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Trin Tragula posted:http://www.amazon.co.uk/The-Casual-Vacancy-J-K-Rowling/dp/0751552860/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1412811433&sr=8-1&keywords=the+casual+vacancy But they weren't as successful. Reviewers even called The Cuckoo's Calling "a good first novel" before they found out that Robert Gailbraith was Rowling's pseudonym. There's a reason The Daily Dot compared Rowling to George Lucas: they both developed wildly successful franchises, followed them up with less-successful work, then returned to the wells of their earlier stuff even as said wells started to run dry.
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Oct 11, 2014 06:34
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I suppose one could say the same thing about J.R.R. Tolkien. "The Hobbit" and "The Lord of the Rings" books are what he's known for, but did anyone really enjoy reading "The Silmarillion"?
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Oct 11, 2014 11:49
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Pththya-lyi posted:But they weren't as successful. Reviewers even called The Cuckoo's Calling "a good first novel" before they found out that Robert Gailbraith was Rowling's pseudonym. There's a reason The Daily Dot compared Rowling to George Lucas: they both developed wildly successful franchises, followed them up with less-successful work, then returned to the wells of their earlier stuff even as said wells started to run dry. Yeah, but when your first thing is lightning in a bottle and spawns a gigantic worldwide franchise that rakes billions in merchandise, a follow up work is bound to be comparatively unsuccessful. And to be honest, you don't need it to be successful.
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Oct 11, 2014 13:02
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I refuse to believe there is any former Harry Potter obsessed 90s kid who wouldn't piss their pants if JK announced she was writing "Harry Potter: The Edgy, Grizzly Adult Auror Kicking Evil Wizard rear end". Don't even lie to yourselves. Since she's been on a mystery jag lately I could see her writing some kind of hard-boiled detective story set in the Potterverse and it would be awesome.
Captain Mog fucked around with this message at 15:00 on Oct 11, 2014 |
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Oct 11, 2014 14:56
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Inveigle posted:I but did anyone really enjoy reading "The Silmarillion"? I did because it has interesting details in it. But remember it was released by tolkien's son after his death and was pieced together from notes and half-written drafts.
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Oct 11, 2014 17:09
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Silmarillion is world-building, like the appendix to LOTR. It's not fiction the way Harry Potter is. If you like the encyclopedic style, it's pretty fantastic. The LOTR appendix is, by far, my favourite piece of Tolkien writing. Also, don't forget Children of Húrin. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f0mX74Q9O4s
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Oct 11, 2014 17:41
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As long as Rowling doesn't go down the Star Wars EU path of having Harry and crew continually face dark wizards threatening to gently caress everything up, each one more diabolical than the last, I'll be just fine with her exploring different parts of the big wide world she created.
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Oct 11, 2014 18:24
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Inveigle posted:I suppose one could say the same thing about J.R.R. Tolkien. "The Hobbit" and "The Lord of the Rings" books are what he's known for, but did anyone really enjoy reading "The Silmarillion"? I've enjoyed the first 100 pages or so I've re-read 6 times since I can't ever get any farther.
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Oct 11, 2014 19:13
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The Silmarillion for Harry Potter would be any encyclopedia of British folklore.
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Oct 11, 2014 22:05
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In the beginning, there was only butterbeer.
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Oct 11, 2014 22:59
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I liked "Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them"
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Oct 12, 2014 01:26
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Pththya-lyi posted:But they weren't as successful. Reviewers even called The Cuckoo's Calling "a good first novel" before they found out that Robert Gailbraith was Rowling's pseudonym. There's a reason The Daily Dot compared Rowling to George Lucas: they both developed wildly successful franchises, followed them up with less-successful work, then returned to the wells of their earlier stuff even as said wells started to run dry. I think Star Wars is the franchise that Harry Potter is the most similar to in scope. Rowling does seem to care a lot more about Harry Potter than Lucas did though. Despite her other novels Rowling constantly flirts with references to Potter and brings it up in interviews, she certainly isn't done with HP by a long shot. She remains the one creative source for HP which is probably as valuable a brand as Star Wars is at this point. I am wary about new content from her in the sense that she's in the position Lucas was where nobody is going to say no to her. I think Deathly Hallows suffered a lot from someone not reigning her in. That leaves me pretty wary with how things will go with the upcoming movies. It would be great if she found good people she was comfortable enough with to expand HP creatively with TV shows and movies based on fresh IP but I don't see that happening. If anything the HP movies would probably be enough to sour her from ceding creative control again. I do super admire Rowling for continuing to write, usually when authors have such tremendous fuckoff success as her they just sit back and enjoy the money/fame.
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Oct 12, 2014 01:31
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Paragon8 posted:If anything the HP movies would probably be enough to sour her from ceding creative control again. 
