Harry Potter [2]

That's what I needed to hear - if it deserves the immersive experience. Unless I get bored, I can wait.

I still have no interest in Fantastic Beasts.

Looks like HP's long Oscar drought is finally over after 15 years and nine films, with Fantastic Beasts taking home the award for Best Costume Design. Can't really comment since I didn't see any of the other nominees but this brought back memories of watching Oscar results with people on HP fan forums back in the day.

I liked Fantastic Beasts well enough, though I haven't really thought about it since maybe two weeks after I saw it (which is in sharp contrast to my relationship with HP, though I've largely stepped back from my fantasy fandom(s) in general these days), but Honest Trailers' take on it is pretty good too.

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I loved the "They're not dangerous!... They're not dangerous!" gag. 

And of course, "We need to talk about Creedence".

I left before it finished, I found it dull and so dark and dreary I could hardly see what was happening, but I hate Yates, he kills magic.

Intriguing until "heir of Gryffindor"

I'm curious, what is offputting about the "heir of Gryffindor" in this context?

Would be better if it was Hufflepuff. Gryffindor is SO overdone.

Oh, duh, of course!

But the re-visiting of familiar material is symptomatic of all fan-fiction. You don't get fan-made films about an obscure portion of Middle-Earth with never before heard from characters; you get someone related to Aragorn doing ranger-y stuff while fighting orcs and talking to Gandalf!

Isn't most fan fiction simply fans wanting to experience more of the original work? They want the work to be different than the original, but not too different.

Of course, there's also a meaner-spirited version of myself that wants to say that fan-fiction is fiction written by people without enough imagination to create something of their own. But that's not fair, really.

@Forest, while I've read and enjoyed a lot of creative and well-written fanfiction, the practice you describe of recycling story beats and character types with only a very thin coat of new paint slapped on them is pretty common. It's disappointing to see a story with a really promising premise turn into a blatant rehash, but it is what it is. On the other hand, some of my favorite fanfics are point-of-divergence AU fics that deliberately move through similar events but with certain key differences that gradually snowball, but I don't think that's quite the same thing.

halfwise wrote:Would be better if it was Hufflepuff.  Gryffindor is SO overdone.

Ravenclaw represent!

I like Ravenclaw as much as the next fellow, but Hufflepuff has received the least amount of love.

Actually, when my sister with two nieces came to visit, we went to see "Puffs: the play" which was all about Hufflepuff; though for trademark reasons they couldn't use any of the house names.  It was great, hit every Potter meme.

Seems when threatened team Hufflepuff huddles into a sort of porcupine stance, heads tucked in with wands sticking out, chanting "We are not a threat! Will you be our friend?"

Haha, sounds like a great house from which to draw adventurous types.

So today, 1 September 2017, is the date that the Deathly Hallows epilogue took place on. The first chapter of Philosopher's Stone took place on 1 November 1981 (the day after Harry's parents were killed) and the entire rest of the series took place from 1991-1998. The books were published between 1997-2007 (1998-2007 in the US), but the first solid evidence of the series' timeframe didn't come until the Deathday Party in the second book, so this is the only date in the series that it's possible for fans to mark when the real one comes around.

I probably should have realized that there would be events in the real King's Cross station (where the epilogue takes place) to mark the occasion, but I hadn't really thought about it much lately.

https://www.standard.co.uk/news/london/crowds-of-harry-potter-fans-descend-on-king-s-cross-to-celebrate-day-his-son-starts-at-hogwarts-a3625086.html

Eldorion wrote:So today, 1 September 2017, is the date that the Deathly Hallows epilogue took place on. The first chapter of Philosopher's Stone took place on 1 November 1981 (the day after Harry's parents were killed) and the entire rest of the series took place from 1991-1998. The books were published between 1997-2007 (1998-2007 in the US), but the first solid evidence of the series' timeframe didn't come until the Deathday Party in the second book, so this is the only date in the series that it's possible for fans to mark when the real one comes around.

I probably should have realized that there would be events in the real King's Cross station (where the epilogue takes place) to mark the occasion, but I hadn't really thought about it much lately.

https://www.standard.co.uk/news/london/crowds-of-harry-potter-fans-descend-on-king-s-cross-to-celebrate-day-his-son-starts-at-hogwarts-a3625086.html

Oh god, now I feel old and nostalgic, hard to believe it's been a decade since Deathly Hallows came out ...I feel a re-read coming on...

I always thought it was quite cool the series took place in the 1990's, I grew up with the series, but the gap of a few years gave it a slightly nostalgic period feel to me like I could seperate the events more easily from real life Britain, and adds to charm of the anachronistic wizarding society.

