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Soy Sauce Beast posted:Goddamnit, I just read his entire blog, and now I want him to read more/faster, so I can read more. Augh, why do you do this to me. Same here. He does say "This poo poo just got real!" a bit too often though. It does get a little annoying after a while. But his generally insightful comments coupled with his great POV's make up for it.
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Aug 21, 2010 22:26
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caleramaen posted:Same here. He does say "This poo poo just got real!" a bit too often though. It does get a little annoying after a while. But his generally insightful comments coupled with his great POV's make up for it. Well, he writes exactly like my Harry Potter nerd friend and I do in IMs and texts to each other when we're nerding out over things like that. So it's got the added bonus of sounding exactly like my friend, who does say "poo poo just got real!" way too much.
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Aug 22, 2010 05:21
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caleramaen posted:Same here. He does say "This poo poo just got real!" a bit too often though. It does get a little annoying after a while. But his generally insightful comments coupled with his great POV's make up for it. A lot of the stuff he has on privilege in the wizarding world is pretty spot on and insightful.
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Aug 22, 2010 05:34
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Obligatory Toast posted:A lot of the stuff he has on privilege in the wizarding world is pretty spot on and insightful. Which is why I said that his insightful comments helped make up for it. It's pretty funny all in all, it's just that some of his jokes get old like the "poo poo got real" jokes and his caps lock ones. I liked it enough that I read all of them in one day.
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Aug 22, 2010 07:22
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THANK YOU for linking to that blog. I now love Mark like a brother. Even if I do skip over most of the gimmick reviews.
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Aug 22, 2010 11:43
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 I am nearly finished with Order of the Phoenix again. This is, I think, my 5th time through (I've read it 3 times previously and listened once to the Stephen Fry audio version, which is amazing). I have only 2 chapters left, including my favourite one: the talk in Dumbledore's office. I love that chapter; Harry's emotional journey of the book comes to its cathartic conclusion, and a huge deal of plot is revealed regarding the prophecy. I just love the "exposition dump" chapters of these books. They're always the moments where the plot comes together and you're left all "  ". Other great examples are the Shrieking Shack scene in POA, and the reveal of what Horcruxes are in HBP.In the past I have counted OOTP to be my favourite Harry Potter book, and I still consider it to be better than the first four. But I am excited to see how I feel after I reread the 6th and 7th, which I have read fewer times (twice and once, respectively). One of the reasons I love OOTP so much is purely the length, but I also love it because so much happens. The Umbridge saga, the drama with the centaurs, the Ministry "rescue mission" scene and the subsequent fight, the thestrals, the introduction of Luna, all the DA meetings, the careers advice, the exams, St Mungos, Fred and George's revenge on Umbridge, Rita's article, and so on. Jo's world building is at its best here. She really answers all the little questions like "so what are hospitals like for wizards?", "how exactly do wizards choose what jobs they want?", etc. The parts I like the least are everything to do with giants: both Hagrid's tale and the introduction of Grawp slow the plot down to a snail's pace. I think next time through I will skip those parts. The movie of this book was utterly bad. I can only think of two moments I really liked in the adaptation: the Voldemort/Dumbledore fight scene, and the DA training sessions. Maybe if I watched it again I'd find a bit more to like. But they really took a giant poo poo on the book in the making of that movie in particular.  edit: oh and I think the most powerful part of the book is The Woes of Mrs Weasley. Holy poo poo that part 
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Aug 22, 2010 16:17
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Literally the only thing I can remember about the OOTP movie is how good Luna was. The movies really jump around in quality a lot when you consider that they maintained the same cast (mostly) and Rowling getting better at writing with each book.
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Aug 22, 2010 17:18
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Oh yeah, I forgot Luna. She was great in the movie. But underused.
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Aug 22, 2010 17:21
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quote:One of the reasons I love OOTP so much is purely the length, but I also love it because so much happens. The Umbridge saga, the drama with the centaurs, the Ministry "rescue mission" scene and the subsequent fight, the thestrals, the introduction of Luna, all the DA meetings, the careers advice, the exams, St Mungos, Fred and George's revenge on Umbridge, Rita's article, and so on. Jo's world building is at its best here. She really answers all the little questions like "so what are hospitals like for wizards?", "how exactly do wizards choose what jobs they want?", etc.
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Aug 22, 2010 17:37
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WHile I loved OOTP, Dolores Umbridge is by far my least favorite character in the series. She is literally the worst type of person imaginable. My only regret about her is that the centaurs don't kill her.
