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I haven't fully reread an HP book in over a decade. I was the biggest fan growing up, though. I use audiobooks and my aunt got me the first two books on frickin' audio cassette while I was in 6th grade and I remained hooked until around 2009. I must have listened to every single book at least 5, maybe even 10 times. I've kinda avoided going back to them because they are a cherished part of my adolescence but I do revisit my favorite parts semi-frequently. I have a much greater appreciation for the ethical vision of the books now I'm older. Harry is an overly passive protagonist and that still bugs me but not quite as much now I'm older. I see now what JK was going for with his character. There's a lot about the series that changes from Book 1 to Book 7 but it remains consistent in its core idea that the most important thing is a sort of loving humility, a combination of Christian and Platonic thought. I do believe JK read philosophy and this was all intentional. Also I know some people swear by Stephen Fry - and he's awesome - but I grew up with Jim Dale and he will always be the HP guy for me. Also I'm here because of that new HP game coming out. Maybe it will be the first one that isn't a steaming pile of poo poo.
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Sep 24, 2020 15:26
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Speleothing posted:In the dream sequence at the train station. Though I guess that's just Harry's projection of how he thought Dumbledore should be Actually, Snape's memory reveals Dumbledore intended for Harry to die. King's Cross Dumbledore suggests he figured Harry would survive. I don't like Evil Dumbledore theories but the fact he apparently let Snape go to his death thinking Harry was gonna die, that he and Snape had protected Harry just so Harry could be "a pig for slaughter", was a pretty dick move. Also I'm pretty sure that was the actuaa Dumbledore in soul form. That was the whole point of showing Harry was just fine while Voldemort's soul was the flayed baby.
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Sep 26, 2020 14:49
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amigolupus posted:As NikkolasKing said, Dumbledore told Snape about this part of the plan, and Snape was rightfully horrified about it. After viewing Snape's memories, there was mention of Harry feeling a kind of burn in his chest from Dumbledore's betrayal, but Harry was too numb with the reveal that he was meant to die to fully process it. They also made her blond and a "daft dimbo" to quote Hermione. I hate the HP movies so I gain great satisfaction out of watching the RiffTrax versions. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o6kXHRm-Oag "Mad with power, Ron declares himself the new Chosen One and is instantly killed by Voldemort."
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Sep 27, 2020 14:17
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Also it was very clearly not just children who read HP. That was why HP became a phenomenon, it was a series beloved by men and women, boys and girls, adults, teens and children, people like my grandmother who was just as into it as me. A lot of great, popular series never fully escape their genre or demographic appeal. Harry Potter clearly transcended those limits. Whether or not that speaks to quality is a different matter but it is interesting.
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Sep 28, 2020 12:00
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I anticipate people in 20 years saying the exact same thing about stuff out now. And then 20 years after that....
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Sep 28, 2020 15:41
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SlothfulCobra posted:Come to think about it, I don't know if the books ever really give a reason why Dumbledore is so renowned aside from being the headmaster who was taking some kind of interest in Harry and not being negative like every other adult in Harry's life up to that point. He was the most brilliant non-evil student Hogwarts ever saw, he defeated Wizard Hitler and the first book has this: quote:Headmaster: Albus Dumbledore
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Oct 8, 2020 06:14
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Voldemort choosing to put his soul fragments in significant artifacts is pretty far down the list of dumbs things he did. It's actually a very believable "normal" thing you'd expect a psychopathic serial killer to do. I'm more annoyed by how Harry explained for 50 pages that he - Voldemort - could not succeed and then Voldemort attacked him anyway and died.
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Oct 8, 2020 09:11
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I mean, what stands out tome about that quote is that they are acting like HP is sort of niche. They're saying HP fans will use lingo that they and their nerd circle will understand and nobody else. Bu HP blew up and i bet most people know what Quidditch is now even if they never read any of the books.