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Oct 12, 2014 01:41
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I get the impression that for a few of the movies Rowling would have made different choices but that's just me. I think that's a big reason why she's writing the screenplays for the Fantastic Beasts books rather than just letting WB produce movies from existing IP/notes.
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Oct 12, 2014 02:04
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Paragon8 posted:I think Star Wars is the franchise that Harry Potter is the most similar to in scope. Rowling does seem to care a lot more about Harry Potter than Lucas did though. Despite her other novels Rowling constantly flirts with references to Potter and brings it up in interviews, she certainly isn't done with HP by a long shot. She remains the one creative source for HP which is probably as valuable a brand as Star Wars is at this point. Deathly Hallows suffered more from the many ways she habitually wrote herself into corners that she was able to get out of by explaining them in the next book - once there was no next book new things she introduced were totally contrived for the sake of ending the plot and obviously so. Concepts like wand lore were never fully fleshed out, and so the crucial bit of magic that ensures Harry's victory is something that neither Harry nor the reader is fully informed about. This is fine if, for example, the diary remains unexplained at the end of CoS and its true nature is only revealed later, but with no next book important stuff was not really explained adequately.
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Oct 12, 2014 03:48
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Jazerus posted:Deathly Hallows suffered more from the many ways she habitually wrote herself into corners that she was able to get out of by explaining them in the next book - once there was no next book new things she introduced were totally contrived for the sake of ending the plot and obviously so. Concepts like wand lore were never fully fleshed out, and so the crucial bit of magic that ensures Harry's victory is something that neither Harry nor the reader is fully informed about. This is fine if, for example, the diary remains unexplained at the end of CoS and its true nature is only revealed later, but with no next book important stuff was not really explained adequately. Good points. I in particular found the sudden shift from Horcruxes to Hallows pretty jarring especially as the Hallows didn't really have any prior mention.
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Oct 12, 2014 12:19
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Yeah, Rowling's plot-weaving has never been her strong suit which is very common with authors whose universes have extensive amounts of world-building. I remember even as a kid wondering how day-to-day life might progress in the wizarding world because things just "happened" conveniently way too much. It's worth noting that this doesn't at all stop her books from being enjoyable in the least- not for me, and not for the absurd amount of fanatical Potter fans who still treasure her work to this very day. It'd make for an interesting discussion about how much readers would be willing to "buy in" to mediocre/deus-ex-machina plot as long as the world and characters are enough to get them absorbed in a particular work.
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Oct 12, 2014 16:15
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Paragon8 posted:Good points. I really enjoyed my official Harry Potter DVD catalogs having a sudden rebranding of Dumbledore's wand for the last two movies. I liked the twist of the Hallows since they never really did explain why Harry's cloak never wore out, that was something that was festering in my head since Moody mentioned that his was on the fritz or something along those lines. That and the Elder Wand was probably the easiest way for Rowling to have Harry defeat Voldemort without actually having him kill someone.
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Oct 13, 2014 06:00
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Paragon8 posted:Good points. It's an alright idea in theory, considering that each book has its own magical macguffin that plays into the plot and the Hallows continue that tradition. But in reality, the Hallows were narrative dead weight, and Rowling should have just focused on the Horcrux arc in Book 7. The movie actually addressed this problem by ignoring the Deathly Hallows storyline completely except for the Elder Wand stuff, at the cost of the Harry loses faith in Dumbledore story, which was really the main arc of Deathly Hallows and in my view the most well executed part of the book.
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Oct 13, 2014 18:36
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TARDISman posted:I really enjoyed my official Harry Potter DVD catalogs having a sudden rebranding of Dumbledore's wand for the last two movies. On the other hand what does it say about Moody's eye that it could see through the most perfect invisibility cloak. You're right though, the Hallows did set up some important end game elements. It might have been a nice bookend for the resurrection stone to be linked to the Philosopher's stone somehow.
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Oct 14, 2014 01:22
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It wouldn't shock me to see Expanded Editions released at some point in the future. Content from Pottermore, some changes to the text to tie everything together better, like earlier references to the time period and the Deathly Hallows, maybe even a new epilogue. That's something I can see Rowling doing.
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Oct 14, 2014 01:39
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Paragon8 posted:On the other hand what does it say about Moody's eye that it could see through the most perfect invisibility cloak. Moody's eye's just super badass?
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Oct 14, 2014 01:45
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Moody's fake eye is so good you wonder why no one else has one.
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Oct 14, 2014 02:13
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Clearly Moody made it himself, and was an even better wizard than the brothers who made the hallows were.
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Oct 14, 2014 02:18
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GodFish posted:Clearly Moody made it himself, and was an even better wizard than the brothers who made the hallows were. Or at the very least, more paranoid. 