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Aug 22, 2010 18:43
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caleramaen posted:WHile I loved OOTP, Dolores Umbridge is by far my least favorite character in the series. She is literally the worst type of person imaginable. My only regret about her is that the centaurs don't kill her. Yeah, OOTP was probably my least favorite because nothing happens and Rowlings has absolutely no idea what it's like to be a teenage boy or how to write their dealings with women as such (I  whever she tried to address his relationship with Cho or just Harry dealing with girls in general) but Umbridge was such a transparent strawman of every bureaucratic cliche ever that before long I was annoyed with her for all the wrong reasons.
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Aug 22, 2010 18:51
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What do you mean Rowling has no idea how to write teenage boys? Harry's an unlikeable, egotistical prick in OoTP. Just like every 15-year old.
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Aug 22, 2010 20:02
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Harashaw posted:Harry's an unlikeable, egotistical prick in OoTP. Just like every 15-year old.
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Aug 22, 2010 21:19
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Soy Sauce Beast posted:Well, they did at the beginning of book six. Voldy still got two full books worth of rampaging time. They only told the Prime Minister. I mean like go to the UN and say "Yeah magic and monsters are real and there is this evil dude in Britain with dreams of world domination. just FYI thought you guys should know. Also here is a list of magical cures for diseases, and spells that can create food out of thin air, we though you might like those. Oh and we can power things through magic so no more energy crisis. Seriously the wizards in the Potterverse are dicks.
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Aug 22, 2010 21:20
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...of SCIENCE! posted:Yeah, OOTP was probably my least favorite because nothing happens and Rowlings has absolutely no idea what it's like to be a teenage boy or how to write their dealings with women as such (I Even worse than Umbridge, as far as fas as the "Bob Ewell" brand of evil is concerned, are the Dursley. While Umbridge's motives and actions are understandable (she was given free reign over a population she despises), how the Dursley never got worried for blatant child abuse is beyond me. quote:They only told the Prime Minister. I mean like go to the UN and say "Yeah magic and monsters are real and there is this evil dude in Britain with dreams of world domination. just FYI thought you guys should know. Also here is a list of magical cures for diseases, and spells that can create food out of thin air, we though you might like those. Oh and we can power things through magic so no more energy crisis. Well, they partly are. On the other hand, is their stated reasons that Muggles would react to them with fear and aggressivity that unreal?
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Aug 22, 2010 21:32
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caleramaen posted:WHile I loved OOTP, Dolores Umbridge is by far my least favorite character in the series. She is literally the worst type of person imaginable. My only regret about her is that the centaurs don't kill her. Hats off to JK Rowling for hitting all of my tender memories and sensitive buttons with Dolores Umbridge. I can't remember when I absolutely loathed a character more, and I was right there with Harry and Co. in feeling absolutely enraged but utterly powerless. A large part of it was that she actually reminded me of a few teachers I had growing up. I was so disappointed when she didn't get tortured and killed by something nasty.
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Aug 22, 2010 23:17
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When I first read the chapter where the centaurs carried her away I assumed exactly that happened and was stunned and excited that the book took that dark of a turn. But then you find out that didn't happen.
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Aug 23, 2010 01:08
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Cap. Monocle posted:They only told the Prime Minister. I mean like go to the UN and say "Yeah magic and monsters are real and there is this evil dude in Britain with dreams of world domination. just FYI thought you guys should know. Also here is a list of magical cures for diseases, and spells that can create food out of thin air, we though you might like those. Oh and we can power things through magic so no more energy crisis. No spell in the books can make food from nothing, it's always brought from somewhere
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Aug 23, 2010 02:25
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IRQ posted:and Rowling getting better at writing with each book. I'd like to hear why you think this is so, because I read the HP series as wonderfully illustrative of what happens when an author loses control of a narrative. In each successive book, Rowling hamfists more and more details and explanations to appease the monster she sketched in the early books. She performs gymnastics to force her worldbuilding instead of just showing how things work in the Potterverse. Her usage of the second person plural "you" increases as the books progress. Flashbacks are by no means seamless, and even in the last book almost all exposition or development is done with info dumps, often taking up entire chapters. Now, I enjoyed the HP series, but by no means would I hold them up as an example of a writer getting better with practice. I think it's fairly well accepted (except by the most die-hard fans) that the books needed some serious editing for length beginning in the third or fourth book, and I think that contributes to all the things I mentioned above. But I'd still be interested to hear your thoughts on the matter.
