Whats Harry Potters appeal?

[Scowling Dragon]

Harry potter isn't horrible, but I don't understand why its as popular as it is in terms of community and stuff.

The characters are broad strokes, the magic is poorly explained, the plots depend on dues ex machina, and everybody acts like an idiot in universe.

[MCerberus]

Harry potter isn't horrible, but I don't understand why its as popular as it is in terms of community and stuff.

The characters are broad strokes, the magic is poorly explained, the plots depend on dues ex machina, and everybody acts like an idiot in universe.

Because it's an exploration of high-fantasy living side by side with the modern world, and this ties into a desire for escapism as well. Also, not being horrible puts it ahead of the curve for fiction skewing towards youth.

[Scowling Dragon]

It also has VERY creepy undertones.

[Prime32]

It also has VERY creepy undertones.It does? :smallconfused:

[Scowling Dragon]

Well not undertones but implications.

Like the parents not giving a dam about their children living in a school with thousands of secrets waiting to kill them.

[Pokonic]

Well, the fact that most people are idiots is a plot point. The people in charge are slightly inbred bigots, and thats before the nazi-ish group takes over. The fact that the seemingly time-stuck wizerds think a gun is a "wand that summons little metal balls" should show just how far they are behind everyone else. A guy whos job it is to study non-magical humans is ignorent of things that a six-grader could tell you of. Schooling does not require, say, the basic math or science classes anyone over the age of eighteen would take, rather they learn how to turn a frog into a teakettle and making dishes wash themselves.

To put it bluntly, the magical world is in some cases worse than a third-world country. In fact, going by the goverment in the books, europe is probably the magical equivulent of any one of the varying brutal little countries in the southern hemisphere that shall go unnamed.

[Tvtyrant]

Well not undertones but implications.

Like the parents not giving a dam about their children living in a school with thousands of secrets waiting to kill them.

Their secrets, the parents don't know about them :smallwink:

I think the major reason for its popularity is that the characters mirror the readers.

It is comparably nonviolent. In most fantasy people are killed a lot. Urban fantasy has horrible murders, high fantasy has massive battles with people being hacked apart, etc. Harry Potter has exactly one way to kill someone, and it looks like a flashlight and leaves no wounds.

This aids in the escapist quality of the story. Harry Potter lives in a world of "dangerous" secrets where people are by and large safe. In the first book a child defeats a troll by dropping a sink on it, in the second some people get turned to stone but they get better, etc. Harry Potter starts out in a child's world where there is no real danger, and everyone recovers from any injury (except the bad guys maybe).

The books become darker and more adult overtime, at about the same rate as the children reading them did. By the time the last book happens and people are dropping left and right, the kids who first started reading the books are adults and no longer live in the children's world.

[Tebryn]

It does? :smallconfused:

Yes. (http://www.cracked.com/video_18244_why-harry-potter-universe-secretly-terrifying.html) Yes (http://www.cracked.com/article_19397_the-5-most-depraved-sex-scenes-implied-by-harry-potter.html) it (http://www.cracked.com/article_19667_6-horrifying-implications-harry-potter-universe.html) does (http://www.cracked.com/article_15101_top-6-reasons-harry-potter-isnt-kids.html)

[Gamer Girl]

Harry Potter has the Special Snowflake appeal. Ron, Hermione and Harry are all dull, unpopular kids in 'real life'. But wait! They each have a secret life full of adventure, fun and magic. Harry, most of all, goes from 'unpopular dork' to 'almighty chosen one demigod'. And that really appeals to most kids: the idea that even the 'dorks' can be special. And every kid wishes to be one of the main characters: a 'dork' in real life, but have a special secret life where your a god.


Plus Harry Potter is a largely adult-less world, and kids love the New World Kid Order type fiction.

And Harry Potter has dragons, and trolls and all other sorts of fantasy.

[Traab]

That and fridge logic making you wonder if the headmaster is senile or evil. I mean, most series have something similar, where there are implications that, if taken a certain way, put things into a very different light, but dumbledoore... man that guy was scary. I could make a long long LIST of actions he takes that show him as being an idiot, or setting up harry for evil luls.

I mean, at least in most universe's fanfics they have to twist events to make the good guy be evil, in hp fanfics they just have to write in dumbledoore admitting how he feels about the events that are going on. Nothing else changes and he goes from kindly old grandfather figure, to the only man voldemort fears, because he is even eviler than he is. Or he turns out to be a puppetmaster, or senile, or just wrong. The writers dont have to change canon events at all to get this effect, it all comes out by dumbledoore talking to his accomplices in one form or another.

[Prime32]

It's pretty common for adults in childrens' books to be depicted as idiots. Look at, say, Roald Dahl.

Even without taking that into account... sending students to Hogwarts is tradition. There were schools more dangerous than Hogwarts in real-life, and parents sent their children there anyway.

[Emmerask]

Harry Potter is actually darker then most other Fantasy literature you can get (with a few exceptions like black company, Song of ice and fire etc), torture, many deaths of major characters?

Anyway I do like about Harry Potter that it all ties together pretty well in the end without going "here is deity xyz, everything is fixed now" which A LOT of other fantasy writers go back to after writing themselves into a corner.
Overall you really feel that the series was completely preplanned before the first book was even written.

And of course that the audiobook was really the best quality audiobook I have ever had, driving to work was lots of fun :smallbiggrin:

[Tebryn]

It's pretty common for adults in childrens' books to be depicted as idiots. Look at, say, Roald Dahl.

Even without taking that into account... sending students to Hogwarts is tradition. There were schools more dangerous than Hogwarts in real-life, and parents sent their children there anyway.

Does that make any of it ok?

[Scowling Dragon]

Even without taking that into account... sending students to Hogwarts is tradition. There were schools more dangerous than Hogwarts in real-life, and parents sent their children there anyway.

I don't think any school teaches kids how to use weaponry, mind control, time travel, and gives easy access to date rape drugs.

[Traab]

I don't think any school teaches kids how to use weaponry, mind control, time travel, and gives easy access to date rape drugs.

Except for time travel that sounds like my high school. And some of those classes were bad enough it felt like time was standing still, so they came close.

[Scowling Dragon]

Damn. I wonder how you survived!

Did your school also had a magic tree that smashed things that where near it (Long after its point was obsolete)

[Pokonic]

I don't think any school teaches kids how to use weaponry, mind control, time travel, and gives easy access to date rape drugs.

Again, unless stated otherwise, wizerds are idiots. Dumbledore survived for as long as he had because of that.

[Traab]

Damn. I wonder how you survived!

Did your school also had a magic tree that smashed things that where near it (Long after its point was obsolete)

No, no trees, just really big seniors who filled that role. As for survival, the potential was there, I just never bothered to seek it out.

[Avilan the Grey]

Harry potter isn't horrible, but I don't understand why its as popular as it is in terms of community and stuff.

The characters are broad strokes, the magic is poorly explained, the plots depend on dues ex machina, and everybody acts like an idiot in universe.

Are you sure you are not judging this as if it was an urban fantasy for adults? It is nothing of the sort, after all.

It is a fairly well-crafted really exciting book series for kids and young teens. It is also fairly unique in it's supposed "growth together with the reader", where the first book is written for a SIGNIFICANTLY younger target audience than the last book.

Etc.

As for sending your kids to Hogwarts... I am no expert, but English people seem to have small fetish for "cruel boarding school"-stories. My sister read a lot of horsy stories and comics when she was a kid and you could almost always detect which ones were bought from England by the simple fact that the formula was the same: Young kid (girl) sent off to boarding school, having a hard time and then coming out on top at the end.

Also, this world is not stranger or more cruel than say Roald Dahl's works.

[Das Platyvark]

I grew up on Harry Potter. I think I read the first book something on the order of 11 times, in the course of a few years, and the later books a continually decreasing number. This is not to say I'm about to defend them.
They are entertaining books, not necessarily good ones. I find that my biggest issue is that the magic does not feel like magic. If you wave your wand and get whatever you want, that's not magic. It shouldn't be that easy.
Besides that, and it was covered in part on Cracked, as linked previously, for me the most horrifying implication of the universe is that these wizards are a society that takes small children, well into the stages of knowing what they want, but still far from the cusp of maturity, and gives a power that will bring them absolutely anything they want. Tell me this will not lead of a society of sociopaths. I'm honestly surprised it's functioned as long as it did—not surprised, really—They obviously have a good deal of help from Ms. Rowling.

EDIT: Forgot to leave this for y'all:http://www.nytimes.com/2003/07/07/opinion/harry-potter-and-the-childish-adult.html?pagewanted=all&src=pm

[Mauve Shirt]

It captured my imagination when I was 8 and wanted to go to a magical school instead of the lame-ass army one I was in. And it's also that the story grew darker as I grew more interested in dark stories. They may be pretty generic, but since I wasn't well read on wizarding school tropes I got really interested in the fantasy world and the characters. I certainly got to know the main ones more personally than I knew some of my friends at the time, and they were there facing peril growing up with me.

The key is, I started when I was young enough to appreciate them without considering any literary failings. And then I was so invested in Harry Potter's life that I couldn't stop reading it even when I noticed the worldbuilding problems and plot holes.
I guess I'm just not aware enough of what I'm reading. If I'm enjoying the story, I don't pull myself out and think "Why doesn't Harry just carry a gun?" And I don't need the characters to do things that make 100% sense because as far as I'm concerned, I'm experiencing their story as they're experiencing it, and they're experiencing a lapse of judgement.

[Jayngfet]

It catches you when you're young, but then a lot of stories do. What keeps you there is that it's largely STILL GOOD. I can reread Goblet of Fire multiple times in a row and love it(and have).

It's not an intricate world but it has cool implications and a plot that isn't horrible.

Also, Scowling Dragon, you're forgetting the major point that there is no other option that isn't arguably worse: Durmstrang gave off lots of rough vibes and every Beaubaxtons girl we saw had monster blood.

There may be a whole lot of horrible danger at Hogwarts, but it's nothing more than you could reasonably expect for living as a wizard in the setting. Werewolves aren't terribly rare but the average Wolf stays in the forrest for the most part, pixies and gnomes and co. can be annoyances in the extreme, the Merfolk and Centaurs are kinda sorta jerks, but they'll leave you alone if you don't bug them, and ghosts like Nick can be kinda shocking at first but largely don't mean any real harm.

Judging by the companion books there are WAY worse things out there, some of them relatively close to hogwarts but cut off in ways that make actually getting to them impossible. The very real evils of the world like Demons and Kelpies and Giants are meant to be far away, and if you have an accident they can heal basically anything.

It's better for your kids to have first hand experience with Day to Day magical troubles regularly so they can deal with it properly later in life, without running the risk of them accidentally coming across a Lethifold or something and being devoured alive.

[Dr.Epic]

Well, the fact that most people are idiots is a plot point.

That's a major understatement. I think that's my biggest problem with the series and why I dislike it so much. Wizards are intellectually based characters. I'm not speaking just in terms of D&D, but all fiction. They're supposed to be great thinkers, wise planners, men and women capable of advance reasoning. But in these books they seem to have the common sense of grade schoolers. If any of these guys - villains or heroes - put any thought into what they were doing they could defeat their enemy.

Another thing I don't really like is there seems to be too many coincidences and (for lack of a better word) retcons. I mean...
...there's a magic chamber with a giant snake in the school. So why didn't Voldermort use this in the first book? Seems like he could have gotten past all those barriers between him and the Philosopher's Stone with it. Also, Ron's rat just happened to be a former long-thought-dead servant of Voldermort?

[Lord Seth]

I don't think any school teaches kids how to use weaponry, mind control, time travel, and gives easy access to date rape drugs.I do not remember a single time when Hogwarts taught kids how to use mind control and time travel. Those exist in the series, but they were never taught at the school.

As to why I liked it, I thought the world was fun (if, looking back at it, full of holes) and thought the humor was pretty good.

[Jayngfet]

That's a major understatement. I think that's my biggest problem with the series and why I dislike it so much. Wizards are intellectually based characters. I'm not speaking just in terms of D&D, but all fiction. They're supposed to be great thinkers, wise planners, men and women capable of advance reasoning. But in these books they seem to have the common sense of grade schoolers. If any of these guys - villains or heroes - put any thought into what they were doing they could defeat their enemy.

Another thing I don't really like is there seems to be too many coincidences and (for lack of a better word) retcons. I mean...
...there's a magic chamber with a giant snake in the school. So why didn't Voldermort use this in the first book? Seems like he could have gotten past all those barriers between him and the Philosopher's Stone with it. Also, Ron's rat just happened to be a former long-thought-dead servant of Voldermort?

Well obviously getting a 50 foot tall gigantic monster through Hogwarts would be rather unsubtle and dangerous. I mean it would take under a minute for it to be discovered that a rampaging snake monster is making for the stone.

[SaintRidley]

That's a major understatement. I think that's my biggest problem with the series and why I dislike it so much. Wizards are intellectually based characters. I'm not speaking just in terms of D&D, but all fiction. They're supposed to be great thinkers, wise planners, men and women capable of advance reasoning.

None of which is even an inkling of an assumption about what makes a wizard in Harry Potter. It's much more analogous to D&D sorcerers where the magic is born into them. The school pretty much exists to teach them to harness it in ways that won't be destructive.

Again, nothing about wizardry in Harry Potter even assumes intelligence. It's silly to assume so when it's so clearly not the case.

[Dienekes]

That's a major understatement. I think that's my biggest problem with the series and why I dislike it so much. Wizards are intellectually based characters. I'm not speaking just in terms of D&D, but all fiction. They're supposed to be great thinkers, wise planners, men and women capable of advance reasoning. But in these books they seem to have the common sense of grade schoolers. If any of these guys - villains or heroes - put any thought into what they were doing they could defeat their enemy.

I want you to read Terry Pratchett sometime. Unseen Academicals is a good start, though his wizards come up fairly frequently.

[Sotharsyl]

I think we can divide the attraction into 3 stages:

Stage I: Wish Fulfillment.

Hey kids magic, i.e. the power to do everything you want, no you don't have to do anything for it you were born special you have it from the start.

You don't like your school but still life without school is too hard to imagine we have a magical school for you where you have a choice to be either a hero! or smart! right from the start both options come with friends included.

Stage II: Snowballing.

This is the first stage I personally experienced.

"Oh look there's this books everybody's reading really strange to see non-geeks so excited about books might as well try them out."

But for me it was:

"Yawn another fantasy series let me guess there's this fighter he quests for a sword ... wait what do you mean everyone is a wizard...man I play wizards in DnD I've got to read this!"

And then it turns out Harry and everyone good was part of the "I am a fighter ROAR" tradition of wizardry :smallsigh:

Stage III: But how does it end?

Rowling you hear me you better not kill off my favourites even though in most cases you never even gave them dialogue.

[Jerthanis]

It's a combination of an exaggeratedly traumatic relatable backstory for Harry and a growing up with the series.

Everyone remembers bad stuff happening to them, they remember how bad middle school was, even if they can't remember exactly what made it so bad. We empathise with Harry, and the fact that his childhood really WAS that bad makes us feel justified for feeling as negatively as we did when we had no reason to feel that way for ourselves.

Then there's the fact that a large portion of the population who grew so obsessed with the series got into it in the beginning when we were 9 - 14, and thus we grew up with Harry.

Aside from that, it's because it was really just a pretty damn good book series. It's funny and stupid, but there's a lot of callbacks and consistency and inside jokes that requires a lot of planning. A lot of these threads pop up and I feel like saying, "Because there's nothing that was written for kids that was better during this time period. Prove me wrong."

Worst case scenario, I get a new book series to read.

[Man on Fire]

Harry Potter is actually darker then most other Fantasy literature you can get (with a few exceptions like black company, Song of ice and fire etc), torture, many deaths of major characters?

I'm pretty sure that there is at least one subgenre just for that. It's called Dark Fantasy.

[Jayngfet]

I'm pretty sure that there is at least one subgenre just for that. It's called Dark Fantasy.

Most "dark" fantasy isn't that much better or worse IMO. I mean even ASoIaF is overblown in terms of how actually "dark" it is. I mean discounting who dies it's not exactly an ambiguous story. You can tell who's good and who isn't even without POV simply because from the first moment everyone displays obvious moral alignment, and there's never a legitimate clash between two "good" people in the books outside maybe the wildlings vs the wall, if you stretch it a bit. It's never so much a bunch of alrightish people with legitimate problems so much as honornoblegood vs incestrapepedophiletorturebad.

I mean even if Voldemort is out and out evil, he has more depth to him than 75% of the "dark" fantasy villains I've encountered over the years, since you can tell exactly how he got to be who he was and why he is the way he is and it's just as much tragic as repulsive because the guy never even had a chance. Most "dark" villains tend to be rather one dimensional or derivative. I mean much as I love say, Mistborn, you will never hear me saying it had a better central antagonist than HP.

[Drascin]

Basically?

It's a book, aimed at kids, that is actually competently written. Rowling's prose is accesible without being stupid and dumbed down. She talks to kids, not at kids, and that makes her a huge exception. The plots are simple but visceral enough to captivate the audience, and the whole thing very rarely needs to resort to the Deus Ex Machinas that are extremely common in kid literature because the writers never thought things through. She knows how to pace things to keep the readers' interest without tiring them, and how to make characters just characterized enough to catch the kid's attention without spending a bunch of paragraphs pontificating on them.

It's, all in all, a very well crafted series of books.

[Weezer]

The first 4 or so are excellent fantasy novels aimed at a young audience, far better than the average book aimed at that age group. However as the series goes on and Rowling tried to age it up the flaws become more and more evident. The kind of fridge logic that works in a largely non-serious kids novel doesn't work when you try to be mature and dark and Rowling failed at making the characters age believably, the early characterizations were about right for book 11 year olds, but later not so much.

[Man on Fire]

Most "dark" fantasy isn't that much better or worse IMO. I mean even ASoIaF is overblown in terms of how actually "dark" it is. I mean discounting who dies it's not exactly an ambiguous story. You can tell who's good and who isn't even without POV simply because from the first moment everyone displays obvious moral alignment, and there's never a legitimate clash between two "good" people in the books outside maybe the wildlings vs the wall, if you stretch it a bit. It's never so much a bunch of alrightish people with legitimate problems so much as honornoblegood vs incestrapepedophiletorturebad.

I mean even if Voldemort is out and out evil, he has more depth to him than 75% of the "dark" fantasy villains I've encountered over the years, since you can tell exactly how he got to be who he was and why he is the way he is and it's just as much tragic as repulsive because the guy never even had a chance. Most "dark" villains tend to be rather one dimensional or derivative. I mean much as I love say, Mistborn, you will never hear me saying it had a better central antagonist than HP.

What you're talking about isn't anything required for dark fantasy. Dark Fantasy is boderline horror, brutal and violent type of fantasy, where bad things happens to protagonists and their idealism, that in more optimistic type of fantasy would lead them to greatness, get them into terrible trouble, or protagonists aren't that nice or idealistic people to begin with. Giving vilians depth isn't necessary requirement in Dark Fantasy. It's welcome, but not required (and my favorite Dark Fantasy series - Black Company and Berserk - mix both types of vilians. Black Company has interesting and complicated antagonists like Lady of Charm or Great General next to more standard Longshadow, Limper or Dominator and people like Soulcacher who is both complicated and shallow at the same time, but in different ways. Berserk has Count and Archbishop Morgus, who are terrifingly evil, but get humanizing moments, or Roseline and Femto, who are even worse (especially Femto) but have tragic backstory (debatable in Femto's case of course), next to...about everything else).

And Emmerask said HP is standing out not because of vilians with psychological depth, but because it's rare to see fantasy with so many deaths and tortures of major characters, to which I respond by saing there is entire subgenre for that. Vilians never come into equation.

[Mauve Shirt]

That subgenre is not for most children, or for people who like some characters to survive.

[Helanna]

The first 4 or so are excellent fantasy novels aimed at a young audience, far better than the average book aimed at that age group. However as the series goes on and Rowling tried to age it up the flaws become more and more evident. The kind of fridge logic that works in a largely non-serious kids novel doesn't work when you try to be mature and dark and Rowling failed at making the characters age believably, the early characterizations were about right for book 11 year olds, but later not so much.

I think this is basically the best explanation. Yes, there are some plot holes and writing flaws, but for the first few books, it's just a children's series and it's well-written enough that you can handwave those away. But I think one of the strengths is that the characters are generally relatable, so by the time the flaws become more evident, you just want to see what happens to them.

Also, I don't think the books are ever terrible, they just have some holes in them. So the later ones are still fairly good, just not the best thing ever.

[Traab]

Well obviously getting a 50 foot tall gigantic monster through Hogwarts would be rather unsubtle and dangerous. I mean it would take under a minute for it to be discovered that a rampaging snake monster is making for the stone.

And yet the next year it was attacking people ALL FREAKING YEAR and not being spotted. They couldnt even figure out what it was with warnings written in blood on the freaking wall right outside the entrance to the chamber. But in all honesty, aside from the cerebrus and the troll, using the basilisk to get to the stone would have been useless, and it would have been overkill for those two parts. Hum a ditty and the dog is asleep, a first year knocked out a troll, im sure dork lard gigglesnort could handle a troll with ease. And while I thought about using the basilisk for the distraction, it would be too indiscriminate just taken off its leash and could wipe out an entire generation if he sent it into the great hall at supper without warning. Including purebloods, which would have shattered all his support in the world, and doomed it to fail due to lack of population. Since noone ever mentions another british based magic school, its safe to assume that hogwarts has ALL the magical kids age 11-17. Losing that would be a horrific blow to magical britain.

[Mauve Shirt]

I think this is basically the best explanation. Yes, there are some plot holes and writing flaws, but for the first few books, it's just a children's series and it's well-written enough that you can handwave those away. But I think one of the strengths is that the characters are generally relatable, so by the time the flaws become more evident, you just want to see what happens to them.

Also, I don't think the books are ever terrible, they just have some holes in them. So the later ones are still fairly good, just not the best thing ever.

Exactly! .....

[Dr.Epic]

None of which is even an inkling of an assumption about what makes a wizard in Harry Potter. It's much more analogous to D&D sorcerers where the magic is born into them. The school pretty much exists to teach them to harness it in ways that won't be destructive.

Again, nothing about wizardry in Harry Potter even assumes intelligence. It's silly to assume so when it's so clearly not the case.

Then that's a flaw I see in the books. My idea of a wizard, or mage, or sorcerer, or any great magical power is one who is cunning and smart. It's the equivalent of making a series about barbarians and none of them can do a single pushup. And even saying wizards in Harry Potter don't need intelligence to cast spells, you'd think they'd be enough common sense for one of the people to finally defeat their foes when it's so obvious the reader.

[Brother Oni]

And even saying wizards in Harry Potter don't need intelligence to cast spells, you'd think they'd be enough common sense for one of the people to finally defeat their foes when it's so obvious the reader.

It's not that they don't need intelligence, it's more that they don't need certain aspects of it.

I believe Hermione pointed it out in the first book with the potions puzzle that many wizards aren't very good at logic or deductive reasoning (I forget which), simply because the magical world defies the application of those traits.

[Dr.Epic]

It's not that they don't need intelligence, it's more that they don't need certain aspects of it.

I believe Hermione pointed it out in the first book with the potions puzzle that many wizards aren't very good at logic or deductive reasoning (I forget which), simply because the magical world defies the application of those traits.

Then how the heck do they keep the wizard world so secret? You think'd they screw it up eventually. If they lack logic, how do they keep their little world full of fantastic monsters hidden?


Well obviously getting a 50 foot tall gigantic monster through Hogwarts would be rather unsubtle and dangerous. I mean it would take under a minute for it to be discovered that a rampaging snake monster is making for the stone.

Hey, it somehow managed to get a bunch of victims in book 2 and not get caught. And the first time it was opened as well. Plus, why not use Quibble or whatever his name was to open the chamber and bring back Voldermort the same way he was planning to in book two? Or just have Quibble get some of Harry's blood and use the method in book 4. I mean, getting the stone seems a lot more difficult that the other two methods for bringing him back.

[lord_khaine]

Then how the heck do they keep the wizard world so secret? You think'd they screw it up eventually. If they lack logic, how do they keep their little world full of fantastic monsters hidden?

I think you answered that question yourself, though lots and lots of idiot-proof magic.


Hey, it somehow managed to get a bunch of victims in book 2 and not get caught. And the first time it was opened as well. Plus, why not use Quibble or whatever his name was to open the chamber and bring back Voldermort the same way he was planning to in book two? Or just have Quibble get some of Harry's blood and use the method in book 4. I mean, getting the stone seems a lot more difficult that the other two methods for bringing him back.

As i recall the method in book 2 depended on a magical book that Quibble didnt have.

And its not certain Voldemort was strong enough to go though the ritual from book 4 then.

[Dr.Epic]

I think you answered that question yourself, though lots and lots of idiot-proof magic.

Not really. Because to develop or discover that sort of magic and use it you think you'd need common sense. Kind of a paradox.

[Brother Oni]

Not really. Because to develop or discover that sort of magic and use it you think you'd need common sense. Kind of a paradox.

Common sense by a wizard's definition you mean. More often than not, 'common sense' means the ability to recognise the bleeding obvious and to act effectively on it, none of which requires a particularly high understanding of logic and which simple experience can easily substitute in for.

Aside from the various memory altering spells, there's the simple fact the people won't initially believe what they're seeing is real. A muggle 'knows' that mythological animals dont exist, or that people can't suddenly vanish into thin air before their eyes, so when they do see it, it's disregarded and not processed, or thought of as a hoax.
The more insistent people get paid a visit by nice men with long sleeved coats that tie at the back, if the nice men with wands that alter memories don't get to them first.

[Traab]

Not really. Because to develop or discover that sort of magic and use it you think you'd need common sense. Kind of a paradox.

Not exactly, all that magic was created way back in the pre handgun days, when wizards and witches were actually noticeably superior to muggles from the standard of what they both could do. Wizards had faster communication, they had the ability to create anything they needed, magical cures for disease, etc. So they just had to come up with a couple decent ideas, and I wouldnt be surprised if there had been more than a few mistakes before they more or less perfected it. Then, as time went by, the magical world was forgotten outside of legend and myth, so muggles never really bothered to look for it, and maintaining the secret became pretty much a cultural thing. You dont have to be heavy on common sense to follow the same rules your parents, grand parents, and great grand parents for the last 600 years have been following, anymore than it takes common sense to follow the rules of table manners.

Another explanation is evolutionary decay. Once the wizarding world was totally separate, the consequences of their actions went way down. Break something and you can wave a wand to fix it, get hurt doing something dumb and you can take a potion to heal it. Lets not forget the good old boys style of government. You dont have to be smart to be a leader, just have the right last name. Because there were so few consequences for their actions, common sense started to decay like a vestigial organ. They may have had it back when the protections against muggles were first developed, but now its established tradition and noone needs to think about it anymore.

[SaintRidley]

Then how the heck do they keep the wizard world so secret? You think'd they screw it up eventually. If they lack logic, how do they keep their little world full of fantastic monsters hidden?


With copious application of memory charms to make the muggles not remember. They do screw up the secrecy. A lot. It's why they have an entire government department devoted to mopping up after that.





Hey, it somehow managed to get a bunch of victims in book 2 and not get caught. And the first time it was opened as well. Plus, why not use Quibble or whatever his name was to open the chamber and bring back Voldermort the same way he was planning to in book two? Or just have Quibble get some of Harry's blood and use the method in book 4. I mean, getting the stone seems a lot more difficult that the other two methods for bringing him back.


One. Quirrel, not Quibble.

