conuly

1. When Harry is teaching DADA, it's the same room every time. More to the point, when Harry needs to hide the Potions book, he goes to a room that has been used before. Generations of students have hidden things from Fanged Frisbees to monsters in cages (and I would like to see a story about that particular incarnation of the room, hint hint hinty hint) in that room.

The obvious conclusion to this is that the Room of Requirement can't give you exactly what you want - remember when Dumbledore needed to pee? He found a room full of chamber pots, not a room with a single, more modern appliance. More likely the door to the Room of Requirement leads to a large number of other "potential" rooms, and you get the one that best suits your needs. It may also be able to make smaller items out of thin air, or to steal them from the other rooms - Harry's whistle appeared just as he needed it.

2. However! When Draco wants to find Harry, he can do so easily. Is this because he walked past the room three times thinking "I need to find them?" or because the room was already occupied? When Harry wanted to use the room as Draco used it, he was unable to.

This part confuses me oh-so-slightly. Thoughts?

If she doesn't grow out of the Terrible Twos soon, one of us may scream. Oh wait. She already is doing that. Well, I may scream, and I can scream louder.

Honestly, when she's being good, she's very very good. She's fun, she's adorable, she's sweet, she's polite, she's helpful.

And when she's bad she is truly horrid. It's enough to make a sane woman weep. I'm not too sane, that might be why I'm not crying :)

We didn't do much today, I still felt fuzzy. Popped my ears a few times, that felt good.

Played the "this little piggy" game. She always forgets she likes that, probably because her feet tickle her too easily. And I've been looking up other games to play that end up with me tickling her or pinching her nose. Because that's just fun. For me, at least - and she giggles instead of protesting vehemently, so I suppose it's fun for her too.

Somebody (the downstairs neighbor, apparently) gave her a small "talking Hermione" (Jenn rather ignorantly thought it was Her-mee-own) Barbie-style doll.

I have serious issues with this doll.

Firstly, there's the hair. Crimped, straight, with string to keep it from getting messed up. Then there's the outfit. A somewhat suggestively opened robe, a short shirt, a short skirt, no undies, and these long-ass socks. It shouldn't be possible for idiot kids to perv out on Hermione, but I can almost see it with this non-bushy-haired version. She doesn't talk, that's a good thing.

Tried teaching Ana to say "Hermione" properly. She can manage either "Hurt-mine-own-knee" (hee!) or "'mione". Yes, her doll bears the name of many a makeover star in the pottersues pantheon. Of course, given the hair, I'm not surprised.

She's holding this weird necklace thingy in her hands. I have no idea what that's supposed to be.

Edit: Aha, here it is: From the 2002 wave of Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets! Connect the magic charms and Hermione talks! Mix and match the beads to hear different messages. "Oooh, it might have hidden powers!", "Brilliant!", "Are you sure that's a real spell?" and more! Hermione is approx. 7 1/2" tall.

Oh god. Just kill me now. End edit.

Note to self: Must force a certain friend to read the books, as she's only seen the movies. I am Most Displeased to find that out.

Other Note to self: The day Ana is old enough to sit through a reading of a real book will be a very bright day indeed. It cannae come soon enough! (We read quite a lot today, and pointed at the pictures.)

Edit: Oh, and my plot to warp Ana's brain by singing her all those old ballads involving death, murder, and all that other good stuff is going just fine, thank you very much. It's a little disconcerting to be singing a version of... that song with the two sisters and one shoves the other into the water... and going "As they were walking along the stream" just to have a two year old join in for the "Lord, have mercy on me!" part. But fun.

And, thanks very much to Jazzy for directing me a long time back to Ten Green Bottles, the song. That song has an amazing soporific effect. Hold Ana down, and she's asleep by six green bottles.

ladydiana has a tiny problem. After reading HBP, she went out to find some interesting discussion - and somehow managed to find nothing by chan, slash, and so on. Mostly non-PG stuff. I'm still not sure how she did that.

Anyway, believing as I do that fanfic in HP is overwhelmed with all sorts of romance, I offered to beg youse guys to show up with lists of gen fic, and also links to interesting, non-slashy discussions on HP from, oh, the last month or so.

