1. DLP Flash Christmas Competition + Writing Marathon 2024!

    Competition topic: Magical New Year!

    Marathon goal? Crank out words!

    Check the marathon thread or competition thread for details.

    Dismiss Notice
  2. Hi there, Guest

    Only registered users can really experience what DLP has to offer. Many forums are only accessible if you have an account. Why don't you register?
    Dismiss Notice
  3. Introducing for your Perusing Pleasure

    New Thread Thursday
    +
    Shit Post Sunday

    READ ME
    Dismiss Notice

Questions that don't deserve their own thread.

Discussion in 'Fanfic Discussion' started by Quick Ben, Feb 1, 2012.

Not open for further replies.
  1. Henry Persico

    Henry Persico Groundskeeper DLP Supporter

    Joined:
    Sep 13, 2011
    Messages:
    343
    Location:
    Argentina
    Brace yourselves forum members, because shit is about to get real.
     
  2. Odran

    Odran Fourth Champion

    Joined:
    Aug 12, 2013
    Messages:
    3,190
    Shhh! Pass along the popcorn.
     
  3. Warlocke

    Warlocke Fourth Champion

    Joined:
    Sep 17, 2006
    Messages:
    3,053
    Gender:
    Male
    Location:
    The armpit of Ohio
    lol

    No it's not. It can't, because it's not real. It's not even real fan fiction, just supposition about fan fiction, loosely based on professional fiction. :p

    But, hey, enthusiasm is good. Maybe it's about to get unreal... even more unreal than it already is.

    You know what is real? My possible overuse of ellipses.

    The hulls just get stuck in my receding gum line, these days.
     
  4. Skeletaure

    Skeletaure Magical Core Enthusiast ~ Prestige ~ DLP Supporter

    Joined:
    Mar 5, 2006
    Messages:
    2,839
    Location:
    United Kingdom
    High Score:
    13,152
    The first point about the danger of time travelling being the time traveller themselves, rather than changes in the timeline per se, comes from JKR's spiel on Pottermore about timetravel.

    The real danger of a time-traveller is not the changes they make to the timeline - which may in fact be for the better - but for the potential for fucking up time itself. In particular, should Harry have attempted to return to his "present", as Mintumble did, Bad Things could have happened.

    It seems that being a time traveller does, in fact, attach to you some, ah, "Chrono-Stink".

    Well, yes. Each person has to act in the way that they believe is the morally correct way. Dumbledore even more so. Being as powerful as he is, he has the responsibility to use that power to safeguard the world. And Harry.

    As for a ruined childhood, Voldemort did that by killing Harry's parents. Dumbledore simply took the best option out of a bunch of shitty options. (Dursleys or death).

    Dumbledore was completely right to do so.

    Funny, I swore I could have seen you say in your previous post that a person is defined by their memories. Post-Obliviation Harry has the body of 11-year-old Harry and the memories of 11-year-old Harry. Hell, he even has the soul of 11-year-old Harry, whatever that means. To obliviate the extra years of knowledge isn't to kill one person and create another, it's to reverse the effects of the extra memories and restore the original.

    It's relevant in that it discounts one of the key pieces of "evidence" you like to use to support your absurd belief in canon evil Dumbledore.

    As of right now, I can't think of a single decision Dumbledore made which could have been made better. He made mistakes, yes, like trusting the fake Moody, but those mistakes were based on making decisions with incomplete information rather than making a bad decision based on the information he had.


    He kept Harry alive - no mean feat, and that alone would justify whatever interference he played in Harry's life - and also managed to give him the maximum freedom of choice. Never forget, Harry chose to go after the Philosopher's Stone, Harry chose to rescue Ginny, he chose to stay in Britain and fight rather than run away. At every step Harry could have done the normal thing and put his own self-interest before others, and thus stay safe, but he chose not to. The only time Harry completely lacked freedom of choice was when he was entered into the Tiw-Wizard, something which Dumbledore couldn't reverse.
     
    Last edited: Mar 25, 2014
  5. dmacx

    dmacx Groundskeeper

    Joined:
    Jun 29, 2008
    Messages:
    375
    How, exactly, did the whole boy-who-lived thing start? How many people actually know what happened at Godric's Hollow in '81?

    I've always wondered about this, and JKR wasn't very clear on it, or I'm not remembering it.
     
  6. Odran

    Odran Fourth Champion

    Joined:
    Aug 12, 2013
    Messages:
    3,190
    Probably by someone going "He lived where others died! The boy who lived!" or some such thingand then it escalated. What is a tad more curious is who gave the permission to all those authors to write books about Harry and his pre-Hogwarts life. Or I might be completely misremembering the official books and this is just something I keep encountering in fanfics so often that I mistake it for Rowling's stuff.
     
  7. pidl

    pidl Groundskeeper

    Joined:
    May 27, 2009
    Messages:
    323

    From PS:
    So he's mentioned in books, but there aren't really books solely about him.
     
  8. dmacx

    dmacx Groundskeeper

    Joined:
    Jun 29, 2008
    Messages:
    375
    So we don't really know.

    Do we even know exactly who was present when Voldemort got disembodied?

    Harry, Lily and Voldemort obviously, but anyone else?

    I'm trying to figure out how we got "reflected killing curse, boy-who-lived" without any witnesses.
     