Two. Voldemort did not plan to use the diary to bring himself back. Nobody planned to use the diary to bring Voldemort back. One of Voldemort's followers whom he had entrusted the diary to decided it would be a great idea to slip the thing into the book pile of an eleven year old girl against whose father he held a grudge. He had no idea what the diary was, only that it probably was some sort of dark magical item which would be embarrassing to the Weasley family should it be discovered.

Three. Voldemort did not know Harry's blood would do what it did at the end of the first book. It's why he decided he needed to incorporate Harry's blood into the creation of his new body in the fourth book.


I really think your issue with wizards and intelligence is more of an issue with your expectations. You're hanging too much on the word wizard.

[Xondoure]

Also, several ministry departments are pretty darn competent. Specifically, the branch in charge of maintaining the masquerade pulls some pretty impressive stunts, and the department of mysteries is just crazy.

Me? I like the books a lot, and love that I can discuss them with almost anyone I'm likely to meet on the street. So snowball effect in force.

[Man on Fire]

That subgenre is not for most children, or for people who like some characters to survive.

Bringing it down to children books wasn't mentioned when Emmerask's said HP stands out for killing many characters. In fact, he bougth up Black Company nad Song o Ice And Fire, both of which are clearly not for kids.


Then that's a flaw I see in the books. My idea of a wizard, or mage, or sorcerer, or any great magical power is one who is cunning and smart. It's the equivalent of making a series about barbarians and none of them can do a single pushup. And even saying wizards in Harry Potter don't need intelligence to cast spells, you'd think they'd be enough common sense for one of the people to finally defeat their foes when it's so obvious the reader.

You need to go on D&D rehab, sometimes it's useful to think outside the box. I mean, having wizards who arren't smart would actually be a change of peace really, just like having smart Orcs (I mean c'mon, gimme some of those, Warcraft isn't really enough, not by longshot). Of course wizards in Hp are more like Sorcerers, so it's really replacing one cliche by another...

[snoopy13a]

What are some of the examples of wizards lacking common sense? It is difficult to attempt to argue against this without evidence.

Also, what is fridge logic?

[Traab]

What are some of the examples of wizards lacking common sense? It is difficult to attempt to argue against this without evidence.

Also, what is fridge logic?

Fridge logic is a term used to describe the moment when you are walking to the fridge to get a snack and thinking about something you just read/saw/heard and going, "Hey, wait a minute, that doesnt make sense." Its something that isnt readily apparent that its wrong until you think about it. Fridge logic would be reading the first hp book and enjoying it, then stopping and thinking, "Wait a minute, why did molly weasly have trouble remembering where to go to get to the train? She went to hogwarts for 7 years, has had 2 kids graduate, a third in his 5th year, twins in their 4th year, etc etc etc. So why did she have to remind herself about a platform she has probably visited several dozen times in her life, every freaking year?"

Anyways, wizards lacking common sense. Book 2. The entire freaking castle is covered with intelligent paintings, ghosts, house elves, and yet noone ever manages to figure out whats going on? It took hermione maybe half a school year to figure out the vast majority of the mystery, while albus fricking dumbledoore had 50 YEARS to work on it and never figured it out. (Or he was evil and thought it was funny)

Book 4. Either magical contracts are the scariest thing imaginable, since anyone can force you to do anything they want with a confundus charm, or harry didnt actually have to compete. Even if he DID have to compete, change the three tasks to things like rock paper scissors games right there on the spot, then once a "winner" was decided, start over again with the original three champs and challenges. Using the goblet was great for "drama" and all, but they already got chosen once, so now we know who each champ should be and there is no real reason to put them in a "compete or else" scenario.

Various points in the series. As Harry seems to spend half of every year after his first one being hated or feared by the school and the wizarding world in general. Why doesnt dumbledoore every DO anything about it? He knows who the real heir of slytherin is, he knew harry didnt enter his name in the goblet, he knew voldemort was back and had proof in the form of his penseive, and yet he does nothing to stop the horrible treatment his chosen one is being put through. Once again we are left with, either he is stupid, or he is evil. How about hagrid in year two? He knows hagrid is innocent, he knows who the real guilty party was, and im sure there are numerous ways to prove it such as veritaserum, and yet he just allows fudgey boy to drag an innocent man off to the closest thing to hell on earth so he can "be seen DOING something"

[SlyGuyMcFly]

I think the appeal of Harry Potter can be compared to the appeal of The Flintstones. It's a strange, extraodinary world from the outside, but people are still people, and do all the things people do. Only instead of doing things we normal folks do with the things we're used to, they do those same things using magic or dinosaurs. People go to watch their favourite sports team, send mail, do homework, have a job, etc. The matter-of-fact way of crossing the completely fantastic with the utterly mundane combined with a healthy dose of silliness is very appealing.

But, you could say, those things aren't normal! It isn't normal to send kids to a school where they might die! And here's where the parody starts. Both series parody/satirise a specific culture: The Flintstones parody the society of 60's America (or, more accurately, the media portrayal of it at the time, I guess), Harry Potter subtly pokes fun at the boarding school culture of Britain (or it's media portrayal, again). A lot of the humour is lost in crossing over to societies not exposed to that culture. Not necessarily the jokes, mind you, it's more the humour value of the overall idea. What's horrifying to some people isn't to others because the latter are familiar with the tropes that are being played with. But I suppose that just explains the success in Britain, and isn't entirely relevant to the discussion. Still a point I felt needed bringing up.

That aside, the books present vivid descriptions that make the world feel very detailed. It's cartoonish, yes. But the quality of the animation (to stretch the cartoon metaphor a bit too much) is without question. The characters are relatable, and while apparently pretty simple, those that do get fleshed out over the series are very well fleshed out, complex, flawed characters with interesting motivations. Finally, the plots' use of foreshadowing to mostly avoid Deus Ex Machina is much appreciated.

A thing about the casual indifference to danger and injury the wizarding world presents: In a world were a just about every concievable form of not immediately lethal injury can be cured within minutes or hours, leaving you good as new or better, a casual approach to risk of injury and pain is perfectly reasonable. If a broken arm requires just a literal wave of the hands to fix, breaking your arm is really not a big deal.

[Philistine]

I do not remember a single time when Hogwarts taught kids how to use mind control and time travel. Those exist in the series, but they were never taught at the school.

"Mad-Eye Moody" (young Mr. Crouch Polyjuiced-up as same) taught his Defense Against the Dark Arts class the Imperius Curse in Harry's fourth year (Goblet of Fire). And Dumbledore and/or McGonagall gave Hermione the Time Turner - and presumably instructed her on how to use it - in her third year (Prisoner of Azkaban). So, yes. Mind control and time travel, taught at Hogwarts. To 13 and 14 year old students.

[SaintRidley]

"Mad-Eye Moody" (young Mr. Crouch Polyjuiced-up as same) taught his Defense Against the Dark Arts class the Imperius Curse in Harry's fourth year (Goblet of Fire). And Dumbledore and/or McGonagall gave Hermione the Time Turner - and presumably instructed her on how to use it - in her third year (Prisoner of Azkaban). So, yes. Mind control and time travel, taught at Hogwarts. To 13 and 14 year old students.

Correction. Crouch used the curse on them to teach them how to resist the curse.

[Scowling Dragon]

The funny thing is that if they tried to censor spells instead of teaching them to children the spells would fall into obscurity instead of later being used by Slytherin kids.

[DomaDoma]

Because it worked so well when they censored Horcuxes. (To say nothing of copies of the Quibbler and spells that half these Slytherin kids have a good chance of learning at home.)

[Scowling Dragon]

So instead of trying to take away fire-arms to kids we should be handing them out?

Again. It worked well with horcruxes. One idiot professor spilled the beans. Otherwise Lord Voldemort would be dead.

[SaintRidley]

So instead of trying to take away fire-arms to kids we should be handing them out?

Again. It worked well with horcruxes. One idiot professor spilled the beans. Otherwise Lord Voldemort would be dead.

No, Voldemort already knew about Horcruxes. He wanted to appear ignorant because he knew that he wasn't supposed to know, so he went about flattering the professor. His purpose was in running a theory about them by the professor, as by that point he had already made one and was contemplating the creation of the second. (He had the ring in his possession. He had not acquired that until after he had already turned the diary into one and gotten Hagrid expelled).

[HalfTangible]

That's a major understatement. I think that's my biggest problem with the series and why I dislike it so much. Wizards are intellectually based characters. I'm not speaking just in terms of D&D, but all fiction. They're supposed to be great thinkers, wise planners, men and women capable of advance reasoning. But in these books they seem to have the common sense of grade schoolers. If any of these guys - villains or heroes - put any thought into what they were doing they could defeat their enemy.

Another thing I don't really like is there seems to be too many coincidences and (for lack of a better word) retcons. I mean...
...there's a magic chamber with a giant snake in the school. So why didn't Voldermort use this in the first book? Seems like he could have gotten past all those barriers between him and the Philosopher's Stone with it. Also, Ron's rat just happened to be a former long-thought-dead servant of Voldermort?

Ron's rat is actually mentioned as being handed down for a long, long time in books 1+2 (or possibly just one of them, it's been a while) and while nobody calls attention to the fact that 12 years is a long time for a rat to live until book 3, it's not entirely unbelievable to NOT question why your pet is living so long. And Animagi were set up in book 1 with McGonnagal's transformation.

The real question is, as always, why anyone would want a rat you found god-knows-where (apparently in the street or something) as a pet when you can get an owl that acts as both faithful friend and messenger, and why did said rat stay in Hagrid's hut once he knew Sirius was at Hogwarts?

[Scowling Dragon]

No, Voldemort already knew about Horcruxes. He wanted to appear ignorant because he knew that he wasn't supposed to know, so he went about flattering the professor. His purpose was in running a theory about them by the professor, as by that point he had already made one and was contemplating the creation of the second. (He had the ring in his possession. He had not acquired that until after he had already turned the diary into one and gotten Hagrid expelled).

OK so it stopped the majority of evil guys from making them. Still better then handing them out.

[Traab]

Ron's rat is actually mentioned as being handed down for a long, long time in books 1+2 (or possibly just one of them, it's been a while) and while nobody calls attention to the fact that 12 years is a long time for a rat to live until book 3, it's not entirely unbelievable to NOT question why your pet is living so long. And Animagi were set up in book 1 with McGonnagal's transformation.

The real question is, as always, why anyone would want a rat you found god-knows-where (apparently in the street or something) as a pet when you can get an owl that acts as both faithful friend and messenger, and why did said rat stay in Hagrid's hut once he knew Sirius was at Hogwarts?

Well, remember the weasleys are poor. They have to get second hand wands instead of brand new, used books, reuse clothing, etc etc etc. Their owl was so damn old it nearly killed itself every time it tried to land. In other words, they couldnt aford to get pets at the store. They found a rat, I can assume it acted fairly intelligent, so they kept ahold of it. Not the reaction I would have to finding a rat in my garden, but then, im not a logic free wizard.

[Scowling Dragon]

Oh my god. Harry Potter is Magic Idiocracy. It all makes sense now.

[Lord Seth]

"Mad-Eye Moody" (young Mr. Crouch Polyjuiced-up as same) taught his Defense Against the Dark Arts class the Imperius Curse in Harry's fourth year (Goblet of Fire).No, he did not. He demonstrated it and talked about it, but did not tell them how to do it. Claiming he did is ignoring what actually happened in the book.


And Dumbledore and/or McGonagall gave Hermione the Time Turner - and presumably instructed her on how to use it - in her third year (Prisoner of Azkaban).It's made very clear that this was a very rare occurrence. Though once again, this was not taught at Hogwarts.


So, yes. Mind control and time travel, taught at Hogwarts. To 13 and 14 year old students.So no. Mind control and time travel, not taught at Hogwarts.

[Scowling Dragon]

No, he did not. He demonstrated it and talked about it, but did not tell them how to do it.

You say a word and wave your wand. Thats all there is too it. he told them the Keyword.


It's made very clear that this was a very rare occurrence. Though once again, this was not taught at Hogwarts.

It was taught. And at Hogwarts.

[Mauve Shirt]

Time travel magic was not taught. The use of a specialized device was taught in an exceptionally rare situation. The unforgivable curses weren't taught by hogwarts, but by a murderous psychopath who clearly stated that he was going against what the hogwarts professors wanted him to teach.

[SaintRidley]

You say a word and wave your wand. Thats all there is too it. he told them the Keyword.


Nope. The word and the wand motion mean nothing without the proper will, the proper mindset, and the proper channeling of energy. Same section of the book Crouch points out that a 4th year student could try casting the killing curse at him and the most damage he'd expect is a nosebleed. In the next book Harry tries the torture curse on Bellatrix but it fails because he's got justified anger and not the demented pleasure it takes to cast it successfully.

Care to try again?

[Scowling Dragon]

And Hogwarts let a crazy Psychopath teach in school.

I want to know whats so bad about the killing curse. Does it do something to your soul or stuff? Because Wizards seem to be happy with bludgeoning and burning things to death, but a quick painless death is a no-no.



Care to try again?

Yup

So they could spend time practicing that stuff.

I could spend decades trying to guess a Keyword. But practice is much easier.

[SaintRidley]

And Hogwarts let a crazy Psychopath teach in school.
Disguised as the person who was supposed to be teaching.




I want to know whats so bad about the killing curse. Does it do something to your soul or stuff? Because Wizards seem to be happy with bludgeoning and burning things to death, but a quick painless death is a no-no.

Well, considering all it can do is kill and killing tends to be viewed negatively... Not to mention that it hurts the caster's soul...

[Dumbledore lives]

It's already been mentioned that it's well written, especially for a children's book, the world that is created is entertaining even if there are deficiencies in terms of logic and it's very easy to relate to.

One thing that has not been mentioned is the incredibly tragic character of Severus Snape, who is actually one of my favorite characters in all of fiction. It's true he is slightly cliched but I believe that it was executed so well that the tragic love just reads so well.

[Scowling Dragon]

Disguised as the person who was supposed to be teaching.

Thats beyond the point really. By this point they should tripple check that every person in school isn't disguised, working for voldemort or isn't mind controling everybody.
It could drive people crazy. That the person near me isn't Ron. Its mind controlled guy. Or shape-shifted guy, or possessed guy, or a hallucination.


Not to mention that it hurts the caster's soul...

So fireballs 2 Face= A OK kids. Roasting to death is wonderful. But a short an painless death is bad.

If you going to kill somebody you might as well do it so they don't suffer.

Also I read all I could about the curse on the wiki (Plus I have read all the books..Though a refresher could be nice) and no mention of any damage to souls.

[Dumbledore lives]

Thats beyond the point really. By this point they should tripple check that every person in school isn't disguised, working for voldemort or isn't mind controling everybody.
It could drive people crazy. That the person near me isn't Ron. Its mind controlled guy. Or shape-shifted guy, or possessed guy, or a hallucination.



To be fair Mad Eye was one of the top Aurors meaning it was incredibly unlikely he would be beaten in a duel or anything like that, especially with Voldemort still 'dead'. There was also the fact that actually keeping up any disguise like that would be damn near impossible, you'd have to have Moody locked up somewhere very close, which he did but no one expected that.

That and they were also getting fairly desperate, as no one wanted the job. Even if he openly proclaimed himself to be a supporter of Voldemort they might have hired him just to have somebody.



So fireballs 2 Face= A OK kids. Roasting to death is wonderful. But a short an painless death is bad.

If you going to kill somebody you might as well do it so they don't suffer.

Also I read all I could about the curse on the wiki (Plus I have read all the books..Though a refresher could be nice) and no mention of any damage to souls.

I don't recall anyone ever using fire on people, it was once used to fight plants, but I don't think that particular spell was ever used again. Crab did used Fiend Fyre but that was one of those lost dark arts not really applicable as it was not taught at the school. Pretty much all spells taught at school are for convenience, defense, or just minor tricks. The most offensive spell they teach is stunning, which is basically using a taser.

As for killing splitting the soul it is the only described way to make a Horcrux, and it says specifically that to make Voldemort's 7 horcruxes he had to kill 7 people, to split his soul 7 times. That is what the killing curse does. Of course to actually use it you have to really not care about a human's life, to really want to end it, something that very few people are able to do.

[Helanna]

And Hogwarts let a crazy Psychopath teach in school.

I want to know whats so bad about the killing curse. Does it do something to your soul or stuff? Because Wizards seem to be happy with bludgeoning and burning things to death, but a quick painless death is a no-no.



Yup

So they could spend time practicing that stuff.

I could spend decades trying to guess a Keyword. But practice is much easier.

I'm not sure you can practice being a sociopath, which seems to be what is needed to use the Unforgivable Curses.

Anyway, I think it'd be more of a plot hole not to teach them about those curses. Okay, maybe not until seventh year, but then, see the whole "Was not actually a teacher" thing. The point is, it'd be kind of stupid to send people out into the world without knowing that there's a curse that can control people's minds, especially when this was a favored tactic used by terrorists not twenty years ago. And you need to know the words, because how else are you going to know if someone is trying to cast one at you, versus a different, less harmful spell? If you don't know that "Avada Kedavra" is unblockable and will kill you instantly, you might assume that a shield charm will work, and you end up dead. If you see a friend get "Imperio" cast on them, it's probably gonna be important to immediately know they're now being mind-controlled. Finally, it's not exactly like it's hard for anyone to figure out. It's not like if they don't teach it, the kids will never be able to find out what the words are. Most of them will probably just ask their parents or read a book.

[Scowling Dragon]

Really I shouldn't be discussing plot holes in a fairly hole ridden story so whatever.

But a magic version of Idiocracy sounds interesting....

[Pokonic]

Thats beyond the point really. By this point they should tripple check that every person in school isn't disguised, working for voldemort or isn't mind controling everybody.
It could drive people crazy. That the person near me isn't Ron. Its mind controlled guy. Or shape-shifted guy, or possessed guy, or a hallucination.

The potion needed for a completly non-detectable transformation needs nearly a month to create and requires several substances that are not exactly common. Mind control is expressivly evvvilll. Love potions are illegal. Kids who would use them are the same people who would use varying real-world mind altering substances. To put it mildly, a wizerd would not be expecting a guy to whip out a wand and kill them the same reason most people do not expect a person walking down the street to suddenly shoot them.



So fireballs 2 Face= A OK kids. Roasting to death is wonderful. But a short an painless death is bad.

If you going to kill somebody you might as well do it so they don't suffer.

Also I read all I could about the curse on the wiki (Plus I have read all the books..Though a refresher could be nice) and no mention of any damage to souls

First and formost, the only one's shooting out that killing curse are criminals and worst. To even consider killing someone is, by general reasoning, is bad.

Secondly, most attack spells are used mostly in dueling. There's a bloody class for it in Hogwarts. The only people who would learn a spell that has no pratical use that does not involve killing someone are those in the shallow end of the moral line. You can do some fancy wandwork and light every candle in a room or create some water and make yourself a cup of tea.

[Traab]

The Unforgivables are just that for one simple reason. Emotional intent. You cannot cast the cruciatus without intending someone to suffer more than they have ever suffered before. You cannot cast the imperio on someone without intending to dominate them utterly. You cannot cast avada kedavra without intending to end their existence utterly. Use of the spells denotes a tendency towards socipathy. Those who use them and enjoy them are unequivocally evil. To put it in a law stand point, you cannot cast the killing curse without intending to commit murder. Thats like the difference between murder 1 and murder 2. It is the textbook definition of, "with malice aforethought" Yes you can leagal-ese it till it twists in circles, but that is its primary purpose.

[Scowling Dragon]

So sociopaths like commiting murder without causing any suffering. Weird.

[Lord Seth]

Yup

So they could spend time practicing that stuff.

I could spend decades trying to guess a Keyword. But practice is much easier.The word doesn't mean anything if you're not actually aware how to cast it, which again was not taught. You're basically claiming that knowing computer viruses exist is enough for someone to make one.

[Pokonic]

So sociopaths like commiting murder without causing any suffering. Weird.

No, sociopaths like commiting murder, period. Your hung up on the whole "causing suffering" bit. There's a spell that's only use is to cause a unholy amount of pain. Chances are, a Death Eater would work you over with that first before killing you.

[Scowling Dragon]

Well magic in harry potter is very poorly explained.

So it might follow your example or it may be like mine (That giving me a gun that I can practice how to use is a worse idea then just not handing out guns at all).

Again. I should stop debating the series. The whole world is based on whimsy and not thinking very hard about stuff.

[SaintRidley]

Really I shouldn't be discussing plot holes in a fairly hole ridden story so whatever.

But a magic version of Idiocracy sounds interesting....

I invite you to actually discuss plot holes as opposed to things which simply anger you because they might involve inferring things from the text.

Seriously, nothing wrong with calling out the fuzzy spots and where things are patched over pretty poorly. But do actually try to aim at those spots as opposed to the undamaged portions.

[Pokonic]

I invite you to actually discuss plot holes as opposed to things which simply anger you because they might involve inferring things from the text.

Seriously, nothing wrong with calling out the fuzzy spots and where things are patched over pretty poorly. But do actually try to aim at those spots as opposed to the undamaged portions.

Yeah, this. Your not so much debating as simply saying " Oi, dis is dumb because I think it is" and then just avoid actualy responding to whats posted afterwords and hang on to the issues that you were annoyed with in the first place, constently saying "Again. I should stop debating the series" and not stopping.

[SaintRidley]

Here, I'll hand you a free one even.

Voldemort's incapable of comprehending love, something that Rowling repeatedly hints in interviews and in the text as a product of his parents' relationship.

Voldemort's parents were together for a year, only due to the efforts of Voldemort's mother in producing extremely potent love potions with which to keep Voldemort's father around. This is called rape.

If Voldemort's entire personality is the product of his parents' relationship, Rowling is pretty much saying that children of rape are incapable of love and are likely to become mass murderers.

There you go, your freebie for the argument.

[TheLaughingMan]

I gotta say, Scowling Arsenal, I don't know why you made a thread looking to see what the appeal of HP is and then go about acting like it's the worst series ever to the fans you inevitably attract.

[Jayngfet]

What you're talking about isn't anything required for dark fantasy. Dark Fantasy is boderline horror, brutal and violent type of fantasy, where bad things happens to protagonists and their idealism, that in more optimistic type of fantasy would lead them to greatness, get them into terrible trouble, or protagonists aren't that nice or idealistic people to begin with. Giving vilians depth isn't necessary requirement in Dark Fantasy. It's welcome, but not required (and my favorite Dark Fantasy series - Black Company and Berserk - mix both types of vilians. Black Company has interesting and complicated antagonists like Lady of Charm or Great General next to more standard Longshadow, Limper or Dominator and people like Soulcacher who is both complicated and shallow at the same time, but in different ways. Berserk has Count and Archbishop Morgus, who are terrifingly evil, but get humanizing moments, or Roseline and Femto, who are even worse (especially Femto) but have tragic backstory (debatable in Femto's case of course), next to...about everything else).

And Emmerask said HP is standing out not because of vilians with psychological depth, but because it's rare to see fantasy with so many deaths and tortures of major characters, to which I respond by saing there is entire subgenre for that. Vilians never come into equation.


Yes, but that kind of "dark" is really, really cheap in my experience. Unfortunately sturgeon's law applies and the bulk of times messing with protagonist "idealism" can be incredibly contrived or just plain badly done, because a good deal of authors use it as a crutch when their writing wasn't that great.

I mean, I've honestly found Harry Potter darker than 90% of the stories that claim to be "dark" simply because of the fact that when bad things happen in the setting, it's a natural consequence of the setting that isn't focused on to the point of being the one hundred percent focus of it all. It's great if you set your story in a fantasy dictatorship where the protagonist does questionable things to avoid the secret police, or else a rampaging group of barbarians routinely kill people, but that's kind of disconnected. I mean I feel like I can relate to the dark things in Harry Potter, simply because if you remove the magic and look at the enemies, they are: A jaded teacher forced to protect a living reminder of everything he never had, a snooping reporter with no sense of privacy, a politician who slowly goes from unsure and careful to brash and willfully ignorant, and the big one being a bunch of people who are excessively violent due to hatred and fear of the future of their place in the world.

While you may have better experience with "dark" stories, most of the stuff that's dark about them is completely disconnected from modern day life. I can't really empathize with so many protagonists in "dark" stories because most of what's dark about them is so rooted in outdated custom or completely fantastic, or on things so far out of my field of experience, that I can't relate to it. If Harry has something bad happen to him, it will be HORRIBLE, but it'll also have consequences I can understand. I mean Harry may have to go through a magical tournament where he fights dragons and breathes underwater, but in doing it he slacks off on his studies, gets accused of stealing from a teacher, has to deal with jerky people harassing him, and people invading his privacy. This is an event where people DIE and he goes through lots of pain, but it's presented in terms Rowling knows I can probably claim to have gone through in some form or another.

[dps]

That's a major understatement. I think that's my biggest problem with the series and why I dislike it so much. Wizards are intellectually based characters. I'm not speaking just in terms of D&D, but all fiction. They're supposed to be great thinkers, wise planners, men and women capable of advance reasoning. But in these books they seem to have the common sense of grade schoolers. If any of these guys - villains or heroes - put any thought into what they were doing they could defeat their enemy.


Uhm, no. Wizard is just another term for "magic user"; it has acquired certain connotations due to the popularity of DnD, but before the influence of DnD, the terms witch, sorceror, wizard, etc., were all pretty much just synonyms. And is being able to use magic a function of intelligence in all fiction? Absolutely not. Let's look at some examples:

The Wheel of Time series: "Channeling" isn't exactly equated to using magic, but functionally it's the same thing. The basis for the ability to channel isn't explained, but clearly it's not based on intelligence. Heck, almost everybody in the books seems to be an idiot, but overall if anything, the people who can channel have even less sense than the other characters.

Star Wars: Again, ability to use the Force isn't supposed to be exactly the same as magic, but it's functionally the same thing. In the original movies, it seemed to be based on sensativity, not intelligence. In the prequels, well, call it genetically based. It's certainly not based on intelligence--the Jedi hang onto the Idiot Ball hard in the prequels.

Bewitched: Witches and warlocks seem to be a subspecies of Homo Sapiens, or a closely related species that can breed with Homo Sapiens, and the ability to used magic is hereditary. The magic users aren't, overall, more intelligent than mortals, but are (overall) more cultured.

Deryni series: Again, ability to use magic is hereditary. (I suppose that I should note that intelligence is also at least partly hereditary, but in fictional works that I'm aware of in which the ability to use magic is hereditary, inheritance of the 2 isn't linked anymore than intelligence and hair color is linked IRL.)

The Wizard of Oz: The Wizard doesn't even use magic; he's a fraud who uses technology to give the appearance that he's a powerful wizard. Real magic users do exist in the setting, but I'm not sure that their ability is based on intelligence. It's not clear in the movie what the basis for being able to use magic is--it might be made clearer in the books, but I've never read them.

Right there, just off the top of my head, are 5 settings in which magic exists, and in 4 of them, intelligence is NOT the basis for the ability to use magic, and in the other, it's possible that it is, but it's not clear.

[SlyGuyMcFly]

Uhm, no. Wizard is just another term for "magic user"; it has acquired certain connotations due to the popularity of DnD, but before the influence of DnD, the terms witch, sorceror, wizard, etc., were all pretty much just synonyms. And is being able to use magic a function of intelligence in all fiction? Absolutely not. Let's look at some examples.

Indeed. Wizard, sorcerer, mage, warlock and magician are all words that mean "dude who does magic", with varying etymologies and setting-specific meanings.

That isn't to say that magic power and wisdom and intelligence aren't often associated to the same character in fiction. But that's more due to the story-role spellcasters most usually take: the nerdy guy in the 5-man band, or the wise mentor figure or the "go thataway for plot" device. But in a series where everyone can do magic? Expecting everyone to be as wise as Gandalf and clever as Harry Dresden is unreasonable.

