noticed how incredibly finnicky the potions are? "Sorry your potion failed because you did this wrong" but I definitely didn't. Just one more frustration with the site. I love that the potions are incredibly easy to mess up to the point of thinking you did nothing wrong, because it accurately simulates Harry's experience with the class in the books. All that's missing is a personal insult from Snape for screwing up.
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Apr 30, 2012 23:05
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Olivia42 posted:I love that the potions are incredibly easy to mess up to the point of thinking you did nothing wrong, because it accurately simulates Harry's experience with the class in the books. All that's missing is a personal insult from Snape for screwing up. Potions are one of those weird things that you just cannot do until you finally get it right without doing anything different than usual. Then at that point, it becomes really easy and you have no idea why you were having so much difficulty before, even though you still aren't doing anything different than what you were when you hosed everything up all the time.
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May 1, 2012 03:54
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I really want to know what the gently caress is taking so long. I was so drat excited for this site, and it was really fun getting sorted and getting my wands and seeing all the extra content from the first book...and now nothing. Seriously is it that drat hard to keep up with the site you hyped so loving much?
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May 2, 2012 04:26
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spixxor posted:I really want to know what the gently caress is taking so long. I was so drat excited for this site, and it was really fun getting sorted and getting my wands and seeing all the extra content from the first book...and now nothing. Seriously is it that drat hard to keep up with the site you hyped so loving much? The plan is to add one book's content per year. So it's actually their plan to have very little content and take forever to update it. Yeah, I don't get it either.
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May 2, 2012 14:05
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thrawn527 posted:The plan is to add one book's content per year. So it's actually their plan to have very little content and take forever to update it. That's poo poo. They could get a near constant flow of traffic if they added, say, a chapter's worth every Monday and Friday, or something similar. 172 chapters in books 2-7, that's near to 2 years worth of regular updates. Everyone would keep going back to see the new stuff twice weekly, and the site would be a success. The way they're doing it, the site'll get huge traffic for a week or two each year, then be dead for the rest of the time.
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May 2, 2012 14:10
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Hedrigall posted:That's poo poo. They could get a near constant flow of traffic if they added, say, a chapter's worth every Monday and Friday, or something similar. 172 chapters in books 2-7, that's near to 2 years worth of regular updates. Everyone would keep going back to see the new stuff twice weekly, and the site would be a success. If people even remember to go back
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May 2, 2012 14:49
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I'm probably not going to bother going back, and since I already have hardcopy on all the books and the buying process is unnecessarily inconvenient, I'm not even going to be motivated to buy the ebooks.
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May 2, 2012 17:53
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JK Rowling and/or her people don't understand the internet. Pottermore is pretty much an interactive website from the late 90s or early 2000s. It could have been a huge part of Harry Potter's legacy but instead it's a "meh" at best.
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May 3, 2012 13:53
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Petrificus totalus is all you need to know for dueling.  Another Ravenclaw checking in.  I'll keep checking in on the site because I am curious about the backstories (loved McGonagall), but the site itself is sadly pretty disappointing. To be fair, I don't know how much they could really do with the first book. Hopefully as the books get more complex, the site does as well. I want to believe...
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May 16, 2012 05:28
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So apparently now we can go to the library and read selected texts in books. Where is the library? Is it one of those things that you get to through the different chapters?
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May 16, 2012 23:52
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You can get the book from the library in chapter 12. Unless I'm missing something, it's just a list of spells from "Curses and Counter-Curses," which we already knew from dueling. But I probably am missing something.
