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You know, after going through all the books ,there's one thing I'm sorry never happened. The Giant Squid. It seems like a Chekov's gun that was never fired. I had hoped it would show up in the battle of Hogwards, but I don't think it did. Unrelated, the unluckiest bastard in the series has to be Lucius Malfoy. If I condense his story, he comes off as a bumbling sidekick. Sort of Baldrick to Voldemort's Blackadder. Voldemort : Ah, Lucius, can I have that diary back? Malfoy : Here, my Lord. Voldemort : ..... It looks a lot more stabbed then when I gave it to you. Malfoy : Ah, about that, I had a cunning plan, my Lord... Voldemort : You gave my diary, the thing I told you to protect with your life, to an eleven-year-old girl? That's it, into the snake pit till I tell you to get out. Malfoy : Does it still have snakes in it, my Lord? Voldemort : It's called a snake pit, Lucius, otherwise I'd just call it a "pit". Voldemort : Ah, Lucius, do you have the prophecy? Malfoy : Bits of it, my Lord. It sort of... broke. Voldemort : I seem to remember telling you that nothing was more important than keeping it safe. It's the fire pit this time, Malfoy. Malfoy : Does it... Voldemort : It's called a fire pit ! Voldemort : Lucius, you had Harry Potter here, locked up and unarmed, and you let him escape? Malfoy : He had help ! From a house elf ! One I have never seen before in my life and who certainly didn't once belong to me and is now helping Potter partly because he hates me ! Voldemort : Malfoy, could you do us all a favour and go join the Order of the Phoenix? That way you can do to them exactly what you've done for me all these years. It's double unlucky that a lot of stuff he got blamed for was either due to Voldermort's own distrust or having Batshit Bellatrix next to him. Bad Wolf fucked around with this message at 15:07 on Jan 18, 2012 |
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Jan 18, 2012 14:45
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Joramun posted:and apparently never noticing it's Voldemort, not Voldermort Audio books. OK, that's no excuse. What the gently caress is wrong with me? Editing my post. No really, I've been calling him Voldermort for all these years, even reading over it every time his name comes up in this thread.
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Jan 18, 2012 15:05
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Going through the books again, Rowling sure likes to use "beaming" a lot. As in "X was beaming at Y". I swear the verb "beaming" is used more in the Potter books than on Star Trek. It's not really a complaint, just a quirky observation.
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Mar 30, 2012 17:22
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UndyingShadow posted:Like her obsession with socks? Blame Dobby for that one.
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Mar 30, 2012 18:04
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WeaponGradeSadness posted:I do wonder what they'll do with the other books, though. Like another quiz or something to determine your Patronus in the third book, maybe? You're expecting a Patronus?
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Apr 20, 2012 13:11
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arioch posted:It makes sense. Though maybe we have to wait until book 5? Puns : Never apologize, never explain.