Finally, Harry Potter wizards' lack of reasoning skills is quite justified and even part of the setting's versimilitude. If I lose my keys, I go "OK Sly, think, where did you last see them and what places did you go to after that". A wizard just goes "accio keys lol". In the real world, I have to think things like "I wonder what the odds are of causing myself serious harm if I do this", the wizard doesn't because, as long as he doesn't actually go and kill himself, he knows he'll be fine. In a world were, by and large, logic, "common" sense and reasoning skills are unnecessary for survival, those skills will not actually be that common.

[Scowling Dragon]

I gotta say, Scowling Arsenal, I don't know why you made a thread looking to see what the appeal of HP is and then go about acting like it's the worst series ever to the fans you inevitably attract.

Its not. Really.

Its adventurous, its fun. And its one of the only books for kids that I really think played up a mystery without it being obvious.

Yes it was full of plot holes and cliches, and fridge logic but its OK. Its not the type of book that suffered from them.

[Man on Fire]

Yes, but that kind of "dark" is really, really cheap in my experience. Unfortunately sturgeon's law applies and the bulk of times messing with protagonist "idealism" can be incredibly contrived or just plain badly done, because a good deal of authors use it as a crutch when their writing wasn't that great.

Irrevelant, considering we're trying to focus on good dark fantasy here. Every genre and subgenre ha their black sheeps, they're not worth taking about.


I mean, I've honestly found Harry Potter darker than 90% of the stories that claim to be "dark" simply because of the fact that when bad things happen in the setting, it's a natural consequence of the setting that isn't focused on to the point of being the one hundred percent focus of it all. It's great if you set your story in a fantasy dictatorship where the protagonist does questionable things to avoid the secret police, or else a rampaging group of barbarians routinely kill people, but that's kind of disconnected.

Only because you want it to be. You make a mistake of focusing too much on the setting and not on the characters. If the characters are potrayed in beliveable way and you can relate to them, you need nothing else and you can have strangest setting possible, and still understand what they're going through and feel for them.


I mean I feel like I can relate to the dark things in Harry Potter, simply because if you remove the magic and look at the enemies, they are: A jaded teacher forced to protect a living reminder of everything he never had, a snooping reporter with no sense of privacy, a politician who slowly goes from unsure and careful to brash and willfully ignorant, and the big one being a bunch of people who are excessively violent due to hatred and fear of the future of their place in the world.

Well, if you remove magic from bad guys from Berserk or Black Company, you'll get bunch of pretty realistic and deep characters too. Or from a lot of books or comics or cartoons for that matter. It's nothing original or special really, it's jsut good writing.


While you may have better experience with "dark" stories, most of the stuff that's dark about them is completely disconnected from modern day life. I can't really empathize with so many protagonists in "dark" stories because most of what's dark about them is so rooted in outdated custom or completely fantastic, or on things so far out of my field of experience, that I can't relate to it.

Mostly because you cannot see through the fist layer. You stop at "this isn't our world" and don't go deeper, to see that even if it's not, things like that still happens or were happening, or still happen but are slighty different. Scenery doesn't have to be realistic to understand what characters go through.


If Harry has something bad happen to him, it will be HORRIBLE, but it'll also have consequences I can understand. I mean Harry may have to go through a magical tournament where he fights dragons and breathes underwater, but in doing it he slacks off on his studies, gets accused of stealing from a teacher, has to deal with jerky people harassing him, and people invading his privacy. This is an event where people DIE and he goes through lots of pain, but it's presented in terms Rowling knows I can probably claim to have gone through in some form or another.

So? I can understand bad things that Murgen from "Grim Seasons" has to go through pretty easily, despite never being in any form of military, because I know that thigs he went through were really happening in similiar manner in the history and his soul is damaged in the same way most of modern veterans' are. People are constructed this way that they can relate to bad things happening to people who aren't their peers and are not living in the ame einvorment. It's one of the most basic lessons any writer must understand and many never get (considering all wank on "amazing youth" in anime and Holywood and many novels). And compared to things that happens to people like Murgen, Harry's troubles are cakewalk.

[Jayngfet]

Irrevelant, considering we're trying to focus on good dark fantasy here. Every genre and subgenre ha their black sheeps, they're not worth taking about.

In which case I'm going to need to hunt down some of these good ones, because every "dark" book I've read has come off as being one dimensional, including the ones everyone seems to adore. I've read a different list and I'll hunt down more when I have the time but the point stand. One dimensional isn't *bad* per se, but it does get a bit old unless someone has a REALLY creative spin on it.




Only because you want it to be. You make a mistake of focusing too much on the setting and not on the characters. If the characters are potrayed in beliveable way and you can relate to them, you need nothing else and you can have strangest setting possible, and still understand what they're going through and feel for them.


I've dealt with a lot of characters and settings and really you can't just have one or the other here. Yeah, you can have decent characters in a particularly weird, out there setting. You can make it an enjoyable story even if you have a whole lot of skill. However if you have believable characters operating in a world where too much is fantastic, the relationships implicitly become strained. The setting grounds the characters and acts as both the canvas you paint interactions onto and the thing you frame it with. If you change it around too much it'll strain the characters. You don't need to copypaste real life, but throwing the audience a parallel will make things much more easy to work with.

To make an example from a co-written book, take a look at Havemercy. It's mostly split into two different plots regarding dragonriders and wizards. I can get the dragonriders since they're portrayed as being like fighter pilots, and as being the kind of guy that knows they're too valuable to face real consequences for their actions and as such get away with doing TERRIBLE things on a regular basis. The wizards ...not so much. They're wizards and that's really it. They don't do anything I can recognise as being akin to anything I've seen or heard of so I had trouble getting what I was intended to feel. Sure, the individual wizard might have felt things I could relate to, BETTER than the dragon guys in fact, but the fact is the setting was so confused as to what a wizard WAS that it kept poking into everything he did and took me out of the story every other paragraph.



Mostly because you cannot see through the fist layer. You stop at "this isn't our world" and don't go deeper, to see that even if it's not, things like that still happens or were happening, or still happen but are slighty different. Scenery doesn't have to be realistic to understand what characters go through.


Harry Potter isn't exactly our world either, and neither are most of it's upper level imitators or the competition it had in it's demographics. The thing is though, that even though I've never had to turn buttons to beetles or make things levitate with my brain, it's presented in a way that I can understand and relate to. I mean nobody will ever, realistically, need to fight a dragon with a magic wand and flying broomstick. However, the buildup is presented in a way that's easy to digest and something I don't need to step back and ponder too much about so much as just keep going with the story.



So? I can understand bad things that Murgen from "Grim Seasons" has to go through pretty easily, despite never being in any form of military, because I know that thigs he went through were really happening in similiar manner in the history and his soul is damaged in the same way most of modern veterans' are. People are constructed this way that they can relate to bad things happening to people who aren't their peers and are not living in the ame einvorment. It's one of the most basic lessons any writer must understand and many never get (considering all wank on "amazing youth" in anime and Holywood and many novels). And compared to things that happens to people like Murgen, Harry's troubles are cakewalk.

No experience with that one character or series, but the problem is it's just one character of the sort that tends to, from the description I'm hearing, pop up with a fair bit of regularity and often do fall flat, because people have more experience with Harry's troubles than the troubles of a military vet in a historical fantasy setting. You might know a bit more and if the author is as good as you're implying it won't be an issue. However that same archtype has probably fallen flat more than a good number of others.

Also, you're probably gonna want to clean up and spell check your posts if you want to keep replying. Your grammar and syntax is atrocious and I'm seeing so many red lines from this text box it's hard to read some paragraphs.

[Avilan the Grey]

No, he did not. He demonstrated it and talked about it, but did not tell them how to do it. Claiming he did is ignoring what actually happened in the book..

And of course he wasn't there at all. :smallbiggrin:

[Obnoxious Hydra]

I'm just going to quickly point out that it is never said that the Avada Kedavra alone splits the soul; killing in general does. Dumbledore simply says that "killing splits the soul", not "the killing curse splits the soul".



Anyway, I'm a fan of the Harry Potter series. It's got good ideas and a fairly good plot, but there's a massive bunch of plot holes that have really annoyed me. Well, some aren't plot holes, but just massive lapses in logic in the Harry Potter world or on J.K. Rowling's behalf.

Harry Potter doesn't know what child abuse is
The Dursleys have forced Harry to live in a cupboard, lock him in there for days, weeks, maybe months at a time, and he has never reported this to the police. They have also locked him in a room with bars over the window (which, disturbingly, a man was willing to put on the windows when he could probably clearly see a child in the room), and simply been abusive parents to him.
So, it seems that Harry is completely unaware of what child abuse is, as he ahs never told the police about his inadequate life. Furthermore, Hogwarts was aware of Harry's dwelling under the stairs, and didn't do anything about it.

Harry Potter is widely hated
In the first three or four books, before Death Eaters come back into power, Harry Potter never seems to have a cult following at school despite the fact he defeated Voldemort when he was a baby. Of course, celebreties in the real world have a fair share of haters, but for some reason everyone at Hogwarts either hates or is neutral to Harry other than his small group of friends. Sure, he has messed up lots of times, but so have celebreties in real life and they still have stupidly large fan followings. Collin Crevey (however you spell his name), the one person who's actually a fan of Harry is regarded as a freak for asking for autographs.

Messed up Defence against the Dark Arts lessons
Seriously, for a position that loses it's teachers so regularly, Dumbledore pays very little attention to what's being taught in DatDA. Quirrel and Moody both have a fairly regular lesson plan (though Moody's is a little extreme), but then the other four teachers are little odd.
Lockhart's schedule consists of a single lesson where he exposes the class to a group of dangerous magical creatures (who quite likely injure several students and costs everyone quite a lot in damaged equipment), and from then on readings from his books, and Dumbledore never speaks up about it despite Lockhart's obvious incompetence.
Lupin is another sane teacher, but his lessons consist of nothing but teaching students how to fight creatures, instead of defending themselves against actual Dark Arts like spells and curses. I really doubt that a wizard will need to defend themselves against a tiny little water goblin thing, instead of one of the three unforgiveable curses.
Finally, from what we know Snape has a fairly regular lesson plan, but he glorifies the Dark Arts in his lessons and puts up explicit gory images all over his class room, and Dumbledore never says anything.

Hogwarts is a horribly dangerous place
Right next to the school there's a massive lake full of horribly dangerous grindelows, a giant squid and barbaric merpeople aswell as a massive forest full of barbaric centuars, giant spiders and apparently several other creatures like trolls and werewolves. And, there is nothing stopping the students from going into either of these places other than logic; not even a fence or something. While it's quite unlikely that students would go into either willingly, it's been shown that students are forced to go into the forest as a punishment for little more than staying up late, and is there anything stopping a bully from throwing a younger student into the lake?
Ontop of this, there's several hidden and dangerous rooms/areas inside the school itself. Obviously, the Chamber of Secrets. Seriously. Apparently it's never been found, but the only reason for that is probably because the teachers are stupidly incompotent. The entrance to the Chamber of Secrets is hidden behind a single sink in the very bathroom were someone was killed by the basilisk. So, this is either an extremely powerful and magical sink, or someone didn't bother using secret revealing magic (which I swear has been mentioned/used several times) in the bathroom.
Then, there's also the openly hostile poltergeist who doesn't aim to kill but does do things that could result in serious injury, the giant bludgeoning tree with no fence around it and the giant three headed dog protected by a locked door which can be opened by an eleven year old.

How did the basilisk attack people?
Yes, Rowling, you're very clever having the Basilisk get around the castle though the wall pipes, but how does it attack anyone when it's inside the walls? How does it get out of the walls? It's obviously to big to get out of a toilet, so unless it's smashing the walls to attack people I don't see how it's doing anything.

Why not just get the Ministry of Magic to help with the Chamber of Secrets ordeal?
The ministry has a Regulation and Control of Magical Creatures department and several highly trained aurors, but they don't think of sending them to the only magic school in the country to take down a monster. They do however, send the Minister of Magic himself to the school to arrest two people and send them to jail without a trial.

Why didn't the Hogwarts staff just send the petrified students to St. Mungoes?
Seriously. They keep a group of magically petrified students at the school medical ward for the best part of the year while they wait for a teacher to whip up some potion, all the while being aware of the threat that someone could come and finish off the students, instead of sending the students to the hospital, where it is highly likely that they have some of the potion in reserve just incase something exactly like this happens.

The anti-Voldemort army is stupidly small
The anti-Voldemort army consists of a few school children, a group of Dumbledore followers, and a single department of law enforcement. Why does the british Ministry of Magic not have an army? Why didn't any other countries help them fight a wizard who had the potential to take down the entire world?

[Avilan the Grey]

Stuff

Two points:

Re: child abuse. This is a very VERY common plot element in English kids stories. See my post about the horsy stories my sister used to read. At least 80% of them had the girl locked up in the attick / forced to sleep in the barn by her evil step parents or evil headmaster halfway through the story before her parent(s) she thought was killed comes back to save her.

Re: Basilisk. I think that is a movie problem. Both in the movie and the book Myrtle says the basilisk came through the toilet. The problem is that in the movie they decided to after that fact had been given to the audience make it 20 times larger for some reason.

[Aotrs Commander]

Re: child abuse. This is a very VERY common plot element in English kids stories. See my post about the horsy stories my sister used to read. At least 80% of them had the girl locked up in the attick / forced to sleep in the barn by her evil step parents or evil headmaster halfway through the story before her parent(s) she thought was killed comes back to save her.

And beyond that, abuse(by a parent/guardian figure) is a core staple of many fairy-tales (e.g. Snow White, Cinderella, Rapunzel etc etc), and subsequently a lot of stories. Enid Blyton - a staple of mine when I was younger - had more than few wicked step-parents - as does say a lot of Roahl Dahl's works; heck, even, arguably, as far back as something like Oliver Twist.

So Harry's treatment at the hands of the Dursleys should be looked at, really, as in the same light as the Wicked Stepmother in Cinderella - because that's basically what it IS. (Actually, now I come to think of it, one could draw a couple of paralellels with Cinderella...!) It's sort of a genera conceit - not unlike the largely "adults are stupid" thing.

I, for one, were I to take Arthur Weasely at face value, you find him a rather disturbing character, given his attitudes towards muggles. He is admiring of them, yes, but in a "oh how, do the poor beknighted dears manage it, aren't they clever?" sort of way. He, unknowingly - because I think he is a basically decent fellow - is being all kinds of patronising and supremacist - and it never occurs to him that this is wrong. He'd probably be horrified if you sat down and told him that's how he was coming across, but the point remains.

[Man on Fire]

In which case I'm going to need to hunt down some of these good ones, because every "dark" book I've read has come off as being one dimensional, including the ones everyone seems to adore. I've read a different list and I'll hunt down more when I have the time but the point stand. One dimensional isn't *bad* per se, but it does get a bit old unless someone has a REALLY creative spin on it.

Well, with your approach, and you do seems to be just biased or outright ignoring the characters (like in case of A Song Of Ice And Fire - Ceresi doesn't really fit black and white dichotomy you try to assign to the series, neither do Tyrion, Danerys (because she is a vilian), Khal Drogo, even Jamie) that are different from your assumptions, then good luck with that.


I've dealt with a lot of characters and settings and really you can't just have one or the other here.

Sure you can, it's the characters that make the story good. If they act logically and in a way people can belive, then your setting may be about anything. As much as I hate (and I mean HATE) My little Pony, it did this, and it's setting is a world of inteligent magic horses.


Yeah, you can have decent characters in a particularly weird, out there setting. You can make it an enjoyable story even if you have a whole lot of skill. However if you have believable characters operating in a world where too much is fantastic, the relationships implicitly become strained.The setting grounds the characters and acts as both the canvas you paint interactions onto and the thing you frame it with. If you change it around too much it'll strain the characters.

Do you want me to start analyzing characters from really fantastic settings and prove that you can still understand what they feel despite what worlds they are from? How about I start with Gurren Lagann? In my opinion, it has very beliveable and interesting characters, despite having one of the most unrealistic settings ever.


You don't need to copypaste real life, but throwing the audience a parallel will make things much more easy to work with.

And that's a lie that so many people belive and pollute the worlds of fiction with unnecessairly making all characters teenagers in high school so everybody can relate to them. I'm tired of this stupidity. I want more adults and old guys saving the world, I wanted that since I was six. And almost nobody wants to give it to me.


To make an example from a co-written book, take a look at Havemercy. It's mostly split into two different plots regarding dragonriders and wizards. I can get the dragonriders since they're portrayed as being like fighter pilots, and as being the kind of guy that knows they're too valuable to face real consequences for their actions and as such get away with doing TERRIBLE things on a regular basis. The wizards ...not so much. They're wizards and that's really it. They don't do anything I can recognise as being akin to anything I've seen or heard of so I had trouble getting what I was intended to feel. Sure, the individual wizard might have felt things I could relate to, BETTER than the dragon guys in fact, but the fact is the setting was so confused as to what a wizard WAS that it kept poking into everything he did and took me out of the story every other paragraph.

That's not the problem we were discussing at all. That's the problem with bad writing and making character who aren't acting like people.

In fact, it only supports my argument - you could relate to dragon riders despite that they were...well, riding dragons and that they were potrayed as equivalent of group (I assume) you are not part of (no, it doesn't count if you're interested in military or anything like that, not by reasoning you presented to us so far). Wizards doesn't act like people in their situation and so you cannot relate to them.


Harry Potter isn't exactly our world either, and neither are most of it's upper level imitators or the competition it had in it's demographics. The thing is though, that even though I've never had to turn buttons to beetles or make things levitate with my brain, it's presented in a way that I can understand and relate to. I mean nobody will ever, realistically, need to fight a dragon with a magic wand and flying broomstick. However, the buildup is presented in a way that's easy to digest and something I don't need to step back and ponder too much about so much as just keep going with the story.

Every good book in existence does that. It's not something Harry Potter invented. And many books does it much better than HP.


No experience with that one character or series, but the problem is it's just one character of the sort that tends to, from the description I'm hearing, pop up with a fair bit of regularity and often do fall flat, because people have more experience with Harry's troubles than the troubles of a military vet in a historical fantasy setting. You might know a bit more and if the author is as good as you're implying it won't be an issue. However that same archtype has probably fallen flat more than a good number of others.

If people too stupid then it's not character's fault and certainly not Glen Cook's either. Sure, Black Company was the most popular among soldiers fighting in Iraq, but it has large fandom outside that, lets call it, "target demographic", fandom who never been on war and certainly never been trapped in besieged town, but still can understand and relate what Murgen went through. If what you said would be reality, people wouldn't like the series because they wouldn't be able to relate to him.


Also, you're probably gonna want to clean up and spell check your posts if you want to keep replying. Your grammar and syntax is atrocious and I'm seeing so many red lines from this text box it's hard to read some paragraphs.

Sorry, my bad. I keep remining myself of doing spell checks but, every time I get worked up, I just forget about it.

[Philistine]

No, he did not. He demonstrated it and talked about it, but did not tell them how to do it. Claiming he did is ignoring what actually happened in the book.

It's made very clear that this was a very rare occurrence. Though once again, this was not taught at Hogwarts.

So no. Mind control and time travel, not taught at Hogwarts.
He demonstrated it and talked about it; then in Book 7, without having seen it cast again in the interim, Harry was able to use it to break into Gringott's. If not from Crouch-as-Moody, where did he learn to cast Imperio? (Hint: not from his own independent reading, because studying was never Harry's thing. And not from exposure to the general Wizarding world away from Hogwarts, because it's a series-long plot point that Harry has very, very little of that.)

And rare or not, they put time-travel in the hands of a thirteen-year-old student and taught her how to use it. At Hogwarts.

[Emmerask]

Well he saw Voldemort use unforgivable curses (though I don´t think this particular spell) in his mind + experienced all the emotions that power such spells.

So it very well could be that this experience gave him the power to use it.

[Tiki Snakes]

Two points:

Re: child abuse. This is a very VERY common plot element in English kids stories. See my post about the horsy stories my sister used to read. At least 80% of them had the girl locked up in the attick / forced to sleep in the barn by her evil step parents or evil headmaster halfway through the story before her parent(s) she thought was killed comes back to save her.


And beyond that, abuse(by a parent/guardian figure) is a core staple of many fairy-tales (e.g. Snow White, Cinderella, Rapunzel etc etc), and subsequently a lot of stories. Enid Blyton - a staple of mine when I was younger - had more than few wicked step-parents - as does say a lot of Roahl Dahl's works; heck, even, arguably, as far back as something like Oliver Twist.

So Harry's treatment at the hands of the Dursleys should be looked at, really, as in the same light as the Wicked Stepmother in Cinderella - because that's basically what it IS. (Actually, now I come to think of it, one could draw a couple of paralellels with Cinderella...!) It's sort of a genera conceit - not unlike the largely "adults are stupid" thing.

This is true, and it is pretty much just a genre conceit. However, it's worth pointing out that Cinderella didn't have the option of Calling Childline or having a neighbor call social services, whereas in the 90's, when the books are set, Esther Rantzan had already and to much publicity set up just such a thing.

This kind of era-based-difference does make it trickier to believe at times.

[Traab]

This is true, and it is pretty much just a genre conceit. However, it's worth pointing out that Cinderella didn't have the option of Calling Childline or having a neighbor call social services, whereas in the 90's, when the books are set, Esther Rantzan had already and to much publicity set up just such a thing.

This kind of era-based-difference does make it trickier to believe at times.

What about stories like Matilda? The headmistress of her school will pick you up by your hair, twirl around and toss you like a hammer throw 100 feet away because she finds you annoying. Or when she accuses a kid of theft of her special cake, she doesnt give him detention, suspension, call the cops, whatever, she sits him down in front of the whole school, forces him to eat 10 pounds of chocolate cake, and when he pulls it off, she bashes him over the head with the lead crystal serving plate in front of hundreds of other children! It may not be set in 2012, but its still fairly modern 1900s considering her dad is a crooked used car salesman. Im pretty sure there are child protection services or the freaking police, that can be called.

[Fragenstein]

And beyond that, abuse(by a parent/guardian figure) is a core staple of many fairy-tales (e.g. Snow White, Cinderella, Rapunzel etc etc), and subsequently a lot of stories. Enid Blyton - a staple of mine when I was younger - had more than few wicked step-parents - as does say a lot of Roahl Dahl's works; heck, even, arguably, as far back as something like Oliver Twist.

That's only part of the formula that nearly all of the great ones follow...

Take a child (preferably an orphan), and put them into an oppressive environment. The orphan angle is particularly important because pulp heroes are always robbed of their personal authority by giving them figures they rightfully have to answer to, and the main characters of these books are basically watered-down pulp heroes.

The oppressive environment can come in the form of direct abuse, poverty, or even a cranky old spinster who wants to get rid of their dog. There needs to be some dire element of their existence that drives the need for escape.

Give them an avenue of escape into a magical world. Sometimes this can be a more mundane element such as the gang of pickpockets in Oliver Twist, or it can be an entirely new universe of enchantment such as Oz or Narnia. It just has to be someplace new that excites the reader and allows the character to experience things not of the common child's world.

Make them a complete newcomer to this world, while you're at it. They can't be allowed to know anything about it beforehand because they're discovering it at the same time as the reader. Things are explained to the protagonist in ways that also enlighten us as we read them.

Pose a threat to that universe which the natives are unable to fight as that threat has been tailored to work against them. It plays on their fears or it holds something dear to them hostage or it just exploits some alien vulnerability that the natives can't overcome.

Make sure that the protagonist, simply by coming from outside of their world, either holds the key to their salvation or is capable of thinking around their blind spots and bring a solution.

It's all very common and makes for gripping stories. I'm sure there are more elements to be found, but that's all I've really identified as the bare minimums.

[Lord Seth]

Honestly, the whole "not reporting child abuse" isn't any kind of plot hole, because it happens in real life. I remember reading in a book about this one girl who was sexually molested by her father for years before taking action, and that "taking action" was to kill the guy rather than report it (this was a real life account). People can very easily take a lot of abuse at home without ever reporting it. And offhand, I can't remember any times the Dursleys were physically abusive to Harry.

[Fragenstein]

And offhand, I can't remember any times the Dursleys were physically abusive to Harry.

Dudley and his gang frequently bullied Harry physically, particularly after Dudley got into boxing. The Dursleys always found this amusing and claimed Harry deserved it.

Further, they deprived him of basic comforts and nutrition. They kept him confined to a relatively unfurnished, spider infested cubbyhole.

That's pretty abusive.

[Weezer]

Time travel magic was not taught. The use of a specialized device was taught in an exceptionally rare situation. The unforgivable curses weren't taught by hogwarts, but by a murderous psychopath who clearly stated that he was going against what the hogwarts professors wanted him to teach.

So wanting to overload on classes is 'exceptionally rare now'? I think not. Giving someone (and not just someone, a 13 year old) a time travel device to take more classes is just ridiculous.

[Tiki Snakes]

What about stories like Matilda? The headmistress of her school will pick you up by your hair, twirl around and toss you like a hammer throw 100 feet away because she finds you annoying. Or when she accuses a kid of theft of her special cake, she doesnt give him detention, suspension, call the cops, whatever, she sits him down in front of the whole school, forces him to eat 10 pounds of chocolate cake, and when he pulls it off, she bashes him over the head with the lead crystal serving plate in front of hundreds of other children! It may not be set in 2012, but its still fairly modern 1900s considering her dad is a crooked used car salesman. Im pretty sure there are child protection services or the freaking police, that can be called.

Sure, though the grotesque and horrific nature of adults is far more of a major theme in Roald Dahl's work, in general.

[Aotrs Commander]

Sure, though the grotesque and horrific nature of adults is far more of a major theme in Roald Dahl's work, in general.

Because - like the Brothers Grimm! - he well understood that children love that sort of non-explicit nastiness. The over-the-top charatured nature of it is something they can easily grasp, as if you talk long with children - especially younger children - that's exactly the sort of thing they make up themselves. Which is sorta fascinating.

And, at the very start, HP was primarily a children's story, so had some elements of that.

[Lord Seth]

That's pretty abusive.Enh, my overall point still stands.

[The Troubadour]

The first 4 or so are excellent fantasy novels aimed at a young audience, far better than the average book aimed at that age group. However as the series goes on and Rowling tried to age it up the flaws become more and more evident. The kind of fridge logic that works in a largely non-serious kids novel doesn't work when you try to be mature and dark and Rowling failed at making the characters age believably, the early characterizations were about right for book 11 year olds, but later not so much.

I'm entirely in agreement with this.

[Zale]

~Barely even relevant~


http://superpower-list-forum.2863604.n2.nabble.com/file/n7583039/523943_463512140333320_1564652766_n.jpg

~Off-Topic Poster is out~

[Tyndmyr]

I invite you to actually discuss plot holes as opposed to things which simply anger you because they might involve inferring things from the text.

Seriously, nothing wrong with calling out the fuzzy spots and where things are patched over pretty poorly. But do actually try to aim at those spots as opposed to the undamaged portions.

Here's a nice, easy one. Voldemort is supposed to be this great threat, yes? However, he's dumb. Dumb masterminds sort of make poor threats. Smart masterminds adapt to changing circumstances, and make use of many different things.

Voldemort, he found AK, and used the hell out of it. After the first time you try to kill someone with it...and it fails...freaking KILLING YOU....you'd think you'd remember to use something different next time.

But hey...it does work on most folks...it's an aright spell. So perhaps we can forgive him for making the same decision a second time.

Only...that failed too.

So then, for a THIRD attempt to kill harry...oh, right. Same spell. What were you seriously expecting to happen?