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May 20, 2012 00:47
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So I'm taking a Topics in Literature Harry Potter course at my university, and these are our final exam questions. Maybe you guys would find it interesting: a) Love and Death. J. K. Rowling has said that death is the most important theme in the Harry Potter series. We have also seen that love—often portrayed as self-sacrificing love—is a central theme. In your essay make a case for which you finally find to be the more important theme of the books, love or death—or, perhaps, some blend of the two. Why do you argue as you do? b) The Broken Colossus?: Harry’s Diminished Fathers. Sylvia Plath’s poem “The Colossus” uses the image of a huge broken statue as a symbol for a now-shattered patriarchal authority; as the speaker says of both the artwork and the heritage it represents,“I shall never get you put together entirely” (l. 1). In the last three books of the Potter series, we see Harry dealing with the ambiguous legacy of three fallen fathers—his dead biological father, James Potter, about whom he discovers unpleasant truths in Order of the Phoenix, his godfather Sirius Black, and his mentor Albus Dumbledore. By the end of Half-Blood Prince, Sirius and Dumbledore have both died, and, as he had with James, Harry has to struggle not only with loss but the knowledge of the imperfections of these father figures. Can Harry, unlike the speaker of Plath’s poem, find a way to “put together” the pieces of the puzzle of who these three men were? Do you think he resolves his ambivalent feelings about them—or not? What difference does it make, finally, that these men were not god-like heroes but flawed human beings? c) The Strange Case of Severus Snape. However you feel about him, Severus Snape is one of the most complex characters in the Potter series. By the end of Deathly Hallows, we discover a lot of information about the “half-blood Prince”—information which clarifies his allegiances but also underscores the ongoing mystery of his multi-faceted nature. In your essay analyze Snape’s character, focusing on what we see in the last three books of the series. How good or bad is Snape, finally—or are either of these terms adequate to describe him? What do we learn of the background that makes him what he is, and what difference does this make to your assessment of him? Please keep in mind my final has been finished and turned in and I have no intention of plagiarizing, I am just sharing our essay questions.
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May 30, 2012 09:05
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I kinda wanna read/write these essays what the gently caress  Love&Death and Snape seem like good ones, but I never noticed until now that James/Sirius/Dumbledore all have Harry go through the same process of "this guy's awesome!" to "in actuality this dude was kind of an rear end in a top hat!" ...Uggggh I really want to write an essay what's wrong with me!? 
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May 30, 2012 13:22
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I'm not adressing your questions, really, I know, but they did lead me on a stream of thought about James Potter, Snape and related things. I find it very difficult to actually define who James Potter was, since the only things we really learn about him come from Snape's memories. And memories are always tainted and biased due to the personality of whoever has the memories. For example, you have two boys in school, both witness a third boy make a pratfall and hurt his knees. One of the boys will, years later, recall the incident as that hilarious time Dougie fell on the ground. The second boy will recall the event as that time Doug really hurt himself and had to go to the nurse. Both different interpretations of the same objective fact. To Snape, James will always be the wizarding world's equivalent of the bullying, popular jock. Most others remember James fondly, but their memories are also tainted. Sirius, his best pal, admits they were dicks to Snape, but since he considered him an rear end in a top hat anyway, he had it coming. The truth is probably somewhere in the middle, and the reader is left to draw his own conclusions. Characters interpreting, or rather misinterpreting events and actions because of their own history and personality is something that happens frequently in the books. Snape sees Harry not as a person, but as a mini-James (so does Sirius at times, really) and so anything Harry does is seen by Snape through that frame of reference. He sees James as arrogant, so he assumes that whenever Harry does something he doesn't like, it's because harry thinks he's better than him. Lockhart is the same, since fame is everything to him, he thinks other famous people are the same, and sees everything Harry does as a way to get fame and glory. It's very interesting that at one point, a character remarks that Muggles will go to great lenghts to not see magic happening, since it doesn't go with their view of the world. Individual characters do the exact same thing, like in the examples above. The most extreme form can be seen in the Minister of Magic, who goes through extreme leaps in logic to delude himself into believing that Voldemort hadn't returned. When you go through Order of the Phoenix, it's easy to think his actions are simply to convince the magical world Voldy isn't back, but it's really more him convincing himself. Back to Snape and James. There are a few similarities between their interactions and those of Harry and Draco Malfoy. Draco thinks Harry is an arrogant prick, and is jealous of him, much like Snape's thoughts on James. While Snape's most intense hatred was probably focused on the moment James saved his life, I believe Draco's moment would be when he confronts Harry after his father is taken prisoner. He swears revenge, and Harry laughs him of saying he's faced Voldy a bunch of times and Draco isn't anywhere near being a threat. Given that the books are told more or less from Harry's perspective, I think it would be fascinating to see the interactions between Draco and Harry through Draco's eyes. I think it would be quite similar to Snape's memories. Finally, would the overall plot have transpired differently is Snape hadn't been a colossal dick to Harry? What if he hadn't seen him as a mini-James but as Lily's son? What if he had been fond of him because of that? It would have made it more difficult to pretend to be the treasurer of the "We hate Harry"-club, president and founding member Thomas Riddle, but other than that?
