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Jazerus posted:the original books have the same issue, it's a fundamental problem with the harry potter narrative structure because it all has to culminate in teenagers killing a resurrected warlock who has lived five times as long as they have, with powers beyond those of other men, who has hidden his heart within a jar, etc. which is fundamentally implausible within the established rules of the world and causes the narrative to contort further and further as it closes in on the end My first thought would be to just have Voldy be stone dead before the books ever start, and replace each appearance of him with magical echoes/fragments (like the diary in Chamber of Secrets) and copycats claiming the "Voldemort" name.
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Jul 20, 2018 07:34
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quote:the original books have the same issue, it's a fundamental problem with the harry potter narrative structure because it all has to culminate in teenagers killing a resurrected warlock who has lived five times as long as they have, with powers beyond those of other men, who has hidden his heart within a jar, etc. which is fundamentally implausible within the established rules of the world and causes the narrative to contort further and further as it closes in on the end When you keep in mind that both Harriezer and Arithmione are what the author thinks they would they would sound and act like they were much more intelligent than they are, you can probably see just why the story is such a clusterfuck of intelligent-sounding nonsense justifying the just plain nonsense the plot revolves around. Intelligence is pretty much a superpower and it's not like it ever gets old to watch Superman use his heat vision to solve problems, either. Cardiovorax fucked around with this message at 17:09 on Jul 20, 2018 |
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Jul 20, 2018 17:04
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Jazerus posted:the original books have the same issue, it's a fundamental problem with the harry potter narrative structure because it all has to culminate in teenagers killing a resurrected warlock who has lived five times as long as they have, with powers beyond those of other men, who has hidden his heart within a jar, etc. which is fundamentally implausible within the established rules of the world and causes the narrative to contort further and further as it closes in on the end I mean, they set up the balance of the conflict right from the beginning. Voldemort is powerful, but it’s an entirely selfish power. Everything is invested in himself, and he’s incapable of understanding others or inspiring loyalty. He’s pitted himself alone against a large, diverse magical society, and the key to defeating him is to remind all those hundreds and thousands that they can be better than him, that they don’t have to crumble away into thousands of tiny islands of fear and greed, and that every contribution they make to opposing him, no matter how tiny, will be part of a vast, crushing tide. Voldemort may be more mature than Harry physically, but mentally, he’s still a stunted, selfish child. Rowling didn’t always write that to its full potential, and drifted away from it and towards dumb rules-lawyering at several important points, but it’s absolutely not an unworkable structure for a story.
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Jul 20, 2018 19:07
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Darth Walrus posted:I mean, they set up the balance of the conflict right from the beginning. Voldemort is powerful, but it’s an entirely selfish power. Everything is invested in himself, and he’s incapable of understanding others or inspiring loyalty. He’s pitted himself alone against a large, diverse magical society, and the key to defeating him is to remind all those hundreds and thousands that they can be better than him, that they don’t have to crumble away into thousands of tiny islands of fear and greed, and that every contribution they make to opposing him, no matter how tiny, will be part of a vast, crushing tide. Voldemort may be more mature than Harry physically, but mentally, he’s still a stunted, selfish child. oh yeah i agree, but ultimately the prophecy forces it to be a personal confrontation, one that can only be won through suddenly-appearing ancient artifacts because knowledge is literally power for a wizard and it's impossible for harry to challenge voldemort's mastery of magic directly without outside help. that's why the first four books are more compelling than the story arc that connects 5, 6, & 7; voldemort is a tractable threat before his resurrection, but not after. the solution is for harry's role to be less personal. he should uniformly get his rear end kicked by voldemort once voldemort is resurrected, with his own strength, as you say, being the ability to rally society's strength. LA definitely is better than the original story on this count, but hermione ends up taking on too large of a role rather than society at large rejecting the death eater ideology and fighting back
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Jul 20, 2018 19:24
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Jazerus posted:oh yeah i agree, but ultimately the prophecy forces it to be a personal confrontation, one that can only be won through suddenly-appearing ancient artifacts because knowledge is literally power for a wizard and it's impossible for harry to challenge voldemort's mastery of magic directly without outside help. that's why the first four books are more compelling than the story arc that connects 5, 6, & 7; voldemort is a tractable threat before his resurrection, but not after. So, Harry should have pulled a Goku and asked the planet and all its people for energy to create a spirit bomb(giant patronus)?