[Emmerask]

Isn´t there a saying that the best sign of insanity is to try the same thing over and over again and expect different results?

Well Voldi is pretty darn insane :smallbiggrin:

[Tyndmyr]

Well, with your approach, and you do seems to be just biased or outright ignoring the characters (like in case of A Song Of Ice And Fire - Ceresi doesn't really fit black and white dichotomy you try to assign to the series, neither do Tyrion, Danerys (because she is a vilian), Khal Drogo, even Jamie) that are different from your assumptions, then good luck with that.

Er, Cersei is pretty obviously villainous, by any standards. Book, screen, doesn't matter. Additional backstory only reveals that she's always been this way. Now, I think this is a fairly good tale, but cersei is pretty obvious on where she falls on the villain-o-meter, and she always has been.

Dany is not a villain, and I'm not really sure how you got that from her. She's young, she makes mistakes, but villain really isn't her deal.

Drogo? Not a complex char in the slightest. He is a very typical barbarian warlord. We never see his PoV, and he barely says anything, ever. He's really more of a set piece for Dany than an actual character in his own right.

[Man on Fire]

Er, Cersei is pretty obviously villainous, by any standards. Book, screen, doesn't matter. Additional backstory only reveals that she's always been this way. Now, I think this is a fairly good tale, but cersei is pretty obvious on where she falls on the villain-o-meter, and she always has been.

She is outright vilian, sure, but she gets humanizing moments. I don't know about you, but I felt for her when she was talking about her relationship with Robert and how he basically never gave her a chance. It makes her more complex, and that's what the argument is about.


Dany is not a villain, and I'm not really sure how you got that from her. She's young, she makes mistakes, but villain really isn't her deal.

She is going to invade Westeros with her dragons and kill everybody else, she's vilian protagonist, but still vilian.


Drogo? Not a complex char in the slightest. He is a very typical barbarian warlord. We never see his PoV, and he barely says anything, ever. He's really more of a set piece for Dany than an actual character in his own right.

He wanted to invade only after an attempt to kill Dannerys, cared about her and her baby, aside from his face he showed the world he had more delicate side he reveals later. He is pretty complex character.

[Tyndmyr]

She is outright vilian, sure, but she gets humanizing moments. I don't know about you, but I felt for her when she was talking about her relationship with Robert and how he basically never gave her a chance. It makes her more complex, and that's what the argument is about.

She says a lot of things. Including a lot of cruel things about robert, and everyone else she dislikes. Robert is hardly perfect, but he's not really that bad of a guy. There's not much complexity to tease out of her here.

She doesn't like Robert, she never liked robert. She wants power, she's always wanted power, and been willing to be cruel to get it. She is not complex at all.


She is going to invade Westeros with her dragons and kill everybody else, she's vilian protagonist, but still vilian.

From this, I assume you have not read the books, and/or have missed the subtext in the movies. I would encourage you to read the books. At a very basic hint for where we're going that you should see even in the show, think a bit about the enemy that is shown literally from the beginning. The real enemy, and the words of house stark. Think about how you kill them.


He wanted to invade only after an attempt to kill Dannerys, cared about her and her baby, aside from his face he showed the world he had more delicate side he reveals later. He is pretty complex character.

He cares about his woman and his baby, likes looting and plundering, does not take insults and offense well...the guy's a walking stereotype of barbarian life. He barely even talks.

He's a useful element, but he is not a complex element. In fact, much of the complexity in GoT comes not from within characters, but from how chars relate to each other. Tyrion, I'll give you as a complex char. Most are not, and have relatively simple desires. They simply live in a system wherein their goals are at odds.

[Gwyn chan 'r Gwyll]

She is going to invade Westeros with her dragons and kill everybody else, she's vilian protagonist, but still vilian.



Kill everybody else? I suppose she wants to kill the Usurper and those who were instrumental in his rise, but she's very conscience-driven, and I'm pretty certain she got VERY uncomfortable at times with the idea of unleashing the horde against her country.

I don't see her as a villain-character at all. She's a protagonist who's aims are at odds with other protagonists. Other characters started out purely as villains and then changed, but she's basically been a pure protagonist the entire time, as I read it. Wanting to reconquer her birthright does not a villian make.

[Man on Fire]

She says a lot of things. Including a lot of cruel things about robert, and everyone else she dislikes. Robert is hardly perfect, but he's not really that bad of a guy. There's not much complexity to tease out of her here.

She doesn't like Robert, she never liked robert. She wants power, she's always wanted power, and been willing to be cruel to get it. She is not complex at all.

In that case we have to call on alternative character interpretation, because from that it seems anyone can get whatever they want from her. Which pretty much makes her complex.


From this, I assume you have not read the books, and/or have missed the subtext in the movies. I would encourage you to read the books. At a very basic hint for where we're going that you should see even in the show, think a bit about the enemy that is shown literally from the beginning. The real enemy, and the words of house stark. Think about how you kill them.

Oh I know it. And you know it. She doesn't. She wants to go there and invade, she doesn't know her dragons will be used against those guys.


He cares about his woman and his baby, likes looting and plundering, does not take insults and offense well...the guy's a walking stereotype of barbarian life. He barely even talks.

But in this he is still pretty complex for a barbarian in that.


In fact, much of the complexity in GoT comes not from within characters, but from how chars relate to each other. Tyrion, I'll give you as a complex char. Most are not, and have relatively simple desires. They simply live in a system wherein their goals are at odds.

Like people in normal life.

[Tyndmyr]

In that case we have to call on alternative character interpretation, because from that it seems anyone can get whatever they want from her. Which pretty much makes her complex.

No...disagreement does not make her inherently complex.

Complexity comes from growth. From having a varied set of motivations, and from choosing which to pursue, and things of that nature. Tyrion has depth because he has to choose between what he's pursuing all the time.

Cersei has none of this. She wants power, for herself and her children. She's literally willing to do anything to gain this. Strictly one dimensional.


Oh I know it. And you know it. She doesn't. She wants to go there and invade, she doesn't know her dragons will be used against those guys.

She is wanting to do good, though. Help people. Stop rapes, free slaves. Oh, sure, she believes her family is the rightful rulers...but this isn't a crazy belief, and wanting to rule is not inherently evil. She's always at least trying to make things better. Not a villain.


But in this he is still pretty complex for a barbarian in that.

In liking battle and his woman and barely talking? HOW is he complex in that?

Note that "not complex" need not be a strike against the work itself. In this case, Drogo doesn't need to be complex. He works in the story just fine as he is. But he's not complex at all. Neither is, say, Hodor.

[Dienekes]

I'm with Trynmyr on this one. Cersei isn't really all that complex, human, she's definitely human but doesn't really register as a real complex character. Jaime is complex. Drogo is not complex, at all really.

The basic rules of humans, you like some people, you dislike others. You like a person you treat them better, you dislike them you treat them worse. Drogo loved his wife, and was willing to butcher just about everyone else. That makes him a pretty generic character, not all that complex really.

Now GRRM actually can create fairly complex characters: Tywin, Varys, Sandor, Littlefinger are all pretty complex and varying degrees of villainous. But complex and humanized are two different things.

[Man on Fire]

For me being humanized character is pretty much the* basic requirement for being complex character, character development isn't necessary for it. But if you want to argue that Ceresi isn't complex, only humanized, then the same can be said about Voldemort and all HP vilians you that have been bough up as complex in this thread.

And compared to barbarians from about everywhere else Drgo is pretty complex, most of those guys don't care about anything but killing and ale.


* no, it's not a mistake, "the basic requirement", not "a basic requirement".

[Dienekes]

For me being humanized character is pretty much the* basic requirement for being complex character, character development isn't necessary for it. But if you want to argue that Ceresi isn't complex, only humanized, then the same can be said about Voldemort and all HP vilians you that have been bough up as complex in this thread.

And compared to barbarians from about everywhere else Drgo is pretty complex, most of those guys don't care about anything but killing and ale.


* no, it's not a mistake, "the basic requirement", not "a basic requirement".

I would disagree, humanizing does not make complexion. It is a prerequisite, definitely but not the only one. Dynamic motivations, external, and definitely inner tensions, are also required. Cersei has 1 motivation, and some external tensions but internally she's largely consistent. Drogo has one major motivation, and I don't think any internal or external tensions. This does not make him a bad character, simple does not mean bad more than complex means good.

I don't think I ever called a Potter villain complex. Voldy is magic-Hitler with a sob story background. Bellatrix is a generic loony. Dementors don't seem to have much in the way of motivation.

Snape is complex. Draco maybe complex. Umbridge is on the verge of being a complex villain but I don't think ever quite made it. I might need to reread her main book to be sure.

Oh and to answer the main question of why I like Harry Potter? It gave me this (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wmwM_AKeMCk&list=PLC76BE906C9D83A3A&index=1&feature=plpp_video) and this (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OepW-AG-Ris&list=PL86C718AEE71C9DE9&index=1&feature=plpp_video). Therefore all other sins are forgiven.

[Gnoman]

Here's a nice, easy one. Voldemort is supposed to be this great threat, yes? However, he's dumb. Dumb masterminds sort of make poor threats. Smart masterminds adapt to changing circumstances, and make use of many different things.

Voldemort, he found AK, and used the hell out of it. After the first time you try to kill someone with it...and it fails...freaking KILLING YOU....you'd think you'd remember to use something different next time.

But hey...it does work on most folks...it's an aright spell. So perhaps we can forgive him for making the same decision a second time.

Only...that failed too.

So then, for a THIRD attempt to kill harry...oh, right. Same spell. What were you seriously expecting to happen?

Voldy gets far dumber throughout the series, which seems, to me, a consequence of his deteriorating humanity rather than a writing flaw. He doesn't really fall into Stupid Evil territory until the latter half of the last book, after much of his soul has been destroyed. Consider his plans:

Book 1: Latch on to the most pathetic-seeming teacher in the school to gain access to an extremely powerful magical artifact that will restore his power. This nearly worked twice. The stone was secured mere hours before he succeeded in gaining acess to the vault, while only a stupidly brave child kept him from managing to get the stone from the mirror. (Absent Harry's intervention, he would have had all the time in the world to crack the puzzle.)

Book 2: Does not appear. Soul form is almost successful in draining the life from a person while coming closer to killing Harry than any other point in the series.

Book 3: does not appear at all.

Book 4: Through use of a proxy, manages to infiltrate Hogwarts and rig a competition to decoy his enemy into a trap, allowing himself to be ressurected, and immune to the effect that prevented killing him the first time. Lily's protaection was broken, and Harry would have had no protection had he not showed suicidal levels of bravery by meeting the attack head-on.

Book 5: Uses a mental connection in an incredibly subtle attempt to retrieve the prophecy that he believes will point the way to victoy. Later manages to decoy Harry to what would have been his death, were it not for the intervention of Snape. (Snape clued the order into what was going on.) In the meantime, he restores his army.

Book 6: With open warfare now the order of the day, he shatters the ministry and kills many, many of his enemies. Further, his assassination plot succeeded. Even without Snape, someone on that tower would have killed Dumbledore.

Book seven: Complete and utter victory. Were it not for his obsession with gaining the power to beat Harry, he would have ruled effectively forever.

[Nekura]

Honestly, the whole "not reporting child abuse" isn't any kind of plot hole, because it happens in real life. I remember reading in a book about this one girl who was sexually molested by her father for years before taking action, and that "taking action" was to kill the guy rather than report it (this was a real life account). People can very easily take a lot of abuse at home without ever reporting it. And offhand, I can't remember any times the Dursleys were physically abusive to Harry.

You are right an abused child not having the courage to report it is not odd and unfortunately happens often in real life. As to Harry being physically abused Dudley is the worst but the adults are aware of it. After Dudley takes boxing lessons don’t the make Harry who is at a drastically lower weight class and with no training fight him repeatedly? Then his aunt hitting him with a frying pan, having a dog set on him and his uncle hitting him with a fire poker although that last one might have been from a fan fiction. No the odd and disturbing thing about the abuse in the book is how many people know about it but don’t do anything. The Weasley’s rescued him from bared windows but see nothing wrong with him going back year after year. Dumbledore confessed to knowing about the abuse even knowing that it would likely happen before he placed him with them as a baby. Ms Figg the squib Dumbledore set up to spy on Harry’s childhood knew, I guess knowing Harry was being mistreated wasn’t enough Dumbledore wanted to be informed of all the gory details.

As for plot holes well

You have Dumbledore’s questionable actions when the Potters are killed. Even if you give him the benefit of the doubt that he didn’t know who the secret keeper was and the fidelius fell when Voldemort broke through the other wards. When he learned of the attack did he alert aurors? No. Did he send his order? No. Did he himself supposedly the only man Voldemort feared rush off to battle? No. He sent a half giant who was expelled with his wand snapped, had no means of fast travel there or back, should have no idea where the Potters where hiding, and was alone. Even if he thought Sirius was the secret keeper learning he let the defenseless Hagrid leave unmolested with Harry and even gave his bike to get him to safety faster you would think he would push for a trail as head of the wizengamot...Nope. It took what a day or two at most for Hagrid to bring Harry to Dumbledore at the Dursely's. But why, I like a lot of others find it hard to believe that parents that loved him and left him money would ever let there be a possibility he would go there legally. So why was Minerva watching the house? When did Dumbledore put up the blood wards? What about the scar did it form right away or was it just a huge gash on an infants head? Considering children spend days in the hospital wing for relatively minor injuries you would think a baby with a horrible head wound from a curse no one survived before would have extensive tests and treatments to insure its health and safety.

Oh let us not forget the stupidity of Ron being able to imitate parseltongue to get into the chamber of secrets.

Or how a horcrux could survive for years in Harry’s scar when just a touch from Harry melted through Qurriel who was possessed by Voldemort.

Is that enough? I am sure there are many more.

[Logic]

Oh let us not forget the stupidity of Ron being able to imitate parseltongue to get into the chamber of secrets.

If you heard your friends say a phrase in a foreign language, might you be able to repeat it? Perhaps, provided the language in question is not completely magical. Since this point is unclear, I'm willing to handwave it.

[Traab]

Or how a horcrux could survive for years in Harry’s scar when just a touch from Harry melted through Qurriel who was possessed by Voldemort.


This one I have a potential explanation for. The mothers protection wasnt limitless. It expended itself almost completely blocking the killing curse, (evidenced by it leaving a mark instead of being perfectly reflected) This left baby harry vulnerable to the soul fragment. Now, the potential reason the fragment stayed there was because all his mothers protection could do once it lodged itself was to keep it from taking baby harry over. Or do you think a baby has the willpower to hold back voldemorts soul?

[Nekura]

This one I have a potential explanation for. The mothers protection wasnt limitless. It expended itself almost completely blocking the killing curse, (evidenced by it leaving a mark instead of being perfectly reflected) This left baby harry vulnerable to the soul fragment. Now, the potential reason the fragment stayed there was because all his mothers protection could do once it lodged itself was to keep it from taking baby harry over. Or do you think a baby has the willpower to hold back voldemorts soul?

No I don't think a baby would have the willpower. But with the love and the power of his mothers sacrifice it is one heck of a balancing act for Vodlemort's soul to just sit there and not be either expelled or taking Harry over. When he gets older and has more willpower it would tip the scales. Then Vodlemort got a body using Harry's blood which showed at least that portion of his soul was exempt from the protection how is Harry staying at the house with the blood wards a good idea?

[Traab]

No I don't think a baby would have the willpower. But with the love and the power of his mothers sacrifice it is one heck of a balancing act for Vodlemort's soul to just sit there and not be either expelled or taking Harry over. When he gets older and has more willpower it would tip the scales. Then Vodlemort got a body using Harry's blood which showed at least that portion of his soul was exempt from the protection how is Harry staying at the house with the blood wards a good idea?

Yeah its a balancing act, but thats prophecy for you. It makes fate arrange things to work out like that. His mothers protection was enough to keep the soul chunk from taking over, but even that wasnt perfect, as he would still feel pain from his scar when voldemort was near or feeling strong emotions. So it wasnt entirely neutralized, just mostly.

The blood wards thing was stupid beyond belief, even before voldy got his body back. Why? Because even when it "worked" it wasnt perfect. His own family and his cousins friends were more than free to hurt him at will, so clearly it wasnt a blanket protection. And it obviously only worked inside the house at best, because of the dementors that attacked during the summer before his 5th year. So we have protections that only protect while he is indoors, and dont protect against those who want to hurt him, otherwise he wouldnt be bullied as badly as he was.

So, who did the blood wards stop? Voldemort? Big effing deal, in 7th year he just sent an army of death eaters to setup watch over where he KNEW the house was and wait for the chance to kill him. Had he ever left the house, he would have died. Thanks for the protections dumbles. Totally worth 16 years worth of abuse and hate.

[Nekura]

Oh don't get me started on the prophecy he didn't even end up dying by his hand.

[Traab]

Oh don't get me started on the prophecy he didn't even end up dying by his hand.

Meh, harry was mostly dead for a little while. It took a miracle to bring him back. Thank god max dumbledoore was there to tell him what to do.

[TheEmerged]

Late to the post summary:

"HolyCrap! It's a book that kids are reading! We need to encourage this while we have the chance."

"Hey, people are encouraging kids to read this. Maybe there's something more to this than just kid fantasy."

"Hey, some of my adult friends are reading this -- and it's starting to kick up some controversy. Maybe I'd better read this and form my own opinion."

"Hey, this has the kids imagination and seems safe. And I hear they're making movies of it..."

And so on, and so forth. In the mid-late 70's, a corny science fiction pulp movie happened at the right moment when the culture wanted it. Potter is a more recent example of this.

[Anecronwashere]

Dumbledore is one of the only mentors in all of bookdom that requires merely screentime to be Evil.
Seriously, all he has to do is be in a single scene and explain his feelings about the events happening and you can tell which character interpretation is being used (Senile, Greater Good manipulator, Manipulator for himself)

There is no possible way for Dumbles to both get screentime more than a cameo while still maintaining credibility if taken seriously.

Just taking into account a bare minimum:
Dursley: "I knew you would have a bad time there" (not a direct quote as I dont have the book handy)
Sirius: Isn't he Head Judge? The Wizengamont is their judicial system (source: Harry being tried as an adult in 5th before the Wizengamont) so why no trial? He either stood by as Sirius was put in Azkaban (with the Dementors he reputedly hates) without any trial or proof OR he was the one to deny a trial. Seriously even Bellatrix got a trial and she was professing her crimes left and right,
Stone: The protections were a Cerberus, troll, flying challenge, fire-weak plant, chess game and logic puzzle? The only true protection was the Mirror of Erised that wasn't even in position until Christmas!
Basilisk: No portrait was petrified? no portrait saw a 60ft+ Snake running around? What about the legendary wards? What about the blatant hints that a 13yr old girl figured out? Seriously, it's a monster put in place by the Snake-Loving Snake-Speaking Founder that petrifies/kills with yellow eyes (Myrtle was a ghost for 50 years without being questioned about her death?). Dumbledore should have worked that out.

As for the Scar-Horcrux I always assumed it would work like the Diary was trying to do. Insert 1 soul, gain 1 Dark Lord. Up until I was told about it in 6th that was seriously what I thought. The Diary and Harry's Scar were similar but whatever killed Quirrell kicked out the wraith half-formed while not doing anything to the connection
Tom was corporeal before Ginny died (he picked up HP's wand).
Harry was an accidental Horcrux container but before Potter could be drained of his life his mother's protection kicked in and kicked out the half-formed wraith-like Voldemort-Horcrux (with the real Voldy dead)
Thus, if Harry had died (and thus destroyed the container ala the Diary's destruction) before 4th (when the process was completed with an outside ritual) the spirit would have been dead and gone but the other Horcruxs would have lain there dormant until someone found and used them.

Wandlore: Elder wand was the only one with the allegiance-swapping and no-one will tell me otherwise. Wands choose the Wizard/Witch forever until snapped and the Elder Wand is from Death himself and thus goes by different rules (namely: Disarm=Owner).
But Harry is still a moron for becoming a Wizard!Cop when he Knows that even if his Phoenix is hit with an Expelliamus (or even if someone takes his wand from him by brute force) the Elder Wand changes allegiance (Source: Draco lost allegiance by being knocked on his but by Harry and having his normal wand stolen)

[Xondoure]

Voldemort's attacks on Harry are not stupid, or mad, working with the knowledge he had. From what he knew, destroying Harry would make him invincible. So killing him with magic, and it having to be him were both intentional things. First and foremost should he allow one of his minions to accomplish the one thing he could not do he would lose face, secondly people had to believe Voldemort's magic was an ultimate force that could not be stopped by anything for the fear factor to work, and thirdly he thought finishing the boy through magic would fulfill the prophecy in such a way that would make him unstoppable.

Every time he tries to kill Harry something else get's in the way. From love protection to priori incantatem to a piece of his own soul stuck on Harry's forehead. He isn't doing the same thing and expecting different results, he's getting around what stopped him last time and finding himself thwarted by fate, blind luck, and all the cunning of a very devious headmaster of hogwarts.

[Socratov]

It's a combination of an exaggeratedly traumatic relatable backstory for Harry and a growing up with the series.

Everyone remembers bad stuff happening to them, they remember how bad middle school was, even if they can't remember exactly what made it so bad. We empathise with Harry, and the fact that his childhood really WAS that bad makes us feel justified for feeling as negatively as we did when we had no reason to feel that way for ourselves.

Then there's the fact that a large portion of the population who grew so obsessed with the series got into it in the beginning when we were 9 - 14, and thus we grew up with Harry.

Aside from that, it's because it was really just a pretty damn good book series. It's funny and stupid, but there's a lot of callbacks and consistency and inside jokes that requires a lot of planning. A lot of these threads pop up and I feel like saying, "Because there's nothing that was written for kids that was better during this time period. Prove me wrong."

Worst case scenario, I get a new book series to read.

well, with only a few years between the first installments of the books you quickly had Artemis fowl (loved that series) which was at least in my opinion a terriffic read.

[Man on Fire]

I would disagree, humanizing does not make complexion. It is a prerequisite, definitely but not the only one. Dynamic motivations, external, and definitely inner tensions, are also required. Cersei has 1 motivation, and some external tensions but internally she's largely consistent. Drogo has one major motivation, and I don't think any internal or external tensions. This does not make him a bad character, simple does not mean bad more than complex means good.

Sorry, but for me being human in behavior is still equal to make you complex, having complicated motivations and internal conflicts isn't that important. I thin kthat in thi case we should agree to disagree, it's just a mtter of how you look at it.


I don't think I ever called a Potter villain complex.

You didn't. Person I was arguing before you joined did, the entire point of this argument was that he aid Potter's vilians are more complex than those from A Song Of An Ice And Fire. In esponse I bought characters you in response, said aren't complex. Either way the original point falls flat really - if I'm right, then Martin's vilians are more complex. If you would convince me, I still wouldn't find HP's vilians to be complex, because the same argument apply to them.

[Chen]

Every time he tries to kill Harry something else get's in the way. From love protection to priori incantatem to a piece of his own soul stuck on Harry's forehead. He isn't doing the same thing and expecting different results, he's getting around what stopped him last time and finding himself thwarted by fate, blind luck, and all the cunning of a very devious headmaster of hogwarts.

Eh did he use Cruciatus curse on him in the graveyard? Why didn't he just the petrifying curse, then torture him and THEN kill him. Clearly he managed to hit him with at least one curse. Hell he could have petrified him AFTER torturing him while he was lying on the ground.

[Traab]

Eh did he use Cruciatus curse on him in the graveyard? Why didn't he just the petrifying curse, then torture him and THEN kill him. Clearly he managed to hit him with at least one curse. Hell he could have petrified him AFTER torturing him while he was lying on the ground.

Because it isnt as funny if they cant squirm and writhe in agony. You might as well crucio a board if you are going to petrify someone before torturing them.

[Tyndmyr]

For me being humanized character is pretty much the* basic requirement for being complex character, character development isn't necessary for it. But if you want to argue that Ceresi isn't complex, only humanized, then the same can be said about Voldemort and all HP vilians you that have been bough up as complex in this thread.

And compared to barbarians from about everywhere else Drgo is pretty complex, most of those guys don't care about anything but killing and ale.


* no, it's not a mistake, "the basic requirement", not "a basic requirement".

Not at all. Humanizing is an entirely separate thing. You can be a human without being a complex human. Hell, you can be a good person without being complex. Some people are.

Complexity is inherently about the number of different things going on. That's what "complex" means. Tyrion has a great many different conflicting motivations, he's dealing with many different things, and constantly trying to balance competing interests. Guy has a LOT going on. Also, he grows and changes as the series continues. This makes him complex.

Barbarian who likes wife is not complex. He also doesn't change greatly. You're introduced to him with the meeting of the wife, and he's mostly a side thing. He's not complex because he doesn't need to be. He does, however, add complexity to Dany.

[Xondoure]

Eh did he use Cruciatus curse on him in the graveyard? Why didn't he just the petrifying curse, then torture him and THEN kill him. Clearly he managed to hit him with at least one curse. Hell he could have petrified him AFTER torturing him while he was lying on the ground.

In that instance he fully believed he was dueling a fourteen year old wizard who could do absolutely nothing to stop him (not knowing of priori incantatem.) A more genre savy Voldemort would have killed him on the spot, and a wiser dark lord does exactly that three books later.

[Gnoman]

Eh did he use Cruciatus curse on him in the graveyard? Why didn't he just the petrifying curse, then torture him and THEN kill him. Clearly he managed to hit him with at least one curse. Hell he could have petrified him AFTER torturing him while he was lying on the ground.

A tyrant like Voldemort keeps power only through power. His defeat in the first war caused many of his minions to doubt his power, which is why none attempted to find him afterward, even when rumors of his return began to surface. Killing Harry unaware, or paralyzing him then killing him, would imply that he was afraid to face an underage, undertrained teenager, while killing him in a far fight, oe while harry was attempting to hide or flee, would have cemented that old defeat as a mere fluke. It turned out to be an unwise decision, but there is a quite reasonable chain of thought leading to it.

In a more on-topic vein, one of the chief appeals of the series is the sheer amount of Fridge Brilliance that you can spot when rereading. Not simply Chekov's guns and the like, but setting details that become clear in retrospect. As one example, Book 1 has Harry taken to a bar that only he and Hadrig seem to be able to see, with the passerby seeming to only notice the buildings on either side. In book 2, ou see Hermoine's parents in Diagon Alley, which is reached through said bar, meaning that it's not simply something only wizards can see. After reading book 6, you realize that these are exact symptoms of a charm with a dead Secret Keeper.

[VanBuren]

Then that's a flaw I see in the books. My idea of a wizard, or mage, or sorcerer, or any great magical power is one who is cunning and smart. It's the equivalent of making a series about barbarians and none of them can do a single pushup. And even saying wizards in Harry Potter don't need intelligence to cast spells, you'd think they'd be enough common sense for one of the people to finally defeat their foes when it's so obvious the reader.


Voldemort's attacks on Harry are not stupid, or mad, working with the knowledge he had. From what he knew, destroying Harry would make him invincible. So killing him with magic, and it having to be him were both intentional things. First and foremost should he allow one of his minions to accomplish the one thing he could not do he would lose face, secondly people had to believe Voldemort's magic was an ultimate force that could not be stopped by anything for the fear factor to work, and thirdly he thought finishing the boy through magic would fulfill the prophecy in such a way that would make him unstoppable.

Every time he tries to kill Harry something else get's in the way. From love protection to priori incantatem to a piece of his own soul stuck on Harry's forehead. He isn't doing the same thing and expecting different results, he's getting around what stopped him last time and finding himself thwarted by fate, blind luck, and all the cunning of a very devious headmaster of hogwarts.