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May 30, 2012 14:29
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I saw his hatred for Harry not only due to James but also that Harry being Lilly's son by another man. It would not matter who the father was he would hate him since he was not the father.
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May 30, 2012 14:56
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Did Snape hate Harry though? Or did he merely dislike what he was a symbol of, and his "hatred" was more "toughen this kid right the hell up, he will have to face Voldemort one day"?
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May 30, 2012 15:40
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I'd hestitate to call Snape's attitude toward Harry as "hate". Harry represented a tremendous torturous pain that the guy lived through every waking minute. If he's not seeing Harry at school, he's hearing about him from others, newspapers, etc., and if he's not hearing about him, he's haunted by his memories of James, Lily, James and Lily, himself and Lily. And of course compounded being told by Dumbledore (and likely understanding and believing it) of the importance of protecting Harry because it was the only way to defeat Voldemort. Harry recognized this when he told his son that he was named after two of the bravest men he'd ever known.
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May 30, 2012 16:10
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Bad Wolf posted:Finally, would the overall plot have transpired differently is Snape hadn't been a colossal dick to Harry? I imagine it would have made Snape's double agent thing a lot harder if he was nice to Harry.
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May 30, 2012 17:13
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Macaluso posted:I imagine it would have made Snape's double agent thing a lot harder if he was nice to Harry. I mentioned that, but I figured since even Lucius Malfoy mentioned (to Draco) it isn't a good idea to seem anything but thrilled about harry Potter in the post-Voldy wizarding world, he could use that as an excuse.
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May 30, 2012 17:21
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Snape was a huge dick to people other than Harry. Does he get a pass for bullying Neville relentlessly because he was in love with some chick?
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May 30, 2012 17:21
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Paragon8 posted:Snape was a huge dick to people other than Harry. Does he get a pass for bullying Neville relentlessly because he was in love with some chick? Yeah, I've never understood people excusing Snape because of Lily. If anything, resenting an 11-year-old kid because his mother is the girl you had a crush on and his father bullied you when you were like 15 is even creepier and weirder than anything else. Snape was a deeply unpleasant, unlikeable creep even if he did redeem himself a good bit at the end.
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May 30, 2012 17:28
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WeaponGradeSadness posted:Yeah, I've never understood people excusing Snape because of Lily. If anything, resenting an 11-year-old kid because his mother is the girl you had a crush on and his father bullied you when you were like 15 is even creepier and weirder than anything else. Snape was a deeply unpleasant, unlikeable creep even if he did redeem himself a good bit at the end. Yeah, Snape did get redeemed a bit - but to me the redemption was about that he wasn't literally evil. It still means he was an rear end in a top hat and not a great educator. Slytherin apologists unsettle me too. It feels weird that people align themselves to a group that is cookie cutter evil. At best Slytherins are amoral glory hounds who place their personal advancement of all else. At worst - they are evil.
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May 30, 2012 18:00
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Paragon8 posted:Yeah, Snape did get redeemed a bit - but to me the redemption was about that he wasn't literally evil. It still means he was an rear end in a top hat and not a great educator. Yeah, I really wish Rowling had gone ahead with her plan of having a good Slytherin. It made sense early in the series when it was still really kiddy but later on a little less black-and-white "these 11-year-olds are good, these are evil" would have been nice. It doesn't even need to be a whole new character, she could have made, say, Luna a Slytherin without changing her personality at all and it wouldn't have changed anything. Or hell, maybe even have a bad Gryffindor.
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May 30, 2012 18:05
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WeaponGradeSadness posted:a bad Gryffindor. That would have honestly been fantastic. Have a character that maybe was a 7th year in the first book and went on to become a trusted member of the Order of the Phoenix and an Auror and he ends up betraying them. Or have Percy go full evil eventually.
