Lois McMaster Bujold said, after analyzing many reviews, that apparently only 50% of what stays with readers after reading a novel came from the book itself, while the rest came from the reader: what they already knew and believed, references to other works and real life, parallels to their own life, their feelings while reading, etc.

Apparently, you and I read the books very differently.

The "Children's Book" excuse is weak by the way. No preteen should have been reading DH. "Children" old enough to read DH are also old enough to spot many of the problems I spotted.

 

I guess so. I always assumed it was happening 'behind platform 9 3/4', as you said, while you clearly think otherwise.

On that we just straight up disagree. I don't think there's anything particularly onerous about DH, or any of the latter, darker, books. I think a 10 year old would be fine reading all 7 books. Which is from experience, since my sister blazed through them at that age.

 

Man that would be absolutely sick. The places some of the authors on DLP could take that kind of story...
I guess the most frustrating part of reading HP is that (like any good book), I wanted to end up sympathizing, or at least understanding Voldemort. But he's just a bad dude all the way through. I feel like at times he has no depth.

Honestly, I spend a lot of days browsing fanfiction, get into a story, and then click the x button button because they're so many cliches that I just don't understand them anymore. I leave fandom for just a bit, and a whole host spring up all at once. There was this three month interval where I didn't read anything, and once I came back Harry was apparently the heir of all four founders and possessed more inherited estates than the Queen of England. It went from him having IMF level funds to suddenly being the perfect intersection of random bloodlines. I once read an entire fic because it had Harry going to Gringotts, but he was poor because apparently James Potter had spent a lot of his wealth simply funding the Order's operations. These days if an author just goes against some of the cliches, it's an impetus for me to read.

I think that the best stories are ones where Harry kicks ass without the author having to invent new techniques to give him so that he can kick ass. Like write an action filled story with just stupefy, incendio, and protego but make it awesome.

Pet Peeve: it may be shocking, but Knuts and Sickles do exist! Not everything is transacted purely in Galleons - I think this statement alone would do wonders for the whole "Harry has enough funds to conduct quantitative easing" cliche.

 

Not entirely like that, but give this a try. Not amazingly brilliant, but decent.

 

And even then, there was explications most of the time if I remember correctly.

Aang is the avatar, aka Bending God, Katara was the only waterbender in the pole, Sokka was her brother and the only warrior of the tribe, Toph was the most talented bender EVER etc. And the adults weren't useless, even if acting in the background.

We never see Harry Potter anything clearly telling us "Yes, adults do stuff and are sometimes useful". The books seem do be going out of their way to make adults useless, in fact.

 

Why are you guys bitching about the adults being useless in HP? For one thing, it's a children's book, so of course the kids are going to take center stage and be the ones to actually get shit accomplished. For two, if Dumbledore had been as super, over the top awesome and omnipotent as Bill Door wishes, this would be Albus Dumbledore and the Well Shit, There's No Conflict 'Cause I Already Took Fucking Care Of It, Bye Bye.

And like pdo said, the only beef I have with D'dore (through GoF) is his failure to uncover Crouch Jr. Everything else was Albus doing his best to help Harry, because he was fairly certain it was Harry's fight to win or lose, and since he also knew it could never be Harry winning a straight up duel, he trusted that if he just continued with delving into Riddle's past he could arm Harry & Co. with their chance to win.


Oh, and it's a children's morality tale, not Inglorius Basterds, so the down and dirty, shit hits the fan, grittiness was left out. Deal with it.


TL;DR - Dumbledore followed his morals and his interpretation of the prophecy, and trusted that if Harry was to win, Harry would have to do the same. End of story.

 

Yeah. I'm pretty sure that Dumbledore of all people was aware of the fact that the prophecy means jack. It only matters if you let it matter. And it was all nonsense anyway. How exactly would he have armed them? By taking away Voldemort's horcruxes? He would still have ripped open Harry's neck and taken a piss down his throat.

My personal view is that Dumbledore wanted to take care of it himself and got hit with that curse before he could. It's the only thing that makes sense. Otherwise he risked the lives of everyone on an incredibly long shot. That or he was omniscient and anticipated Draco disarming him.