You know, I'd never really thought about that.

1. Lily's sacrifice causes his spell to rebound and kill him. Weird and unexpected. Some very obscure magic at play here, but whatever. He can recover.

2. Quirrel starts getting burned to death when trying to handle Harry. The love protection is clearly not some one-off thing. Might be a smart idea to learn what exactly is the catalyst for the magic and find a workaround.

3. Done. Now that I have his blood, I can get around that whole protection thing. Time to k--wait, what? Well, that figures. It figures he'd have my brother wand and that we'd inadvertantly invoke one of the most obscure, lesser-known bits of wandlore in the world. Typical, really.

4. So that's just going to happen every time our wands meet. OK, I'll use a different wand. Never mind. That didn't work (did they ever explain why Lucius' wand didn't work?)

5. Eh, screw it. I'll just get the one wand that can instantly overpower all of the other wands. Simplify this **** a little bit. Oh, nope. I'm dead.

[Pokonic]

You know, I'd never really thought about that.

1. Lily's sacrifice causes his spell to rebound and kill him. Weird and unexpected. Some very obscure magic at play here, but whatever. He can recover.

2. Quirrel starts getting burned to death when trying to handle Harry. The love protection is clearly not some one-off thing. Might be a smart idea to learn what exactly is the catalyst for the magic and find a workaround.

3. Done. Now that I have his blood, I can get around that whole protection thing. Time to k--wait, what? Well, that figures. It figures he'd have my brother wand and that we'd inadvertantly invoke one of the most obscure, lesser-known bits of wandlore in the world. Typical, really.

4. So that's just going to happen every time our wands meet. OK, I'll use a different wand. Never mind. That didn't work (did they ever explain why Lucius' wand didn't work?)

5. Eh, screw it. I'll just get the one wand that can instantly overpower all of the other wands. Simplify this **** a little bit. Oh, nope. I'm dead.

On point 4, I am pretty sure it was just shear wandpower at play. Or something.


A importent note about Voldy is that while, yes, he is powerful, smart, and very capiable of setting up things in his favor, he's the equivulent of a low wisdom wizerd. Oh yes, he can find out to shove his souls into little objects and can throw out the most reviled spell in the world like its going out of style, but he never once took into consideration any bit of magic that was not readly availible to him could assist him in any way. All it would take is a half-hour search in the wand-shop and see if theres anything odd at play, such as his archnemisis having some supa speshial wand made of rainbows and sunshine or whatever. Dispite his shear ability to stay around (he's 71 when he died), he's still the DnD equivulent of a wizerd who takes only offensive spells when he levels and never takes a skill not related to making breathing things not-breathing.

[Gnoman]

4. So that's just going to happen every time our wands meet. OK, I'll use a different wand. Never mind. That didn't work (did they ever explain why Lucius' wand didn't work?)


Harry asks Dumbledore in the afterlife. It has to do with the combination of them sharing bits of soul, sharing Lily's magical protection, and Harry's wand linking with Voldy's in the graveyard, all combining to the wand recognizing the attack with Voldy's raw power. Or, at least, that was Dumbledore's theory.

[Xondoure]

The explanation given is that Harry and Voldemort's fates are so tied together that magic happens. Not a very good one, but hey, a lot worse in fiction.

[Mauve Shirt]

4 doesn't work because no one knows. It's never happened before. Dumbledore's theory that the wand recognized Voldemort's magic, not just his wand, is all we've got.
Do you need me to explain why 5 doesn't work? :smallsigh:

[VanBuren]

4 doesn't work because no one knows. It's never happened before. Dumbledore's theory that the wand recognized Voldemort's magic, not just his wand, is all we've got.
Do you need me to explain why 5 doesn't work? :smallsigh:

Right. But was it unreasonable of Voldemort to think #4 would work? #5 didn't work, but that was only because Voldemort didn't know that Malfoy was the one to disarm Dumbledore. It was something he possibly should have considered, but you're only as good as your intel. Harry did try and tell him, but he probably thought Harry was bluffing.

All-in-all, Voldemort should have compromised his blood-superiority beliefs and bought a gun, but that'd be asking a bit much.

[Xondoure]

Right. But was it unreasonable of Voldemort to think #4 would work? #5 didn't work, but that was only because Voldemort didn't know that Malfoy was the one to disarm Dumbledore. It was something he possibly should have considered, but you're only as good as your intel. Harry did try and tell him, but he probably thought Harry was bluffing.

All-in-all, Voldemort should have compromised his blood-superiority beliefs and bought a gun, but that'd be asking a bit much.

It had to be magic, to cement his authority, and because he believed it would make him invincible.

[Traab]

The whole notion of brother wands is stupid beyond belief. It should be fairly well known if wands that share a core from the same animal cant be used against each other. How many hairs do you think ollivander gets from a single unicorn for example? There could be dozens of wands out there with matching "brothers" per unicorn. It may be somewhat rare that they get into a fight with each other, but not so rare that only ollivander and those equally knowledgeable about obscure wand lore would have any clue about it. So while voldemort falling for it the first time makes sense, he shouldnt have to go on a world wide quest to figure out what the hell happened in the graveyard.

[VanBuren]

The whole notion of brother wands is stupid beyond belief. It should be fairly well known if wands that share a core from the same animal cant be used against each other. How many hairs do you think ollivander gets from a single unicorn for example? There could be dozens of wands out there with matching "brothers" per unicorn. It may be somewhat rare that they get into a fight with each other, but not so rare that only ollivander and those equally knowledgeable about obscure wand lore would have any clue about it. So while voldemort falling for it the first time makes sense, he shouldnt have to go on a world wide quest to figure out what the hell happened in the graveyard.

And yet we're told flat-out that this is an extremely rare occurrence. So it doesn't happen very often at all. In fact, the battle in GoF is the only occurrence of it we know about in canon. Obviously it must have happened before, but we're not given any reason to believe that it happens with any sort of frequency.

[Traab]

And yet we're told flat-out that this is an extremely rare occurrence. So it doesn't happen very often at all. In fact, the battle in GoF is the only occurrence of it we know about in canon. Obviously it must have happened before, but we're not given any reason to believe that it happens with any sort of frequency.

Exactly, and it cant be just unicorn hairs, there have to be other materials that can be virtually mass produced from a single being. Hairs, feathers, scales, I have no clue what a "heart string" is, but it would seem very wasteful if each dragon only yields a single string for the wand. About the only thing keeping brother wand conditions from popping up all over the place is the fact that the majority of the wizarding world are spineless sheep, so very few people ever get into real magical duels with each other.

[Xondoure]

Exactly, and it cant be just unicorn hairs, there have to be other materials that can be virtually mass produced from a single being. Hairs, feathers, scales, I have no clue what a "heart string" is, but it would seem very wasteful if each dragon only yields a single string for the wand. About the only thing keeping brother wand conditions from popping up all over the place is the fact that the majority of the wizarding world are spineless sheep, so very few people ever get into real magical duels with each other.

I'm assuming most wands have between five or six companions, but even then, I don't see why this would be at all common. Besides, I'm sure Voldemort knew about it, he just wasn't expecting it and likely had never seen it. I can guarantee he didn't expect Harry to put more power behind his spell than he himself could muster.

[VanBuren]

I'm assuming most wands have between five or six companions, but even then, I don't see why this would be at all common. Besides, I'm sure Voldemort knew about it, he just wasn't expecting it and likely had never seen it. I can guarantee he didn't expect Harry to put more power behind his spell than he himself could muster.

Did Voldemort even know that Harry had his brother wand?

[Xondoure]

Did Voldemort even know that Harry had his brother wand?

Not until the wands reacted in the graveyard.

[Traab]

Didnt voldemort kidnap ollivander specifically to learn exactly what the hell happened in that graveyard?

[Anecronwashere]

Didnt voldemort kidnap ollivander specifically to learn exactly what the hell happened in that graveyard?

He did yes.
But Olivander didn't know for sure.
Also he was after Gregorovitch who was reported to have the Elder Wand (for some reason, what with Dumbledore getting it in the 40s from Grindlewad)

[Traab]

I'm assuming most wands have between five or six companions, but even then, I don't see why this would be at all common. Besides, I'm sure Voldemort knew about it, he just wasn't expecting it and likely had never seen it. I can guarantee he didn't expect Harry to put more power behind his spell than he himself could muster.

Not COMMON no, but not so vanishingly rare that everyone looks at it as if harry won the lottery, three times in a row! Not so insanely rare that only those possessing the most esoteric knowledge of wand lore possible could do more than theorize on what happened.

Also, think about this. You said each wand could have between 5 or 6 companions, but consider just how small wizarding britain is. While its possible the brother wands may be even as much as generations apart, (and honestly, the longer the unicorn lives, the more brother wands it should produce) its like giving out 1000 license plate combinations in a medium sized city and just endlessly repeating them. Eventually people are going to stumble over others who have the same license as them.

[grolim]

Who says the longer an animal lives the more materials for a wand it produces?
There is also no reason to think that such materials are not only able to be gathered as/after the animal dies. And that after it is dead only rarely is there something on it that would be suitable.
Phoenix feathers for instance, why does any feather shed while it is alive have to be viable. It makes just as much sense that when it dies and it reborn that only rarely would maybe a single feather survive the fire and only THOSE would be the ones suitable for use. And there is no indication of how long there is between cycles for them.
In many fantasy setting such materials from animals is rare or hard to harvest. There is no reason to believe Ollivander or someone has a unicorn in a stable and goes out every 6 months and shaves it for the stuff to make hundreds of wands.
It makes more sense, to me, that any materials suitable for a wand would be semi-rare from any magical creature and usually at its death. And that one creature such as a phoenix giving two items are once are exceedingly rare.
Or even rarer if to get materials of high enough quality the animal has to be harvested quickly or prepared in some way.

[SoC175]

As for killing splitting the soul it is the only described way to make a Horcrux, and it says specifically that to make Voldemort's 7 horcruxes he had to kill 7 people, to split his soul 7 times. That is what the killing curse does. Of course to actually use it you have to really not care about a human's life, to really want to end it, something that very few people are able to do.Actually it's never linked to the killing curse specifically. It only said that murdering splits the soul (or makes it vulnerable to being split if you know how to take advantage of it). It never said it had to be done through a killing curse or that only a killing curse would cause this state.

He could have beaten his victims to death with a club and it would have worked all the same.

Also why the death eaters are not just rapid shooting killing curses while they are fighting to kill their opponents is never explained.

[pendell]

I've never really got into Harry Potter. When I picked up 'Sorcerer's stone' in the 1990s I read perhaps one page before I said. "Meh. Diane Duane did it so much better with the Young Wizards series (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Young_Wizards).

That series is still in production , incidentally. In the last book they went to Mars. DD put a *lot* of thought into the magic system and there's bits of nice, hard science fiction peeping out from under the fantasy.

I've never really understood why her books -- which have a cult following, but nowhere near HP's popularity -- are given such short shrift. I suspect it's threefold:

1) There's an obvious element of religious allegory which is not terribly well disguised, much as in Chronicles of Narnia.

2) Young Wizards is a lot more detailed and geekish than HP is. So I suspect HP has more appeal because it's written for kids, not intelligent adolescents. Poorly thought out magic systems may be worse for making game systems, but they seem just the ticket for once upon a time fairy tales. Maybe six year olds can't appreciate the intricacies of quantum mechanics or the laws of thermodynamics, but waving a wand and making something happen is wish fulfillment at its purest. Young Wizards touches the head, but HP touches the heart.

3) HP has an honest-to-goodness villain in Voldemort. Voldemort is human with human motives and is recognizably Darth Vader. Duane's Lone Power never really seems like the kind of personal in-your-face enemy that Voldy does. The Lone Power is more like a force of nature, something you confront but cannot ultimately defeat, any more than you can overcome a tidal wave or a hurricane. It is what it is. You do your best to protect yourself and those under your care from it's machinations, but you can't achieve the kind of unconditional victory that comes from throwing the ring in the fire of beating Voldemort.

Respectfully,

Brian P.

[Lord Seth]

Also why the death eaters are not just rapid shooting killing curses while they are fighting to kill their opponents is never explained.It actually is, albeit a little vaguely; when it's introduced, it's stated it requires a powerful bit of magic behind it to work. I interpreted that as indicating that there's some kind of special requirement for it that means you can't necessarily cast it at any point on the fly, like maybe it requiring a windup time or something. I do admit it could've been better elaborated on, though.
I've never really got into Harry Potter. When I picked up 'Sorcerer's stone' in the 1990s I read perhaps one page before I said. "Meh. Diane Duane did it so much better with the Young Wizards series (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Young_Wizards). So...based on one page you felt qualified to compare it to another series? Even though the book hadn't even gotten to the plot or premise yet?

[pendell]

So...based on one page you felt qualified to compare it to another series? Even though the book hadn't even gotten to the plot or premise yet?


For my own personal reading pleasure? Yes.

Since then I have sat through a number of movies and I stand by my assessment. There has also been a heap o' internet chapter and versus threads. I know who Snape is and what Gryffindor is and that Slytherin is the house that all the nasties come from and the Ministry of Magic and what a horcrux is and that Harry was one of them. I know what a Mudblood is and why Voldemort hates them, and the lengths he went to to prosecute his Nazi-like campaign to eliminate them in favor of pure wizards. I have also checked the books from the library and , again, utterly failed to make any headway. Is there any one point I made you disagree with?

I have been reading SF/fantasy for the better part of 30 years. I should like to believe that I can get a fair idea of whether I'm going to like a book or not fairly quickly, and whether it's worth my time to struggle with it, or bin it and read something else I actually like.

HP did not pass that test, and it failed it fairly quickly. But that's a personal opinion and I'm delighted there are so many people out there who enjoy the books. I'm just not one of them, doubtless because I was already an adult when I picked them up and they weren't either the first or the best modern fantasy I've read.

:Waves his stick: Now get off my lawn!

Respectfully,

Brian P.

[Traab]

Who says the longer an animal lives the more materials for a wand it produces?
There is also no reason to think that such materials are not only able to be gathered as/after the animal dies. And that after it is dead only rarely is there something on it that would be suitable.
Phoenix feathers for instance, why does any feather shed while it is alive have to be viable. It makes just as much sense that when it dies and it reborn that only rarely would maybe a single feather survive the fire and only THOSE would be the ones suitable for use. And there is no indication of how long there is between cycles for them.
In many fantasy setting such materials from animals is rare or hard to harvest. There is no reason to believe Ollivander or someone has a unicorn in a stable and goes out every 6 months and shaves it for the stuff to make hundreds of wands.
It makes more sense, to me, that any materials suitable for a wand would be semi-rare from any magical creature and usually at its death. And that one creature such as a phoenix giving two items are once are exceedingly rare.
Or even rarer if to get materials of high enough quality the animal has to be harvested quickly or prepared in some way.

Even if that WAS the case, and say, they can only harvest the hair off a unicorn after it dies, that is still a LOT of hair. The phoenix feather thing I understand, you cant go around plucking them like chickens, so their feathers would be rare, but a unicorn hair wand core? There is no way in hell that can be considered rare. Whether he collects sheddings in the woods, freely given hair donations, or harvests dead unicorns, there is no reason to think that there wouldnt be potentially hundreds of wands made with the hair from the same unicorn.

[Xondoure]

Even if that WAS the case, and say, they can only harvest the hair off a unicorn after it dies, that is still a LOT of hair. The phoenix feather thing I understand, you cant go around plucking them like chickens, so their feathers would be rare, but a unicorn hair wand core? There is no way in hell that can be considered rare. Whether he collects sheddings in the woods, freely given hair donations, or harvests dead unicorns, there is no reason to think that there wouldnt be potentially hundreds of wands made with the hair from the same unicorn.

I think the difference is that wand makers are picky. They consider each wand a work of art unparalleled by any other field, and are also restricted by how much wood they have that's suitable for wand making. So they wouldn't use a hundred strands from the same unicorn. They'd use the three best strands they could find. And some unicorn's might simply not have had luxurious enough hair to consider. Add this to the fact that Unicorn's are very rare creatures, and harming one is considered sinful, and suddenly unicorn hair wands are comparably difficult to gather the materials for as dragon heart string and phoenix feather wands. (Speaking of which, isn't it mentioned that Fawkes is the donor for Harry and Tom's?)

So while Priori Incantatem is probably not unheard of, it is rare enough to be surprising when it works on Lord Voldemort. I mean what are the chances of that happening. (Not that surprising what with Harry and Tom being linked through horcruxes, prophecy, and ancient love wards, but not something anyone but Olivander and Harry knew.)

EDIT@Pendell: Harry Potter is very satirical in it's treatment of britain, and magic. It has a plot that is both incredibly well thought out from the very beginning, while managing to keep people on their toes. Sure there are inconsistencies with the magic system, but that's sort of part of the semi deconstruction that goes on. I highly suggest you don't judge it on the films (which strip the complexity and writing quality away.) However if you refuse to pick up the books might I suggest the audio books, as they are some of the best I've found.

[Gwyn chan 'r Gwyll]

For what it's worth, my family started reading them starting with my parents, who read them to see if it might be what would finally get me to learn to read properly (They knew I could learn to read if I tried, I just had no interest in reading whatsoever), and ended up getting hooked.

One of my strongest memories from that age is of my dad reading the 3rd book, and I wanted to know about the wolf-creature on the back.

[Gnoman]

Not COMMON no, but not so vanishingly rare that everyone looks at it as if harry won the lottery, three times in a row! Not so insanely rare that only those possessing the most esoteric knowledge of wand lore possible could do more than theorize on what happened.

Also, think about this. You said each wand could have between 5 or 6 companions, but consider just how small wizarding britain is. While its possible the brother wands may be even as much as generations apart, (and honestly, the longer the unicorn lives, the more brother wands it should produce) its like giving out 1000 license plate combinations in a medium sized city and just endlessly repeating them. Eventually people are going to stumble over others who have the same license as them.

You're overlooking two things. First, the wand chooses the wizard, so you can't just pick out a unicorn hair one, or one made out of dragon. Second, consider the sheer number of wands in the shop in book 1. Ollivander probably sells less than a hundred wands each year. (Hogwarts seems to admit forty to sixty students a year, plus replacements by adult wizards that lost, broke, or wore out their wand.) Based on the description of the shop, he has thousands in stock. If, for example, a wand has six brothers, four of them might collect dust for a century before being sold.

[snoopy13a]

It actually is, albeit a little vaguely; when it's introduced, it's stated it requires a powerful bit of magic behind it to work. I interpreted that as indicating that there's some kind of special requirement for it that means you can't necessarily cast it at any point on the fly, like maybe it requiring a windup time or something. I do admit it could've been better elaborated on, though.So...based on one page you felt qualified to compare it to another series? Even though the book hadn't even gotten to the plot or premise yet?

I think there are a couple of other reasons:

1) Wizards tend to be better at certain spells than others, just as they tend to be better in certain fields of magic. HP is really good at the disarming spell, for example. It is probably more optimal for a dark wizard to injure a foe with a spell that they are an expert in.

2) Friendly fire. You don't want to miss HP and hit Lucius Malfoy with a killing cure (well, maybe you wouldn't mind :smallbiggrin: ).

3) Some of the non-lethal spells can have hidden tricks such as making them silent for quickness.

4) You may want to take prisoners. Prisoners can tortured for intelligence, used as leverage against family members, subjected to the Imperius Curse to make allies, or framed as criminals.

[Traab]

Yes, but "the wand chooses the wizard." If only one or two wizards a generation would be "chosen" by wands using that particular unicorn's hair, then it would not be wise to make hundreds of them.

Maybe so, but he still has to have a copy of everything on hand so each new wizard that comes in can get the right one. He cant say, "Oh, I doubt there will be TWO kids who can use elm with unicorn hair, so I will only make 1." That wand shop wasnt exactly low on raw number of wands. Those shelves were packed with boxes upon boxes. It isnt like you need a large cross section of unicorns to donate hairs, any unicorn hair will do, with only the wood type differing if unicorn hair is the right core for the person. Its only a guess, but I would expect that if your chosen wand was say, hickory with unicorn hair, ANY hickory with unicorn hair wand would work well for you. It doesnt have to be specifically, Gary, the 3 legged unicorn male's tail hair.

Lets say you are right, and, as an example, maybe 2-3 new students per year get a hickory wand with unicorn hair in it. Wizards can live to be over 100, which means there are over 200-300 "brother wands" floating about in general population in britain alone. Similar stats for every other common item part like hair.

[Xondoure]

Maybe so, but he still has to have a copy of everything on hand so each new wizard that comes in can get the right one. He cant say, "Oh, I doubt there will be TWO kids who can use elm with unicorn hair, so I will only make 1." That wand shop wasnt exactly low on raw number of wands. Those shelves were packed with boxes upon boxes. It isnt like you need a large cross section of unicorns to donate hairs, any unicorn hair will do, with only the wood type differing if unicorn hair is the right core for the person. Its only a guess, but I would expect that if your chosen wand was say, hickory with unicorn hair, ANY hickory with unicorn hair wand would work well for you. It doesnt have to be specifically, Gary, the 3 legged unicorn male's tail hair.

Lets say you are right, and, as an example, maybe 2-3 new students per year get a hickory wand with unicorn hair in it. Wizards can live to be over 100, which means there are over 200-300 "brother wands" floating about in general population in britain alone. Similar stats for every other common item part like hair.

This is blatantly untrue. Every core is different, every wand a work of it's own. The wand chooses the wizard, not the wizard has an affinity to hickory and unicorn hair.

[Traab]

This is blatantly untrue. Every core is different, every wand a work of it's own. The wand chooses the wizard, not the wizard has an affinity to hickory and unicorn hair.

We have no reason to expect that if harry blew up his wand and went back to ollivanders, that there wouldnt be another phoenix feather wand waiting for him. Not by fawkes, true, but still the same type of wand. Is there any part of the series I have forgotten about where someone, with a wand that was matched to them, lost their first wand, and ended up with a different one entirely? Neville doesnt count, he was forced to use his daddys wand. Ron doesnt count, his wand was secondhand as well. Its POSSIBLE you are right, but we have no evidence I am aware of that would suggest a wizard might break his first wand of elm and unicorn hair, and get a new matched wand that is oak and hungarian horntail heart string.

The closest we get to it is book 7 where people are playing musical chairs with their wands by beating each other and stealing their opponents wands allegiance or whatever. But even then I think they mention those wands dont work as well as a matched wand would, but better than a random wand picked up off the street.

[Gnoman]

On a tangentally related subject, I realized recently that the three main characters and Neville each epitomize the virtues and vices of one of the Houses. Harry is brave and noble, but tends towards recklessness, arrogance, and a hero complex. This makes him the ideal Griffindor. Hermione is brilliant and talented, but her pride in her intellectual superiority and skepticism often blind her, making her the ultimate Ravenclaw. Ron is ambitious and actually quite clever, but he ahs something of an inferiority complex and is a bit of a coward at times, thus encapsulating Slytherin. Neville, of course, is Hufflepuff: Not particularly bright, but keeps at things, and refuses to back down when it comes right down to it due to extreme loyalty. He's even something of a background character for most of the series, despite being just as important as the other three. Just like the House.

[The Glyphstone]

We have no reason to expect that if harry blew up his wand and went back to ollivanders, that there wouldnt be another phoenix feather wand waiting for him. Not by fawkes, true, but still the same type of wand. Is there any part of the series I have forgotten about where someone, with a wand that was matched to them, lost their first wand, and ended up with a different one entirely? Neville doesnt count, he was forced to use his daddys wand. Ron doesnt count, his wand was secondhand as well. Its POSSIBLE you are right, but we have no evidence I am aware of that would suggest a wizard might break his first wand of elm and unicorn hair, and get a new matched wand that is oak and hungarian horntail heart string.

The closest we get to it is book 7 where people are playing musical chairs with their wands by beating each other and stealing their opponents wands allegiance or whatever. But even then I think they mention those wands dont work as well as a matched wand would, but better than a random wand picked up off the street.

See, both of those examples seem to support the concept that wands are specifically attuned to wizards, not simply wood+core combo to wizards. Neville and Ron (Neville more than Ron) had to make do with secondhand wands because they couldn't get one that 'chose' them, and their spellcasting suffered as a result. If the wizard in question breaks his first wand of elm and unicorn hair, he might get a second elm/unicorn wand, he might get an oak/dragon heartstring...or maybe he's stuck with secondhand/inferior wands for the rest of his life, because it's a one-per-customer deal. No real evidence for or against any of those that I remember.

[Dumbledore lives]

See, both of those examples seem to support the concept that wands are specifically attuned to wizards, not simply wood+core combo to wizards. Neville and Ron (Neville more than Ron) had to make do with secondhand wands because they couldn't get one that 'chose' them, and their spellcasting suffered as a result. If the wizard in question breaks his first wand of elm and unicorn hair, he might get a second elm/unicorn wand, he might get an oak/dragon heartstring...or maybe he's stuck with secondhand/inferior wands for the rest of his life, because it's a one-per-customer deal. No real evidence for or against any of those that I remember.

Well I think one of the only canonical changes of wand was Ron buying a second wand after his first one broke in book 2. They were both unicorn hair, but his first was Ash while his second was Willow. His first however was inherited from his brother so he didn't buy two wands.

[irenicObserver]

About the idiot wizards I heard it WMG'd that magic caused brain damage.

On a more serious note, how do you think having the amazing ability to affect your environment would wear on your motivation to advance? As both a society and a person?

[Traab]

See, both of those examples seem to support the concept that wands are specifically attuned to wizards, not simply wood+core combo to wizards. Neville and Ron (Neville more than Ron) had to make do with secondhand wands because they couldn't get one that 'chose' them, and their spellcasting suffered as a result. If the wizard in question breaks his first wand of elm and unicorn hair, he might get a second elm/unicorn wand, he might get an oak/dragon heartstring...or maybe he's stuck with secondhand/inferior wands for the rest of his life, because it's a one-per-customer deal. No real evidence for or against any of those that I remember.

Thats not the case. Neville used the first wand because his grandmother basically forced him to use his fathers wand, not caring that it wasnt a great match for him. Ron was using a second hand wand. It likely was a reasonable match, but once again, not perfect. Not because none chose him, but because he is a weasly and they cant afford nice things like brand new wands. The only reason neither of them had a perfect match for a starter wand was because they couldnt go to ollivander and get one.

Neither of them gives any proof that once you get your perfectly matched wand, thats not the wand type you will get in the future if need be. We dont see any reason to doubt they would get another copy of the same wand, in fact, ollivanders obsession with memorizing what wand everyone has is likely because that way if they do need a new one, he already knows what to get. Its his own mental filing cabinet. Or he is just creepy. But my vote leans towards, he doesnt see a need to spend another 8 hours trying every wand combination in the shop looking for the right one.

"Ok mr potter, you had holly and phoenix feather? Lets go get you another one. Funny story, the phoenix that gave the feather for THIS wand gave up 57 other feathers over the last 150 years. Why is that funny? I dunno, im easily amused I guess. I still expect great things from you mr potter, mostly that this wand will last a few more years this time. Because that WOULD be great. I hate my artwork getting smashed."

[The Glyphstone]

See, but there is no evidence of your interpretation any more than there is of other ones...I see Olivander as keeping perfect records not for easy replacements or just creepiness, but an obsessive and very, very old craftsman who puts heart and soul into every single wand he makes, and so likes to keep track of who got each one. Every one is a work of art to him, individually hand-made - they're not just impersonally mass-produced on a magical assembly line, where he can see Harry bought Holly+Phoenix #234, using feathers from the same phoenix as Models #224 through #259 and direct him to that batch for a replacement.

