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The polls will continue until morale improves. E: The Nintendo 64 is the only console where you can play the greatest, most influential video game of all time - Buck Bumble.
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Jan 14, 2020 00:29
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Debbie Does Dagon posted:This is from pages ago, but I think it's with mentioning that this is one of the central conflicts in the show. The power of the slayer was thrust upon a teenager who just wanted to have a normal life. So you do get dissonant moments like the one you mention, where she has become so surrounded by death and suffering that it's become almost commonplace, and escaping into something "normal" like going to prom becomes the all consuming goal. I genuinely can't believe Buffy is so unexamined whilst Harry Potter is this perpetual lib zeitgeist, they are both such perfect expressions of the late 90s urge for meaning (that honestly hasn't gone away but post 2000 we've accepted it and found solace in whichever narrative we most like and that benefits us) and I find the parallels and divergences so interesting. Like Buffy and Harry Potter are things I would non-ironically and not as an insult, even though the implication is kind of insulting, call genuinely impactful influences on white western culture. Buffy has the supernatural as yeah it gives meaning to life but it's also kind of a hassle you have to deal with and connecting with the earthy mundane world is also important, the narrative is that if the supernatual could be ended and the nice monsters were being chill then Buffy would hang up her stakes. But Harry Potter is way more occult, it's a secret exclusive society that is also really cool and fun and sure the heroes whack a protection spell on muggles or whatever but the supernatural structure is not something he'd ever give up, obviously. The earthy socially-connected story is broadly forgotten while the inherently heirarchal exclusionary one has flourished and I think it's interesting.
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Jan 14, 2020 00:30
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Ms Adequate posted:https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-northern-ireland-51086276 I am pretty sure they deliberately timed it so they could claim it was out of their hands so they could dodge having to deal with the inevitable.
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Jan 14, 2020 01:10
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The Deleter posted:E: The Nintendo 64 is the only console where you can play the greatest, most influential video game of all time - Buck Bumble. You know it fam! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x7ok5AV7ZrM
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Jan 14, 2020 01:14
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I know they were writing for entirely different ends, and for different audiences, and not otherwise comparable aside from being fantasy and featuring wizards, but I think of how Pratchett uses dwarfs and golem as allegory for LGBT+ identities, civil rights, class struggle, and in (the case of the golems) slavery. and how things change in that society... And compare that to the Harry Potter narrative lightly mocking the character trying to free actual indentured slaves (who love being slaves - really!), and how their utterly toxic society based on blood purity is presented as pretty good actually, with their only goal is to restore the failed status quo that sided with the wizard fash the minute he was back. Again, that's not entirely fair as a comparison, but holy gently caress seeing how Harry Potter has infected peoples brains.
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Jan 14, 2020 01:41
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JK Rowling is a loving hack that writes horrible plot hole ridden shite filled with middle class racist tropes and it angers me greatly that it's held up as some great loving literary triumph
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Jan 14, 2020 01:46
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OwlFancier posted:Who on earth is paying for election polls literally five years from the election? It’s never a bad time to release polls if they make the left look bad.
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Jan 14, 2020 01:48
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Bundy posted:JK Rowling is a loving hack that writes horrible plot hole ridden shite filled with middle class racist tropes and it angers me greatly that it's held up as some great loving literary triumph My favourite part of Harry Potter lore is wizards used to poo themselves in their robes, and magic away the piss and poo poo. And also that Rowling's detecive fiction is somehow worse than Harry Potter.
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Jan 14, 2020 02:35
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Pesky Splinter posted:And also that Rowling's detecive fiction is somehow worse than Harry Potter. detective fiction which was selling like poo poo until someone at her publisher "accidentally" leaked her pen name
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Jan 14, 2020 02:39
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I've never read any of the books but I tried to watch the first harry potter film with the missus when it came out and it made me angry almost immediately lol
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Jan 14, 2020 02:45
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Was it her detective book that had the thinly veiled Corbyn stand-in?