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Jul 20, 2018 21:13
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Jazerus posted:oh yeah i agree, but ultimately the prophecy forces it to be a personal confrontation, one that can only be won through suddenly-appearing ancient artifacts because knowledge is literally power for a wizard and it's impossible for harry to challenge voldemort's mastery of magic directly without outside help. that's why the first four books are more compelling than the story arc that connects 5, 6, & 7; voldemort is a tractable threat before his resurrection, but not after. The alternative is, of course, to have it the other way around. Have Voldemort gradually get worn down by betrayals from his allies and the unexpected courage of ordinary people until a teenage boy drawing on all he’s learned from his friends and mentors can kick his rear end.
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Jul 20, 2018 21:20
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Darth Walrus posted:The alternative is, of course, to have it the other way around. Have Voldemort gradually get worn down by betrayals from his allies and the unexpected courage of ordinary people until a teenage boy drawing on all he’s learned from his friends and mentors can kick his rear end. That’d be like the world growing up and losing their collective fear of the bogeyman. Itd be a coming-of-age story for the wizarding world. I like it.
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Jul 20, 2018 21:31
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Thinking about it in retrospect, I never really could bring myself to find Voldemort-the-villain all that terribly menacing compared to the threat the books wanted to make him out to be, because honestly, he was just kind of, well, a moron. As a character he has so little in the way of any actual complexity or depth to his personality that literally his one and only motivation, the reason he started a war of bloody insurgency on the British Governent, can be summed up as "never got over the childhood inferiority complex he developed growing up as a bastard child in an orphanage." Which he decides the best way to deal with is to start calling himself the Dark Lord Notaword and pretending really really hard he totally isn't that "that Tom Riddle kid" that his former classmates went to school with when he goes to his former classmates to recruit the most inbred and snobbish for Lord 'Totally Wizard Aryan, for reals' Voldemort's völkisch Society for The Preservation Of Wizard Lebensraum... except then it actually loving works and they decide he's clearly the most snobby and inbred of them all, because wizards apparently really are just that stupid. So then he decides to conquer England with his newly minted Evil Incest Army of Doom and is actually somehow winning, which I can buy because we're shown exactly how useless the Ministry is. All in all it makes me think he really can't have been nearly as dangerous or competent as he had everyone believing. Between his reputation and what it would still actually take to conquer even the worst country in the world when all you have is Gandalf McSixfingers in a spooky Halloween costume, I think it's a fairly reasonable assumption that he keeps getting his rear end kicked by a middlingly competent high school student because that's about all he can manage and "the power he knows not" is simply having a functioning brain. There's no way anyone who could look at a plan like that and think it's is a super good idea is anything less that a complete and total idiot who certainly "knows not" quite a lot of things even a just middlingly bright teenager would. Cardiovorax fucked around with this message at 21:56 on Jul 20, 2018 |
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Jul 20, 2018 21:35
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Well, one of the things about HP is that wizarding society secretly agrees with Voldy and would probably have elected him if he had a less bellicose approach. In this context it's hard to create a feel good people banding together ending.
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Jul 21, 2018 02:28
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Added Space posted:Well, one of the things about HP is that wizarding society secretly agrees with Voldy and would probably have elected him if he had a less bellicose approach. In this context it's hard to create a feel good people banding together ending. Then again, the hero having an uphill struggle ahead of ‘em ain’t necessarily a bad thing, and seeing Harry’s good deeds snowball as he inspires other people to be better and do better (and they in turn inspire others) could be really sweet and satisfying.
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Jul 21, 2018 02:40
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Added Space posted:Well, one of the things about HP is that wizarding society secretly agrees with Voldy and would probably have elected him if he had a less bellicose approach. In this context it's hard to create a feel good people banding together ending.