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Oct 9, 2020 03:12
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Harry is an overly passive protagonist, that is a definite flaw in the series. However, one year of coaching a 16-year-old is not going to let them fight and defeat Mike Tyson. Nothing Dumbledore could teach Harry in a year would let him defeat a guy who has spent almost a century traveling the world and learning more about magic than anyone else alive. And this just fits with the themes of the series which are very Christian. Blessed are the humble and the meek. Hermione says it in the first book - Harry is a better wizard than her because while he isn't as book smart or clever, he has a pure heart and is driven selflessly by love. That is where Voldemort is weak and it is what lets Harry beat him in Book 7. It was not power or skill that allowed Frodo to resist he Ring, it was his pure heart. Defeating Voldemort or Sauron through force of arms is both impossible and goes against the core ideas of the two series. Unsatisfying perhaps but thematically consistent. NikkolasKing fucked around with this message at 01:44 on Oct 12, 2020 |
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Oct 12, 2020 01:41
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Ghost Leviathan posted:It came up before but Harry actually explicitly suggests that Voldemort could just make a Horcrux out of a rock in a cave full of rocks and no one would ever find it, and Dumbledore says that would be the smart thing to do but Voldemort is a narcissistic drama queen so his horcruxes have to be objects of significance True but I was just drawing a thematic parallel. The point is to extol humility and virtue. Frodo was no descendant of legendary Numenor. He was no First Age Elf or Hero. He was a Hobbit, a people considered beneath the notice of the "Wise" save for Gandalf. Harry, while "The Chosen One," was not special because of his birth or because of his magical abilities. He was special because he was a good person who had a tireless, selfless drive to stop Voldemort and save others from his evil. Meeting might with might is foolish. What truly defeats evil is goodness, not swords or wands. I think that is a vital message of both HP and LOTR which are two works tthat place discussions of morality before pretty much everything.
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Oct 12, 2020 05:29
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SlothfulCobra posted:Harry also learned flipendo when he was helping Ron kill gnomes over the summer, Diffindo to cut down tapestries and small shrubs, Skurge to get rid of goo, and Alohamora to open locked chests and steal their contents. And to get to the Slytherin Commonroom you gotta get passed the giant murderous spiders. Dunno if you or anybody else here remember or watched the Harry Potter Let's Plays done on this here forum about a decade ago now but I still love them and I'm very grateful I saved at least 7 of them. A billion dollar franchise yet they churned out this poo poo. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2o1_tgGuyfM
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Oct 12, 2020 22:39
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RoboChrist 9000 posted:You don't have playlists! I want to watch these in order! You mean me? Sorry, I rarely ever upload to YouTube and only did this on a request. Here are all the vids I have and put in a playlist. https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLZ-06zMCdll3emOBBReTtQHUApuS4SKdB It's a small miracle I have even this many as I only saved these because they would not load for me on the old blip or viddler players so I had to download them to watch them. Still, 7 is better than 0 I guess. dordreff posted:please tell me you have the one where one guy had a complete nervous breakdown during a bean collection minigame, i can only find this clip and need it back Unfortunately not but thank you and that person for uploading that clip. Rirse always told me he had all of them and would upload them but he never did and now he's banned so....
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Oct 13, 2020 10:17
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Edgar Allen Ho posted:This might be common knowledge but all the Potter movies are free for streaming on peacock tv. There's ads but they're quite unintrusive, like, better than what happens on youtube or twitch nowadays. Inspired by the shriekcast I'mma give them a watch. I don't think I've seen any of them past Azkaban more than once. If you like RiffTrax, i highly recommend all their HIP riffs. Been watching 'em for years and years, over and over.