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Oct 14, 2014 02:20
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PriorMarcus posted:It wouldn't shock me to see Expanded Editions released at some point in the future. Content from Pottermore, some changes to the text to tie everything together better, like earlier references to the time period and the Deathly Hallows, maybe even a new epilogue. That's something I can see Rowling doing. This would actually be really great. I'd be definitely into buying those.
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Oct 14, 2014 12:24
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I'm really confused right now. Every year I read the series over again, and for fun now that all the pottermore questions have been weighted and put together in comprehensive quizzes by beautifully spergy people, I took one of them. Apparently I'm equal parts Slytherin and Hufflepuff. How... 
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Oct 25, 2014 06:12
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A. Beaverhausen posted:I'm really confused right now. Every year I read the series over again, and for fun now that all the pottermore questions have been weighted and put together in comprehensive quizzes by beautifully spergy people, I took one of them. Apparently I'm equal parts Slytherin and Hufflepuff. How... IIRC, it will always give you two choices. The quiz narrows it down to the two closest to you, then you pick from there.
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Oct 25, 2014 06:19
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Obligatory Toast posted:IIRC, it will always give you two choices. The quiz narrows it down to the two closest to you, then you pick from there. It gave me percenteges and poo poo from all the questions from pottermore, I don't really know. It gave me an even split with hufflepuff and slytherine, followed by ravenclaw, then gryffindore. Apparently the Tails over Heads answer is really weighted toward slytherine. It seems people rationalize that particular hatstall by saying slytherin has some hufflepuff qualities taken to the extreme. Regardless, with the questions I got on pottermore years ago, hufflepuff was the right fit, it's just interesting I would have gotten the hatstall if all the questions had been asked, if the spergy sorting analysis is right. A. Beaverhausen fucked around with this message at 09:20 on Oct 25, 2014 |
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Oct 25, 2014 06:26
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Alright, I'm trying to write this post in a way that won't come across as unnecessarily combative, just try to understand where I'm coming from. I tried to bring this up with my friends who've read the series but they were dismissive or simply didn't care, hopefully I find something here. Full disclosure, I've only just started the third book. I was 7 when the book was published in the US and basically the whole world was centered around them for the next decade. I vaguely recall reading the first one when my sister finished it probably sometime around 2000 but stopped very early in the story, before he even found out he was a wizard. Being 8 years old at the time I lacked the critical insight to discover why I put down what everyone else not only couldn't put down, but couldn't put down for 6 more books and 8 movies. I finally decided to sit down and read them (well, listen to them - audiobooks are my bread and butter thanks to a lot of quiet time at work and my commute) after being invited to give a talk at my alma mater's annual Harry Potter Conference (if you live in the Philly area, look it up and go to it, it's a surprisingly robust event given the size of the school and the specificity of the event) (ps this post is probably going to be the seed of my paper). Anyway I've been devouring the series, putting my normal podcasting schedule out of whack as I've finished the first two books in one week but I've noticed that going through the first few chapters has been a chore, taking me the better part of two days of going through one to five minute chunks before moving on to something else. There was no mystery as to why it was so hard, but it did finally answer the reason why I threw the book down as a kid and started reading Zelazny and Robert E Howard before I got out of elementary school. It's the Dursley's. Everything about them is so problematic and vividly triggering to my childhood of abuse that I end up in tears just trying to get through it. I don't understand how a children's book can have vivid and graphic destriptions of child abuse to open up each book. Granted I haven't been in the fandom but simply by existing in the culture I've heard more than my share of Potter discussion and I've never once heard anyone talk about how terrible and disgusting the portrayal of his adoptive family is. And the way Rowling describes it is so unfortunately vivid because the only times I've heard someone fictionalize abuse that well is from victims of it themselves, so my mind doesn't focus on the story, but of my own past and the theoretical past of Rowling's. But worst of all is how unnecessary it is, the place of the Dursley's in the story makes no sense if they’re supposed to make me hate muggles then why is the entire plot of the second book about how much Harry doesn’t hate muggles? If it’s supposed to be about how great it is that the wizarding world actually cares for Harry why do they send him back year after year to suffer at the hands of uncaring, evil people? If it’s supposed to emphasize how wonderful and magical Hogwarts is and how boring and bland the ordinary world is, why the gently caress would you even do that, that’s the most terrible, egregious way of showing the fact that real life is boring I’ve ever heard of. I, hand to God, can't make sense of it and need to discuss it with someone. Also the Silmarillion is badass if you like world building with no characterization.
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Oct 25, 2014 23:50
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I really don't have a good response to that particular concern...but goddamn if that wasn't a very well put post.