I'm not saying that he could have just waltzed in and beaten Voldemort, but the notion that he should have sat back and let Harry handle it is a bit despicable.

Yes, from an outside story perspective he had to be a bit impotent. Unfortunately it was done in a way that raised these questions.

We're all aware that it's a children's morality tale, I don't see how that negates anything that Dumbledore did (or didn't do).

 

I take offence to that! There is Democracy in my country. And yes it is %99 percent muslim country.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turkey

 

Yeah, us Muslims are fucking amazing. Apart from Saudi Arabia, and let's be honest, even the Saudi's don't like themselves.

 

... I do?

All I said is that I thought pdo91's idea was shit.

 

You did pretty much say that.

And you're wrong, on both counts. The idea is not shit.

 

@Portus: Your Dumbledore has the morality of a villain. He chose to not save the lives of people he could have saved.

Of course, the other options are that he didn't anticipate the war (not true) or he couldn't save more people even if he wanted to, which is strange.

I think HP started as an Enid Blyton's Mystery. The kids have to solve the mystery themselves because the adults (McGonagall) don't believe them about what they found out and they only found out by chance because kids can go around unnoticed. This worked.

But then(1) it went epic with the fate of millions of lives at stake and the adults certainly involved in saving at least their own skins. At this point, if common sense prevailed, the kids would have been evacuated into a home in the country where they could discover Narnia. Instead, not only are they on the front lines (there is precedent: Hitler Youth saw action at the end of WWII), but they are the most important players, because all the adults are useless. Kids during wartime is a legitimate genre. Kids being heroic during war, getting adult medals, is legitimate. But to make them the most important players, not only symbolically (Aurors kill all DEs, capture Voldemort, Harry has to cast the AK to kill him), everyone, not just the chain of command but everyone on their side has to be incompetent. And that just breaks the suspension of disbelief. After all, if everyone is that incompetent, how does the world function at all?

1 - As I said before, common sense was broken in CoS when Dumbledore either couldn't or wouldn't save students' lives. I waited to discover that it was he who ensured no one died and he let Harry deal with it for some reason. But we are not told that. We are led to believe Dumbledore couldn't figure out it was a Basilisk, couldn't figure out the entrance was in the 2nd floor girls' bathroom, couldn't get to to the monster himself to kill it. Dumbledore unable to sneak into his own school? Dumbledore avoided multiple deaths of his pupils by dumb luck? Dumbledore letting Lucius get way with mass murder? There is no (good) excuse.

 

1) I really didn't, I never mentioned Dumbledore. I honestly don't know where Portus got that idea from.

2) That's a matter of opinion, and until someone proves me wrong by writing it I'm going to disagree with you.

 

My impression of turkey is that it's an oligarchy like almost everywhere else with the difference that it's more visible there with the big companies in the hand of a few families and the military/secret services as the national control mechanism to keep this clan/family cesspool stable.

 

Let's not get into this argument here but I will concede your point as it has oligarchy aspect of it but than again wich country doesn't? America certainly has them, Russia has them Turkey isn't worse than them. Certainly noting like İran.

Any way Pet peeve; Gary stu character. Dear lord isn't there any Time travel story without them!

 

Pet peeve: well-adjusted time-traveler Harry who enjoys spending time with 11-year olds. Which, really, is pretty much every single time-travel fic ever, except maybe Time, Mr Potter? and Circular Reasoning.

 

One would think that late-teens to early twenties Harry would have some problems with spending time around 11-year old variants of his friends/loved ones/significant other.

 

Backwards Compatible definitely avoided this issue.

 

My main pet peeve with time travels apart from the dumb plots is the fact, that if a 150 billion years old Harry goes back, the he won't talk like a 10 year old, or like his friends... Or as stated above get his knickers in twist because his "gf"'s parents are angry at him sullying their girl. He is a BAMF unless it's a pure angst fic... then go ahead, but I won't even touch those...

 

If I were to write Harry potter which traveled in time it would be an adventure story where Harry travels a lot. I mean c'mon Harry already gone thought Hogwarts years whats to point of repeating them. That time can spend for better pursuits. Why would Harry spend that time for something he already done I will never understand.