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May 30, 2012 18:14
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Peter Pettigrew was in Gryffindor, and Slughorn isn't evil
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May 30, 2012 18:24
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reflir posted:Peter Pettigrew was in Gryffindor, and Slughorn isn't evil I was already thinking Slughorn. He even said that he refused to join with the Death Eaters and would eventually fight Voldemort's forces at Hogwarts.
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May 30, 2012 20:12
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Regardless, I always make a ">:C" face when I read through the books and encounter a  SLYTHERINS ARE EVIL scene. Like someone mentioned yes, it made sense in the earlier books, but in the final chapters of DH, the Battle of Hogwarts, I really, really resent, to this day, the way NOT ONE Slytherin stayed behind ~*~*but all da Gryffindors did lyke dis if u crey evritam~*~*For a series that does such an excellent job of exploring the topics of "what is evil" and "how is evil created?", I think the 'Slytherinz r bad' mechanic of the story is just jarring. I am mad about the portrayal of characters stemming from a fictional house in a long finished series, ok?
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May 30, 2012 21:22
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Ballin Stalin posted:Regardless, I always make a ">:C" face when I read through the books and encounter a They mention that they do return and that help turn the tide.
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May 30, 2012 21:23
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Yeah, it's the movie that bans the Slytherins completely.
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May 30, 2012 21:30
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bobkatt013 posted:They mention that they do return and that help turn the tide. I don't remember that happening, but it has been 4 years since I've read a Harry Potter book so it's possible I may have forgotten.
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May 30, 2012 21:30
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That makes me feel a lot better. 
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May 30, 2012 21:33
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I thought that was something she mentioned after the fact and that she's wished she'd actually put it in the book? I don't remember any being mentioned as present at the battle apart from Slughorn.
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May 30, 2012 21:41
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thebardyspoon posted:I thought that was something she mentioned after the fact and that she's wished she'd actually put it in the book? I don't remember any being mentioned as present at the battle apart from Slughorn. An exact quote was his going on about how Slughorn talking about how Slytherins helped too.
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May 30, 2012 21:45
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Macaluso posted:Yeah, it's the movie that bans the Slytherins completely. The movie is kinda weird in that regard. Harry turns out not to be dead, and that seems to be the reason the Death Eaters go "welp, see ya Voldy, wouldn't want to be ya!" and disapparate in an almost cartoony way. Instead of, you know, killing him again or something? At least in the book, once Harry turns out to be alive, practically everybody from the wizarding world (including the Slytherins? I don't remember either, but I'll believe it) decide they've had enough of this crap and come in to beat the everloving poo poo out of the Death Eaters, and only at that point do some of them run like hell.
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May 30, 2012 21:49
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Snape's main issue, in my mind at least, was always that he wanted to be accepted, and if he couldn't be accepted then he would be the one doing the excluding. He didn't fit in anywhere even when he tried to go in with the Death Eaters. There was always something pulling him in the opposite direction (i.e. Lily). He wanted to be an accepted wizard, but he was excluded because he was half-blood, etc. So he grew up and still couldn't fit in on the good side or the bad side but then he became a teacher and he had power. He could make a mockery of the students. Both the ones who fit in, because that's what he couldn't do, and the ones who didn't; not showing any pity for those who may have been like himself at that age. He did show preferential treatment toward the Slytherins, but mainly in the beginning books. After some time, I believe, he got tough with everyone because if there was one thing he did not take poo poo in, it was with potions, where he excelled. In the end, when we get the exposition of Snape's story, we learn that he finally accepted himself as having to carry on alone. He could never be part of any group. He had to deny himself what he had wanted for so long, and I believe that he was at peace with himself when he died.