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Aug 23, 2010 03:56
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In the end, I think Rowling is just not very good at world building. She's very good at sketching very lively characters. The Weasleys, Luna, and Hagrid are all really fun to read about. Meanwhile, Snape, Dumbledore, and Voldemort are really compelling characters. She's also very good at creating a sense of place. As has been mentioned before, she often throws out a lot of rules that become confusing and often only serve as a quick save at the plot's end. She throws in things like the time turner and doesn't think about the repercussions of the fact that her world had time travel. As much as there is a lot of exposition, we still don't get a full view of the world. We have people in this thread still curious about how far reaching the wizarding world is. For awhile, I got mad about people saying the "camping" sections of DH were boring. I personally felt they were very well done. I've realized now that they're not so much boring as they're boring in comparison to what Rowling is not writing about. The backdrop to Book 7 is the magic equivalent of if Hitler won World War II and we only catch glimpses of it. Hell, man that very premise can support its own series of novels, but it only acts as a distant and passing threat to the more intimate story that Rowling is telling. Of course, there is another extreme where writers are all about world building, and if I had to choose, I'd pick Rowling's fun characterizations. Still, I think the series would've been perfect if it had been a bit more balanced. On another topic, I actually just listened to an audio version of Philosopher's Stone. I listened to it with the mindset that most everything in the plot had been orchestrated by Dumbledore. I ended up listening to it in the mindset that even Harry's friendship with Ron had been planned. More than that, Ron was aware of this and being fed information from Dumbledore throughout the book. It ended up fitting pretty well. Timeless Appeal fucked around with this message at 04:46 on Aug 23, 2010 |
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Aug 23, 2010 04:44
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Paragon8 posted:Seriously, posters in this thread if you haven't - read Magicians by Lev Grossman. Well they do drink a lot during their sixth year and I'm sure they gently caress, its just not explicitly mentioned cuz its a children's book. For example, after Ron and Lavender were making out after the Quidditch game in Book 6 he drags her into an empty classroom, his intentions were pretty clear.
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Aug 23, 2010 04:44
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Rowling's world-building is fine for the whimsical tone of the first few books. But then she made the story more and more Serious Business as the series went on. It's hard to construct a compelling grownup narrative when you're dealing with in-universe rules that change on the fly and every crisis is resolved by a random plot element that the author probably didn't even think of until that chapter.
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Aug 23, 2010 08:01
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The talk of casting from a few pages back reminded me: ever since the first book, and over the course of all the years and movies, I've not been able to picture Snape as anyone but Jafar from Aladdin. Every other character is a vague mishmash, but Snape has remained Jafar -- turban and everything. The bizarre part is I didn't especially like Aladdin as a kid, and haven't watched it since. No idea why that image has stuck with me for so long. I just needed to share.
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Aug 23, 2010 08:28
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_jink posted:The talk of casting from a few pages back reminded me: ever since the first book, and over the course of all the years and movies, I've not been able to picture Snape as anyone but Jafar from Aladdin. Every other character is a vague mishmash, but Snape has remained Jafar -- turban and everything. The bizarre part is I didn't especially like Aladdin as a kid, and haven't watched it since. No idea why that image has stuck with me for so long. Not really related, but it came up when i googled jafar+snape, so enjoy: 
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Aug 23, 2010 10:30
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Cap. Monocle posted:and spells that can create food out of thin air, The exceptions to Gamp's laws of elemental transfiguration state that this cannot be done! In one of the earlier books however there is an instance of Molly conjuring sauce from her wand. Likely explanation: Rowling hadn't thought of it then. In-universe explanation: Molly, being a fat person, was watching her calories; since she obviously knew food can't be conjured from thin air because it violates a rule of elemental transfiguration the sauce she created could be applied liberally since it would disappear after a while like Leprechaun gold without being digested.
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Aug 23, 2010 11:24
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My pet theory behind why a lot of people didn't like the camping at the end of book 7 is that Hogwarts itself was the character that everyone really liked - and deviating from that probably left a lot of people unfulfilled.
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Aug 23, 2010 11:32
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Paragon8 posted:My pet theory behind why a lot of people didn't like the camping at the end of book 7 is that Hogwarts itself was the character that everyone really liked - and deviating from that probably left a lot of people unfulfilled.
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Aug 23, 2010 13:16
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Paragon8 posted:My pet theory behind why a lot of people didn't like the camping at the end of book 7 is that Hogwarts itself was the character that everyone really liked - and deviating from that probably left a lot of people unfulfilled. Honestly, I think you may have put words to why I wasn't crazy about the camping segments but could never really pinpoint why. If and when I reread the last book (it's far away right now), I'll have to pay more attention to that.