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Oct 25, 2020 17:43
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Given what Spirit Harry sees in Book 7, I think flayed snake baby Voldemort is just what Voldemort looks like now. His form in Book 4 before his revival is a "materialization" of what he has done to his soul. None of the Death Eaters seemed shocked by his appearance when they returned in GOF. And this is what Dumbledore has to say in Book 7, as well as the description of Past Tom Riddle post-most Horcruxes. quote:Harry let out a hastily stifled gasp. Voldemort had entered the room. His features were not those Harry had seen emerge from the great stone cauldron almost two years ago: They were not as snakelike, the eyes were not yet scarlet, the face not yet masklike, and yet he was no longer handsome And even before most of his Horcruxes, his eyes turned red when he was angry at the fat lady and the shop owner for stealing his mom's Locket. I always remembered this exchange quote:“Slytherin’s mark,” he said quietly, as the light played upon an ornate, serpentine S. You can interpret this in all sorts of ways but it is the only implication he ever was empathetic to another human being. Sure, it might very well have just been selfish - they stole "his" Locket, after all - but it's interesting to think about. NikkolasKing fucked around with this message at 21:30 on Nov 5, 2020 |
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Nov 5, 2020 21:28
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Who What Now posted:Mom Weasley turned Bellatrix into a dessicated mummy-corpse, that's got to be a form of dark magic beyond Snape's papercut spell. So dark magic can't be all that uncommon. I don't remember getting any such description of how she killed Bellatrix in the book. It was a callback to how Bellatrix killed Sirius, laughing as she gets hit with a jet of light. Jet of light that kills has to be Avada Kedavra so far as I know.
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Nov 7, 2020 03:12
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JethroMcB posted:the movies are genuinely lovely hth And on that note, in Movie 5, Cho ends up being the traitor. No disfiguring curse but she is ostracized and hated by everyone,...even after we learn that Umbridge drugged her to get this information so she wasn't a traitor at all. Cho is one of the characters done most dirty by both the fandom and the media she's in. I still remember how much fans of the books hated her back in the day.
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Nov 7, 2020 08:18
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Regalingualius posted:Oh, that part was pretty indefensible, no arguments there. They briefly consider murdering one of the Death Eaters after they flee the wedding and are attacked in a muggle shop, although it was mostly Ron. [This is he part that always bugged me: quote:It’s not a case of what you’ll permit, Minerva McGonagall. Your time’s over. It’s us what’s in charge here now, and you’ll back me up or you’ll pay the price.’ He's referring to the end of Book 5: quote:“Come out, come out, little Harry!” she called in her mock-baby voice, which echoed off the polished wooden floors. “What did you come after me for, then? I thought you were here to avenge my dear cousin!” Which, of course, means he was savoring the Death Eater's agony for its own sake and not in any way righteously or gallantly (as Minerva calls it) because of the disrespectful act of spitting at the old lady. I mean...that's quite the moral deterioration. Trying to torture somebody for taunting you after killing your father figure is understandable enough, especially for a fifteen-year-old boy. Torturing somebody, even a Nazi, for something as miniscule as spitting in somebody's face, and relishing the agony of said person, is probably hosed up. Especially sine this is not A Song of Ice and Fire. HP has a clear ethical vision and Harry just spat in its face.
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Nov 7, 2020 09:44
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Edgar Allen Ho posted:That was just Jason Isaacs hamming it up though. He definitely doesn't try it in the book, because they need Harry alive for the rez ceremony after the good book and the book about the most convoluted evil plan ever devised. Well he didn't know anything about that. It's more like he didn't try to kill Harry because he was 100 feet from Dumbledore and also he would be committing murder in front of at least one witness. Although now I'm wondering about if House Elves are compelled to serve their masters, even with perjury and the like. Kind of a complicated situation when you have magical laws and contracts that exist outside a state or government. Like how the Stewards could never be the true Kings of Gondor, even if they ruled it for thousands of years. The throne belongs to the blood of Numenor and only Aragorn was the rightful king. This always bugged me a lot.
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Nov 7, 2020 23:39
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Regalingualius posted:Though, granted, that just raises further questions about why he would have ever left it exposed for one of his dumbass followers to inadvertently jeopardize, especially when he had made it a point to guard all of the others (except the ring) behind varying degrees of seemingly-impossible obstacles. Dumbledore points out the careless way Voldemort used this Diary made him conclude there must be more than one Horcrux. The Diary was as much a weapon as a safeguard. He had others to keep him alive even if it was destroyed so he could afford to gamble it in an attempt to prove he was the Heir of Slytherin and to kill muggle-borns. Although this has always made me wonder: how much soul was in each horcrux? If he had won in Book 7, could he have tried to make more horcruxes? When does he just run out of soul to divide?