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Apr 20, 2012 21:30
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I'm not adressing your questions, really, I know, but they did lead me on a stream of thought about James Potter, Snape and related things. I find it very difficult to actually define who James Potter was, since the only things we really learn about him come from Snape's memories. And memories are always tainted and biased due to the personality of whoever has the memories. For example, you have two boys in school, both witness a third boy make a pratfall and hurt his knees. One of the boys will, years later, recall the incident as that hilarious time Dougie fell on the ground. The second boy will recall the event as that time Doug really hurt himself and had to go to the nurse. Both different interpretations of the same objective fact. To Snape, James will always be the wizarding world's equivalent of the bullying, popular jock. Most others remember James fondly, but their memories are also tainted. Sirius, his best pal, admits they were dicks to Snape, but since he considered him an rear end in a top hat anyway, he had it coming. The truth is probably somewhere in the middle, and the reader is left to draw his own conclusions. Characters interpreting, or rather misinterpreting events and actions because of their own history and personality is something that happens frequently in the books. Snape sees Harry not as a person, but as a mini-James (so does Sirius at times, really) and so anything Harry does is seen by Snape through that frame of reference. He sees James as arrogant, so he assumes that whenever Harry does something he doesn't like, it's because harry thinks he's better than him. Lockhart is the same, since fame is everything to him, he thinks other famous people are the same, and sees everything Harry does as a way to get fame and glory. It's very interesting that at one point, a character remarks that Muggles will go to great lenghts to not see magic happening, since it doesn't go with their view of the world. Individual characters do the exact same thing, like in the examples above. The most extreme form can be seen in the Minister of Magic, who goes through extreme leaps in logic to delude himself into believing that Voldemort hadn't returned. When you go through Order of the Phoenix, it's easy to think his actions are simply to convince the magical world Voldy isn't back, but it's really more him convincing himself. Back to Snape and James. There are a few similarities between their interactions and those of Harry and Draco Malfoy. Draco thinks Harry is an arrogant prick, and is jealous of him, much like Snape's thoughts on James. While Snape's most intense hatred was probably focused on the moment James saved his life, I believe Draco's moment would be when he confronts Harry after his father is taken prisoner. He swears revenge, and Harry laughs him of saying he's faced Voldy a bunch of times and Draco isn't anywhere near being a threat. Given that the books are told more or less from Harry's perspective, I think it would be fascinating to see the interactions between Draco and Harry through Draco's eyes. I think it would be quite similar to Snape's memories. Finally, would the overall plot have transpired differently is Snape hadn't been a colossal dick to Harry? What if he hadn't seen him as a mini-James but as Lily's son? What if he had been fond of him because of that? It would have made it more difficult to pretend to be the treasurer of the "We hate Harry"-club, president and founding member Thomas Riddle, but other than that?
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May 30, 2012 14:29
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Macaluso posted:I imagine it would have made Snape's double agent thing a lot harder if he was nice to Harry. I mentioned that, but I figured since even Lucius Malfoy mentioned (to Draco) it isn't a good idea to seem anything but thrilled about harry Potter in the post-Voldy wizarding world, he could use that as an excuse.
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May 30, 2012 17:21
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Macaluso posted:Yeah, it's the movie that bans the Slytherins completely. The movie is kinda weird in that regard. Harry turns out not to be dead, and that seems to be the reason the Death Eaters go "welp, see ya Voldy, wouldn't want to be ya!" and disapparate in an almost cartoony way. Instead of, you know, killing him again or something? At least in the book, once Harry turns out to be alive, practically everybody from the wizarding world (including the Slytherins? I don't remember either, but I'll believe it) decide they've had enough of this crap and come in to beat the everloving poo poo out of the Death Eaters, and only at that point do some of them run like hell.
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May 30, 2012 21:49
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A Cnidarian posted:It's a little while since I last read the books but didn't Snape end up more or less stuck at Hogwarts for political reasons, instead of really wanting to become a teacher? He seems like someone who's a borderline dick to adults but really, really dislikes children. And if I had to spend all day every day with other people's teenagers I'd probably be pretty awful to them too. He sells it to Bellatrix that he stayed at Hogwarths because as an ex-Death Eater, there wasn't really anywhere he could go, aside from prison. The real reason is so he could pretend to be a spy for Voldy while actually being a double agent. There aren't that many teachers there who's reason for being there is actually teaching though, when I think about it. Squirrel was there for the stone, Moody was asked there for security (worked out so well) and Trelawny was there so Voldy wouldn't kidnap her and try to torture information out of her she didn't consciously have. Speaking of that, in Order of the Phoenix, I thought it was really nice of Dumbledore to step in for Trelawny, only to realize later that he did it possibly so she wouldn't be taken by Voldy as an asset. Did he actually give a poo poo about her, or was he simply afraid she could somehow give up information? Zore posted:Its actually sort of amazing that he isn't even in the top five worst teachers Harry had during his time at school despite all the crap he pulled. Well, considering that an unusual amount of other teachers tried to kill Harry (Squirrel), or have him killed (fake Moody,Umbridge), or get him killed accidentally (Hagrid sending him to Aragog, though he wasn't a teacher then), Snape could almost be in the running for employee of the month, since he actually saved Harry's life on occasion. Hell, thanks to Hogwarths less than stringent vetting practices when it comes to hiring staff, Lockhart probably got a good performance review because he "only" tried to wipe Harry's memory.
