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Paragon8 posted:but yeah, that's all super spergy poo poo that can be explained easily by Rowling not thinking things through to that extent and most people not caring. Really you can't think too hard about the Harry Potter universe or suspension of disbelief gets difficult. "You mean to tell me not one of these people thought to bring a shotgun when confronting Voldemort? Avada Kevad*BLAM*" It's just a fun series to read with your brain firmly in the off position.
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Aug 14, 2010 14:36
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Ah, the Doom 3 dilemma. 
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Aug 14, 2010 15:05
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vseslav.botkin posted:I suspect that The Gun Question is mostly an American one. All of the British people I've known have had little to no contact with firearms, and seem to view them the way we view explosives (confirm or deny at your leisure, old chaps). Depending where you are in the US guns are really very rare (I have only seen them carried by police) and explosives are also quite rare (even sparklers are illegal here, although nobody really gives a gently caress if you go buy fireworks out of state). But the fact of the matter is, if I was facing some dork who had to recite a spell to kill me, I'd drive down to Virginia and buy a shotgun and blow his head off. I also did specifically say "shotgun" in my initial post as it is my understanding that our gunophobic friends across the pond still have access to those for hunting foxes or peasants or whatever silly aristocratic bullshit with their corgis and such. But still, you could destroy Voldemort with a loving 16th century musket. I was always willing to accept that the Harry Potter novels took place during the 70s or 80s so that cell phones and the internet didn't exist or whatever, but I just cannot accept that not one mudblood figured they should just drag along a pistol and blow Voldemort away while he's reciting the death curse. :sperg:
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Aug 15, 2010 10:13
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Hedrigall posted:She's a teenager you creepers. I saw the first two movies before reading the books, I can't not see them as the movie cast. Also that kid that plays Luna in the movies is so spot on it's scary. Alyson Hannigan? Really? What? Even in American Pie she was in her mid 20s at least.
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Aug 17, 2010 23:32
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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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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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Pththya-lyi posted:"I just love your books!" I shouted desperately. I don't think she was comfortable with fame at that point, if she is now. Also your dad is pretty awesome. Also you're making me feel old.
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Aug 24, 2010 06:08
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Soy Sauce Beast posted:That's still the only book I've ever camped out for. My sister camped out for the last book, with a home made pro-Snape shirt. I will never let her live that down. then I read it in like 6 hours after she and my mom finished it in under a day And then I bought the special edition.
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Aug 29, 2010 06:52
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Hobnob posted:I never really understood the whining about the epilogue. Wasn't it pretty much "Happy Ever After"? What was wrong with it? It was pretty unnecessary but not nearly as big a deal as some people make of it. I think a lot of those people are probably shippers that weren't happy with how Rowling paired everyone up in the end.
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Sep 1, 2010 21:08
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Pththya-lyi posted:I'm rereading GoF right now and I'm remembering all the objections I had to the Age Line that prevents underage kids from putting their names in the Goblet of Fire. Yeah, the Line can't be tricked by Aging Potions, but what was there to stop an underage wizard from 1) balling up his parchment and throwing it into the Goblet or 2) giving his parchment to a seventeen-year-old confederate who could drop it into the Goblet for him? Also, if underage wizards really aren't up to the task of competing in the TriWizard Tournament, then wouldn't the Goblet simply not pick them? Whomever the Goblet picks as Champion is objectively more skilled than the other applicants, whether or not he's underage! A wizard did it. Literally.
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Sep 2, 2010 02:15
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Van Dis posted:Hey IRQ, don't know if you missed it but I responded to your post: I didn't say she was Shakespeare by the end, but I think it's hard to say she didn't improve. I haven't read the books since Deathly Hallows came out so I couldn't give you extreme specifics, but I did read 1-6 in the space of a few weeks and I definitely felt that each book was progressively better, relative to where Rowling started anyway. My impression of book 1 was that it was incredibly simplistic and barebones almost to the point of being a screenplay. They got leaps better until around OOTP which was a bit overlong, and I would agree that the story started to sputter in Half Blood Prince, but aside from length I don't remember much of your complaints. I really didn't have a very high standard for these books though.