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Nov 11, 2020 08:22
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Edgar Allen Ho posted:But it didn't, it was given to, and possessed, the darling baby of Gryffindor House and failed to achieve anything. I guess it got Hagrid sent to Azkaban, and he was fine because dementors weren't a thing yet. Well that was because Lucius Malfoy used it for his own purposes to destroy a political nuisance. Arthur Weasley was after him for having dark magical artifacts and being a former Death Eater so Malfoy wanted to have Arthur's own child discovered to be killing muggleborns and thus discredit him. Eve n with no deaths, the school was on the verge of closing. I mean, there's a monster in the loving walls. Even Hogwarts has some standards.
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Nov 11, 2020 17:23
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AfJkjLP1SvM Dale was absolutely perfect as Snape and probably a big reason why i liked the character. He's just genuinely hilarious.
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Nov 12, 2020 00:58
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dordreff posted:Harry is actually canonically supposed to be a really good student, the problem is that we're only told that and what we're shown is him learning like two or three spells on his own and then copying everything else from Hermione. A point I've been saying since I first read the books Hermione does all the work, learns all the spells, and Harry just...well, look at it this way. Harry knows he has to go on a quest to find he soul jars of the greatest wizard ever. Does he prepare in any way? Learn some new spells or something? Nope. Lupin tells him they will be encountering magic they've never seen before or even contemplated but Harry makes zero effort to improve himself whatsoever.
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Nov 20, 2020 19:41
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Edgar Allen Ho posted:Honestly I don't know if TERF is the right word for Rowling because while she is a transphobe, she's really lovely at feminism. All her female characters suck. Luna is far and away the most universally beloved character I've seen in the fandom., at least in my experience. NikkolasKing fucked around with this message at 20:22 on Nov 29, 2020 |
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Nov 29, 2020 20:17
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I don't think anything is "undefined" about Hermione or Ron. Even Harry gets more of a character as the series matures and becomes much less blatantly childish wish fulfillment. I've always related very strongly to Ron. I'm also an extremely insecure poor person who is jealous of my brother.
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Nov 30, 2020 07:36
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Sydin posted:To be fair though he's supposed to be long retired and way over the hill with a body that's been blown to poo poo and is barely holding together. It's actually kind of lovely that Dumbledore planned to drag his rear end out of retirement to teach even discounting the whole Crouch Jr. shenanigans. I mean, teaching isn't that hard. Lockhart could do it....kind of.
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Dec 13, 2020 04:54
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Regalingualius posted:I hate how Rowling bent over backwards to explain how oh, Dumbledore was just testing Lockheart and planned to expose him as a fraud before the main plot started... instead of just saying that it was one of his rare lapses in judgment to humanize him a bit. Or just that the first two or three books are clearly more childish and silly.
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Dec 13, 2020 05:14
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Edgar Allen Ho posted:This one was actually challenging as an american accented kid because of "er" vs "uh" as the thing you uhhhhh, what's the thing, say I had that exact same problem. I had no idea British people said "err" instead.
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Dec 17, 2020 12:25
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It's like Dumbledore - and the books themselves - say, they sort too soon. Dumbledore was ambitious and selfish in his youth but grew out of that over the course of a few centuries. And Dumbledore says the "sort too soon" line in reference to Snape who, even if you insist on his selfishness to the end, was decidedly not ambitious later on in his life. But really, for all the takes in here about how hosed up the HP world is, the House System is the worst of the lot so far as I'm concerned. Childhood is such a fundamental part of developing character - which means your character isn't actually set in stone yet - and can more or less determine the entire rest of your life. Maybe some of those Slytherins wouldn't have been Nazis if they hadn't been forced to room with Nazis who preached Nazis tuff all the time and also having to sleep with the knowledge that speaking out would antagonize the Nazis they had to share a bedroom with.
