The question remains with transfiguration as to whether when you change a teapot into a tortoise, is it really a tortoise or is just a teapot that has all the attributes of a tortoise? Is it giving "life" to the teapot or the appearance of it?

Disregarding animate transfiguration since I think Harry would have little use for a teapot/tortoise, if Harry were to transfigure something into a clock which is relatively mechanically complex, if he attempted to take the it apart physically would it have all the gears of a real clock, would it be held together by pure magic, or a mess of the base material?

 

Is anyone else seeing parallels between this thread and the thread for Santi's Harry Potter and the Boy Who Lived?

 

Meh. Needs more rarity of Occlumency books discussion.

 

Any word from cxjenius lately?

 

White you have to keep in mind this is set in a GRRMartins world time is bit distorted

 

No, but considering his track record I'm assuming he's writing a massive chapter. Thus, liberties when it comes to how fast he writes are definitely permitted.

 

It might be more likely that since its ASoIaF; it's totally normal for releases to take longer than promised. That's a fact straight from GRRM.

 

He has updated his profile on FFnet a few times with how many words he's written, since people apparantly have been spamming him.

14600 words at the moment, even after he cut a scene.

 

Cxjenious; you left out the 'o'.

 

D'aww.

 

Wasn't it sweet?

 

You are a gentleman and a scholar.

 

To be fair, you probably spent something like 30 minutes to an hour at it? If that? And you were doing it alone, and probably had not really thought about it all THAT long, but just basically tried to create something without thinking about it much in advance? I doubt anyone could create a workable design in that timeframe, unless they actually worked/built them for a living for real. However Harry in this story is not limited to couple of hours with paper and a pen.

Assume that you would focus on developing that steam engine for the next 2 years of your life, dedicating several hours of every day into planning it. Also assume you had lots of people to help you, and the necessary resources to produce several prototypes to experiment and observe what worked and what did not, and then refine your engine based on your observations. Harry does have the necessary wealth and influence, and he can probably find people that would be able to understand the concepts and start taking them further.

After those 2 years, could you honestly say you would not have atleast a primitive working prototype? And once you had something workable enough that people could see that "hey, this thing actually works and is both usefull and profitable", you could probably leave it for other people to continue refinining it.

More advanced technology is probably beyond Harrys means (atleast unless he dedicates the rest of his life to it), but basic steam engine would be something that I think he could realistically do (or rather, have others do for him under his orders) and have workable designs ready to help when the war he foresees arrives. Whether that would actually improve the story is another matter alltogether ofcourse.

 

@Datakim - I fully agree, it is not impossible - it is merely really hard. Problem is that "Hey, I need competent people, significant amount of money and two years of holidays to recreate some machine from my dreams based on half-remembered dumbed-down schemes for children." is more likely to backfire than end in started project (even after becoming a respectable adult).

And additional problem: I have significantly bigger exposure to technology than Harry that is not described as technology fan, geek or book devourer. And he spend over 95% of his life in nontechnical world.

 

Ignoring all the steam engine bullshit, Aeryn was a lot better in this snippet but could do with some more detailed character development. Consensus seems to be that either 1) She needs to die horribly for unspecified reasons or 2) they don't like or dislike her.

Now, I'd argue that both of these stances are symptomatic of Aeryn not being fully fleshed out and seeming like a plot device more than a character in her own right. If she's to be even a semi important character this should probably be rectified.

Plus, the readers should care as much about what happens to Aeryn as Harry does, otherwise she loses all of her power as a character.

 

Detailed character development like what?

 

That makes sense.

 

All I meant was making her seem more like a living, breathing person rather than That-One-Girl-Harry-Saved. The crown making scene and the bathing scene we just saw were definitely steps toward that, as we got see more of her behavior and how she thinks.