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Oct 26, 2014 00:27
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They do kind of explain why he has to live at the Dursley's in one of the later books... but the reasoning is kind of flimsy when considering it in that larger context. Basically, Harry's mother dying to save him gave him this special enchantment that gave him protection... and being near the Dursleys strengthened that, since 2 of them shared blood with him/his mother. So even though they were terrible and abusive to him, Dumbledore kept him there to keep the protection enchantment alive. thexerox123 fucked around with this message at 00:49 on Oct 26, 2014 |
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Oct 26, 2014 00:41
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First off, what you went through is horrible and I'm sorry. I think the reason most of fandom doesn't talk about it is I think it's a mainstay of classic British children's literature that the hero comes from an abusive household. It happened in a few Roald Dahl novels and I'm sure happened in others, so in that regard a lot of fans probably just accept it as a convention of the genre. Wicked stepmothers, evil uncles, and so on. Googling around, there is some speculation that Rowling may have been abused, and if she was, she may have been using those conventions to work through her feelings on abuse. She's been public about the Dementors representing her depression and she did have an abusive marriage. If she did come from an abusive home, maybe she was writing Harry to give hope to other abused children? Harry might be a means of escapist fantasy for some children, and maybe a positive message to them? Harry is horribly abused, but it doesn't make him a lesser person and despite the abuse he is good and kind. He finds a new family in his friends who love him and he eventually leaves and lives his own life. Of course, this would make Dumbledore an even more complex and horrible character if Rowling intended Harry to be going through real-world abuse and not Matilda-fantasy-eat-a-whole-chocolate-cake abuse. Presumably Dumbledore knew the whole time what Harry's home life was like and even though Voldemort hadn't been seen--and couldn't even physically touch Harry if he showed up anyway--he left him there. It wouldn't have kept away Death Eaters and it's not as if anyone with 10 extra minutes couldn't have found out Harry was with the Dursleys. If it was a matter of keeping Harry from getting a fat head over his fame, I'm sure the weirdo Squib catlady next door could've fostered him and kept a secret. Then again, Dumbledore was basically just raising Harry to be a human shield to sacrifice For The Greater Good. He also didn't seem to see much harm in letting a sad magically-advanced orphan boy who already had trouble connecting with his peers languish in a muggle orphanage, either. Dumbledore's the worst.
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Oct 26, 2014 01:38
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TheModernAmerican posted:It's the Dursley's. I absolutely understand where you're coming from. The Dursley chapters are pretty out of whack with the tone of the series. Rowling feels like she's going for sort of a dark surreal Roald Dahl whimsy with the Dursley segments. It feels very Matilda. Ironically the chapters in the wizarding world and Hogwarts are more grounded in reality as far people behaving like human beings. This makes the Dursley segments seem more abhorrent than they should because the majority of the story is realistic and doesn't really have a place for the Dursley's as written.
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Oct 26, 2014 01:41
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My reading of the Dursleys falls squarely into the Roald Dahl, and older, camp of horrible evil parents. Rowling just wrote them very vividly. And that entire first book really feels like a Roald Dahl riff, which doesn't quite square with where the series wound up. I also have always thought that Dumbledore knew that Harry wasn't walking off to his death, that the AK would kill the Horcrux and not Harry.
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Oct 26, 2014 01:47
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I always had a real problem with the Dursley's, moreso than anything else in the series. They're just so needlessly cartoonishly cruel. The extent never meshed for me. It's sort of why I really wish Petunia had said what she wanted to in the last book.
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Oct 26, 2014 02:40
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Maybe I'm just forgetting because I haven't read them in awhile but it seemed like most of the actual child abuse was going down in the first two books, and other than that they were just dicks. Whether they stopped being as bad because they felt it was in their best interest or because they realized he was a person is up in the air though.
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Oct 26, 2014 04:09
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Having given this some thought for the last few hours, I'm also gonna come down on the "British children's fiction trope" side of the line, with a side dose of "it's so cartoonishly over the top, how could anyone take it seriously?" mentality. Outside of literally making Harry live in a cupboard, a lot of what happens at the Dursley's is abstracted. He stuck wearing hand-me-downs that are nowhere near the right size, he gets lame haircuts to make him 'fit in', he doesn't get to go to the fun events with Dudley and his friends. It's only when you really start looking at it all as a whole that it starts adding up to abusive levels. That and the whole "locking him in in room and feeding him via pet flap" in book 2. But I think most of it just gets written off as "oh those dastardly Dursleys". As the series progresses, things become much more tame. Harry is treated as an unwanted roommate more than anything else. They begrudgingly house his owl, sneer at his educational and career aspirations, but more or less start leaving Harry to his own devices unless something happens that affects the rest of the family in some way.
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Oct 26, 2014 04:17
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| # ? May 29, 2024 09:44 |
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I don't know Harry was fed and clothed and given a roof over his head. They even took him to the zoo when he talked to the snake. They weren't beating the hell out of him or Mr duesley molesting him. Maybe they just didn't like him because he wasn't their kid and was a burden to a family that didn't have a lot to begin with.
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Oct 26, 2014 06:38
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