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Dec 17, 2020 18:39
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Like, as early as Book 2, we have this line from Dumbledore: “Listen to me, Harry. You happen to have many qualities Salazar Slytherin prized in his hand-picked students. His own very rare gift, Parseltongue — resourcefulness — determination — a certain disregard for rules...” And in Book 5, Sirius' ancestor says: :It looks to me as though you would have been better off in my own house. We Slytherins are brave, yes, but not stupid. For instance, given the choice, we will always choose to save our own necks.” I think she wanted Slytherin to have an element of at least neutrality to it but Slughorn really is the first good Slytherin we meet and he is vain, greedy and cowardly. I really like Half-Blood Prince for all sorts of reasons. But in the same book that gave us Slughorn, she also tried to undo 5 books of making Malfoy the typical Stephen King psychopathic bully. Now we're supposed to feel bad for him. And on the flip side, she gave us two lovely Gryffindor characters to show us the negative side of Gryffindor traits but it still just doesn't even out. I feel like she kinda ran into the same problems as Tolkien did with his orcs. Both LOTR and HP are very Christian works in their ethics. JK wanted some diversity and "realism" but at the end of the day her promoted ethical worldview has no place for people like Slughorn who, if not evil, are still decidedly not good. Ambition and greed are anathema to a Christian worldview. NikkolasKing fucked around with this message at 21:33 on Dec 17, 2020 |
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Dec 17, 2020 21:27
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Sodomy Hussein posted:I don't know about that. Salazar Slytherin was an avowed racist who basically just made his own house so he could have a blood purity club, and then installed a dead man's switch to murder everyone from all the other houses. Which of course the Slytherins and everyone in charge knew was there, and effectively did nothing about because wizards are insane. I've always wondered about this. We know from our history and also a passing mention in one of the books that muggles did in fact hunt witches and wizards. It doesn't make Slytherin good but he seems less evil if, when he was around, muggles were actively trying to kill magic folk.
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Dec 19, 2020 15:15
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Edgar Allen Ho posted:Snake Voldemort has a big tiddy goth gf and fucks all the goddam time Yeah, I just ignore everything not in the 7 books. Voldemort having sex with anybody at any time is the most OOC thing ever.
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Dec 21, 2020 17:59
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I don't think Harry's lack of hormones has anything to do with JK being old and white and a woman. It's a children's book, that explains it perfectly. There is no children's book on Earth that can talk about the kind of poo poo I was doing at 14 and 15. Unless children's literature has changed a lot in the last 10-15 years. Maybe it has. As for Harry's remark about Luna and Neville, he knows they are both incredibly loyal but also incredibly lonely. That was the only point of his comment. Luna's end of Book 5 talk with Harry is all about how everyone thinks she's a freak. So Harry, living with Neville for 6 years and having had this heart-to-heart with Luna, understands the two of them found a home in the DA they never had before.
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Dec 23, 2020 19:21
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Sydin posted:The thing is though, Ron is written pretty on point for a straight teenage boy. As soon as he turns 14 he starts remarking on all the pretty girls while Harry rolls his eyes, is absolutely gobsmacked by Hermione dolling up for the Yule Ball whereas Harry's response is "huh that's neat I guess", and while he has an obvious developing crush on Hermione that doesn't stop him from eagerly jumping into a relationship with the first pretty girl to give him the time of day in Lavender while Harry thinks pretty girls who are not his crush chatting him up are an annoyance. Well how much of that is the very explicit dichotomy since Book 1 of Harry as a saint and Ron as a normal dude? Harry when he saw his heart's desire only saw his family or later the way to defeat Voldemort. Ron saw himself as the best Hogwarts student ever. Ron is possessed by all sorts of flaws - jealousy, a hunger for glory and Lust could be one of them. Harry is a very Christian ideal of a hero. He only really loses it in Book 5 when he has a huge ego and anger problem but even though it's not explicitly stated, most view that as the result of Voldemort contaminating him. He is decidedly better in Book 6, after all. But he is always presented as self-sacrificing, not ambitious or power hungry. and his central driving principle is Love.