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May 31, 2012 00:03
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innocent_deadly posted:Snape's main issue, in my mind at least, was always that he wanted to be accepted, and if he couldn't be accepted then he would be the one doing the excluding. He didn't fit in anywhere even when he tried to go in with the Death Eaters. There was always something pulling him in the opposite direction (i.e. Lily). He wanted to be an accepted wizard, but he was excluded because he was half-blood, etc. Snape never really stopped favoring the Slytherins which is pointed out pretty aptly in book six when Slughorn takes over and Malfoy and company almost immediately lose a shitton of house points and get terrible grades for the crap they were pulling in Snape's classes up to that point. How much of that was due to his cover in the final years is hard to say, but he really was a piss-poor teacher in almost every conceivable sense. Its actually sort of amazing that he isn't even in the top five worst teachers Harry had during his time at school despite all the crap he pulled. Plus, I never really got the impression he particularly excelled at potions. Every time his strengths were brought up, in flashbacks or in establishing conversations, everyone always talked up his affinity for the Dark Arts and spells in general and he always wants to bail from his Potions job to become the Defense Against the Dark Arts professor. Even most of the stuff that Harry learned out of the Half Blood Prince potions book were pretty hosed up spells that Snape either invented or learned from somewhere. He did have a whole bunch of experimental notes but I'm assuming that came with the fact that by his sixth year he had driven off the only friend he had, the older Slytherins who had taken him under their wing a bit had graduated (Malfoy) and he really had nothing to do but make up spells and brew potions. Possibly in an attempt to make himself ready for a position teaching Defense Against the Dark Arts which is about the only job he ever showed any signs of wanting.
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May 31, 2012 05:04
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Zore posted:Plus, I never really got the impression he particularly excelled at potions. Every time his strengths were brought up, in flashbacks or in establishing conversations, everyone always talked up his affinity for the Dark Arts and spells in general and he always wants to bail from his Potions job to become the Defense Against the Dark Arts professor. Even most of the stuff that Harry learned out of the Half Blood Prince potions book were pretty hosed up spells that Snape either invented or learned from somewhere. He did have a whole bunch of experimental notes but I'm assuming that came with the fact that by his sixth year he had driven off the only friend he had, the older Slytherins who had taken him under their wing a bit had graduated (Malfoy) and he really had nothing to do but make up spells and brew potions. Possibly in an attempt to make himself ready for a position teaching Defense Against the Dark Arts which is about the only job he ever showed any signs of wanting. Yeah, but it's worth noting that the notes Snape put down were improvements over what the book was teaching even years later. If that poo poo had been documented, I'm pretty sure Hermione's response wouldn't have been "Where the hell did you come up with that" every time Harry massively outperformed her. Even if he was experimenting because he was alone/sad/whatever, he was creating massive improvements to potions while he was a teenager in school. The notes he had were good enough that Harry went from Crap to Best of Class just by following them, which implies they were some really god damned good notes. It's also worth noting that for all Snape's complaining, he actually wasn't that good at Defense against the Dark Arts. When he was teaching about the magical creatures he got stuff wrong and taught students the wrong information. (And Rowling points this out in one of the for-charity Hogwarts textbooks.) He was good at curses and dark arts but those were clearly the parts he cared about. It's kind of an evolution of his thing with Lily. He sure wanted her but he was a pretty bad fit.
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May 31, 2012 14:33
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ImpAtom posted:Yeah, but it's worth noting that the notes Snape put down were improvements over what the book was teaching even years later. If that poo poo had been documented, I'm pretty sure Hermione's response wouldn't have been "Where the hell did you come up with that" every time Harry massively outperformed her. Even if he was experimenting because he was alone/sad/whatever, he was creating massive improvements to potions while he was a teenager in school. The notes he had were good enough that Harry went from Crap to Best of Class just by following them, which implies they were some really god damned good notes. Also like Nevile he might have been crap due to Snape bulling him.
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May 31, 2012 14:38
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bobkatt013 posted:An exact quote was his going on about how Slughorn talking about how Slytherins helped too. Yeah it was like "Let's not forget the role Slytherin house has played!" as he is following some other teachers. But I always thought that meant himself, Snape, maybe even Phineas and Regulus Black if he knew about them helping out (and he couldn't have known about what Narcissa did). I didn't get the impression from that one line that a bunch of teenagers who had earlier fled the scene had come back and kicked down the doors and started fighting Death Eaters though. Guy A. Person fucked around with this message at 16:29 on May 31, 2012 |
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May 31, 2012 16:27
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