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Jul 21, 2018 02:58
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There being some sort of giant existential threat that's unbeatable by everybody other than the special teenage protagonist and his or her friends isn't really that uncommon in young adult books, though. That was Hunger Games, that was Divergent, that was The Lightning Thief, that was everything I read as a kid by Gordon Korman, that was William Sleator. It's not an uncommon theme you see.
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Jul 21, 2018 03:42
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I was with you for most of that, but every Gordon Korman book I've read has been about teenage boys pranking and/or con art-ing their way through boarding school.
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Jul 21, 2018 04:22
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quote:There being some sort of giant existential threat that's unbeatable by everybody other than the special teenage protagonist and his or her friends isn't really that uncommon in young adult books, though. That was Hunger Games, that was Divergent, that was The Lightning Thief, that was everything I read as a kid by Gordon Korman, that was William Sleator. It's not an uncommon theme you see. Voldemort spent a year literally living in the same building as Harry et al. and eating meals with them three times a day the entire time and ends up causing less harm over the course of it than Rita Skeeter does within five minutes every single time the character appears, it's kind of amazing. Something really isn't right about that. Cardiovorax fucked around with this message at 04:32 on Jul 21, 2018 |
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Jul 21, 2018 04:29
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YggiDee posted:I was with you for most of that, but every Gordon Korman book I've read has been about teenage boys pranking and/or con art-ing their way through boarding school. The first thing that popped into my head is Son of Interflux.
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Jul 21, 2018 05:02
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Darth Walrus posted:I mean, they set up the balance of the conflict right from the beginning. Voldemort is powerful, but it’s an entirely selfish power. Everything is invested in himself, and he’s incapable of understanding others or inspiring loyalty. He’s pitted himself alone against a large, diverse magical society, and the key to defeating him is to remind all those hundreds and thousands that they can be better than him, that they don’t have to crumble away into thousands of tiny islands of fear and greed, and that every contribution they make to opposing him, no matter how tiny, will be part of a vast, crushing tide. Voldemort may be more mature than Harry physically, but mentally, he’s still a stunted, selfish child. Added Space posted:Well, one of the things about HP is that wizarding society secretly agrees with Voldy and would probably have elected him if he had a less bellicose approach. In this context it's hard to create a feel good people banding together ending. An ending that took the confrontation from a couple of morons - one noseless and the other with a lobotomy scar - to society-level changes, would have been far more appropriate. The other races could have pitched in, SPEW could have actually amounted to something, the British PM could have authorized a tactical At the very least, some part of the epilogue should have take time from Draco's balding palate to casually throw out "oh yeah, and we're educating British society about the values of equality and diversity, so that the next Fuhrer cosplayer won't have a platform to run on". Oh well.
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Jul 21, 2018 06:40
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Xander77 posted:Yes to that description of Voldy, no to that description of wizard society. The epilogue is probably the worst part of all of Harry Potter for me. Instead of talking about how Hogwarts might have changed for the better, representing a change in wizarding society at large, it's literally the exact same poo poo as when Harry went, down to Slytherin doll being the baddies. The house system should have been scrapped when the house cup broke and spilled all beads. Draco shouldn't have names his kid Evil McVillain. Things should have been...better.
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Jul 21, 2018 08:08
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quote:The epilogue is probably the worst part of all of Harry Potter for me. Instead of talking about how Hogwarts might have changed for the better, representing a change in wizarding society at large, it's literally the exact same poo poo as when Harry went, down to Slytherin doll being the baddies. The house system should have been scrapped when the house cup broke and spilled all beads. Draco shouldn't have names his kid Evil McVillain. Things should have been...better.