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Aug 23, 2010 13:19
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Paragon8 posted:My pet theory behind why a lot of people didn't like the camping at the end of book 7 is that Hogwarts itself was the character that everyone really liked - and deviating from that probably left a lot of people unfulfilled. Speaking as a fan of Ghormengast, Perdido Street Station, Warhammer 40K and many other books/series that feature locations that are just as alive as the cast, I think you're probably right. The camping was pretty OK, though. It was a huge shift from the established pattern of the previous books, and that's exactly what was needed.
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Aug 23, 2010 13:44
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Can anyone recommend any worthwhile fanfics? Someone recommended A Year Like None Other in the last A/T thread, but I've finished it and I need my Harry Potter fix 
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Aug 23, 2010 17:29
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Years ago, a friend of mine pointed out how silly it is that wizards can't create food. They can turn inanimate objects into animals and back again, but they can't turn them into dead and cooked versions of these same animals?  She also mentioned a fanfic that "explained" why wizards can't share their medical innovations with Muggledom, even on the sly: Muggle medicine makes wizards sick, and vice versa. According to the fanfic, Harry and Hermione's first childhood inoculations were also their last because they nearly died from allergic reactions. I wish I knew what the fanfic was called - it's been years since I've heard of it - but the idea was such a neat bit of fanon that it stuck with me.
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Aug 23, 2010 18:40
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Ben Davis posted:Can anyone recommend any worthwhile fanfics? Someone recommended A Year Like None Other in the last A/T thread, but I've finished it and I need my Harry Potter fix I know it's not really well liked because the author stole lots of lines from other places, but I've always been partial to the Draco Dormiens/Veritas/Sinister Trilogy. They're set after book four, and are basically Cassandra Claire's version of books five, six and seven. I can't find it online, so as soon as the megaupload of all three PDFs is finished uploading, I'll link it here. http://www.megaupload.com/?d=ALAN54RZ Soysaucebeast fucked around with this message at 18:56 on Aug 23, 2010 |
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Aug 23, 2010 18:47
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Pththya-lyi posted:Years ago, a friend of mine pointed out how silly it is that wizards can't create food. They can turn inanimate objects into animals and back again, but they can't turn them into dead and cooked versions of these same animals? That's dangerously close to midiclorians though.
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Aug 23, 2010 18:47
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Ben Davis posted:Can anyone recommend any worthwhile fanfics? Someone recommended A Year Like None Other in the last A/T thread, but I've finished it and I need my Harry Potter fix Can't remember how I got to this page, it may have even been via this thread, but I have had some entertaining reads via http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/FanFicRecommendations
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Aug 23, 2010 18:58
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Pththya-lyi posted:Muggle medicine makes wizards sick, and vice versa. That would be interesting, but it wouldn't explain why the two cultures couldn't share. Accio has no healing properties, and there's no pennicillin in a computer.
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Aug 23, 2010 19:28
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Pththya-lyi posted:Muggle medicine makes wizards sick, and vice versa. But this contradicts the canon, stitches worked on Arthur Weasley.
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Aug 23, 2010 19:33
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reflir posted:But this contradicts the canon, stitches worked on Arthur Weasley. Stitches allow the body's natural regenerative properties to function properly! 
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Aug 23, 2010 19:36
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Still in the post I quoted muggle medicine and wizard medicine were treated as distinct natural kinds and the use of stitches would fall under the 'muggle medicine' kind, so the point stands. Molly's ignorance of what stitches are speaks for this interpretation.
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Aug 23, 2010 19:39
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Harashaw posted:That would be interesting, but it wouldn't explain why the two cultures couldn't share. Accio has no healing properties, and there's no pennicillin in a computer. I don't think we need to look further than mere smugness. It's emphatized many times that the World of Wizardry at large does not give a drat about Muggles, and see them as simpletons that could never do anything as right as Wizard would. And Hagrid in Philosopher's Stone gives us another, equally as good reason: The Wizards are not keen on becoming pretty much the miracle-makers and solutio-finders of the Muggle World. Is it a logical reason? Not really, but a quite human one.
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Aug 23, 2010 20:26
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reflir posted:But this contradicts the canon, stitches worked on Arthur Weasley. By medicine, I meant chemical medicine - pills and liquids and whatnot - not sutures.
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Aug 23, 2010 21:23
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