It's more magical and fitting with the classic tropes Rowling was drawing from/shamelessly stealing (depending on your individual POV) if a single unicorn only has two or three hairs perfect enough for a wand, as someone else suggested above, or that a phoenix only gives half a dozen feathers over the course of its lifetime. If any type of wand would be most likely to cause a brother-effect under this scenario, it would be dragon heartstrings; once you've gone through the effort to kill a dragon, you're going to be salvaging every bit of heartstring it has to make it worthwhile...which could still be very, very little heartstring. Coincidentally, this also adds circumstantial evidence for why 'brother wands' are so rare.

[Helanna]

I've never really got into Harry Potter. When I picked up 'Sorcerer's stone' in the 1990s I read perhaps one page before I said. "Meh. Diane Duane did it so much better with the Young Wizards series (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Young_Wizards).

That series is still in production , incidentally. In the last book they went to Mars. DD put a *lot* of thought into the magic system and there's bits of nice, hard science fiction peeping out from under the fantasy.

I've never really understood why her books -- which have a cult following, but nowhere near HP's popularity -- are given such short shrift. I suspect it's threefold:

1) There's an obvious element of religious allegory which is not terribly well disguised, much as in Chronicles of Narnia.

2) Young Wizards is a lot more detailed and geekish than HP is. So I suspect HP has more appeal because it's written for kids, not intelligent adolescents. Poorly thought out magic systems may be worse for making game systems, but they seem just the ticket for once upon a time fairy tales. Maybe six year olds can't appreciate the intricacies of quantum mechanics or the laws of thermodynamics, but waving a wand and making something happen is wish fulfillment at its purest. Young Wizards touches the head, but HP touches the heart.

3) HP has an honest-to-goodness villain in Voldemort. Voldemort is human with human motives and is recognizably Darth Vader. Duane's Lone Power never really seems like the kind of personal in-your-face enemy that Voldy does. The Lone Power is more like a force of nature, something you confront but cannot ultimately defeat, any more than you can overcome a tidal wave or a hurricane. It is what it is. You do your best to protect yourself and those under your care from it's machinations, but you can't achieve the kind of unconditional victory that comes from throwing the ring in the fire of beating Voldemort.

Respectfully,

Brian P.

I dunno. I read Young Wizards a while after I read the first HP book, maybe around 11 or 12, and . . . well, I liked it enough to pick up the second one, but I stopped after that. I liked them well enough, but it just didn't really do it for me. Honestly, I remember the books being kind of blandly written. Now it's been a while, so that may or may not be true, but the fact that I remember them blandly is kind of telling, at least from a kid's perspective. I've re-read HP a hundred times, I re-read the first YW book maybe twice.

Like I said though, I did like it. Man, I'd dig it out and re-read it for a comparison, but my copy got ruined. :smallfrown:

[Jayngfet]

snip

Let me boil this down into the specific point I'm arguing from here, so there's no room for confusion:

A big part of fantasy is translating the events the reader has no frame of reference to into something they can understand.

Young Adult fantasy tends to deal in simpler things using a more concise idea of what their readers have and haven't done.

Dark Fantasy usually gets more ambitious, and works from a much broader experience list and is able to deal with more heavy and out there stuff. This tends to be harder, since there's a lot more to account for.

Ergo, Dark Fantasy tends to fail more often, because it's going into greater detail with events the reader has less knowledge to draw from on average.

This isn't to say there isn't some damn good dark fantasy. It's just to say that it's harder to write for and that it fails a bit more often, simply because it has to do more with about the same page count than the young adult stuff.

[Xondoure]

"Ok mr potter, you had holly and phoenix feather? Lets go get you another one. Funny story, the phoenix that gave the feather for THIS wand gave up 57 other feathers over the last 150 years. Why is that funny? I dunno, im easily amused I guess. I still expect great things from you mr potter, mostly that this wand will last a few more years this time. Because that WOULD be great. I hate my artwork getting smashed."

"Just. One. Other." (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5whe9XtdQgw&t=2m40s)

[Jayngfet]

"Just. One. Other." (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5whe9XtdQgw&t=2m40s)

I'm not really for or against it either way but it seems like while Fawkes only gave two feathers, his tone implies giving more than two is the norm.

In any case, I'd say the whole Wand-Making art is an incredibly specialized field with so much information we don't have. While there are more than three magical creatures in Britan and the official website confirms at least one other can make wand cores, only those specific three are dealt in by Ollivander.

It seems to me like while the wand chooses the wizard, how the wand does the choosing depends very much on the material and dimensions of the wand. Hence why Veela hairs are so tempermental as cores.

To hypothesize further, this is probably why other creatures don't get used quite so often. Kelpie hairs CAN work, but they're murderous, deceitful creatures. Veela are a dangerous bunch that can even inadvertently turn nasty fast. Obviously the use of dragons kind of makes this theory questionable but again, we need more information before we keep going.

[SFactor123]

Reason behind Harry Potter's massive popularity is the fact that there is no other film which is also based on the similar story line, I mean there is no other film which unites the two Worlds, real and Fantasy for only children and children love. Harry Potter may not be greatest of all the comic books but the Film adaptation definitely stood out and made its mark.

[Xondoure]

I'm not really for or against it either way but it seems like while Fawkes only gave two feathers, his tone implies giving more than two is the norm.

In any case, I'd say the whole Wand-Making art is an incredibly specialized field with so much information we don't have. While there are more than three magical creatures in Britan and the official website confirms at least one other can make wand cores, only those specific three are dealt in by Ollivander.

It seems to me like while the wand chooses the wizard, how the wand does the choosing depends very much on the material and dimensions of the wand. Hence why Veela hairs are so tempermental as cores.

To hypothesize further, this is probably why other creatures don't get used quite so often. Kelpie hairs CAN work, but they're murderous, deceitful creatures. Veela are a dangerous bunch that can even inadvertently turn nasty fast. Obviously the use of dragons kind of makes this theory questionable but again, we need more information before we keep going.

Oh absolutely the core changes the personality of the wand. But my point is every wand is a different entity and it isn't necessarily going to choose the same person as it's brother wand. And while 2 may be few, I doubt it's more than a dozen for any one beast. As I said before, wands are the highest end of wizarding craftsmanship. Only the heartstrings, hairs, and tail feathers Olivander deems of the highest quality would ever go in to one of his wands.

edit: other relevant quote. "The wand chooses the wizard mr. Potter. It's not always clear why." Implying that certain combinations working for certain people all the time regardless of individuality is not how this works.

[VanBuren]

Maybe so, but he still has to have a copy of everything on hand so each new wizard that comes in can get the right one.

I see absolutely no reason to agree with this statement. Don't think of it in terms of ordering a product out of a catalog. This is high-level craftsmanship with each wand being a unique and individual creation. Even wands with identical cores might be crafted out of different woods. The wand will choose the wizard, so I doubt Ollivander is worried about not being able to find a match.

[Sotharsyl]

On a tangentally related subject, I realized recently that the three main characters and Neville each epitomize the virtues and vices of one of the Houses. Harry is brave and noble, but tends towards recklessness, arrogance, and a hero complex. This makes him the ideal Griffindor. Hermione is brilliant and talented, but her pride in her intellectual superiority and skepticism often blind her, making her the ultimate Ravenclaw. Ron is ambitious and actually quite clever, but he has something of an inferiority complex and is a bit of a coward at times, thus encapsulating Slytherin. Neville, of course, is Hufflepuff: Not particularly bright, but keeps at things, and refuses to back down when it comes right down to it due to extreme loyalty. He's even something of a background character for most of the series, despite being just as important as the other three. Just like the House.

It might have been my reading of the sorting scene carrying over but I switch around Ron and Harry, emphasizing Harry's bend the rules Sliterin side and keeping Ron as the most pure Gryifindor.


I've never really got into Harry Potter. When I picked up 'Sorcerer's stone' in the 1990s I read perhaps one page before I said. "Meh. Diane Duane did it so much better with the Young Wizards series (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Young_Wizards).

That series is still in production , incidentally. In the last book they went to Mars. DD put a *lot* of thought into the magic system and there's bits of nice, hard science fiction peeping out from under the fantasy.

I've never really understood why her books -- which have a cult following, but nowhere near HP's popularity -- are given such short shrift. I suspect it's threefold:

1) There's an obvious element of religious allegory which is not terribly well disguised, much as in Chronicles of Narnia.

2) Young Wizards is a lot more detailed and geekish than HP is. So I suspect HP has more appeal because it's written for kids, not intelligent adolescents. Poorly thought out magic systems may be worse for making game systems, but they seem just the ticket for once upon a time fairy tales. Maybe six year olds can't appreciate the intricacies of quantum mechanics or the laws of thermodynamics, but waving a wand and making something happen is wish fulfillment at its purest. Young Wizards touches the head, but HP touches the heart.

3) HP has an honest-to-goodness villain in Voldemort. Voldemort is human with human motives and is recognizably Darth Vader. Duane's Lone Power never really seems like the kind of personal in-your-face enemy that Voldy does. The Lone Power is more like a force of nature, something you confront but cannot ultimately defeat, any more than you can overcome a tidal wave or a hurricane. It is what it is. You do your best to protect yourself and those under your care from it's machinations, but you can't achieve the kind of unconditional victory that comes from throwing the ring in the fire of beating Voldemort.

Respectfully,

Brian P.

Those two I boulded is why I didn't get into young wizards call my tastes under developed but I just can't go for that mix you're describing.

#1 was also exactly as you described it for me.

[Traab]

I see absolutely no reason to agree with this statement. Don't think of it in terms of ordering a product out of a catalog. This is high-level craftsmanship with each wand being a unique and individual creation. Even wands with identical cores might be crafted out of different woods. The wand will choose the wizard, so I doubt Ollivander is worried about not being able to find a match.

Yeah... except we can see his store is filled to the brim with box after box of wands. It looks like the stock room of a shoe store, only more so since the boxes are thinner. I suppose its POSSIBLE that out of the hundreds upon hundreds of wands he has stocked back there, each one is a unique core/wood/length, but its just hard to tell because we learn next to nothing about wands aside from, "the wand chooses the wizard" or how they are made, until book 7 when suddenly, we learn that wands can change allegiance and its rowlings new toy to play with as everyone is disarming each other in a game of musical chairs and switching wands left right and center.

I still say its more likely that each wizard or witch would get the same wand as a replacement if their original broke, because while the wand chooses the wizard, ollivander also makes a point of stating what each wand type is best at, so it would seem odd if suddenly after being a transfiguration wizz with your wand suited to that lineup, you find yourself having a hard time with transfiguration, but your healing spells are oddly effective because you got a new wand.

Another possible hint that my theory is true is harry getting his wand. Think about this. Fawkes dropped two feathers right? Why would ollivander have made a second, identical wand, with that other feather except to be meant as a future replacement for a young tom riddle? Thats why harry tried virtually every other wand in the shop first. That was supposed to be toms replacement wand, so it was unlikely to choose someone else.

[Anecronwashere]

There is Religious Allegory in HP too. Dude rises from the dead (or close enough to it) 2-3 times (depends on if you count the end of 1st when Voldy passed through him)

EDIT: @Poster above me: Harrys wand is NOT the same as Voldemorts. It shares a whole 1 feature with it (Fawkes feather) and everything else is completely different.

[pendell]

There is Religious Allegory in HP too. Dude rises from the dead (or close enough to it) 2-3 times (depends on if you count the end of 1st when Voldy passed through him)

Maybe so , but it's a lot more subtle. You can read HP in its entirety without worrying overmuch about the religious undertones. By contrast, the Powers in Lone Wizards (including the archangel Michael in multiple appearances) and the Lone Power are so obvious that it's a lot harder to ignore if that sort of thing bothers you.



there's bits of nice, hard science fiction peeping out from under the fantasy.


Yah. And that's a fundamental difference. I grew up in the 1970s, after the golden age of Hard SF in the 50s-60s and Asimov, Niven & Pournelle, Heinlein, Poul Anderson, Arthur C. Clarke, and all the rest. Society doesn't produce much of that SF any more, gravitating towards fantasy. I miss it.

And that's why I preferred Young Wizards to Harry Potter. Because I prefer a story set in a logical universe with consistent rules to a universe where the rules are pretty much pulled out of a sorting hat. Objectively, I suspect Harry Potter is a better *story* but not enough better to tear my reading time away from Pratchett and Duane.

Case in point: One of my favorite Young Wizards stories is A Wizard Alone (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Wizard_Alone), most of which is spent inside an autistic child's mind -- or, more specifically, in the alternate dimension that child's soul inhabits, since there's essentially "nobody home" in his body most of the time. I've had dealings with autistic kids, and the depth of research and the compassion for those struggling with it, the depth of understanding, took my breath away. Rowling can't match that. And she shouldn't try. She's writing for a different audience, and she's got her own story to tell. Better she tell her story than poorly tell someone else's. Especially when Rowling sells a lot more books :smallamused:.

Respectfully,

Brian P.

[Sotharsyl]

There is Religious Allegory in HP too. Dude rises from the dead (or close enough to it) 2-3 times (depends on if you count the end of 1st when Voldy passed through him)


You can find religious allegory in any story if you dig dip enough, but there's just some stories were it's much too blatant


Maybe so , but it's a lot more subtle. You can read HP in its entirety without worrying overmuch about the religious undertones. By contrast, the Powers in Lone Wizards (including the archangel Michael in multiple appearances) and the Lone Power are so obvious that it's a lot harder to ignore if that sort of thing bothers you.



Yah. And that's a fundamental difference. I grew up in the 1970s, after the golden age of Hard SF in the 50s-60s and Asimov, Niven & Pournelle, Heinlein, Poul Anderson, Arthur C. Clarke, and all the rest. Society doesn't produce much of that SF any more, gravitating towards fantasy. I miss it.

And that's why I preferred Young Wizards to Harry Potter. Because I prefer a story set in a logical universe with consistent rules to a universe where the rules are pretty much pulled out of a sorting hat. Objectively, I suspect Harry Potter is a better *story* but not enough better to tear my reading time away from Pratchett and Duane.

Case in point: One of my favorite Young Wizards stories is A Wizard Alone (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Wizard_Alone), most of which is spent inside an autistic child's mind -- or, more specifically, in the alternate dimension that child's soul inhabits, since there's essentially "nobody home" in his body most of the time. I've had dealings with autistic kids, and the depth of research and the compassion for those struggling with it, the depth of understanding, took my breath away. Rowling can't match that. And she shouldn't try. She's writing for a different audience, and she's got her own story to tell. Better she tell her story than poorly tell someone else's. Especially when Rowling sells a lot more books :smallamused:.

Respectfully,

Brian P.

The thing is I like pure science fiction stories and pure fantasy but I can't swallow their mixxing with only one exception (Star Wars).

[pendell]

The thing is I like pure science fiction stories and pure fantasy but I can't swallow their mixxing with only one exception (Star Wars).


But IMO that's a distinction without a difference -- both assume that on some fundamental level the universe in which the story is set operates by different rules than the world we inhabit. In some, the difference is called "science" and in others "magic", but in both cases they usually boil down to something unexplainable by current science (hyperdrive , magic wands, phasers whatever).

Consequently, there's no real difference between them -- they are both speculative fiction. Consequently there are well thought out, "hard" fantasy universes (such as Terry Brooks Shannara or David Drake's "Lord of the Isles") and there are space opera SF universes which rely utterly on handwavium and unobtanium (Star Trek).

But other than that, there's little difference between them. You have elves in one and Vulcans in the other, and they both fill the same role of an alien species like humans but different in fundamental ways, down to the pointed ears. Only the mechanism by which these beings are contacted changes (warp drive to a planet, magic through a wardrobe door) and both are equally implausible to current science.

Respectfully,

Brian P.

[The Glyphstone]

Which is kind of interesting in the analogy; Star Wars is space opera, it's basically fantasy wrapped up in science fiction visuals right down to the wizards using magic. Young Wizards, on the other hand, is science fiction dressed in fantasy trappings, the rules of 'magic' in that universe being so meticulously detailed, explained, and studied that it's practically Clarke's Law given form. Both exist in the hazy realm of speculative fiction that blurs the two subgenres.

[Lord Seth]

There is Religious Allegory in HP too. Dude rises from the dead (or close enough to it) 2-3 times (depends on if you count the end of 1st when Voldy passed through him)That's...an extremely questionable basis for claiming it's religious allegory.

[hamishspence]

"King's Cross Station" in HP7 seems like a big hint that there really is an afterlife in the HP world.

Voldemort seems to "rise from the dead" in a sense too though- in book 4- he's basically "resurrected" by Wormtail's spell- with his previous body being just a construct to hold his spirit.

"Blood of the enemy, forcibly taken- you will resurrect your foe!"

[Sotharsyl]

But IMO that's a distinction without a difference -- both assume that on some fundamental level the universe in which the story is set operates by different rules than the world we inhabit.

I admit that functionally they are the same but I contend since we are talking about literature a difference in presentation or tone is enough for me to not want to read them further.

[Nekura]

Originally Posted by Gnoman

On a tangentally related subject, I realized recently that the three main characters and Neville each epitomize the virtues and vices of one of the Houses. Harry is brave and noble, but tends towards recklessness, arrogance, and a hero complex. This makes him the ideal Griffindor. Hermione is brilliant and talented, but her pride in her intellectual superiority and skepticism often blind her, making her the ultimate Ravenclaw. Ron is ambitious and actually quite clever, but he has something of an inferiority complex and is a bit of a coward at times, thus encapsulating Slytherin. Neville, of course, is Hufflepuff: Not particularly bright, but keeps at things, and refuses to back down when it comes right down to it due to extreme loyalty. He's even something of a background character for most of the series, despite being just as important as the other three. Just like the House.




It might have been my reading of the sorting scene carrying over but I switch around Ron and Harry, emphasizing Harry's bend the rules Sliterin side and keeping Ron as the most pure Gryifindor

I mostly agree with Gnoman's idea other then that Ron never came across as particularly clever to me. Harry a slytherin? At that point he had no ambition. He was just glad to be away from the Dursleys, didn't know Voldemort was after him so no big hope to take him down, and didn't want anything to do with his fame. I suppose you can at least say he was much more cunning then Ron.

I didn't agree with a lot of how JKR sorted kids. Take Draco for instance the hat instantly put him in slytherin. Draco wasn't ambitious he was arrogant thinking himself already at the top and well for the most part he was right at least his father was. Voldemort was winning and even after he fell to baby Harry the DE's ended up basically running magical Britain. Dumbledore had a lot of political power and could have stopped them from gaining it but just let them get away with it and do as they please. Nor was Draco all that cunning. As for the other houses he wasn't brave, noble, wise, intelligent, hardworking, or loyal. I guess when the hat sees they don't match any house he sticks them in what house their family normally goes to but that doesn't explain the quick choice. Actually I take that back the house Draco most represented was the house he told Harry in the cloths shop he would rather go home then be in....Hufflepuff. The only trait Draco showed was blind loyalty to Voldemort and the pureblood cause. The Malfoys only switched after being treated so horrible by Voldemort and possibly finally finding out he was a half blood. Kind of hard to keep loyalty when you treat people like Voldemort does.

[Tyndmyr]

I mostly agree with Gnoman's idea other then that Ron never came across as particularly clever to me. Harry a slytherin? At that point he had no ambition. He was just glad to be away from the Dursleys, didn't know Voldemort was after him so no big hope to take him down, and didn't want anything to do with his fame. I suppose you can at least say he was much more cunning then Ron.

I didn't agree with a lot of how JKR sorted kids. Take Draco for instance the hat instantly put him in slytherin. Draco wasn't ambitious he was arrogant thinking himself already at the top and well for the most part he was right at least his father was. Voldemort was winning and even after he fell to baby Harry the DE's ended up basically running magical Britain. Dumbledore had a lot of political power and could have stopped them from gaining it but just let them get away with it and do as they please. Nor was Draco all that cunning. As for the other houses he wasn't brave, noble, wise, intelligent, hardworking, or loyal. I guess when the hat sees they don't match any house he sticks them in what house their family normally goes to but that doesn't explain the quick choice. Actually I take that back the house Draco most represented was the house he told Harry in the cloths shop he would rather go home then be in....Hufflepuff. The only trait Draco showed was blind loyalty to Voldemort and the pureblood cause. The Malfoys only switched after being treated so horrible by Voldemort and possibly finally finding out he was a half blood. Kind of hard to keep loyalty when you treat people like Voldemort does.

In practice, Slytherin is where all the bad kids go, to keep the story nice and simple.

[pendell]

That's...an extremely questionable basis for claiming it's religious allegory.

JK Rowling herself has said in interviews that she used religious imagery and themes. That's not the same thing as allegory. Allegory is when you take a mainstream religious theme and give it the barest Crystal Dragon Jesus (http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Laconic/CrystalDragonJesus) coat of paint so that it's a fictional story and not a Sunday School lecture. See: Chronicles of Narnia.

Tolkien had a lighter touch, in that he used religious themes and ideas in his stories but didn't go so far as to drop an anvil on his readers. I seem to recall in his essay he described his work as 'application' rather than 'allegory' . 'Application' meaning "you can take away something if you've got the right sort of mind". 'Allegory' meaning "I'm going to drop the anvil so hard there's NO POSSIBLE WAY you could possibly interpret it to mean anything else than what I say".

I think Rowling's approach was much closer to Tolkien's -- mining the western tradition for themes and idea -- than it was Lewis' approach of dressing up a Sunday school lesson in fairy tale garb.

I cannot post links Rowling's interviews on the forum without contravening the rules, but I can PM. And , of course, google is your friend. :)

Respectfully,

Brian P.

[Xondoure]

I mostly agree with Gnoman's idea other then that Ron never came across as particularly clever to me. Harry a slytherin? At that point he had no ambition. He was just glad to be away from the Dursleys, didn't know Voldemort was after him so no big hope to take him down, and didn't want anything to do with his fame. I suppose you can at least say he was much more cunning then Ron.

I didn't agree with a lot of how JKR sorted kids. Take Draco for instance the hat instantly put him in slytherin. Draco wasn't ambitious he was arrogant thinking himself already at the top and well for the most part he was right at least his father was. Voldemort was winning and even after he fell to baby Harry the DE's ended up basically running magical Britain. Dumbledore had a lot of political power and could have stopped them from gaining it but just let them get away with it and do as they please. Nor was Draco all that cunning. As for the other houses he wasn't brave, noble, wise, intelligent, hardworking, or loyal. I guess when the hat sees they don't match any house he sticks them in what house their family normally goes to but that doesn't explain the quick choice. Actually I take that back the house Draco most represented was the house he told Harry in the cloths shop he would rather go home then be in....Hufflepuff. The only trait Draco showed was blind loyalty to Voldemort and the pureblood cause. The Malfoys only switched after being treated so horrible by Voldemort and possibly finally finding out he was a half blood. Kind of hard to keep loyalty when you treat people like Voldemort does.

It isn't about what house you're best suited for. It's about the house they want to be in. Draco wanted to be in Slytherin, it was a matter of pride. So the hat chose it for him. Sure, maybe sometimes the hat will see something in you and try and talk you into the house you'd be best suited for, but ultimately you decide, and the hat goes along with your choice (after making sure you're making it with all the facts.) And while loyalty is a trait of hufflepuff the badgers have one thing over all the other houses: work ethic. Which means that they are the quintessential unappreciated nerds who go on to be the ones doing all the real work.


Yeah... except we can see his store is filled to the brim with box after box of wands. It looks like the stock room of a shoe store, only more so since the boxes are thinner. I suppose its POSSIBLE that out of the hundreds upon hundreds of wands he has stocked back there, each one is a unique core/wood/length, but its just hard to tell because we learn next to nothing about wands aside from, "the wand chooses the wizard" or how they are made, until book 7 when suddenly, we learn that wands can change allegiance and its rowlings new toy to play with as everyone is disarming each other in a game of musical chairs and switching wands left right and center.

I still say its more likely that each wizard or witch would get the same wand as a replacement if their original broke, because while the wand chooses the wizard, ollivander also makes a point of stating what each wand type is best at, so it would seem odd if suddenly after being a transfiguration wizz with your wand suited to that lineup, you find yourself having a hard time with transfiguration, but your healing spells are oddly effective because you got a new wand.

Another possible hint that my theory is true is harry getting his wand. Think about this. Fawkes dropped two feathers right? Why would ollivander have made a second, identical wand, with that other feather except to be meant as a future replacement for a young tom riddle? Thats why harry tried virtually every other wand in the shop first. That was supposed to be toms replacement wand, so it was unlikely to choose someone else.

There's no guarantee that Tom Riddle's wand is good at the same kind of magics as Harry Potter's, or identical in any other way besides sharing cores from the same phoenix. They are called brother wands not twin wands. And Olivander would not take into account replacements like that. Because it goes entirely against the idea that each wand is an irreplaceable work of art. He'd help you find a new wand rather grudgingly, but he certainly wouldn't have back ups just in case.

Also recall in the books it takes hours to find the right wand for harry. If it was as simple as finding the right combinations it would have gone like this: "That's a no to the dragon heartstring. Let's try unicorn hair- no no no. Phoenix feathers it is. Alright try this oak wand. No? How about this elm one instead. Hmmm.... how about Holly? Ah, yes that works. Now it's just about finding the right length. I wonder..." Which was not the case at all.

Wands are alive. They may even be intelligent. And every single one is a different beast, with a different temperament and affinity.

[Sotharsyl]

I mostly agree with Gnoman's idea other then that Ron never came across as particularly clever to me. Harry a slytherin? At that point he had no ambition. He was just glad to be away from the Dursleys, didn't know Voldemort was after him so no big hope to take him down, and didn't want anything to do with his fame. I suppose you can at least say he was much more cunning then Ron.

I didn't agree with a lot of how JKR sorted kids. Take Draco for instance the hat instantly put him in slytherin. Draco wasn't ambitious he was arrogant thinking himself already at the top and well for the most part he was right at least his father was. Voldemort was winning and even after he fell to baby Harry the DE's ended up basically running magical Britain. Dumbledore had a lot of political power and could have stopped them from gaining it but just let them get away with it and do as they please. Nor was Draco all that cunning. As for the other houses he wasn't brave, noble, wise, intelligent, hardworking, or loyal. I guess when the hat sees they don't match any house he sticks them in what house their family normally goes to but that doesn't explain the quick choice. Actually I take that back the house Draco most represented was the house he told Harry in the cloths shop he would rather go home then be in....Hufflepuff. The only trait Draco showed was blind loyalty to Voldemort and the pureblood cause. The Malfoys only switched after being treated so horrible by Voldemort and possibly finally finding out he was a half blood. Kind of hard to keep loyalty when you treat people like Voldemort does.

The thing is how does one define ambition if one is taught he has achieved all that can be achieved simply by being born to the proper parents?

I agree that Draco could make a proper case for Hufflepuff by the way.

Let's see ambition, Draco is shown to be quite the teachers pet to Snape, granted it might be actual hero-worship, but Harry doesn't describe him in other classes maybe he uses the same tactics/sneakiness on other teachers :smallconfused:

Anyways Harry is supposed to regularly trump these guys so they can't be written too smart, it's the same thing with Hermione and her not described Ravenclaw chalengers fro best in class.

The thing is in theory Slitherin should be the best house around, all the qualities of the other houses could be subbed by ambition, if there is profit to be made:

"Save those orphans are you insane? Oh the press is here, well anything to get into office... don't worry kids I'm coming!"

"That Ravenclaw girl thinks she'll get the scholarship, well though she breezed by in this class with no effort but now I'm in the game she better be prepared for competition."