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Jan 14, 2020 02:57
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crispix posted:I am pretty sure they deliberately timed it so they could claim it was out of their hands so they could dodge having to deal with the inevitable. That does make sense, that train was coming down the tracks one way or another, letting it get through like this and pretending it was an 'unfortunate' effect of the general chaos at Stormont is probably the smartest play they had. I'm not a big HP fan but I have a good friend who is and she explained that she doesn't think it's some kind of literary revelation or anything, but that it happened to be There for her when she was going through stuff as a kid and her parents were fighting and divorcing and being abusive and stuff. So it's hard for something that has helped her emotionally to be discarded, even though she's raging about what a shite terf knob JKR has turned out to be. Pesky Splinter posted:My favourite part of Harry Potter lore is wizards used to poo themselves in their robes, and magic away the piss and poo poo. This was truly an incredible thing for them to tell us, the reading public. What a day that was 
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Jan 14, 2020 02:57
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Bundy posted:JK Rowling is a loving hack that writes horrible plot hole ridden shite filled with middle class racist tropes and it angers me greatly that it's held up as some great loving literary triumph  I enjoyed the first couple of books as a literal child but they were never the incredible layered pieces of fiction some people seem to imagine, and yeah some of the themes are deeply deeply conservative while they think they're progressive, which kind of explains the popularity with centrist liberals. It's also very obvious that from about the halfway point of the series Rowling started huffing her own farts real badly and came to believe that she genuinely was this infallible genius author, the deterioration in quality is impossible to miss. I'd be really interested to read a study on why precisely Potter became as globally popular as it did. It's decent escapism for kids at least in the early volumes, but beyond that it's just mediocre. I need to understand how it of all things became a global phenomenon with theme parks and huge dedicated shops and (frankly scary) obsessed adult fans in a way much better book series didn't.
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Jan 14, 2020 08:40
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Pratchett has all that just without the massive Hollywood money thing behind me and also without the bad writing. So I'd guess it was probably a successful book series that got massive by throwing a ton of money at it.
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Jan 14, 2020 08:43
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I loved Harry Potter as a teenager but it wasn't really for the magic or the plot. An 800 book novel following a year in life of people who were my age in excruciating detail just sort of appealed to me.  It felt like going home in a way.The same way Lost was good for the first three seasons when it was about a group of people hanging out on a beach learning to get by day by day.
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Jan 14, 2020 08:45
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The first four are alright but they get poo poo real quick after that, also "alright" not what I'd call good. I figure people just like lovely books.
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Jan 14, 2020 08:46
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The earlier books were properly edited: once Rowling got too big to be challenged, they swelled into Stephen King- style zillion page monstrosities. The conflict between the pure-blooded traditionalist wizards and the middle-class incomers like Harry is also awfully centrist: Potter and his pals don't have any fundamental problem with rigid hierarchies, they just think that the wrong people are at the top.
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Jan 14, 2020 08:55
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Miftan posted:Pratchett has all that just without the massive Hollywood money thing behind me and also without the bad writing. So I'd guess it was probably a successful book series that got massive by throwing a ton of money at it. Pratchett is big but neither he nor discworld has anything near the global name recognition of Rowling and HP with your average dumbass. Of course that's connected to the amount of money thrown at the latter but then you wonder why it got that where others haven't. Similar story with things like His Dark Materials, which, fine, is getting a bit of attention atm but is nowhere close to being as culturally powerful as HP despite being miles better written and conceived. stev posted:I loved Harry Potter as a teenager but it wasn't really for the magic or the plot. An 800 book novel following a year in life of people who were my age in excruciating detail just sort of appealed to me. I loved lost even more when it went all weird sci-fi and got super into it but boy did they drop the ball at the end.
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Jan 14, 2020 08:56
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The main problem with Harry Potter, disregarding political views, is overwriting. Note that books 1-3 are pretty short and tightly plotted: this is because Rowling was working with her editor quite closely in those books and they will have told her to cut a lot of the fluff that predominates in the later books. Goblet of Fire which is imo the best one of the series changed all that: it's substantially longer than the previous 3 books but this is justified by the content. Among other things, Goblet of Fire deals with Harry's struggle for validity in the Triwizard Tournament, his romantic troubles, and the loving return of Voldemort. In other words it is where Harry and the series hit adolescence. After book 4 the editors apparently just trusted Rowling to do what she liked, and as a result books 5-7 have all the length of 4 with the meaningful content of 1-3: they're flabby and don't justify the time investment.