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Jul 21, 2018 09:30
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Cardiovorax posted:It doesn't help any that its protagonist and HPMOR's are basically the exact same character, because for the same reason HPMOR is such a trainwreck, the "super genius who solves everything by being just that clever" stock character they both use drags down pretty much anything where it is ever given a central role: if the author were actually as intelligent as their character is supposed to be, they wouldn't be writing fanfiction, so rather than a character who is actually written as intelligently as whatever they do or say is stated to be, what you get instead is its caricature as drawn from the author's own ideas about what a much more intelligent person would be like and what problems they should be able to solve, even if he has no idea of just how, exactly. Yeah that's really the reason why I disliked the latter bit of Arithmancer/LA. Like the plot structure of having to fight Voldemort- not great, but no worse than the canon, whatevs. Except Hermione's character- and it's inclusion of science as a concept- increasingly moved from actual science/scientist to pop-sci great mind mad scientist. Like, early on Hermione's smart, yeah, but not the most brilliantest person to ever be, and there's a focus on... I dunno. Like, curiosity, and exploration and experimentation. Asking questions and trying new things. And we're with her the whole way. It's fun! But in LA she just... vanishes off-screen for a bit and comes back with a spell that does a 'we love science' blog post and everyone else oohs and ahhs. It's no longer science, it's name-dropping. Plus a bunch of the character and plot resolutions were... I just did not like them. like rookwood. He's built up as Hermione's counter-part, a death eater arithmancer who's reverse engineered a bunch of her spells, and has developed a bunch of his own nasty poo poo. How is he defeated? Hermione pulls out a magic uzi- never mentioned ever before- and shoots him in a fly by. This spoiler text is more words than his death took. Even the final ritual to defeat Voldemort... It just... hmm. Ok, actually it's an ok idea- you defeat the incredibly powerful wizard by doing an incredibly dangerous ritual that just circumvents his power, but there's risks and costs to that. That's ok. It would have been good in any other story. It's not good here. It doesn't at all fit with the prophecy, or have any sort of theme or character resolution of either Harry Potter OR this fanfic series. And again, Hermione came up with and developed this plan off-screen, and for some reason the narrative treats it as a mystery when it really shouldn't be and and and ugh. There was some other stuff too but I dunno... just go read natural d20. or harry the hufflepuff. or Alexandra Quick, cause at least with that one the narrative is very, very aware when Alexandra's being an idiot (also great side characters and world building) Cavelcade posted:The epilogue is probably the worst part of all of Harry Potter for me. Instead of talking about how Hogwarts might have changed for the better, representing a change in wizarding society at large, it's literally the exact same poo poo as when Harry went, down to Slytherin doll being the baddies. The house system should have been scrapped when the house cup broke and spilled all beads. Draco shouldn't have names his kid Evil McVillain. Things should have been...better. I also heard that it was one of the first things Rowling wrote, but as the series went on she kind of realized that the characters weren't really on track, specifically with the romantic pairings. So that's why book 6 suddenly has this hard push for Harry/Ginny and Ron/Hermione. Now I don't care about the pairings per se, but yeah you can really see how she was forcing it in 6, with the heavy focus on romance, which kind of... mucked up the overall tone, I think? I mean having an end point in mind is very good for writing, but you gotta also be willing to reassess as you go, instead of contorting stuff to try and mash it into place. Mazerunner fucked around with this message at 13:33 on Jul 21, 2018 |
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Jul 21, 2018 13:17
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Wow, writers coming up with their character pairings early on can really screw things up. That's what made How I Met Your Mother turn out awful. I thought Hogwarts did get rid of the house system after book 7. That's at least a meaningful change to wizard society.
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Jul 21, 2018 16:20
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Ccs posted:Wow, writers coming up with their character pairings early on can really screw things up. That's what made How I Met Your Mother turn out awful. How will the villains cope without being tidily sorted into House Evil Nazi Badman? Will they even know they’re supposed to be bad?
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Jul 21, 2018 18:47
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Did they get rid of houses in HPATMOR or do you mean canonically? Because there were definitely still houses in the flash forward at the end of book 7.
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Jul 21, 2018 19:30
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The first few were great children's books. Starting with 5 Rowling started trying to make it dark and complicated but it just didn't work.
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Jul 21, 2018 19:52
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Ccs posted:Wow, writers coming up with their character pairings early on can really screw things up.