"It's tough hard work and I don't like it but believe me the prize is worth it"

Anyway Rowling made something very strange when she wrote the ambition house to also be the evil nobles house at Hogwarts Che Guevara,Lenin every rebel anywhere would have been class mates with the people they would be trying to bring down.

Also quick fact I picked up and was waiting for a Potter thread to drop you know Merlin that guy everybody practically worships ... his alumni hose was Slitherin (according to Pottermore) :smallbiggrin:

[mangosta71]

The way the Sorting Hat works is never adequately explained. Apparently the kids' desires are a strong factor - that would explain Draco instantly being put into Slytherin (that being the House he wanted to be in) as well as Harry convincing it to not put him into that House. It also makes sense for someone to go into the Sorting with a thought process like "my family has always been <insert House here> and not being in <insert House here> would make me a disgrace, therefore I have to be in <insert House here>," and that always resulting in that person being in <insert House here>, thus perpetuating the legacy.

But it seems to me that Hermione, having no legacy and having studied the school (and therefore having some idea of what the Houses were and what each stood for), should have chosen Ravenclaw for herself, even if that wasn't clearly the best fit for her.

Also, Hagrid has a line in the first book that says something along the lines of "every wizard who turned evil was in Slytherin." If that's the case, Slytherin would have to be bigger than the other three Houses combined (or they have a very impressive kill ratio) as the bad guys at the final battle very clearly outnumber the good guys. Near as I can tell the Houses all have equal-sized tables in the dining hall, so I guess it must be the kill ratio thing after all.

And then we get into the unforgivable killing curse, Avada Kedavra. I don't understand why killing someone with that is any worse than killing them with any of the other spells that exist in the setting. You can cut someone in half with Sectum Sempra, or blow them into tiny little foe-shaped bits with whatever spell Sirius Black was accused of having used on Peter Pettigrew, so why is AK taboo?

[Emmerask]

The hat takes a look at the potential traits of the young wizard and places him then in the corresponding house, though it takes wishes by the person into account.

As for the numbers in the siege, it was never explicitly told in the books, though the number of deatheaters is about 20 at that time, the movie scene I think is more to have a "moaaar epic" fight so the ratios there should not be taken at face value.

As for AK I think its about how you perform the spell and not its effect that makes it taboo.

[Xondoure]

We can learn a lot from Harry's conversation with the Hat. I stand by the idea that it fills in the kids with as much as they need to know until they consciously or not make their decision. I also think people get too hung up on the courage/intelligence/ambition/hardworking divide. The houses are much more than that. Gryffindor is the house with the most ambition other than Slytherin and yet they are polar opposites. This is because Slytherin is all about personal ambition, while Gryffindor is all about standing up for what you believe. We also see the houses in a period of great division due to the conflicts within the books. Remember that in peace time things are very different.

Gryffindor never wins the house cup because it has the vast majority of the trouble makers (Moony, Wormtail, Padfoot and Prongs to Fred and George, to Harry himself.) It's the house of the rebels and misfits, and kids who have tremendous heart but don't necessarily work as much as the more ambitious, talented, and hardworking houses. Despite this, they also have some of the most gifted in those who want to use their talents to make positive change in the world (like Hermione and Lilly.)

Slytherin meanwhile had won the house cup for so many years all the other houses and house leaders had grown discouraged (other than Mcgonagall.) They're parents are usually better off than the rest, and everyone who wants to prove themselves as powerful wizards who isn't afraid of being called out on it comes to them (such as Snape.)

Hufflepuff is supposed to be the reject house, but really that whole viewpoint comes mostly from Draco Malfoy giving Harry that particular first impression. More literally while the house is happy to take anyone who can't find a place, it is also the house of Cedric Digory. Which is to say fair, hardworking, and loyal. They're much like Gryffindor but instead of the tendencies which cause kids like Fred and George to act out and draw attention, they're the kids who put their nose to the grindstone. They don't stand out much from the crowd, but in the real world these are the qualities that are going to get you places in life. Having the other qualities certainly help, but without this one you have no foundation.

Ravenclaw's are all very clever, but that's not the same thing as magically talented. Harry is very clever, but he doesn't have enough Hufflepuff to do all the work Hermione does. :smalltongue: What you have here is a house of smart people congratulating themselves on how smart they are. While really, this is the house that encourages thinking, it isn't necessarily channeled towards becoming an honors student. Look at Luna, who is in Ravenclaw because her imagination is stretched out even for wizards. It paints a pretty good picture for the house. They're smart, but their heads are up in the clouds. Now obviously Luna is an extreme example, but it explains why they aren't all at the top of their classes all the time.

However the most important thing to note is that the houses are not really that different. They have different cultures, and this is what the houses seem to represent from the outside. But given Harry's conversation with the Sorting Hat it isn't actually dividing the students by their primary traits but by both their desires and their potential. Later on, we hear from the Sorting Hat himself that he thinks the whole thing is a terrible idea and there should never have been houses to begin with.

Ultimately the houses define people rather than the people defining the houses, and thus the system limits the camaraderie and understanding of each other as individuals that would otherwise be there.

[Gnoman]

It might have been my reading of the sorting scene carrying over but I switch around Ron and Harry, emphasizing Harry's bend the rules Sliterin side and keeping Ron as the most pure Gryifindor.


There's nothing in any of the Houses' descriptions about keeping to the rules. Harry is the most pure Griffindor because, if he sees a threat, he tends to immediately, with little doubt or fear. If there's a fight, he's there. If a friend, or in several cases an enemy, is in danger, he'll risk everything to go to that person's aid.

Ron is much more pragmatic. He'll go, especially if Harry, Hermione, or Ginnie is in danger, but he's never eager to go into harm's way, and he has a somewhat cowardly streak that shows at time.

[Nekura]

originally posted by Xondoure

It isn't about what house you're best suited for. It's about the house they want to be in. Draco wanted to be in Slytherin, it was a matter of pride. So the hat chose it for him. Sure, maybe sometimes the hat will see something in you and try and talk you into the house you'd be best suited for, but ultimately you decide, and the hat goes along with your choice (after making sure you're making it with all the facts.) And while loyalty is a trait of hufflepuff the badgers have one thing over all the other houses: work ethic. Which means that they are the quintessential unappreciated nerds who go on to be the ones doing all the real work.


Yes that seems to be how the sorting hat works but it's not how it should work or how we are told it should work. I have nothing against the badgers of Hufflepuff I am just saying that of the listed qualities of the houses loyalty is the only one Draco showed. Not that it would make him the perfect Hufflepuff I never said he had a good work ethic. Speaking of which if it is as you say and the only thing that matters is what house the kid wants to be in how can you say Hufflepuff or any house has something over the others? In that case the stated qualities of the house don't matter because the people in said house don't necessarily fit any of the qualities they just think they do, or want other people to think they do, or don't care just want to be in the house their parents/friends were/are in.


The thing is how does one define ambition if one is taught he has achieved all that can be achieved simply by being born to the proper parents?

I agree that Draco could make a proper case for Hufflepuff by the way.

Let's see ambition, Draco is shown to be quite the teachers pet to Snape, granted it might be actual hero-worship, but Harry doesn't describe him in other classes maybe he uses the same tactics/sneakiness on other teachers :smallconfused:

Anyways Harry is supposed to regularly trump these guys so they can't be written too smart, it's the same thing with Hermione and her not described Ravenclaw chalengers fro best in class.

The thing is in theory Slitherin should be the best house around, all the qualities of the other houses could be subbed by ambition, if there is profit to be made:

"Save those orphans are you insane? Oh the press is here, well anything to get into office... don't worry kids I'm coming!"

"That Ravenclaw girl thinks she'll get the scholarship, well though she breezed by in this class with no effort but now I'm in the game she better be prepared for competition."

"It's tough hard work and I don't like it but believe me the prize is worth it"

Anyway Rowling made something very strange when she wrote the ambition house to also be the evil nobles house at Hogwarts Che Guevara,Lenin every rebel anywhere would have been class mates with the people they would be trying to bring down.

Also quick fact I picked up and was waiting for a Potter thread to drop you know Merlin that guy everybody practically worships ... his alumni hose was Slitherin (according to Pottermore) :smallbiggrin:

I wasn't knocking Slytherin I was complaining about it being the evil house and a dumping ground for people like Malfoy. However while ambition isn't a bad thing it would hardly make them the best house. They would have the ambition to work to be and being cunning would make a good run for it but it wouldn't be a guarantee. Of coarse Draco likes Snape he is his godfather and completely biased in favor of him and slytherin it's not him ambitious and cunningly sucking up to Snape to get him on his side.

[Prime32]

Reason behind Harry Potter's massive popularity is the fact that there is no other film which is also based on the similar story line, I mean there is no other film which unites the two Worlds, real and Fantasy for only children and children love. Harry Potter may not be greatest of all the comic books but the Film adaptation definitely stood out and made its mark.The books were already a phenomenon before the films.

[Kalrany]

About the idiot wizards I heard it WMG'd that magic caused brain damage.

On a more serious note, how do you think having the amazing ability to affect your environment would wear on your motivation to advance? As both a society and a person?

I think that has been the point -- it has the potential to damage both. And for many characters in the HP universe, it shows, but most assuredly it shows greatest in the WW culture. And that was part of the point.


...Poorly thought out magic systems may be worse for making game systems, but they seem just the ticket for once upon a time fairy tales. Maybe six year olds can't appreciate the intricacies of quantum mechanics or the laws of thermodynamics, but waving a wand and making something happen is wish fulfillment at its purest. Young Wizards touches the head, but HP touches the heart.

3) HP has an honest-to-goodness villain in Voldemort. Voldemort is human with human motives and is recognizably Darth Vader. Duane's Lone Power never really seems like the kind of personal in-your-face enemy that Voldy does. The Lone Power is more like a force of nature, something you confront but cannot ultimately defeat, any more than you can overcome a tidal wave or a hurricane. It is what it is. You do your best to protect yourself and those under your care from it's machinations, but you can't achieve the kind of unconditional victory that comes from throwing the ring in the fire of beating Voldemort. ...

And you hit to the heart of the appeal. Many of the people commenting on their own enjoyment of the series (especially in the early posts) grew up with Harry. I was older, and probably would not have picked the story up as early as I did if I hadn’t had a friend who worked in a bookstore. I was already in college when book 1 hit the shelves, and was told to borrow a copy because it was a fun little read. A couple of hours of pure escapism.

But what kept us reading, anticipating the release of a children's book of all things, was the world that was created. Let me pull 3 critical reasons for the appeal to me (and several of my friends who read along with me):

HP has an honest-to-goodness villain...
...unconditional victory...
...HP touches the heart.

Perhaps it was because I love the escapism of reading a clearly defined hero's struggle, where the enemy is obvious, the fight fundamental, and victory total. Because the real world isn't made that way. Tragedy and heartache are hard to overcome, but there is an timelessness to the hero beating the odds. The deep appeal to good always triumphant over evil, and that love and honor are the most powerful magic. These are themes that extend through hundreds of years of literature, further still in oral traditions. That is the inherent appeal.

There was a small sense of thrill to idea of magic simply being a part of the world in which we live... those goose-bumps of wonder that something amazing could be around the corner. I will never be able to deny that the characters were often stilted, the plot flawed, and many of the plot holes large enough to drive an 18-wheeler through. But the thing is, I am ok with that -- because it captured my minds-eye in a way that many books failed to do. I had no problems with the very glossed over magic system, because every time something was not explained enough, I could use my imagination to fill in the gaps.

The personal input that arose from that is a large part of draw. It allowed me to become a PART of the world, rather than bystander. I personally think that is a good part of why it has been such a phenomenon. Our imaginations are allowed great reign, and there is an almost intoxicating appeal to the idea of What-If...

I may well be alone in this, but that is my interpretation of the phenomenon, and reasons for my personal enjoyment of the series. Make of it what you will.

:smallsmile:
As for the films... eh, I saw them. I vastly prefer the books; 'nuff said. :smallbiggrin:

[Nekura]

We can learn a lot from Harry's conversation with the Hat. I stand by the idea that it fills in the kids with as much as they need to know until they consciously or not make their decision. I also think people get too hung up on the courage/intelligence/ambition/hardworking divide. The houses are much more than that. Gryffindor is the house with the most ambition other than Slytherin and yet they are polar opposites. This is because Slytherin is all about personal ambition, while Gryffindor is all about standing up for what you believe. We also see the houses in a period of great division due to the conflicts within the books. Remember that in peace time things are very different.

Gryffindor never wins the house cup because it has the vast majority of the trouble makers (Moony, Wormtail, Padfoot and Prongs to Fred and George, to Harry himself.) It's the house of the rebels and misfits, and kids who have tremendous heart but don't necessarily work as much as the more ambitious, talented, and hardworking houses. Despite this, they also have some of the most gifted in those who want to use their talents to make positive change in the world (like Hermione and Lilly.)

Slytherin meanwhile had won the house cup for so many years all the other houses and house leaders had grown discouraged (other than Mcgonagall.) They're parents are usually better off than the rest, and everyone who wants to prove themselves as powerful wizards who isn't afraid of being called out on it comes to them (such as Snape.)

Hufflepuff is supposed to be the reject house, but really that whole viewpoint comes mostly from Draco Malfoy giving Harry that particular first impression. More literally while the house is happy to take anyone who can't find a place, it is also the house of Cedric Digory. Which is to say fair, hardworking, and loyal. They're much like Gryffindor but instead of the tendencies which cause kids like Fred and George to act out and draw attention, they're the kids who put their nose to the grindstone. They don't stand out much from the crowd, but in the real world these are the qualities that are going to get you places in life. Having the other qualities certainly help, but without this one you have no foundation.

Ravenclaw's are all very clever, but that's not the same thing as magically talented. Harry is very clever, but he doesn't have enough Hufflepuff to do all the work Hermione does. :smalltongue: What you have here is a house of smart people congratulating themselves on how smart they are. While really, this is the house that encourages thinking, it isn't necessarily channeled towards becoming an honors student. Look at Luna, who is in Ravenclaw because her imagination is stretched out even for wizards. It paints a pretty good picture for the house. They're smart, but their heads are up in the clouds. Now obviously Luna is an extreme example, but it explains why they aren't all at the top of their classes all the time.

However the most important thing to note is that the houses are not really that different. They have different cultures, and this is what the houses seem to represent from the outside. But given Harry's conversation with the Sorting Hat it isn't actually dividing the students by their primary traits but by both their desires and their potential. Later on, we hear from the Sorting Hat himself that he thinks the whole thing is a terrible idea and there should never have been houses to begin with.

Ultimately the houses define people rather than the people defining the houses, and thus the system limits the camaraderie and understanding of each other as individuals that would otherwise be there.

Either the houses mean something or they don't. If a kid hears whatever argument the hat makes but decides the want to be in Ravenclaw the smart house because they want to be smart, or there friend/sibling got sorted there they don't suddenly become smart. The same with any of the other houses and traits or are you saying they magically become so? Unless magic changes the kids to fit what house they end up sorted into you can't on one hand say the only deciding factor of your house depends on the fickle decision of each individual kid and on the other say the kids in the houses match the traits the houses are described as.

Slytherin has been winning the house cup for the past 10 years or so from the point of the first book because Snape has been a biased and unprofessional teacher and Dumbledore and the others let him get away with it.

[Xondoure]

Either the houses mean something or they don't. If a kid hears whatever argument the hat makes but decides the want to be in Ravenclaw the smart house because they want to be smart, or there friend/sibling got sorted there they don't suddenly become smart. The same with any of the other houses and traits or are you saying they magically become so? Unless magic changes the kids to fit what house they end up sorted into you can't on one hand say the only deciding factor of your house depends on the fickle decision of each individual kid and on the other say the kids in the houses match the traits the houses are described as.

Slytherin has been winning the house cup for the past 10 years or so from the point of the first book because Snape has been a biased and unprofessional teacher and Dumbledore and the others let him get away with it.

No what I'm saying is that the houses mean something, but that people are more than just one trait, and that the hat cares more about what people think about themselves and where they want to be than what they are. Additionally, people identify with the house they are in which shapes them as they grow older, so it's a self fulfilling prophecy.

And Slytherin was winning because they're good. Sure Snape is biased, but it can't possibly be enough to offset every other class in the building. Especially if Slytherins were all as cruel as Crab and Goyle.

[Jayngfet]

No what I'm saying is that the houses mean something, but that people are more than just one trait, and that the hat cares more about what people think about themselves and where they want to be than what they are. Additionally, people identify with the house they are in which shapes them as they grow older, so it's a self fulfilling prophecy.

And Slytherin was winning because they're good. Sure Snape is biased, but it can't possibly be enough to offset every other class in the building. Especially if Slytherins were all as cruel as Crab and Goyle.

That's the real shame of the books: Slytherin House. I mean I'd be ok with them being evil if they actually got the job done but most slytherin students we saw were ugly, dim witted idiots a-la Crab/Goyle/Bullstrode/ect. Even though Draco probably did a whole lot to work with other Slytherins, especially in Quiddich, he strikes me as like, the one guy out of a sea of idiots.

The most you can say for the average Slytherin is "eh, we haven't seen all that much of them. But since we haven't actually seen them to wrong I ...kinda guess they aren't total d-bags?".

It's not even like they're the only evil guys either. Wormtail was a Griffondor and he was instrumental to the plans of Voldemort and the first to come back.

[Nekura]

No what I'm saying is that the houses mean something, but that people are more than just one trait, and that the hat cares more about what people think about themselves and where they want to be than what they are. Additionally, people identify with the house they are in which shapes them as they grow older, so it's a self fulfilling prophecy.

And Slytherin was winning because they're good. Sure Snape is biased, but it can't possibly be enough to offset every other class in the building. Especially if Slytherins were all as cruel as Crab and Goyle.

Yes people are more then the one or two traits the houses are said to have. But your posts seem to be that the people in a house all have similar mindsets. If the houses are made up with people who want to be in a house but aren't what that house stands for the Hufflepuff wont necessarily have more hardworking loyal people in it then any other house so identifying with the others in your house won't shape you into a hardworking loyal person as you grow older which doesn't make a self fulfilling prophecy. If houses are not determined by personality then there won't be a majority of people in a house with the house trait to peer pressure someone who might not be as strong in those house traits to develop them more. If one or both of a house traits being your strongest trait is not the reason you are sorted there but any superficial reason you want to be in a house then the houses wont have people full of that traits they are said to be of. If it is just up to the kids choice they could choose it for any reason. Not just because they want to have that trait. If a kid whished he was more brave so he joins Gryfindor there is nothing set in stone that he would succeed. And not everyone would have a noble reason you could have some kid who wanted to join Hufflepuff so he could be surrounded by hardworking friends he could get to do all the work.

[Anecronwashere]

The way I see it is that the Sorting Hat sees which traits are above the threshold (he is X Cunning so Slytherin is a choice, has X Intelligence too so Ravenclaw is also offered). The hat offers the house with the highest value, but the kid can choose to be in any he qualified for.

For example. Say you took 4 classes, Cooking Latin IT and Art.
You can take 1 class next year but only if you got a pass mark in it this year.
You pass Cooking and Art but got a higher Cooking score than Art so the hat offers you Cooking but you can choose Art if you want. You cannot go into IT or Latin.

[Tiki Snakes]

The way I see it is that the Sorting Hat sees which traits are above the threshold (he is X Cunning so Slytherin is a choice, has X Intelligence too so Ravenclaw is also offered). The hat offers the house with the highest value, but the kid can choose to be in any he qualified for.

And if he doesn't find that they are qualified for anything in particular, it still has an option. (http://youtu.be/fXF4JuA6tcg)

[Lord Seth]

That's the real shame of the books: Slytherin House. I mean I'd be ok with them being evil if they actually got the job done but most slytherin students we saw were ugly, dim witted idiots a-la Crab/Goyle/Bullstrode/ect. Even though Draco probably did a whole lot to work with other Slytherins, especially in Quiddich, he strikes me as like, the one guy out of a sea of idiots.

The most you can say for the average Slytherin is "eh, we haven't seen all that much of them. But since we haven't actually seen them to wrong I ...kinda guess they aren't total d-bags?".Well if memory serves all the Slytherins either sat out the final battle or were with Voldemort, with only Horace Slughorn actually siding with the good guys.
It's not even like they're the only evil guys either. Wormtail was a Griffondor and he was instrumental to the plans of Voldemort and the first to come back.Was it ever stated he was a Gryffindor? He could have been in another house for all we know...

I think the main issue is that it seems there are very few good Slytherins or evil non-Slytherins. I think the series should have been more nuanced in regards to this.
And then we get into the unforgivable killing curse, Avada Kedavra. I don't understand why killing someone with that is any worse than killing them with any of the other spells that exist in the setting. You can cut someone in half with Sectum Sempra, or blow them into tiny little foe-shaped bits with whatever spell Sirius Black was accused of having used on Peter Pettigrew, so why is AK taboo?Because it can only kill, whereas the others can at least be used for, well, non-killing methods.

It's kind of like comparing knives to guns. You can kill or really hurt people with either, but knives have far more non-harmful usages than guns do. Obviously killing someone with a knife would be considered really really bad, but you can do other things with knives.
The books were already a phenomenon before the films.True. But the films pushed its popularity even further and made it more mainstream. It's kind of like how Twilight was a big series before the films came out, but it wasn't until the films that it really bled into popular culture.

Though you can just swap out the word "film" with "book" in the message you're responding to and it still seems applicable.

[Jayngfet]

Voldemort, with only Horace Slughorn actually siding with the good guys. Was it ever stated he was a Gryffindor? He could have been in another house for all we know...

Not that I recall, however it's implicit. His only three known friends are all Gryffindor's and he spent so much time with them. It'd be weird if he was randomly a Hufflepuff or something but it never got mentioned.

[Nekura]

The way I see it is that the Sorting Hat sees which traits are above the threshold (he is X Cunning so Slytherin is a choice, has X Intelligence too so Ravenclaw is also offered). The hat offers the house with the highest value, but the kid can choose to be in any he qualified for.

For example. Say you took 4 classes, Cooking Latin IT and Art.
You can take 1 class next year but only if you got a pass mark in it this year.
You pass Cooking and Art but got a higher Cooking score than Art so the hat offers you Cooking but you can choose Art if you want. You cannot go into IT or Latin.

Explain crabbe or goyle then I can't think of a good house for them off the top of my head but they were not cunning and I don't consider being Draco toadies to be very ambitious.

[Anecronwashere]

They don't fit anywhere so the SH put them in with the rest of their family? Probably to prevent them having a very bad time.

[Logic]

Explain crabbe or goyle then I can't think of a good house for them off the top of my head but they were not cunning and I don't consider being Draco toadies to be very ambitious.

The sorting of Crabbe and Goyle can be explained as thus: Purebloods, want to be in Slytherin, willing to do whatever it takes to get ahead.



Slytherins tend to be ambitious, shrewd, cunning, strong leaders, and achievement-oriented. They also have highly developed senses of self-preservation

[Xondoure]

Yes people are more then the one or two traits the houses are said to have. But your posts seem to be that the people in a house all have similar mindsets. If the houses are made up with people who want to be in a house but aren't what that house stands for the Hufflepuff wont necessarily have more hardworking loyal people in it then any other house so identifying with the others in your house won't shape you into a hardworking loyal person as you grow older which doesn't make a self fulfilling prophecy. If houses are not determined by personality then there won't be a majority of people in a house with the house trait to peer pressure someone who might not be as strong in those house traits to develop them more. If one or both of a house traits being your strongest trait is not the reason you are sorted there but any superficial reason you want to be in a house then the houses wont have people full of that traits they are said to be of. If it is just up to the kids choice they could choose it for any reason. Not just because they want to have that trait. If a kid whished he was more brave so he joins Gryfindor there is nothing set in stone that he would succeed. And not everyone would have a noble reason you could have some kid who wanted to join Hufflepuff so he could be surrounded by hardworking friends he could get to do all the work.

People go into the houses because they want to, and then the houses own idea of what they should be shapes their personality. Would Neville have ever discovered he could be brave, or Hermione ever have realized there was more than books, or Ron gotten over his inferiority had they not been a part of Gryffindor?

[Anecronwashere]

Ron never got over his inferiority and Neville only became brave through the DA and becoming Hogwarts Rebel #1 but your point stands.



What do you guys think is the weakest character overall?
I reckon it's Ron. The guy serves no purpose except to argue with Hermione,be all insecure and beat the chess game in 1st.

[Omergideon]

I would actually say Ron is my favourite character of the Trio because he is the normal person of the group. OK he is a wizard and al but in most cases he is a typical teenage boy and all that entails. He can be brave, cowardly, insightful, dim, horny, romantic, friendly, judgemental and more besides. He is the typical everyman sort of character. not a genius like Hermione, or a person with "Epic Destiny" like Harry. He could happily sit things out. But does not.

I personally think he is the most identifiable of the 3 characters and especially by the last book has to deal with normal everyday problems AND the fact he is not special like his friends. And whilst he stumbles he eventually rises to the occasion. In fact with most of his flaws he initially stumbles, but overcomes his own flaw and rises afterwards.

So not the weakest. Just the most normal.



I personally think Draco is the weakest major character. He is stereotypical bully for ages, and then we see too little of him in later books to really explore the effects of his lifestyle on him.

[Anecronwashere]

He is too flawed in my opinion, he is lazy, dumb, boorish, mean, has an inferiority complex and is a very fair-weather friend.
Any of those alone would make a good everyman character but together I got to the point where I was berating Harry for not dropping the guy.

He grew a whole 0% over the whole series while everyone else you could see changing with the events.

Harry went through moody periods but you could see his change in stance over the books, until accepting his fate and walking to his death.
Hermione became less of a bookworm and rules stickler, she went from "Killed, or worse Expelled" to willingly dropping out of her 7th year to follow Harry.
Ron played chess, ate in a disgusting way and didn't change. He was still told not to be disgusting, always ate too much and walked out on Harry, forcing Hermione into a tough decision (stay with Harry or follow her crush).

Even Draco (who you say is weak) got more character development than Ron, from Daddy's boy Bully to reluctant Death Eater who lost one of his trio.

[Fragenstein]

Even Draco (who you say is weak) got more character development than Ron, from Daddy's boy Bully to reluctant Death Eater who lost one of his trio.

Draco was great. He started out... as the typical Deatheater wanna-be who expected to grow up just like his dad. It seems like he started to realize that wasn't exactly what he wanted for his life about the time he was pushed into being Slytherin's seeker.

The darker his duties became, the less he seemed to want to follow them. Unfortunately, he had little choice. It's no wonder that Dumbledore was so insistant on having Snape pull the trigger before Draco had the chance. Allowing the boy to be pushed into murder would have sent him back along the dark path he just didn't deserve.

Then we find out he and Harry eventually reconcile and become friends. That's part of the reason I feel that a hypothetical sequal with a protaganist set within Slytherin house would be a great followup. Possibly A. B. Potter as described in that final scene.

[Anecronwashere]

I know, I like Draco as a fictional character, would have loathed him in RL.

His saga is a sad one, though not easily seen by anyone inside the universe.

I was using him as an example because Omergideon thought he was the weakest character.

[Fragenstein]

I know, I like Draco as a fictional character, would have loathed him in RL.

His saga is a sad one, though not easily seen by anyone inside the universe.

I was using him as an example because Omergideon thought he was the weakest character.

I'm with you. I feel as if Draco and Neville had the best overall growth. And speaking of wands, is it just me or did Neville start getting more competent after breaking his father's wand? I always wondered if, perhaps, he'd never truly earned its loyalty. Only after using a wand that had actually selected him did he start kicking ass.

[Anecronwashere]

I don't like the progression of Neville for 1 reason.
He got his badass moment back in book 1 that was pretty much retconned away.

