Potter thoughts

[alexxkay]

So I finally let myself be assimilated by the Harry Potter thing. I bounced off the first few books several years ago, but they read rather differently when you realize that you are married to one of the leads :-) My old opinion still mostly holds ("I've read this before, and better done"), but they're enjoyable enough to keep up with, if only to know what everybody else is talking about. So now I'm all caught up... for a few weeks :-)

I wonder if Dumbledore dies in Book 6 or early in Book 7? Mythologically speaking, he can't be around for the Big Fight At The End. Earlier in the series, I was happy in the belief that he was probably clever enough to realize this himself and make plans. But then he spent all of Book 5 acting like an idiot, so maybe not.

Actually saw the movie of Azkaban shortly before reading the book. Thought that the movie was a much better-told version of the story. Goblet of Fire's going to be a trickier compression problem, but I look forward to seeing how they manage it.

I'm still upset that the american editions of Book 1 don't include an illustration for the potion logic problem at the end.

I agree with rickthefightguy that mystics with uselessly vague prophecies (I'm looking at you, Trelawney) should really be shot in the face.

I read these in scanned editions, on my PDA. I'm used to glossing over mis-scanned words, but every once in a while, they achieve a kind of accidental poetry. At one point a cauldron is described as having, beneath it, "crackling names".

Comments

"crackling names"

[cvirtue.livejournal.com]

Heck, if words have power, why can't you cook with them?

HP

[cvirtue.livejournal.com]

Oh, right, I was going to make a useful comment, and forgot.

Dumbledore: I've read advice on writing books for kids. One of the things always mentioned is that the kids have to be the ones to solve the problems, no deus-ex-machina adults. This may be why Dumbledore, who is reputed to be so wise and knowledgeable, consistently acts like an idiot, unless he's giving exposition, or handing Harry something useful off-screen. It bothers me that this is handled badly, but maybe lots of people haven't noticed.

As for Goblet of Fire, I wonder how they're going to film something with such an unsympathetic main character. Harry whines for pretty much the entire book. Now maybe that's common for teenagers, but it's damned annoying.

"mystics with uselessly vague prophecies should really be shot in the face." No argument. However, this does follow common real-world examples. The vagueness, that is. It's got to be vague enough that the "mystic" has half a chance of finding some lunk who will say "I have a cousin named Jack!" when the mystic says "It's someone whose name begins with J... or maybe K..."

Re: HP

[alexx-kay.livejournal.com]

Dumbledore: On reflection, what annoyed me so much in Book 5 was the weakness of the eventual revelation. The obvious interpretation of the prophecy was "either you kill Voldemort, or he will kill you" -- moderately disturbing, but hardly something worth keeping from Harry all that time. I was sure that the big reveal would be along the lines of "you have a copy of Voldemort in your head, and might easily turn Eeeeevil". Y'know, something with a solid reason for keeping secret. [Not necessarily a reason I *agree* with, but at least more plausible. Compare "Darth Vader is actually your father".]

[The prophecy is sufficiently vague that Harry *might* yet turn out to have a copy of V in him ("mark him as an equal"), but I don't think Rowling will actually do something that clever.]

Whining: That's actually much worse in Book 5, as I recall. Boy, I'm glad that I've gotten used to having testosterone in my system. It's painful to watch Harry and Ron made stupid by raging hormones. In any case, I think making whiny-Harry sympathetic is a solvable problem, given good scripting and direction. Not *easy*, but do-able.

Mystics: If wizardry-enabled mystics can't do better than real-world cold readers, why bother having them?

Re: HP

[mickeymao.livejournal.com]

Um, except that the point with Trelawny is that her prophecies aren't magically-enabled, except in extremely rare cases. The fact that Hogwarts has a multi-year required class in her usual brand of quasi-prophecy, is sort of an interesting commentary on / subversion of the predominant "we're real wizards!" party line.

Re: HP

[alexx-kay.livejournal.com]

What you say is true. But on the other hand, even her two "magically-enabled" prophecies were not useful. This is a problem with most fictional prophets. If the prophecy is only clear after it comes true, it's not of use to anyone inside the story.

Re: HP

[jducoeur]

Hmm. I'm sympathetic, but how many times in all of literature has a prophecy actually been useful? In practice, even when a prophecy is clear, it is almost always delivered to people who aren't prepared to accept it -- so it still isn't useful in the most practical sense...

Useless Prophets

[alexx-kay.livejournal.com]

Again, I acknowledge that most literary prophets have this problem, when viewed from the POV of the people inside the story. But most readers, historically, don't adopt that interior viewpoint. It may be that my exposure to more interactive media makes me more prone to "put myself in their shoes".

It's notable that the discussion with rickthefightguy where the "prophets should all be shot in the face" concept came up kept slipping into LARP territory. He is, after all, a Boston Player, so when confronted with an Unhelpful Prophet when he is within a story, that's his response :-)

This may also have a lot to do with my being a product of a scientific, skeptical (sub)culture. I tend to value ideas based on their predictive power, tested under rigorous conditions. And even the big classical ones, like Delphi, totally fail those criteria :-)

[Even more tangentially, this scientific attitude, when applied to the body of Greek Myth, is what led to Alexx's Principle of How Best To Deal With Greek Gods. "Don't."]

[jducoeur]

Dumbledore: I was actually pretty surprised that he survived Book 5. Given the big publicity windup of Someone Important Will Die, I was just *sure* it would be Dumbledore, for precisely the mythological reasons you cite...