Since this thread has been revived...

I too liked HBP, but not because of the plot or the characters. They sucked.

I liked it for the expansion of the world. Non-verbal magic, spell creation, the effects of legilimency when used in a duel, new potions, a glimpse into how defensive spells/wards work.

So while the actual story sucked, I liked the book for the setting.

 

I think everyone on this sight agrees that HBP had a few things in it that added to fanfiction. But the majority of the book's plot seemed off to me. I had to force myself to keep reading like it was an 'okay' fanfic. That shouldn't happen. JKR wrote four (maybe five) wonderful books before HBP that I have read over and over. HBP, though? I have only read that once. I got the gist, I hated the gist, and I took what I liked for fanfiction.

 

That is it though, HBP you can only read once. I can't really go through and list the problems chapter by chapter, because I can't stomach the thought of reading it again.

 

Are you going to do another one of these for Deathly Hallows, Mid?

 

What fleshing out? Harry's a stupid skinny jock who can ride a broom. Hermione's smart and annoying, Ron is a uber stupid jock with a Dad who doesn't know how to pull out, the best characters that are actually fleshed out with personalities are the freaking Twins.

I'm not even going to touch the rest, lol.

 

scrimgoer, the muggle p.m, professor slughorn, tom riddle, and that's just from the top of my head.

 

Fleshed out, xcel? Scrimgeour we barely know a thing about; the muggle PM not at all; Professor Slughorn, we have one memory and a small bit of teaching back-story. The only one I could say fits the bill of 'fleshed out' is Tom Riddle as the main villain has to be so the story can go anywhere.

On the point of back-story, we barely know anything at all about the magical world. Nothing about politics, the people, what it's like in other countries, etc. The only thing we know is from the angle of a school-boy, no matter if he is Harry Potter.

 

We know the PM's relationship with the magical world.

We know more about what happened to Fudge which fleshes out the politics of the world.

We know about new character -- and that he was the potions teacher to Riddle as well as the mauraders. Its the little things that flesh out the world.

 

I don't know about the characters being fleshed out in terms of back story and characterization, but I will at least say that there are many and I find them enjoyable. Yes we may not know about wizard politics nor much of Slughorn's past but I didn't have a problem with that. I wouldn't want to read how Slughorn struggled with childhood obesity, and adult diabetes.
As for the Stephen King comment all I have to say is that guy never says anything bad about J.k. Every comment he ever says related to Harry Potter is in appraisal. I personally think he's trying to get into her rowling.

 

Not really, none of these points actually prove the characters are fleshed out and/or backstory is present. They arent. We saw the PM for one whole chapter, and just because we know how he is contacted by the Minister for Magic doesn't mean that he's a fleshed out deep character. On the contrary, we don't even know his name, party, or anything to do with the current political climate in the country (and no, the fact that a bridge recently fell down does not give an accurate picture of this).

The same goes for both Fudge and Slughorn really. We know about odd events that explain their behaviour for a short period of time, but thats the oddity. We don't really know anything about the lives and/or full backstories of any of the people in the books save Harry really, and all we know about him is that he inhabited a cupboard and wasn't popular at school thanks to Dudley.

Rowling writes the present and only aludes to the past when necessary. That means that whilst we get masses of tidbits that prop up the world and make it seem like the world is deep it actually isnt if you scratch the surface, and neither are very many of the characters.

 

Really? Do we know what makes him tick? Do we know why he doesn't support Dumbledore? Do we know why he chose to be the prime minister?

That is absolutly ridiculous. You don't even know his name. The muggle prime minister was a character created solely for the purpose of showing how Voldemort is effecting the muggle world- their confusion and anger. He was also a way to introduce Scrimegeur (sp) without having Harry interact with him too early in the story. He's a plot device, far from a character with an actual story.

Again, do you know his first name? Do you know his motive for being so power-hungry? Do you know why he even tried to hide from Voldemort?