Getting nerdy, it also gives the books a little leeway to be more plausible, the 1990's were really the last decade there was still some chance Wizards could plausibly lead separates lives to muggles and blend in/ get around without their ignorance of Muggle culture or technology, broomstick travel and potions lessons seem less charming and more silly in the century of high speed train/plane connections and the internet, with the huge increase in CCTV/Surveillance/Camera technology in recent years you'd start to wonder how incompetent the UK Government/Police service was if they didn't notice a major wizarding war/weird events cropping up all the time

(I.e IIRC in Chamber Of Secrets Snape says 7 Muggles were known to have seen the flying car and had their memories wiped...but add a decade and I think you'd have at least one muggle who caught it on his camera phone and posted it to youtube before he was caught...)

But enough of me picking holes in the logic of the Wizarding World, it's good to know the series still inspires/entertains so many people

Oh interesting, the way in which the movies were seemingly set in the year of their release distracted me. A necessary sacrifice of continuity, I suppose.

Forest Shepherd wrote:Oh interesting, the way in which the movies were seemingly set in the year of their release distracted me. A necessary sacrifice of continuity, I suppose.

Yeah, the movies include a number of touches (especially London landmarks like the Millennium Bridge in HBP) that date them as occurring in the 2000s. Though the books give a number a contradictory clues as to the time setting that fans used to argue over in detail. Most people went with the solid numbers based on the Deathday Party, though, (and later backed up by James and Lily's gravestone in Deathly Hallows) which JKR has since officially endorsed.

malickfan wrote:I always thought it was quite cool the series took place in the 1990's, I grew up with the series, but the gap of a few years gave it a slightly nostalgic period feel to me like I could seperate the events more easily from real life Britain, and adds to charm of the anachronistic wizarding society.

Back when the series was still incomplete, Troels Forchhammer (who in addition to HP is/was active in Tolkien fandom and is still a mod on the LOTR Plaza) made a persuasive argument that the series was intentionally set in a vaguely defined and not entirely consistent recent past, or an "eternal 'a few years ago'" as he put it. As with you and probably most people who read the books when they were new, that would mean the '90s for me. Though, poetic as that concept is, it's not entirely satisfying to my Lore-minded side. And I think you're right that technological changes make the idea of a hidden magical world increasingly implausible in stories set in this century. Though part of the reason I feel that way might just be that I'm older and know more about the wider world and so there doesn't seem to be that infinitesimal but ever-so-exciting possibility that maybe it was true and there really was magic and I'd find out when I turned 11.

(If you're interested in really detailed Lore analysis I had fun yesterday re-reading the essay I mentioned: https://www.hp-lexicon.org/2004/03/13/mapping-the-harry-potter-timeline/ )

Oh god, now I feel old and nostalgic, hard to believe it's been a decade since Deathly Hallows came out   ...I feel a re-read coming on...

It's been just over a year since I finished my re-read of the series last year but I've felt the urge to revisit again lately. Though it'd probably be best not to try while also reacclimatizing to school.

I find myself liking the idea of Harry Potter taking place to a soundtrack of Depeche Mode and the Smiths

I also like the distance placing the story in the 80s gives. It gives the story more a feeling of finality. And a distinct time and place that suits it.

halfwise wrote:That's what I needed to hear - if it deserves the immersive experience.  Unless I get bored, I can wait.

I got bored and left half way through. It was truly awful. mind you it was a Yates gloomfest...

After the team at Botnik fed the seven Harry Potter novels through their predictive text keyboard, it came up with a chapter from a new Harry Potter story: Harry Potter and the Portrait of What Looked Like a Large Pile of Ash. It is worth reading.

“Magic: it was something that Harry Potter thought was very good.” Well, that’s not wrong. And the following sounds plausibly Pottery: “Leathery sheets of rain lashed at Harry’s ghost as he walked across the grounds towards the castle. Ron was standing there and doing a kind of frenzied tap dance.”

So far, so Ron. But then:

“He saw Harry and immediately began to eat Hermione’s family. Ron’s Ron shirt was just as bad as Ron himself.

‘If you two can’t clump happily, I’m going to get aggressive,’ confessed the reasonable Hermione.”

It continues in this vein: almost making sense, but mostly just gloriously bonkers, like: “To Harry, Ron was a loud, slow, and soft bird. Harry did not like to think about birds.” And my favourite: “They looked at the door, screaming about how closed it was and asking it to be replaced with a small orb. The password was ‘BEEF WOMEN,’ Hermione cried.”

https://www.theguardian.com/books/booksblog/2017/dec/13/harry-potter-botnik-jk-rowling?CMP=fb_gu

Still better than Harry Potter and the Cursed Child.

{{{}}}

I mean sure, it's charming now, but I have a deep-seated dislike for the idea that the right algorithm could process mega-data to produce "best-seller" material in mere minutes. It's easy to jump on the Luddite band-wagon, but people are stupid and will do anything that they can do.

And if AI can be created that can pump out imitation-works of Dostoevsky, Dickens, Rowling or Gaiman: if that can be done, it most certainly will be done . And if the market can be manipulated into accepting the idea? What's an author to do?