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Sep 3, 2010 00:21
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Paragon8 posted:I always found it strange that there was a house that was essentially evil and they just kept putting more evil people in it. The different houses always did just seem like a convenient way to establish a baseline personality for people without Rowling having to actually describe them. Which is why we only saw the evil people because that's all we needed to see for the plot. It doesn't make sense to think that everyone in Slytherin was a straight up evil. I think it's more like Slytherin is the "old money" or aristocracy or whatever of wizards, after all right along side Draco there were those dumb as bricks goons that would follow him around; the George W Bushes of wizards.
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Sep 5, 2010 01:56
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Dickeye posted:Quick question, why didn't the US get a cover as rad as this We never get good covers of anything in the US.
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Sep 12, 2010 17:57
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LividLiquid posted:In addition to what others have said, the first one or two books also change some words. Bogeys is changed to boogers, for instance. I assume much like they thought Americans wouldn't know what a philosopher was No, they thought we wouldn't know what the mythical alchemical bullshit the philosopher's stone was. Apparently they were correct since you didn't get the reference. 
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Sep 14, 2010 03:56
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they also figured kids wouldn't get the slang.
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enuma elish posted:I agree - looking at pretty much any aspect of the Harry Potter world in depth for more than, like, five minutes, you're going to find something that doesn't make much sense. That's just kind of the way the series is, honestly, no point getting bothered about it. Such is the problem with writing magic into a modern setting. It has to be really mysterious and truly fantastic to come off as believable, but you can't really have a wizard school and do that. I'm sure someone could go on at length about how it's the line of transition between fantasy and sci-fi that results in suspension of disbelief becoming more difficult, but I'm really quite content to enjoy Harry Potter and explain away the dumb stuff with "a wizard did it."
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Sep 18, 2010 04:52
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Obligatory Toast posted:What? That's... odd. They didn't change the typeface at all for the US editions - the only time they do change it is basically for inserts like notes, letters, and newspaper articles. It's a bizarre decision in any case as by the time HBP was coming out page length wasn't going to be a deciding factor. Harry Potter was a license to print money by then; people would still buy the poo poo out of it even if it was just Harry being a petulant twat for 800 pag, oh.
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Sep 19, 2010 03:04
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FrensaGeran posted:Is it really censorship to remove a book called "Mustard Gas: And How to Make It" from your local library? That's pretty much the definition of censorship, yes.
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Sep 22, 2010 21:04
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geeves posted:Dumbledore also saw / knew that they were there in Hagrid's cabin I'm pretty sure Dumbledore knew everything they were doing and was probably even helping them.
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Sep 23, 2010 17:47
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I kind of hope she sticks to her guns and just leaves it where it is. The story is done, she certainly doesn't need the money, and it would cheapen the series as it is to expand upon it.
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Oct 2, 2010 05:46
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Levitate posted:I just read The Magicians, that everyone recommended, and have to say I was disappointed. It seemed like the guy took a somewhat interesting idea and just didn't have the writing ability to do anything with it. It really shouldn't have been recommended in this thread is the biggest problem. That and about a quarter of the book is Jersey Shore Wizard Edition.
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Oct 16, 2010 15:49
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Levitate posted:Why this thread in particular? I mean, I wasn't expecting anything similar to Harry Potter or any of that, I just expected better writing I guess. Because the people plugging it made it sound like Harry Potter, which it was not. At all.
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Oct 16, 2010 17:06
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Hedrigall posted:Oh shiii What is that dancing lion from anyway?
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Oct 17, 2010 02:16
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It does a better job of integrating magic into the real world than Harry Potter, but then the second half of the book throws all that out the window. Much like the characters, I think Grossman had no idea where to go with it after they finished school. In fairness though, I guess, Rowling glosses over that completely.
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Oct 18, 2010 19:37
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...of SCIENCE! posted:The thing I don't get is that they explicitly have Harry having a stag as a Patronus, it seems like if they were going to do furry fanart they'd run with that. I'm sure it's out there too.
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Oct 19, 2010 00:01
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Hedrigall posted:Protip: never ever GIS "harry potter furry" That wasn't nearly as bad as I was expecting.
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Oct 19, 2010 01:07
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Hedrigall posted:Have you got safesearch on? I just got a ton of porn on the first page of results D: No no, it's off of course, but most of it was just regular old porn, some rather mundane drawings, and your average non sequitur results like a dude on a raft and a Steyr Aug. It could also be that I've been on the internet too long. e: It may also be that I've been in the Bad Thread too long.
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Oct 19, 2010 02:26
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daggerdragon posted:Four words: "Harry Potter fanfic neko" Why do you know this?