  9. Andrela

    Andrela Plot Bunny DLP Supporter

    Joined:
    Apr 19, 2012
    Messages:
    5,048
    Gender:
    Female
    Location:
    Silesia
    What books? Fanon getting to you?
     
  10. Odran

    Odran Fourth Champion

    Joined:
    Aug 12, 2013
    Messages:
    3,190
    Seems like it. I really should reread at least the first three books. I guess I just kept seeing in various fanfics how Ginny was read bedtime stories about Harry and that muddled my memory, which isn't all that great to begin with, of the original books.
     
  11. pidl

    pidl Groundskeeper

    Joined:
    May 27, 2009
    Messages:
    323
    Lily and James dead from killing curse cast by LV, Harry alive with curse scar, LV nowhere to be found and all the Dark Marks became almost invisible.

    Not that big a leap of logic.
     
  12. Odran

    Odran Fourth Champion

    Joined:
    Aug 12, 2013
    Messages:
    3,190
    For wizards and witches, that's quite an accomplishment.
     
  13. Krieger

    Krieger Minister of Magic DLP Supporter

    Joined:
    Oct 12, 2009
    Messages:
    1,389
    Fanon shit again. Resist man, don't let it get to you.
     
  14. pidl

    pidl Groundskeeper

    Joined:
    May 27, 2009
    Messages:
    323
    Logic loses much of it's importance when A > B > C > A is totally possible and only takes a wave of a wand.
     
  15. T3t

    T3t Purple Beast of DLP ~ Prestige ~ DLP Supporter

    Joined:
    Jan 21, 2011
    Messages:
    176
    Location:
    Los Angeles
    High Score:
    3,164
    Oft said, yet totally wrong. Cause and effect is still paramount in the wizarding world (perhaps even more so than in the muggle world).
     
  16. Andrela

    Andrela Plot Bunny DLP Supporter

    Joined:
    Apr 19, 2012
    Messages:
    5,048
    Gender:
    Female
    Location:
    Silesia
    Prophecies - Effect before the Cause.

    Time Turners - Either Cause and Effect are reversed, or happen at the same time, not sure.
     
  17. pidl

    pidl Groundskeeper

    Joined:
    May 27, 2009
    Messages:
    323
    Eh? I wasn't talking about cause and effect, I was talking about things being larger on the inside than on the outside. Object A is bigger than object B, yet can still fit inside it.
     
  18. Rhaegar I

    Rhaegar I Death Eater

    Joined:
    Jul 8, 2013
    Messages:
    975
    Location:
    Right behind You...
    Prophecies: Actually, Dumbledore outright said the Prophecy would be nothing if Voldemort didn't try to fulfill it. Therefore, the Cause of Voldemort trying to fulfill the Prophecy leads to the Effect of it being fulfilled.

    Time Turners: The Effect only happened because of the Cause of travelling back in time in the first place.
     
  19. Andrela

    Andrela Plot Bunny DLP Supporter

    Joined:
    Apr 19, 2012
    Messages:
    5,048
    Gender:
    Female
    Location:
    Silesia
    Prophecies - Where do Prophecies come from then if not from the future? Information about the future, before that future happens, is effect before the cause.

    Time Turners - That's just untrue. Harry saw himself from the future before he traveled back in time. Therefore, the cause and effect are one and the same. If Harry didn't travel back in time, then it wouldn't cause him to do so.
     
  20. Joe's Nemesis

    Joe's Nemesis High Score: 2,058 ~ Prestige ~

    Joined:
    Jan 29, 2012
    Messages:
    1,192
    High Score:
    2,058
    You ever read Plato? How about C.S. Lewis? Maybe One Thousand and One Nights (the Adventures of Bulukiya). It's a very common philosophical discussion based on strong logical premises. In short, you're conflating Aristotelian logic (basis of western logic) with "what is real" and negating any other logical premises.

    Whether she meant to or not, JKR simply borrowed from a very long tradition of non-Aristotelian logic when she wrote about the particular spell/ability in a magical world.

    ---------- Post automerged at 11:17 AM ---------- Previous post was at 11:09 AM ----------

    Prophecies: not necessarily. It depends on one's definition of fate or whether there's a higher level of being/consciousness involved. If one is fated or a higher level of being is involved, then both the cause and effect are already established, and the prophecy itself is not affecting the effect, but rather is preparing those who have heard it for the coming effect. One could argue that the preparation is then an effect before cause, but it's not. Rather, the cause and effect are already established, and secondary causes and effects are now being played off it. (see narrative logic below)

    Time turners: we only see them working in one direction, backwards. Because of that, the original cause is what brought the person to the place of using the Time-turner (effect). Even if that person now goes back and changes something, even wiping out the original cause, in greater story, the cause still remains because the person still remains. This is another example of Aristotelian logic failing where other types of logic succeed, in this case, narrative logic.

    Narrative logic argues that a story is being told, and as that story develops, the question is how will each character respond to any given set of circumstances, based on the aforementioned characteristics of that character. Cause and effect are still in place, but they are viewed in a different way. In this situation, they reside in the living/telling of the story.

    Thus, so in both cases, cause and effect remain in their respective positions.
     
    Last edited: Mar 25, 2014
    T3t
Loading...
Not open for further replies.