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Jan 14, 2020 08:57
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Dumbledore is the manager.
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Jan 14, 2020 08:57
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https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-51100029quote:The government is to consider cutting air passenger duty on all domestic flights as part of a plan to save regional airline Flybe from collapse. Insanity.
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Jan 14, 2020 08:58
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Azza Bamboo posted:Dumbledore is the manager. Holy poo poo
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Jan 14, 2020 08:59
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Azza Bamboo posted:Dumbledore is the manager. lmao
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Jan 14, 2020 09:03
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Good job, Greens.
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Jan 14, 2020 09:04
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Me and my partner recently rewatched the films, and the think that struck me is how many times Harry is shown to be rich as absolute gently caress (all inherited, unearned wealth), and just watches his friends struggle. I know the books make a point to show him constantly offering charity to Ron and his family (rather than paying tax  ) but it's still pretty jarring that the hero just fell into this world with more money than he could ever want or need and that's just fine. (How did his parents become wizard millionaires anyway? Who did they exploit?)
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Jan 14, 2020 09:10
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Anyone have any data on the potential trade impact of Brexit with a deal? I have seen plenty...perhaps too many... on the potential impact on no deal Brexit, but relatively few on Brexit with a deal. Also, assuming that a relative Centrist wins the coming Labour leadership election, it does seem that Brexit couldn't have worked out better for the Tories even with the potential economic consequences. I don't live in the UK (or the US...most of the time), but it does looks extremely grim.
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Jan 14, 2020 09:11
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stev posted:(How did his parents become wizard millionaires anyway? Who did they exploit?) Grown adults with terrible taste in literature.
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Jan 14, 2020 09:11
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BoJo is being interviewed on BBC breakfast news and he just said the quiet part out loud; the problem the Americans have with the Iran nuclear deal is that it was negotiated by Obama and it needs to be replaced with a Trump deal.
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Jan 14, 2020 09:11
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Vitamin P posted:I genuinely can't believe Buffy is so unexamined whilst Harry Potter is this perpetual lib zeitgeist Maybe for the best. Taken literally, Buffy was about the necessity of forming a gang to violently take back the streets from predators of another race.
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Jan 14, 2020 09:12
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I mean given that vampirism is explicitly something you become (and people do become vampires in buffy) it's more the necessity of forming a gang to violently take back the streets from socially constructed predators which sounds basically like antifa.
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Jan 14, 2020 09:16
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radmonger posted:Maybe for the best. Taken literally, Buffy was about the necessity of forming a gang to violently take back the streets from predators of another race. Also Xander is just terrible
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Jan 14, 2020 09:16
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sebzilla posted:Also Xander is just terrible He stopped Willow from correctly ending the world, so yes.
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Jan 14, 2020 09:20
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stev posted:(How did his parents become wizard millionaires anyway? Who did they exploit?) They invented toaster strudels
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Jan 14, 2020 09:21
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OwlFancier posted:The first four are alright but they get poo poo real quick after that, also "alright" not what I'd call good. They also like lovely politics. People are just god awful is what they are. god loving awful
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Jan 14, 2020 09:31
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ThomasPaine posted:I'd be really interested to read a study on why precisely Potter became as globally popular as it did. It's decent escapism for kids at least in the early volumes, but beyond that it's just mediocre. I need to understand how it of all things became a global phenomenon with theme parks and huge dedicated shops and (frankly scary) obsessed adult fans in a way much better book series didn't. OwlFancier posted:The first four are alright but they get poo poo real quick after that, also "alright" not what I'd call good. ThomasPaine posted:Pratchett is big but neither he nor discworld has anything near the global name recognition of Rowling and HP with your average dumbass. Of course that's connected to the amount of money thrown at the latter but then you wonder why it got that where others haven't. But I'd like to visit that theory that things only develop huge fandoms because they have an aspect of the terrible. Works that can defend themselves don't get fandoms, and works that are fairly inoffensive and entertaining don't get fandoms either. It's only works that teeter on the precipice between cultural landmark and truly monumental badness that tend to attract fan followings that cross over from "a handful of anoraks queueing up for Authorfest '20" into actual fandom, because it turns the defence of the work into a matter of faith, and faith inspires a tribalism that transcends rationality. It's the same driving force that makes it impossible to imagine a serious fandom around George Boole or Leo Löwenthal, but the number one selling philosophy book of the past 5 years is (spoilered to protect Miftan and others) 12 Rules for Life by loving Jordan Bernt Peterson. You can deny that there's even a coherent philosophy there, but you can't deny that there's a thread of badness or a fandom willing to go to bat as a matter of faith. Azza Bamboo posted:Dumbledore is the manager.