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Jun 1, 2012 16:04
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Chucat posted:Speaking of that did anything ever come up about Harry not seeming to have listened to a single History of Magic class in the entire time he was there? Plot-wise or school-wise? As far as the plot went, whenever information from that class would be relevant, you'd have Hermoine there to explain things. Especially from "Hogwards : A History". (As an aside, Rowling should write that book) School-wise, you're allowed to fail some classes and still move up a year. I think Harry and Ron both failed their history OWLS, but it didn't really matter since they could just stop taking that class the next year. when they did pass their History exams, it was mostly thanks to cribbing notes from Hermoine.
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Jul 3, 2012 13:03
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Look a sunflower posted:Situations like this make me wish that it were acceptable for an author to get a do-over (if she chose to, of course). In the same way that it's common to remake movies with better effects or technology that didn't exist when the movie was first produced, I think it would be neat if an author could rewrite his or her earlier works to fill in the gaps and strengthen it with their experience as a writer. Tolkien did this, sort of. He rewrote small parts of "The Hobbit" after he wrote "Lord of the Rings" to make it fit better.
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Jul 9, 2012 17:14
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AwesomePossum posted:On topic, I never read any of the books until this January. I enjoyed the hell out of the movies, thought they were great. Just never got around to reading any of the books. For me, this is the best way to enjoy works that have been made into movies. I saw the Lord of the Rings movies before I read the books, and the same with Harry Potter. Seeing the movies first means you won't get annoyed or confused by stuff like "Why did they change that?" or "Why did they leave this out?". By reading the books after seeing the movies, you get to enjoy how much more story you find and how richer the fictional world is. The other way around, no matter how good or faithful the movie adaptation is, you'll miss the stuff they have to leave out due to story flow, time constraints etc. I'm actually kinda bummed I've already read "The Hobbit" because of that. Edit : For example, If I had read HP first, I'd be constantly asking myself when watching the movies "OK, but where is Peeves? He was awesome!"
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Jul 12, 2012 13:14
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Blight posted:He was there, with his dog and giant-halfbrother. Later he was held capture by voldemort. I liked that bit in the book, if only because I couldn't help but think of The Simpsons. "Agh, I have to save the wee spiders!" "Agh, save me from the wee spiders!"
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Jul 12, 2012 17:07
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WeaponGradeSadness posted:It explains Neville, I suppose. Now wait just a minute there. Neville is plenty Gryffindor. He's the one that stands up to Harry&co when he sees them breaking the rules for the umpteen time, he's (or has tried to) kicked the everloving crap out of Malfoy on several occasions, and he's the one that destroyed the final Horcrux. Hell, the only reason the books aren't called "Neville Longbottom and the X" (well, apart from the name being silly) is that Voldemort apparently flipped a coin between him and Harry and decided "yup, that's the Chosen One!". Also, he ends up together with Luna, clear winner there.
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Dec 26, 2012 16:35
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Paragon8 posted:I think it damages the impact of Harry learning the Patronus which is often times treated as exceptional. Instead of him mastering complicated magic it becomes more along the lines of a high schooler reading a chapter in a college level text book and having just a bit more knowledge than his peers. Yeah basically anyone can learn a Patronus charm if they just sat down for a bit and practiced. Perhaps that is just another indicator of Hogwarts' appalling curriculum. But didn't it take most of the kids in the DA pretty much the whole year to learn how to conjure a proper patronus, while Harry managed it in one, maybe two lessons? Still seems pretty exceptional then. On anothet topic, back to the unforgivable curses for a bit. "Moody" pretty much stated that the kids could Kedavra him till their throats got sore and he wouldn't even get a nosebleed. And with Bellatrix later explaining to, and when I say "explaining to", I mean "shrieking at" Harry that they don't work unless you really, really mean it, can we say that pretty much none of the kids would be able to actually do the Kedavra curse? This also means that Draco's task was doomed to fail from the start in THBP. I mean, the only "kid" we ever saw use the killing curse was Crabbe (Or Goyle, I always get them mixed up) and he was an adult by that point. (And probably too stupid to realize why it was a bad thing to do anyway.)
