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The Wheel of Time is pretty much a perfect storm of everything going right. The author had years to prepare for the handover and had been amassing careful notes for a decade; his wife and manager of the estate had been his editor for the entire series and so knew intimately what he wanted with the handover; they lucked into a one in a thousand writer for the handover, who was good enough to do the job but not so famous already that he'd refuse it.
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Oct 6, 2010 21:40
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MrFlibble posted:
I think Rowling was trying to create a parallel "lovely as hell childhood" to Harry's, and show that Voldemort reacted differently and made different choices. After all, Harry did a lot of things with magic that were "over the line" -- blowing up his aunt, etc.
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Mar 2, 2011 20:31
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thrawn527 posted:So...this is a thing. Apparently J.K. Rowling told a reporter friend what one ending she almost used was, and he transcribed it from memory. It can be read here, and is far too long for me to include a quote here. But it is weird as hell. My guess is that Rowling both overstated how seriously that particular plotline was considered, and the reporter mis-told and mixed up his retelling as well. The main interesting point from that seems to be that Rowling was willing to do drastic re-writes to her story, repeatedly. Which is probably a large part of why her final product was of such high quality.
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Jul 21, 2011 19:15
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ashez2ashes posted:There's actually some really good information in the latest Prisoner of Azkhaban chapters of Pottermore. The following about werewolves from Rowling is pretty cracktastic: "One curious feature of the condition is that if two werewolves meet and mate at the full moon (a highly unlikely contingency which is known to have occurred only twice) the result of the mating will be wolf cubs which resemble true wolves in everything except their abnormally high intelligence. They are not more aggressive than normal wolves and do not single out humans for attack. Such a litter was once set free, under conditions of extreme secrecy, in the Forbidden Forest at Hogwarts, with the kind permission of Albus Dumbledore. The cubs grew into beautiful and unusually intelligent wolves and some of them live there still, which has given rise to the stories about ‘werewolves’ in the Forest – stories none of the teachers, or the gamekeeper, has done much to dispel because keeping students out of the Forest is, in their view, highly desirable". D'awwww, magical puppies!
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Aug 5, 2013 20:15
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Decius posted:New movie (and book I guess): Wow. That . .could actually be pretty cool. It would be like a 1920's New York setting?
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Sep 12, 2013 16:20
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TheModernAmerican posted:Anyway I've been devouring the series, putting my normal podcasting schedule out of whack as I've finished the first two books in one week but I've noticed that going through the first few chapters has been a chore, taking me the better part of two days of going through one to five minute chunks before moving on to something else. Hrm, good question. I think it's a couple of different things. Partly as was mentioned above it's that there's a tradition of horrible parents of victimized orphans in English literature, especially in Roald Dahl and Dickens, both of whom seem to have been really big influences on Rowling. More importantly though there's a reason that authors like Rowling, Dickens, and Dahl start their stories like this, and I think it's that the books are escapist fantasy and escapist fantasy generally means an escape from something fairly horrible. Most people reading the story of Harry's life are going to 1) stop thinking about their own problems because Harry's are initially worse, and then 2) Harry gets a literally magical ticket away from all his problems! I, the escapism-seeking reader, may one day find my own fantastical ticket away from my problems too! Wouldn't that be nice! And then the rest of the story happens. As to why he has to keep coming back, there are some in-narrative explanations for that later in the series. More to the point though I think Rowling wanted that "horrible life --> escape into magic" dynamic to happen in every book, since it's one of the engines that drives the fantasy. Just like Harry, you, the reader, get to escape from your horrible life into this magical fantasy. That type of explicit in-narrative labeling of the story as "ESCAPIST FANTASY HERE, LOOK HE LITERALLY ESCAPES" may seem redundant or unnecessary to readers who've read a lot of other modern fantasy, but it's part of why the books had such mainstream popular appeal. That fantasy of escape is the "hook" that brings you back. Plus she's always careful to show the Dursleys getting comeuppance and Harry getting some appropriate degree of vengeance in every sequence, whether it's Vernon getting frightened out of his wits in the first book or whatever else. SO that's part of the fantasy too. It's difficult to deal with and vivid because Rowling's a good writer and she's got a good eye for human character and she understands how neglect and abuse happens and so she writes it believably. If you're interested in fictional chronicles of child abuse, I'd recommend checking out David Copperfield as well. Hieronymous Alloy fucked around with this message at 06:43 on Oct 27, 2014 |
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Oct 27, 2014 05:13
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Bad Wolf posted:(and in my head was James Hacker.) I think this was true for just about everyone, or at least everyone who's seen Yes Minister. I wouldn't be surprised at all if she was imagining Jim Hacker as she wrote.