Lists of good references to find these things would also be appreciated.

Because, honestly, if I were looking for talk, and all I found was a bunch of stuff I'm not interested in, I'd be a little freaked out too.

While you do that, I'll be sorting out my bookmarks, separating the wheat from the chaff. See, I'm addicted to the written word, and I have a perverse fondness for not-so-good stories, so I'll have to sort out all the urg fic and discussions before I can point her in that direction.

And I know, a lot of you don't like fanfic at all. That's your perogative. I have a nice side discussion with Diana right now about the concept of the author owning the story. I'm not entirely sure where I stand on that issue, but I have some vague feelings about it.

We know that he hates non-purebloods - or, at least, that he hates "mudbloods", to use his term. He certainly allows half-bloods into his organization, but this may be due to a dearth of actual purebloods (query: some sort of genetic illness caused by inbreeding forcing the population to drop? an anathema to large families causing the population to stupidly drop?)

( Read more... )

I'm sure I'm overthinking this, of course, but I would appreciate some ideas here.

I'm describing it that way because I'm about to go off on a tangent.

A while back, I made a passing comment about potential gay relationships in Harry Potter, and received the reply that it would never happen because JKR is writing a fun book, she's not trying to "make a point about homosexuality".

I didn't reply. I know this may come as a surprise, given my propensity for charging in wherever I think somebody is wrong, but... I couldn't find the words. What could I possibly say to this person?

I remember the Kel books, by Tamora Pierce. In one of them - the first one, I think - one of the characters (a good guy, as it happens), got back at the Sexist Pig Jerk character for an insult by turning it around and making it a gay innuendo. Which eventually prompted a short discussion on how homosexuality isn't accepted in Tortall, but it is elsewhere, something our main character, as far as I remember, doesn't find completely rational (the first part, not the second). Gay people are at least acknowledged to exist in Tammy's books, even if in them no person is explicitly identified as gay. This didn't detract in any way from my enjoyment of the books, nor did I feel I'd been preached at. Later, I read transcripts of several conversations with her in which different characters are identified as gay. (Pretty sure they were reliable transcripts, but I could be wrong here. I wouldn't mention them, though, if I doubted their veracity.) Does that make these books political?

Harry Potter already had one openly-disabled character, Moody. Nobody thinks that having a guy missing a leg and an eye is some sort of statement on disability, do they? They don't complain that by having him turn his missing eye into an advantage that she's somehow bowing to political correctness, not that I've seen.

Racism is a persistant theme in the Harry Potter books. Various groups of people are discriminated against because of what they are, instead of who they are. This would seem to go against the idea that JKR is just trying to write a fun book. But, interestingly, all conversation about race is limited to fictional groups of people - giants, werewolves, goblins, elves. There's at least two clearly defined black people in this English school. There's the Patil twins, obviously Indian. Does this mean that JKR is trying to make some sort of point about race and multiculturalism in England? Or is she just writing the magical world as a logical subset of the nonmagical world, with the human races represented in the same proportions as they are here? Certainly, if she is going for that level of realism, it would be fair to assume that the same percentage of wizards and witches are gay/bi as in the real world, right?

When we find out that Blaize is black, nobody in the books seems to go around shouting OMG! BLACK PEOPLE IN OUR SCHOOL! (The real world is a separate issue, and it will cease to be so as soon as I self-define "real world" to exclude those sillies.) So why should it be an issue to find out that a minor character (or, gasp, a major character, should she be so daring) isn't straight? All it has to be is one line about how so-and-so kissed so-and-so else, and they both are the same sex. They've had interracial couples, and nobody thought that was some sort of political point.

I mean, this is Harry Potter! Action, adventure, and derring-do! It's not like she's devoting chapters and chapters to... um... well, if she'd had more gay, maybe she would've avoided it so as to not upset the fundies. (Not like she should care, they hate her already for magic, but...)