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Jan 14, 2020 09:33
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stev posted:(How did his parents become wizard millionaires anyway? Who did they exploit?) I think it's like the Dracos, in that both James and Lily are from old wizarding families and just have a shitload of wealth lying around where the actual source of that wealth is lost to history. This makes sense in the context of Harry Potter being a boarding school novel like Enid Blyton, where everyone is just kind of rich by default. The issue is that this is retreading themes from the 19th and early 20th century where aristocrats were outraged about Potter kind of just mashes up this feudal-aristocratic stuff with fascism though, when actual aristocrats were more ambivalent and at best saw fascism as a gauche necessity. You could probably read it on the context of the Royal scandals of the 90s if you wanted to go full Literature Professor on it though.
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Jan 14, 2020 09:41
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I was surprised when I reread the first few Harry Potters that as much or more actually happens in them as in the later fat ones.stev posted:(How did his parents become wizard millionaires anyway? Who did they exploit?) Long-dead people, the Potters are old-money aristrocracy.
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Jan 14, 2020 09:42
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Jorbo goes out of his way to cultivate obsessive fandom though, that's literally his biggest talent as a psychologist. Like the whole structure of his poo poo is that it doesn't actually make sense but he takes a long time to say it and intersperses it with bland truisms so that you feel smart for agreeing with them and somehow miss that the whole has no substance or rigour. I think a lot of the potter nerds actually do like it on its own merits, if I had to suggest a sociological basis for it I'd be more inclined to point at the idea that once the fandom reaches a critical mass it becomes a social space in and of itself and becomes self growing and reinforcing, helped along by marketing. People don't have to defend it because they can find other people who actually like it very easily and it forms the pretext for socialization. It's not that people like it because it's bad and they can defend it, they like it because a lot of people have a sufficient interest and comparable experience with it that it becomes the context through which other, better social experiences occur.
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Jan 14, 2020 09:44
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Ardennes posted:Anyone have any data on the potential trade impact of Brexit with a deal? I have seen plenty...perhaps too many... on the potential impact on no deal Brexit, but relatively few on Brexit with a deal. Naturally since a deal has actual conditions to it it's not possible to analyse something that doesn't exist but there's been some analysis of the proposed May and Johnson interim agreement impacts - maybe try the IFS? Yes any move to the right in Labour is very good for the Tories as left Labour has been their biggest fear for 4 years now but they've achieved it by severing any assumed ties between themselves and the business community and risk the unionist faction through the NI border compromise as well as promising a return to increased government spending without clearing out the austerity dogma or supporters in the party. The strength of the Tory government now will crumble under the needs of government because even now as it is happening, no one can agree on what Brexit means and the left can still occupy the massive space between promise and delivery from the government.
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Jan 14, 2020 09:52
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Guavanaut posted:I've never read any of the Harrys Potter. I'm not even sure why, I think it took off while I was I was reading The Last Continent and in the wrong age range, maybe? Jordan Peterson has never written anything that could count as philosophy in his life, unless you want to categorize all self help books as philosophy. He's a Christian Conservative but he actively tries to hide it. In non-awful person news, all around good egg David Graeber has written a piece about Centrism and the election I think the thread will enjoy and that on first read through seems mostly very plausible to me
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Jan 14, 2020 09:53
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