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Oct 27, 2014 14:05
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Unfortunately mod stuff is kinda up in the air a bit this weekend due to the Halloween Shuffle but yeah, lemme ask please everyone knock off the child abuse discussion at least for now.
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Nov 1, 2014 20:01
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ArtIsResistance posted:As a grown adult, can anyone share tips for stopping people from bullying you for reading a book for children? Kindle.
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Nov 11, 2014 19:36
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Has Harry Potter ever really ended? In our hearts? I should probably change the thread title at some point.
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Nov 18, 2014 15:26
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Make me some suggestions
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Dec 22, 2014 04:40
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It could be that wizards are just culturally slapdash and slack. Like not just British wizards but almost all wizards. After all if you could just wave a wand and get all your necessities provided for, why work all that hard?
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Dec 28, 2014 15:40
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On the bright side though permanent injuries are very rare and almost no magic-induced injury appears incurable, short of death.
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Dec 28, 2014 22:11
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Variant_Eris posted:See Lockhart. And all those people who were murdered at the hands of magic. Dudley's pig tail had to be removed via a hospital, and if Muggles didn't have that kind of magic, he would've been screwed. And then there's Marietta Edgecomb and the Pimples of Sneak in book 5, And that's not to mention the Longbottom's Cruciatus-Curse induced insanity. Yeah, basically it seems like magic can cure anything except death and insanity.
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Dec 29, 2014 00:43
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quote:There’s a linguist’s saying about English speakers that we go to work in Latin and come home in Anglo-Saxon. Meaning that much of our professional language (words like office, supervisor, colleague — even computer and telephone) comes from the Latin-derived French. While the language of home (house, hearth, fire) comes to us from the German-derived Anglo-Saxon. To use Latin is to ally yourself with all of these powerful connotations at once: mystery, power, and formalism. Thus, it is interesting to note that the wizarding world falls into the same patterns of speech, with many lower-level hexes and household charms in English, such as Scourgify. It’s in the higher-order spells that one sees the shift to Latin and Latinate phrases: Expecto Patronum, Cave Inimicum, Fidelius, Expelliarmus, Finite Incantatem. http://www.tor.com/blogs/2015/01/the-language-of-spellwork-in-harry-potter-jk-rowlings-incantations-hold-surprising-linguistic-depth
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Jan 16, 2015 21:09
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Bad Wolf posted: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. Man was born to play the role. Well, that and everything else he's ever done, because he's always amazing, but yeah it's like Rowling wrote Snape with Rickman in mind. I've never seen him do a bad job but I can't imagine anyone else filling that role. One of those performances good enough to prevent future remakes because how could anyone ever compete?
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Mar 18, 2015 14:44
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TheModernAmerican posted:People hated the pope because he was forced into the Hitler Youth. Genuinely wanting to replace the British government with a wizard-run dictatorship in a violent coup should totally invalidate the fact that he was a cute kid. Normally I hate Nazi analogies because they are so cheap, but the Death Eaters wanted to kill or enslave every non-pureblood in the world, they actually wanted to do something with a Hitlerian level of violence, hatred, and scale. Snape wasn't a hero, he was the right hand man of the greatest evil to ever exist in the wizarding world. Snape is Rowling's Gollum-equivalent. He's a bad person and a jackass but he exists for the narrative purpose of demonstrating that even horrible, evil people can sometimes do good things and you shouldn't just write them off completely.
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Mar 19, 2015 16:01
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