Tom Riddle is partially fleshed out, I'll give you that, but his childhood, etc. was one of the more prominent plot-lines in book 6. Even then, he's not fleshed out completely. His 'motives' for turning out to be the way he is are flimsy at best. We don't know what his actual vision for the future is, why he choses to attack the wizarding world the way he does, why he preaches pureblood supremacy even though he is a half-blood, etc.

The point is, my definition of a fleshed out character is a character with a consistent personality and multiple facets. Take Harry- powerful and resourceful to a point in the first 4 books, then does a complete 180 into a PMSing bitch in the 5th. You can argue that he had to deal with teenage angst, but that shouldn't have changed the fact that he was somewhat capable.

When SK said she is the queen of backstory, I don't think he meant that she was good at creating fleshed out characters. He meant, and I agree with him, is that in the first two books only she managed to create an entire society with its own ethics, prejudices, traditions, schools, government, and even sports. That's why there are so many genres of fanfiction- she created such a rich world, that many fanfic writers can find something new to work with in it.

EDIT- Ignore the bit about not knowing Slughorn's first name. I haven't read HBP since I first got it, so I just forgot about it. Thanks DLR.

 

It's Horace.

 

I agree with everything but that point. It isn't because it's a rich world that folks write in it, it's that there's so many gaping holes left unexplained that it's easy to twist the work into anything you want it to be

 

My apologies for raising this thread from the dead, but since this thread is a goldmine for fan fiction authors as it highlights the clusterfucks of book six (it's certainly helping me with my own fiction plots), I was wondering if there was one for the Deathly Hallows, too? Maybe one for the fifth and other books in the series, as well?

 

I highly suggest you don't go for 'fix this grievance and branch out from there' method of storytelling.

The general trend these days is to create your whole story from scratch and play with the characters and places as they already exist.

Book rewrites are awfully stale these days.

 

I wanted to do one, but from what I read snippets of, it was so horrible I didn't bother. All of the Potter books follow the same thing more or less, the problem could of been solved by either not doing anything, or telling Dumbledore, but HBP in particular stood out as horrible on every front, and the death of my interest in the canon.

I still need to proofread and grammar check this damned OP too.

 

Clusterfucks in book7:

The deathly hallows
The complete lack of opposition to Voldimort's Reign
The goblins being uniformly traitorous backstabbing bastards
The known-to-be-good guys returning to work and not immediately meeting 'Accidents'
Harry and Hermoine welcoming Ron back with open arms
Ron finding the other two again.
SNAPE finding any of them
Snape's Patronus
The entirety of the epilogue

The list goes on and on, how many more do you want?

Edit: Removed 'Camping Trip' upon reflection that was about the only part she really got right

 

True, but some of the storylines that I'm fleshing out right now do spin off into dramatic A/U territory around sixth year onwards, although they are still set around canon elements. (E.g., Horcruxes, the 'Kill Dumbledore plot', as they had already been set up before the point of canon divergence).

Because of this, it's good to know/have a list of the clear cut screw ups that she made so that if they become relevant to my plot, they can be corrected. An example would be the date/day mistakes made in the first chapter of the first book (see http://www.hp-lexicon.org/about/books/ps/rg-ps01.html). There could also be omitted details, such as it raining (as it was implied) during the night when Harry was on the doorstep that could be used.

I can understand your reasoning: I myself did not particularly like the final two books for the same sort of issues (most notably the Epilogue) that you have with them. I guess it's time to Google the 'net to find the Deathly Hallow fuck ups, right?

I do agree that some of the plot lines were a bit...predictable. I did not like the ending and the Epilogue especially.

Many of the character deaths seemed unnecessary to me (although I do understand her motives as to why Tonks, Remus and the others died in the ways that they did), and Bellatrix Lestrange dying at the hands of Molly Weasley? I always expected her to die being cut to bits when dueling (and holding her ground) against just over half a dozen opponents when she was in a fanatical bout of rage/insanity, or something like that.