He stood up to the golden trio to do what was right, not what was easy that with just a little bit of exploration in CoS could have shown to the young kids (while they were kids) that even the forgetful clutz has it in them to be great.
Instead they wait until book 7 when he becomes unholy levels of awesome but after everyone is grown up and he is stuck in character growth limbo for 3 years (until the DA starts and he begins to go from clutz to badass)


And yes, Neville getting a wand that didn't fight him was a big point for his growth. Both as metaphor and In-Universe. Neville always struggled with using magic and assumed he was near-squib but it was just a bad wand-wizard pairing. When he got a new one his magic went up very, very fast (think doing pull-ups with sandbags attached to finally letting the sandbags come off and trying again).
Metaphorically it was Neville struggling to fit into the idealized form of his father who was in hospital after being tortured. his grandmother wanted Neville to be Frank and was disappointed when he wasn't. Frank was a top-notch Auror with a tailored wand while Neville was a top-notch Herbologist with a terribad fitted wand.

[Traab]

I'm with you. I feel as if Draco and Neville had the best overall growth. And speaking of wands, is it just me or did Neville start getting more competent after breaking his father's wand? I always wondered if, perhaps, he'd never truly earned its loyalty. Only after using a wand that had actually selected him did he start kicking ass.

Personally, im surprised neville didnt suicide early on. He has crippling self doubt from the fact that he hadnt shown any accidental magic till like, the summer before hogwarts started, so he has his entire extended family taking turns trying to force magic out of him, and I doubt they were quiet about their opinion when it failed to work. He is being forced to use his fathers wand, which cant be working very well. That means every spell he tries to learn is going to be even harder for him to pick up, he has a psychotic potions teacher that revels in shattering any shred of confidence he might have, and his only real strength is his ability to grub around in the dirt like a garden gnome. Honestly, him even TRYING to stop harry and crew at the end of book 1 struck me as fairly ooc. With his setup he should have been too busy locking himself in the bathroom practicing his cutting charm on himself to waste time standing up to the "golden trio"

[Omergideon]

He is too flawed in my opinion, he is lazy, dumb, boorish, mean, has an inferiority complex and is a very fair-weather friend.
Any of those alone would make a good everyman character but together I got to the point where I was berating Harry for not dropping the guy.

He grew a whole 0% over the whole series while everyone else you could see changing with the events.

I would disagree in that, even if the majority of his growing up was finished off in the 6/7th books. And his character did change over the years. He became more flawed regarding his inferiority and the like as Harry's fame rose, especially brought to a head in the 4th year. But he overcame that issue in 4 and when it resurged in 7 he got over it again. A fair weather friend I do not think he was. I think Ron's character arc can be best summed up by his post return exchange with Harry in book 7, when Harry says (to paraphrase) that Ron's key feature is that he always comes back. He may waver but he turns out for the best in the end and does get over it. It happens in fits and starts as he faces his weaknesses, but it does happen.

Overall I think I just find his flaws, and the way the narrative forces him to address many of them head on, to make him a more realistically rounded character than Draco. And an exploration of how the normal, everyday, humdrum teenager can still end up contributing to the saving of the world. Plus I kind of disagree with you about some of the flaws, but really that is not my issue. Liking/disliking a character is not always the same as thinking them strongly written.


But regarding Draco my issue with him as a weakly written character is that we do not get to spend enough time with him on screen to see his deterioration and change. We get told about it, and a few snapshots, but overall we never see enough of it to really feel it. And his final moment in DH I remember (pre epilogue) is him still trying to stab harry in the back to get back in Volemorts good graces. His struggle and story is not witnessed enough for me so that any character growth with him becomes a case of "told, not shown".

[Fragenstein]

But regarding Draco my issue with him as a weakly written character is that we do not get to spend enough time with him on screen to see his deterioration and change. We get told about it, and a few snapshots, but overall we never see enough of it to really feel it. And his final moment in DH I remember (pre epilogue) is him still trying to stab harry in the back to get back in Volemorts good graces. His struggle and story is not witnessed enough for me so that any character growth with him becomes a case of "told, not shown".

I seem to recall them hinting at it, as I said, when he was forced into direct competition against Harry as seeker. I thought the message came across quite subtly that he was starting to realize Harry wasn't such a bad guy... why does he need to be such a d**k to him?

He does continue with his moments of getting off on power trips and bullying others, but it seems quite clear that he's being bullied, himself, into a role that ultimately isn't in his nature.

Voldemort coming back just cements this coercion. Now it's not just a matter of staying in his father's good graces, but rather an attempt to keep Voldemort from killing his entire family. Any backstabbing and other villainous behavior is a consequence of that. He then joins up with the resistance when he finds out he actually has a choice in how his life will turn out.

[Tiki Snakes]

I often think that really, if I'm honest, that for me Harry is the worst written of the characters. The rest were often more interesting and endearing, even if they usually weren't meant to be.

I also wonder sometimes how much the movies coming out changed the later books, but I'm unsure of the timings and never got round to reading the later books anyway.

[edit] Well, apparently the first film was released in 2001, the last book released before that was Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, so Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix (2003) and onward are all written (presumably) since the Films started to be released.
No Idea if this correlates with anything meaningfully, but it's an interesting thought.

[Xondoure]

I don't think the movies changed anything. Looking at the books, it's easy to believe that she had the whole plot mapped out ahead of time.

And I want to say Harry is well written but it still bugs me that he get's all mopey after the fourth book, but has more tragedy happen at the end of the fifth and comes out much more stabilized.

[Nekura]

I don't think the movies changed anything. Looking at the books, it's easy to believe that she had the whole plot mapped out ahead of time.

And I want to say Harry is well written but it still bugs me that he get's all mopey after the fourth book, but has more tragedy happen at the end of the fifth and comes out much more stabilized.

I still say there are too many plot holes to think JKR had a good map of the plot beforehand.


originally post by Xondoure
People go into the houses because they want to, and then the houses own idea of what they should be shapes their personality. Would Neville have ever discovered he could be brave, or Hermione ever have realized there was more than books, or Ron gotten over his inferiority had they not been a part of Gryffindor?

Yes I believe Neville would have been able to find his courage in another house. Other houses joined the DA Luna went with them to the department of mysteries. Then you have other gryffindors like Percy who didn't.

Hermione just needed a friend like Harry to grow. Yes they happened to both be in gryffindor but it still would have happened if they were in a different house. Her and Harry both would have grown faster if they didn't keep Ron around he was just a terrible friend.

Ron never got over his faults even in the horrible epilog he is casting spells on a muggle to cheat his way into a drivers license. Showing no respect for muggles, random pedestrians, or anyone if the vehicle with him it's all about what Ron wants as usually.


originally posted by Fragenstein
I seem to recall them hinting at it, as I said, when he was forced into direct competition against Harry as seeker. I thought the message came across quite subtly that he was starting to realize Harry wasn't such a bad guy... why does he need to be such a d**k to him?

He does continue with his moments of getting off on power trips and bullying others, but it seems quite clear that he's being bullied, himself, into a role that ultimately isn't in his nature.

Voldemort coming back just cements this coercion. Now it's not just a matter of staying in his father's good graces, but rather an attempt to keep Voldemort from killing his entire family. Any backstabbing and other villainous behavior is a consequence of that. He then joins up with the resistance when he finds out he actually has a choice in how his life will turn out.

When while competing against Harry in quiditch did Draco think Harry wasn't such a bad guy? Draco bought his way onto the team, dressed as a dementor to distract Harry during a game, had his godfather force Harry to prepare his potion ingredients while faking an arm injury etc. Draco wasn't being coerced into being evil he was fine with killing but was just to much of a coward to curse Dumbledore in the face.

His mummy, daddy, and godfather spoiled him to much to think about hurting him. Then when his father messed up and got Voldemort mad Draco learned what it was like to hang out with that kind of crowd without his fathers protection. Now Draco was the one taking orders instead of giving them and being cursed for mistakes instead of doing the cursing and wanted out. He would have been fine standing next to his father watching other DE being punished even being the one to crucio them he only didn't want to be part of that life when he and his family fell toward the bottom of the pyramid.

[Xondoure]

Might I ask which plot holes lead you to think that?

[Nekura]

I had some before like the timeline of when Harry's parents were attacked to Harry being put on the doorstep. There are other like Hermione casting a lot of spells before school. The prophecy not really fitting waht happened. the responess I got not really countering them just someone who didn't know about parseltounge and how Ron couldn't have memorised a single would in it like he could for a normal language like french. Or the response to Harry being a horcrux being well yeah it's unbelievable put it happened bacause of the prophecy. Saying something stupid happened just to try and force a plot point doesn't make it not a bad plot point.

[Xondoure]

I had some before like the timeline of when Harry's parents were attacked to Harry being put on the doorstep. There are other like Hermione casting a lot of spells before school. The prophecy not really fitting waht happened. the responess I got not really countering them just someone who didn't know about parseltounge and how Ron couldn't have memorised a single would in it like he could for a normal language like french. Or the response to Harry being a horcrux being well yeah it's unbelievable put it happened bacause of the prophecy. Saying something stupid happened just to try and force a plot point doesn't make it not a bad plot point.

I'm confused, what's wrong with the Potter's timeline? Wizards aren't punished for wild magic, so I assume Hermione casting spells before she entered school was allowed, it's after they start to learn that the ban comes in place. (This because there aren't many wizards who can teach themselves the basics.) As for the prophecy "Neither can live while the other survives" makes little sense. My personal explanation is that Neither can be whole until the other is dead because Harry has a part of Voldemort fused onto him. What's the plot hole with Harry being a horcrux?

Or in other words: I don't see the inconsistencies. What exactly about these things make them plot holes (rather than setting holes, or not holes at all.) And why do these plot holes lead to you thinking JK didn't have a map in her head? Because none of these fit with your opinion that the books weren't planned out from the beginning, except perhaps the last two, but even then I'm not quite understanding what you're getting at.

[Nekura]

I'm confused, what's wrong with the Potter's timeline? Wizards aren't punished for wild magic, so I assume Hermione casting spells before she entered school was allowed, it's after they start to learn that the ban comes in place. (This because there aren't many wizards who can teach themselves the basics.) As for the prophecy "Neither can live while the other survives" makes little sense. My personal explanation is that Neither can be whole until the other is dead because Harry has a part of Voldemort fused onto him. What's the plot hole with Harry being a horcrux?

Or in other words: I don't see the inconsistencies. What exactly about these things make them plot holes (rather than setting holes, or not holes at all.) And why do these plot holes lead to you thinking JK didn't have a map in her head? Because none of these fit with your opinion that the books weren't planned out from the beginning, except perhaps the last two, but even then I'm not quite understanding what you're getting at.

It wasn't wild magic when Hermione met Harry on the train first year she said she already tried a lot of spells and they all worked for her. So there she was sitting at home reading her school books successfully casting spells and getting no letters of warning. As for the timeline go back a few pages and read what I wrote and if you don't think there is something to question about it I am not sure what to tell you.

[Fragenstein]

When while competing against Harry in quiditch did Draco think Harry wasn't such a bad guy? Draco bought his way onto the team, dressed as a dementor to distract Harry during a game, had his godfather force Harry to prepare his potion ingredients while faking an arm injury etc. Draco wasn't being coerced into being evil he was fine with killing but was just to much of a coward to curse Dumbledore in the face.

His mummy, daddy, and godfather spoiled him to much to think about hurting him. Then when his father messed up and got Voldemort mad Draco learned what it was like to hang out with that kind of crowd without his fathers protection. Now Draco was the one taking orders instead of giving them and being cursed for mistakes instead of doing the cursing and wanted out. He would have been fine standing next to his father watching other DE being punished even being the one to crucio them he only didn't want to be part of that life when he and his family fell toward the bottom of the pyramid.

Meh. I'm not going to devolve into scrolling through books to find exact quotes. It's just not worth it. I remember a lot of "You beat Potter or else..." moments. Draco's dad bought his way onto the team. I'm not even sure it was his idea. But that's around the time I started to feel sympathy towards the character.

It's also possible that I'm allowing the actor the color my memories. He seem to portray more facial expressions of reluctance then you're crediting him.

Oh, yeah, he had his psychotic episodes. But in the begining it was how he was raised. He had no way of knowing better. Later, he was also lashing out at how much pressure he was facing to be a budding dark lord. Later he was living in fear of Voldemort.

I don't think he really figured it out until Harry saved hia life, but my impression was always of someone who would eventually that the support of actual trust and loyalty was better than the crushing dominance and sadism of his family.

But that was just my take. Yours may differ.

[Xondoure]

It wasn't wild magic when Hermione met Harry on the train first year she said she already tried a lot of spells and they all worked for her. So there she was sitting at home reading her school books successfully casting spells and getting no letters of warning. As for the timeline go back a few pages and read what I wrote and if you don't think there is something to question about it I am not sure what to tell you.

Yes she was using a wand, no she hadn't started school yet. Is all I'm saying. the ban seems to come in during their first year.

[Xondoure]

You are right an abused child not having the courage to report it is not odd and unfortunately happens often in real life. As to Harry being physically abused Dudley is the worst but the adults are aware of it. After Dudley takes boxing lessons don’t the make Harry who is at a drastically lower weight class and with no training fight him repeatedly? Then his aunt hitting him with a frying pan, having a dog set on him and his uncle hitting him with a fire poker although that last one might have been from a fan fiction. No the odd and disturbing thing about the abuse in the book is how many people know about it but don’t do anything. The Weasley’s rescued him from bared windows but see nothing wrong with him going back year after year. Dumbledore confessed to knowing about the abuse even knowing that it would likely happen before he placed him with them as a baby. Ms Figg the squib Dumbledore set up to spy on Harry’s childhood knew, I guess knowing Harry was being mistreated wasn’t enough Dumbledore wanted to be informed of all the gory details.

As for plot holes well

You have Dumbledore’s questionable actions when the Potters are killed. Even if you give him the benefit of the doubt that he didn’t know who the secret keeper was and the fidelius fell when Voldemort broke through the other wards. When he learned of the attack did he alert aurors? No. Did he send his order? No. Did he himself supposedly the only man Voldemort feared rush off to battle? No. He sent a half giant who was expelled with his wand snapped, had no means of fast travel there or back, should have no idea where the Potters where hiding, and was alone. Even if he thought Sirius was the secret keeper learning he let the defenseless Hagrid leave unmolested with Harry and even gave his bike to get him to safety faster you would think he would push for a trail as head of the wizengamot...Nope. It took what a day or two at most for Hagrid to bring Harry to Dumbledore at the Dursely's. But why, I like a lot of others find it hard to believe that parents that loved him and left him money would ever let there be a possibility he would go there legally. So why was Minerva watching the house? When did Dumbledore put up the blood wards? What about the scar did it form right away or was it just a huge gash on an infants head? Considering children spend days in the hospital wing for relatively minor injuries you would think a baby with a horrible head wound from a curse no one survived before would have extensive tests and treatments to insure its health and safety.

Oh let us not forget the stupidity of Ron being able to imitate parseltongue to get into the chamber of secrets.

Or how a horcrux could survive for years in Harry’s scar when just a touch from Harry melted through Qurriel who was possessed by Voldemort.

Is that enough? I am sure there are many more.

Dumbledore trusts Hagrid, and while it's been awhile I sort of always thought Hagrid was spending time in Godric's Hollow in case the Fidelius charm ever broke.

And the Dursley's weren't the legal guardians after the Potter's death. Sirius Black was. Who you know, was being blamed for their murder. So Dumbledore was left in charge of deciding the child's fate.

The transaction was made days after the fall of the dark lord. Is it any surprise that Minerva was waiting on privet drive given the still dangerous atmosphere of the times?

Why does it matter when/if Dumbledore put up the blood wards (and they weren't simply there as part of Lilly's sacrifice.) If I had to guess it would be the same night he left Harry with the Dursleys.

The scar was there on the day the boy landed on their doorstep. It's a magic scar it's possible it was never a bloody gash. It's a magical scar I'm sure Dumbledore ensured it wasn't going to kill the boy.

Why can't Ron copy parseltongue? It's supposed to be a language. Why can't he imitate the same phrase he's heard multiple times, all during particularly vivid circumstances.

And finally Lily's protection served to keep the scar from taking over, but that was already covered.

And I repeat, none of these point to JK Rowling not having the story thought out from the beginning.

[Dark Elf Bard]

Draco was great. He started out... as the typical Deatheater wanna-be who expected to grow up just like his dad. It seems like he started to realize that wasn't exactly what he wanted for his life about the time he was pushed into being Slytherin's seeker.

The darker his duties became, the less he seemed to want to follow them. Unfortunately, he had little choice. It's no wonder that Dumbledore was so insistant on having Snape pull the trigger before Draco had the chance. Allowing the boy to be pushed into murder would have sent him back along the dark path he just didn't deserve.

Then we find out he and Harry eventually reconcile and become friends. That's part of the reason I feel that a hypothetical sequal with a protaganist set within Slytherin house would be a great followup. Possibly A. B. Potter as described in that final scene.
Wait what? They become friends?

[Fragenstein]

Wait what? They become friends?


I can't say they spend their Saturdays drinking butterbeer and chasing Cornish Pixies, no. But in the final scene where Harry is explaining to his son, Albus, that Slytherin isn't as bad as everyone thinks, it's obvious that they've made their peace with each other. Mutual respect if nothing else. No words were exchanged, but the whole scene had a very chummy air.

[Nekura]

Dumbledore trusts Hagrid, and while it's been awhile I sort of always thought Hagrid was spending time in Godric's Hollow in case the Fidelius charm ever broke.

And the Dursley's weren't the legal guardians after the Potter's death. Sirius Black was. Who you know, was being blamed for their murder. So Dumbledore was left in charge of deciding the child's fate.

The transaction was made days after the fall of the dark lord. Is it any surprise that Minerva was waiting on privet drive given the still dangerous atmosphere of the times?

Why does it matter when/if Dumbledore put up the blood wards (and they weren't simply there as part of Lilly's sacrifice.) If I had to guess it would be the same night he left Harry with the Dursleys.

The scar was there on the day the boy landed on their doorstep. It's a magic scar it's possible it was never a bloody gash. It's a magical scar I'm sure Dumbledore ensured it wasn't going to kill the boy.

Why can't Ron copy parseltongue? It's supposed to be a language. Why can't he imitate the same phrase he's heard multiple times, all during particularly vivid circumstances.

And finally Lily's protection served to keep the scar from taking over, but that was already covered.

And I repeat, none of these point to JK Rowling not having the story thought out from the beginning.

Trusting Hagrid is one thing sending him to a location that was under fidelius that he shouldn't have know alone against an unknown amount of DE and probably Voldemort himself is another.

Dumbledore even if he didn't know who the secret keeper was and I remember something about him being the one to cast the charm to hide the potters so that is a big if, would have heard from Hagrid how Sirius let Hagrid and Harry go unmolested even helping them away faster by giving them his bike. So while some people might think he betrayed the potters Dumbledore shouldn't have. I don't know about in England but I don't think Godfathers and Godmothers automatically get custody when parents are dead it should be determined by the will or people applying in court for custody not Dumbledore.

In the timeline we are given Hagrid flew on the motorbike straight to the Dursleys but with McGonagall watching the house all day even though she apparently didn't know about the potters death it must have took at least one day for that. There discrepancy in the timeline. I said earlier it took a day or two because that’s how long it should have taken in order for McGonagall to be sent to observe the Dursleys for an entire day , or to put up wards, or for Sirius to have tracked down the rat and been arrested, or to take the time to have Harry medically checked over, or for word to have spread about what happened for there to be parties, but that is not how we are told it happened in the books.

From when Harry got the scar to being left on the doorstep Dumbledore was with him for a very short amount of time none of which we are shown him or anyone else casting the wards or making sure Harry was safe and healthy.

Parseltounge was stated as being a magical language that was inherited and couldn't be learned like how Dumbledore learned to speak Mermish. Ron heard it at most two times once to open the sink and once to open the door after the slide and that was years ago from when he managed it.

Lily's protected melted Qurriel it shouldn't just keep a horcrux from taking over.

Here is another odd tidbit about not being carefully planned. JKR changed Hermione's middle name. She claimed it was because she latter gave Umbridge that middle name and didn't want them to share it. That’s not well planned out, it's not even a very good excuse. Sharing middles names is not a big deal, She even has Tom the barman of the leaky caldron and Tom Riddle sharing the same first name. It just seems like a poor excuse to cover up a mistake.

[Boci]

Might I ask which plot holes lead you to think that?

In the 4th book it is revealed that electronics do not work in Hogwarts, yet Harry had an electric alarm clock in the 2nd book.

Also:
The map never revealed Peter's disguise.

[Anecronwashere]

There is another weird thing with the Parseltongue.
Harry heard it through the pipes when no-one else could hear anything
That implies some form of sub-vocal or hyper-vocal because the human mouth is not designed to make noises that the human ear can't hear.
So how did Ron both a) know what kind of sub/hyper-vocalization to speak and b) how did he make that sub/hyper-vocalization.

Also if Parsel is a learnable language that some people just auto-speak then How is it still considered Dark?
Wizard A can speak to snakes, he teaches it to Wizard B who teaches it to Wizard C, D and E.
Parseltongue is now a common language like French that snakes can also hear and speak in.


And shouldn't the dragons have heard Parseltongue? They are practically giant snakes/lizards.
JK should have mentioned in passing that they couldn't. it's quite simple just do this:
Harry "I know, what if I talk to the dragons."
Hermione "That's ridiculous harry, dragons cant speak english."
H "I meant Parseltongue, if I can talk to snakes why not dragons."
Hr "Parseltongue doesnt work on dragons, they speak a different language Harry."

Four lines and the whole thing is covered.

[Logic]

The map never revealed Peter's disguise.
Yes, it did.
That is how the professor knew that the culprit was still alive. Specifics in the spoiler:
Remus Lupin used the map to discover Peter was still alive.

[Anecronwashere]

Yes but the twins had it for years.
They should have seen a Peter pettigrew sharing Percy's bed until peter moved to ron's bed.

Did they really say nothing about the obviously older man sleeping in the same bed as Ron? for 2 years?

[Xondoure]

Yes but the twins had it for years.
They should have seen a Peter pettigrew sharing Percy's bed until peter moved to ron's bed.

Did they really say nothing about the obviously older man sleeping in the same bed as Ron? for 2 years?

They probably just thought Peter Petigrew was one of the students in Ron's year.

[Nekura]

Yes but the twins had it for years.
They should have seen a Peter pettigrew sharing Percy's bed until peter moved to ron's bed.

Did they really say nothing about the obviously older man sleeping in the same bed as Ron? for 2 years?

Or Qurriel for that matter. Twins sneaking about doing there pranks would be paying close attention to where professors are seeing Tom Riddle overlapping Qurriel all year and they don't get suspicious?

Back to the basilisk. Apparently the school has pipes….pipes that are large enough for a snake that huge to fit into. How does it get in and out of the pipes? Do the pipes have parsel passworded trap doors or out of the walls after it got out of the pipe? I don’t remember the snake ever opening any of those by itself Riddle did it for it. If it could it would have done so over the years

Something else to think about at the end of the first book a comment was made to Harry about going home and he responded “but I am not going home not really”. By itself that statement is fine. Harry’s life at the Dursleys sucks and he thinks of Hogwarts as home and where he belongs. The problem comes in latter books that say the blood wards on the house will protect him as long as he calls that place home. Then it gets retconed so that it wont last as long as he calls it home apparently it will fall when he comes of age.

[Anecronwashere]

The twins must have seen Percy with Pettigrew. Sure, they might have thought it was just another classmate. That was sharing Percy's bed and never mentioned.
But Ron? Unless the Peter pettigrew that shared Percy's bed left at the same time a new Peter Pettigrew started sharing Ron's bed (which didn't happen and Percy and Ron didn't mention Peter) then whoever was sleeping with Percy moved down and started sleeping with Ron.

The most logical explanation for seeing Percy and peter overlapping on 1 bed and then Peter and Ron overlapping on a bed is a pedophile. The twins saw this until PoA when they gave the map up.

[Logic]

The twins must have seen Percy with Pettigrew. Sure, they might have thought it was just another classmate. That was sharing Percy's bed and never mentioned.
But Ron? Unless the Peter pettigrew that shared Percy's bed left at the same time a new Peter Pettigrew started sharing Ron's bed (which didn't happen and Percy and Ron didn't mention Peter) then whoever was sleeping with Percy moved down and started sleeping with Ron.

The most logical explanation for seeing Percy and peter overlapping on 1 bed and then Peter and Ron overlapping on a bed is a pedophile. The twins saw this until PoA when they gave the map up.

Perhaps the Twins never cared except to look for professors.

[Xondoure]

Perhaps the Twins never cared except to look for professors.

This. It's a big school with lots of dots walking around, and there's nothing particularly suspicious about another name clumped in with the rest of Gryffindor tower.

[Math_Mage]

If you stop questioning and just let it happen, then it's a fun ride. I couldn't keep that up (especially when the movies started coming out and reminding me why the early books were better suited to younger kids), but a lot of people did.

[Boci]

This. It's a big school with lots of dots walking around, and there's nothing particularly suspicious about another name clumped in with the rest of Gryffindor tower.

The map seemed to be a bit more detailed than that. In the 4th book Harry was able to distinguish that the dot was in Snape's office as oppose to just the dungeons. In fact its never implied the Map isn't room accurate.

[Xondoure]

The map seemed to be a bit more detailed than that. In the 4th book Harry was able to distinguish that the dot was in Snape's office as oppose to just the dungeons. In fact its never implied the Map isn't room accurate.

Sure, but my point is one extra name in Gryffindor doesn't actually mean anything. Especially when the twins mostly used it to avoid people when they were trouble seeking. There has to be at least close on a thousand people at Hogwarts, and Peter Pettigrew isn't exactly standing out unless you were paying attention in Professor Bins' class.

[Boci]

Sure, but my point is one extra name in Gryffindor doesn't actually mean anything.

If you can see each dorm separately it should stand out. For the most Harry and Ron got on with their dorm mates. It never occurred to the twins to inquire about that door mate they had that they never mentioned?


and Peter Pettigrew isn't exactly standing out unless you were paying attention in Professor Bins' class.

Er no. Bins teaches ancient history. Pettigrew is a bit more recent than that. Ancient history and decade old terrorism are two very separate things.

[Xondoure]

If you can see each dorm separately it should stand out. For the most Harry and Ron got on with their dorm mates. It never occurred to the twins to inquire about that door mate they had that they never mentioned?

Do you ever see the Twins showing any interest in the other students who sleep in Harry and Ron's dorm?


Er no. Bins teaches ancient history. Pettigrew is a bit more recent than that. Ancient history and decade old terrorism are two very separate things.

My point is that it's the twins. They didn't care or really think about these things at the age of fifteen.

[Boci]

Do you ever see the Twins showing any interest in the other students who sleep in Harry and Ron's dorm?

No, because they are not main characters. We do not see much of them at all.


My point is that it's the twins. They didn't care or really think about these things at the age of fifteen.

Just, no. Unless you have a quote, you cannot assume that the twins do not care about Voldermorts reigh of terror, because they are carefree and 15 years old.

[AgentofHellfire]

Harry Potter has the Special Snowflake appeal. Ron, Hermione and Harry are all dull, unpopular kids in 'real life'. But wait! They each have a secret life full of adventure, fun and magic. Harry, most of all, goes from 'unpopular dork' to 'almighty chosen one demigod'. And that really appeals to most kids: the idea that even the 'dorks' can be special. And every kid wishes to be one of the main characters: a 'dork' in real life, but have a special secret life where your a god.



This is almost exactly right.