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Dec 23, 2020 20:05
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So if any of you are slightly older goons, you might recallthere was a Let's Play of many Harry Potter games done by Dr. Roosevelt and friends over ten years ago now. I loved them and saved a few, mainly because blip and Viddler wouldn't play them on my browser so I had to download them to watch them. Luckily I did this because when those sites died, the videos died with them. I recently uploaded all the vids I had to YT to share and also to hopefully find more videos saved by other people. A week ago my hopes were fulfilled as somebody left a comment and shared with me most videos of Chamber of Secrets and Prisoner of Azkaban. https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLZ-06zMCdll3emOBBReTtQHUApuS4SKdB Still no complete set but far more complete than it was with just my offerings. This will always be my favorite video, though https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qeyZy-0mNHs
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Jan 16, 2021 02:45
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I know it's cool to hate JK now but let's not lose touch with reality. Fudge and Umbridge are the biggest hate sinks in the series. They are clearly bad guys you are supposed to deride as incompetent at best and malicious at worst. Fudge even a his most benign is always characterized as a racist shithead which is why Arthur is kept down at the Ministry. His being a fascist enabler is why the evil snake Nazi main villain is able to even accomplish anything. I don't think any of this is presented as positive or desirable, ever. NikkolasKing fucked around with this message at 19:54 on Jan 20, 2021 |
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Jan 20, 2021 19:52
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Guy A. Person posted:Unless I’m not looking in the right place I think that part was an invention of the movies. In the book Karkaroff starts giving out names and they all are already known except one, then when they try to take him away he accuses Snape in a panic. It’s also a series of memories instead of one; the next one is Ludo Bagman then the group with Crouch Jr Exactly this. Harry even asks him about Crouch Jr. and Dumbledore says he didn't know the truth of his guilt or not. The movie also changed it so "it destroyed Barty to [send his son to Azkaban]" whereas it's the total opposite in the books. Crouch Sr. is presented as a very ruthless figure who never loved his son.
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Jan 29, 2021 04:50
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So I hate the HP films for a lot of reasons. But I'm a fair man and this bit from Movie 4 rules
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Jan 29, 2021 06:04
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So I'm 32, dunno how old any of you are, but for some completely unexplained reason, another childhood favorite series of mine came back to my mind. A Series of Unfortunate Events. I haven't read any of them in years (well less "read" and more "listen to." I read the first few books in middle school but then I found out Tim Curry did the audiobooks. Also I use audiobooks all the time anyway now but this was a very pleasant surprise) I hear it got a Netflix series or something that was pretty good or maybe is pretty good if it's still going. Just glad it's still relevant and remembered. Now those were some hosed up and depressing kid books They maintained their wackiness more than HP did but never lost a step in being grim.
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Feb 6, 2021 05:13
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I'm reminded of various discussions I've heard over the years about how all Slytherins are not in fact ugly, it's just Harry doesn't like them and so it's merely his untrustworthy opinion that Pansy has a face like a pug. I never bought this argument. Harry's perspective is pretty clearly supposed to be right almost all of the time. Incidentally, he comments more on Tom Riddle's handsomeness than anyone else's appearance, even Ginny's.
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Feb 9, 2021 18:35
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Edgar Allen Ho posted:Here's another mystery: why the gently caress do the (explicitly sentient) spiders turn on Hagrid, to the point of hauling him off as a human sacrifice to the death eaters? I get why they'd be opposed to the human-magic supremacist status quo of Hogwarts and Dumbledore but the death eaters are supposed to be even more so. Hagrid kinda seems like their only true ally and advocate. What's up with them? What is their deal? Well Book 2 establishes only Aragog felt any real loyalty to Hagrid. Plus, given Voldemort's methods, he and his Death Eaters probably just bullied the spiders. So they had no love for the humans of Hogwarts + they were most likely violently forced into service. As for why they don't like Hagrid when he's their #1 fan, they are still animals at the end of the day and they have violent instincts to kill and eat humans. Hagrid only "tamed" that by raising Aragog.
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Feb 13, 2021 16:32
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