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Jul 21, 2018 20:10
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OctaviusBeaver posted:The first few were great children's books. Starting with 5 Rowling started trying to make it dark and complicated but it just didn't work. The same thing happened with The Hobbit/Lord of the Rings. Tolkien wrote The Hobbit when his kids were young to read to them. When the kids got older, LotR had lost most of its predecessor’s whimsy, adventurous spirit and quick pacing. He was writing for much older children, then. Rowling wrote the first HP book because she had been entertaining her kids at bedtime with stories of wizards and poo poo. Her kids grew up and everything got all dark, edgy and serious. If the however many HP books were written in one big batch, they’d all be in the same tone as the first book.
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Jul 21, 2018 20:24
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Argue posted:Did they get rid of houses in HPATMOR or do you mean canonically? Because there were definitely still houses in the flash forward at the end of book 7. Oh I could've sworn they got rid of houses at the end of the series. I guess I just imagined that? Hmm...
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Jul 21, 2018 21:05
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The houses don't get abolished because they're just not important outside the context of the school. They're just like houses at any other school. The thing about evil wizards always being Slytherins isn't even true. Gilderoy Lockhart was going around erasing people's memories and taking credit for their accomplishments and he was in Ravenclaw.
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Jul 22, 2018 04:15
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Added Space posted:Well, one of the things about HP is that wizarding society secretly agrees with Voldy and would probably have elected him if he had a less bellicose approach. In this context it's hard to create a feel good people banding together ending. He also seized on 'Literally Wizard Hitler' Grindelwald's old allies as well, because Wizarding society apparently didn't suppress the fash after world war two the way the rest of Europe tried to. Liquid Communism fucked around with this message at 05:57 on Jul 22, 2018 |
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Jul 22, 2018 05:53
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Mazerunner posted:put a cap in that bitch And yeah, I've read Natural 20 and it really does everything right that these two stories don't, including the genuine character development arc and the important side characters.
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Jul 22, 2018 12:59
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Liquid Communism posted:He also seized on 'Literally Wizard Hitler' Grindelwald's old allies as well, because Wizarding society apparently didn't suppress the fash after world war two the way the rest of Europe tried to. my dude have you seen today
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Jul 22, 2018 18:22
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Dabir posted:my dude have you seen today
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Jul 22, 2018 20:27
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Yeah the Death Eaters are still the aristocracy of the wizarding world. They didn't even lose their assets after Voldy died the first time.
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Jul 22, 2018 23:23
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Sounds like an opening for some muggleborn antifa to cause strategic chaos.
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Jul 22, 2018 23:42
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Roadie posted:Sounds like an opening for some muggleborn antifa to cause strategic chaos. there's a story where fudge sells out to voldemort and hermione leads the muggleborn antifa. the muggleborn uprising or something like that? it's not bad, not really outstanding either tho
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Jul 23, 2018 00:04
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Jazerus posted:there's a story where fudge sells out to voldemort and hermione leads the muggleborn antifa. the muggleborn uprising or something like that? Buncha ungrateful squibs
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Jul 23, 2018 23:26
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Ccs posted:Yeah the Death Eaters are still the aristocracy of the wizarding world. They didn't even lose their assets after Voldy died the first time. Well, of Wizarding Britain anyway. Rowling never really answered much about what's up in the rest of the world. I mean, by sheer population alone China and India should have way bigger communities than the UK. Hell, there's a fun Commonwealth question. Does Hogwarts get Canadian exchange students?
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Jul 24, 2018 14:33
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All of the Canadian wizards turned into zombies in WW II E: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conscription_Crisis_of_1944
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Jul 24, 2018 15:02
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Liquid Communism posted:Well, of Wizarding Britain anyway. Rowling never really answered much about what's up in the rest of the world. I mean, by sheer population alone China and India should have way bigger communities than the UK.
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Jul 24, 2018 17:01
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is magic britain part of the eu or if one exists the magic eu
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Jul 24, 2018 17:30
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90s Cringe Rock posted:is magic britain part of the eu or if one exists the magic eu probably not there's an international committee of wizards or something like that as an equivalent to the U.N., and Hogwarts/Durmstrang/french school have historical ties (and the triwizard tourney) but nothing's mentioned beyond that, best I remember
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Jul 24, 2018 19:31
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