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Sep 30, 2013 14:41
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Zore posted:The Sorting hat takes your wishes into account, and seems to put you into houses that embody things you value. Not to mention you're sorted when you're eleven which even Dumbledore brings up as a stupid idea later in the series. Did Peter, James and Sirius know eachother before they went to Hogwarts? Because while I imagine most children just sit there and be judged, I can see Peter telling (well, begging, really) the hat that he wanted to be in the same house as his friends. And you can be pretty much certain that Sirius had a terse conversation with the hat explaining he wouldn't be joining the house of dickbags his entire family had been in.
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Dec 19, 2013 11:54
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Zore posted:and Slytherin only accepts pure bloods. No, Slytherin (the founder) only accepted purebloods. Slytherin (the house) didn't have that restriction after he left. Voldemort was a halfblood (though nobody really knew that at the time) and in Slytherin. So was Snape (and/or his mother), who did know.
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Dec 19, 2013 16:41
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I don't get why Griphook thought he could keep the sword anyway, even if it was given to him. He seemed to know all about the bloody thing, and I don't think it was a secret anyway that the sword could just up and teleport to any worthy Gryffindor in desperate need of it. Also, Harry could have just said "You can have it after Voldemort's dead, I need it to kill him." Which is technically true. There, problem solved. The whole deal was just a problem that really didn't need to be created.
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Feb 4, 2014 15:58
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So this was pretty sweet. Also, I'm going through the books again, just started at the very beginning. In the Leaky Cauldron in book one, Quirrel shakes hands with Harry. Was that an error, since it hurts him like hell at the end of the book. In the movie, they just had him shrink away when Harry offers his hand as part of him being quirky.
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May 6, 2014 13:21
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Lord Hydronium posted:Yeah, Voldemort only physically joined his head after his failure to break into Gringotts. Ah, gotcha. It's amazing how much you can forget between reading stints. Oh, but he didn't fail to break into Gringotts, he was just too late. That's pretty impressive for a non-possesed Quirrel to pull that off. It's never explained, but I assume the Imperious curse was involved. Also, that fake GRRM account is pretty entertaining, but I should have spotted that. Bad Wolf fucked around with this message at 14:16 on May 6, 2014 |
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May 6, 2014 14:13
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Inveigle posted:The main reason the Dursleys hated Harry so much is because they were really afraid of magic. This is my theory too. The Dursleys were terrified of wizards in general, and Harry in particular. I think it's mostly down to Petunia. She knew what Azkaban was, and what dementors were, plus, her sister was murdered by the most powerful and evil dark wizard of the time. That's enough to make you believe the wizarding world isn't the super fun happy land they make it out to be. Her resentment of her sister may be partially due to the fact that if she hadn't been a witch, she'd still be alive. (though initial jealousy at not having magical powers herself played a part.) Initially, they treated Harry like crap because they thought keeping him downtrodden would keep the magic out of him. They wanted him to be as "normal" and boring as possible, going so far as to bitch at him for having imaginative dreams. I can only guess they kept treating him like crap after book 2 out of fear, since after that point, they couldn't stop him from becoming a wizard. As far as Dumbledore (and wizards in general) was concerned, I think he was misguided, but genuinely didn't think Harry had it that bad. I have two reasons for this theory. For one thing, punishments in the wizarding world used to be incredibly harsh, Filtch mentioned detention used to mean being hung by the thumbs in the dungeons, and even in modern times, being sent into the forest wasn't the nicest thing to have done to you. For another thing, from Dumbledore's perspective, the Dursleys were far crueler to their son than to Harry, though it's up to the reader to speculate why he thought this. I do wish we had some well-developped, kind muggles in the series. As is, there were only Hermoine's parents, who are barely in the books, and the prime minister, who was just there to be annoyed by the minister for magic. (and in my head was James Hacker.)