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Oct 20, 2010 00:34
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daggerdragon posted:I read quite voraciously. Fanfic and other original stories (which are free) is a good substitute for paying for books (which usually cost money). As much as I can identify with not wanting to spend money, I really can't agree with this statement.
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Oct 20, 2010 19:22
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I find that audiobooks work best for me if they're non-fiction or straight up comedy type stuff. I don't know exactly how to explain that, but I guess it is in part because the author reading the book to you makes more intuitive sense that way? Maybe it's really hard for a single reader to do a cast of characters and have it click for me? There are exceptions of course, but I don't think I could listen to that Harry Potter audiobook, for example.
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Nov 6, 2010 00:08
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Hedrigall posted:edit: I just GISed "slughorn art" to look for good fan-art Point of failure located.
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Nov 8, 2010 17:54
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Nah, that's a fairly common notion. Harry's world is very hard to justify past the 1700s or so considering they routinely take muggle-born students. Even then it's sketchy at best. By the 1990s, where HP seems to be set, even gun shy England would see muggle students saying "what the gently caress, give me a cell phone and a G36 and I could single-handedly own this entire community, let alone Voldemort." The wizarding world, especially the ministry supposedly tasked with interfacing with muggles should have been making GBS threads their pants over the several hundred per minute Avada-kevadra spitting machines that anyone from Dumbledore to Dobby can operate past, oh, the 1860s. But we're well into sperg territory at that point.
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Nov 20, 2010 13:02
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thebardyspoon posted:Does that really matter when they probably have purses that can teleport money from their vaults or like that bag Hermione made in the last book? Then why have an elaborate central bank in the first place?
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Nov 21, 2010 07:14
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THE HORSES rear end posted:The situation regarding the Wizarding World in Harry Potter actually inspired me to start work on a fantasy novel that shows what would happen if a secret magical society continued down that route. Eventually, the masquerade cannot be maintained, and when the magical world is finally revealed to the rest of us, all Hell breaks loose. I'm glad I'm not the only one who is too huge a nerd to get over that. Anyway are we talking about the new movie in here? It was about half an hour too long, other than that no real complaints other than one moment that kind of came out of nowhere. I really don't think it should have been split into two movies either. Has any reason for that been given beyond "we like money"?
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Nov 22, 2010 02:40
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That also sounds nothing like what The Horses' rear end posted.
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Nov 22, 2010 05:28
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TheBigBudgetSequel posted:I think that they will have Aberforth talk to the kids about Dumbledore, and that's where most of the flashback stuff will be if there is any. If they're going to try to fill another (dreadfully plodding) 2.5 hour movie with content I figure they'll explore that plot line a bit further because it's close to being actual content as opposed to sitting around a campsite, dancing for no reason, and wandering through an inexplicable FEMA trailer graveyard.
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Nov 23, 2010 09:58
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FrensaGeran posted:I just assumed the graveyard of trailers was attacked by Death Eaters at some point. Actually thought it was cool, got across the idea that the world is at war, Muggle and wizard alike. Why would death eaters destroy a trailer park in the middle of a field? I could be totally off here but while I remember Voldemort and company messing around with Muggles during that time, it was never laying waste to entire towns. At least not that I recall.
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Nov 26, 2010 05:44
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Ok fair enough, I always got the impression that they were out of control loving with muggles but not that blatant about it for fear of blowing their cover. Then again I guess they wanted to Kill All Humans or enslave them or something so maybe not. The FEMA trailer graveyard is still funny though.
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Nov 26, 2010 05:57
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I meant blowing their cover with the muggles.
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Nov 26, 2010 06:01
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FrensaGeran posted:Well the "Magic is Might" statue gave the impression that the Statute of Secrecy would be no more and muggles would be the new worker class or something. Actually I've never thought about it before. What use are muggles in a magic-fascist state? Internet porn.
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Nov 26, 2010 06:36
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geeves posted:Never heard that. We're also never given a clear reference on how fast spells travel (speed of thought? light? sound? something else?). Everything is ambiguous at best. Everyone has plenty of time to react to and dodge the spells. But if a learned wizard was knowingly going against gun, etc. I'm sure they'd have adequate defense surrounding them. I don't know. Have we ever seen someone evade a killing curse without at least partially taking a hit? Maybe, I don't remember. I think that spells just move at the speed of plot in Rowling's world.
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Nov 28, 2010 10:13
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