1. An article about gay marriage, taken from mephron. Well, it's a letter. Not an article.

2. Okay. So, if we're going to do pro/con essays about Harry Potter, we need a list...

( Remind me to check it. Thrice. )

I tried to limit myself to characters who have been reasonably important in more than one book, or whom we know a lot about (that'd be Dean), but I no doubt missed many. We've got space to offer to write pro-essays, con-essays, whatever. Or not. I might write a lot, if I don't get bored halfway through. I love overanalyzing stuff :)

Edit: If enough people are willing to do this, do you think this deserves a comm? Maybe hppeople_essays? I'm thinking links are good enough, but I can always add one more community to my huge list I already maintain.

1. See, I've already seen the Firefly episodes. I was already planning on watching Serenity. Now... I want to do it sooner. I like movie trailers. They always get me prepared to watch (and mock!) a movie. *hums happily*

Just remember: I mock, because I love.

2. atlantapendrag has an interesting post up, which led to this interesting HP-related thread. Anybody want to help me write this series of criticizing-individual-characters-from-the-books? I'll give out imaginary kittens to all who participate! Bonus points for complimenting characters everybody hates, like Umbridge, or Chamberlain Fudge.

Edit: I love this icon, but I'm thinking I may want to modify the quote. Or, rather, I may want to ask youse guys to modify the quote for me. Lemme see if I can find a different one. Um. Wait, anybody willing to do this? If yes, then lemme see if I can find a different one.

Edit again: ( Possible quotes )

Quote-finding is a pain sometimes.

I know a lot of people are going "I just don't care about the last book now". And some are going "OMG! BEST BOOK EVAH!"

*waits for both groups to converge*

I've been reading HP since the actual beginning, before the hype. Never liked the hype. It obscured several books which deserved more attention, set up a huge number of copycats, caused every friggin' fantasy book to be "If you like Harry Potter....", which sucks, because many of them are very different from HP.

And unlike books by some authors, I've never been dying to know what happens next with HP. Oh, I read it, but I'm not counting down the minutes. Hilari Bell, now... I want to read the last book in that trilogy so much.

*coughs*

As I was saying, I'm not that invested in the books. I think they're a nice bit of fun, and it's certainly fun to take them too seriously and analyse the shit out of them as you would with... well, for want of a better term, with real literature. One of these days I'll analyse Dick and Jane like that for fun. So I could hardly start crying that "I'm not that interested in them anymore", nor could I start declaring my undying love for them.

But I'll say this for the most recent book: It's the first one I've wanted to re-read so soon after getting it. I often enjoy books by reading them twice a day for weeks, until I get bored, then taking a break. I sometimes enjoy books by reading them only once, then not again. I usually (now that I'm not a kid anymore) enjoy them by reading them, waiting a while, then re-reading them. I read fast, it's not a problem for me to read a book several times.

Harry Potter has always been in the third category, except in cases where I was traveling and inexplicably only had Harry Potter with me. But now I want to re-read book 6. This is a good sign for JKR's writing. She still needs to find a better editor, one who will help her cut down her word count just a tiny bit (agreed totally on adverb abuse. This is why god invented descriptive verbs), but her writing is already vastly improved over even the last book. *nods*

So says me, anyway.

So, maybe I'll re-read it, after I finish this DWJ I never read (Merlin Conspiracy).

Because I don't want to retype anything, I'm linking directly to my reply.

While I disagree with him, his view on criticizing people seems thought out, so I thought I'd link to it here to see what other people say. Say nicely, I mean, I did promise to be respectful and all.

And I have a question, which I didn't think to ask him directly: How does one know if something is "great"? How can you say you recognize greatness if you don't define greatness?

I don't define it at all, so I don't have this problem, do I? I even refer to Alexander the Pretty Good.

I wonder if this is true, that we don't know what houses the Marauders were in.

*thinks back*

It could be! I don't do fanfic (I don't like how I write, no, really), but now I really really want to see a fic where they're all in different houses.

Since I'm not writing one myself, the only solution is to throw myself on the mercy of my friends, many of whom do write fanfic.

( The comment in question )

Yeah, I asked the OP to unlock the entry. And she did!