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Oct 27, 2014 13:02
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This could just be a false memory, but weren't the HP books always meant to be read while the reader was the same age as the characters? I think that's why Stone and Chamber feel more like fairytales than the later books. So the series tranforms from children's books to YA naturally.
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Nov 20, 2014 11:12
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On the 12th day of Christmas, JK gave to me... Twelve new short stories ! http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/12/07/jk-rowling-12-new-harry-potter-stories-christmas_n_6283836.html
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Dec 8, 2014 11:27
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JohnSherman posted:Horses would be a pretty good analogy. It's an antiquated method of travel and generally is only used for sport. Well, horses would be the analogy for Thestrals. Or possibly Centaurs, but the average Centaur would kick your face in for saying that. There's quite a bit of magical creatures that have been used for transport, up to and including dragons. And let's lot forget the Knight Bus.
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Dec 10, 2014 10:38
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Guy A. Person posted:Well the dude wasn't a fan of the dark arts at all, remember he wanted to duel Luna's dad at the wedding for wearing (what he thought was) Grindelwald's symbol. He is pretty loyal to his teacher and school but aside from that I don't think he was especially into using the dark arts for personal gain. I don't think he even liked his teacher much. Granted, this comes from just a couple of lines at the end of book four, and I may be influenced by the way Stephen Fry read them in the audio book, but when asked if they could get the ship home without Karkaroff, Victor basically bitterly said Karkaroff didn't do poo poo and had the students run the boat. Speaking of Durmstrang, given Dumbledore's speech about unity at the end of 4, I'm disappointed a bunch of Durmstrang students, led by Krum, didn't show up for the battle of Hogwarts. Same goes for Beauxbatons really. (As a complete aside, I've only ever "read" the audio books, so I had to look up how to spell the name of the French school for this post, and as such, I only just NOW got the joke. )
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Jan 9, 2015 10:57
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Xachariah posted:What possible reason do they have for getting rid of Peeves for the films? It's not like he would take up a lot of screen time and they had the ghostly CGI for the other ghosts anyway. Cut for time, I'd assume. The first movie was already pretty long, and this was before (or just at the start of) The Lord of The Rings era where movies were allowed to be the lenght of an ice age.
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Jan 21, 2015 14:20
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bobkatt013 posted:The Lord of the Rings Fellowship of the Ring was only 20 minutes longer than the first Harry Potter. "only". That's pretty long in movie time. Also, you're comparing the Potter extended version to the regular version of the Fellowship. Compare both regular versions and it's 26 minutes. To further my point, if you compare both extended versions, Fellowship was a whopping *49* minutes longer.
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Jan 21, 2015 17:37
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I watched the movies (with the exception of Hallows) before I ever read the books, and all I can say is well done Alan Rickman. I would have absolutely hated the character of Snape if I had read the books first, but the guy made him entertaining. I remember reading somewhere that Rickman was also the only person who knew in advance what Snape's deal really was, since Rowling felt it was important enough for his portrayal. In contrast, my hate for Umbridge is unchanged between media.
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Mar 18, 2015 11:21
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rchandra posted:Didn't Crouch and Umbridge survive also? Crouch was Kissed and I'm pretty sure Umbridge wasn't at the Battle for Hogwarts (being neither a Death Eater nor Imperiused she wouldn't fit). Well, Crouch is dead for all intents and purposes. Umbridge is serving life in Azkaban (according to Pottermore). The only DADA teacher who got through it all relativly unscathed was Slughorn, but he had the position before the curse happened.
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Mar 23, 2015 11:41
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