quote:Originally posted by rivka: Harry's shockingly poor grasp of genetics is exceeded only by the author's. And his notion of a genetic key (oddly like the ATA gene in Stargate, as was pointed out to me) simply makes no sense at all.
Why not? Postulate a hidden machine somewhere that reacts to the wand-waving and whatnot to do the magical effects; why shouldn't it respond only to bearers of a particular gene?
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posted
In a world where saying Wingardium Leviosa causes things to float? Come now. Intelligent intervention is the simplest hypothesis, to the extent that your average seven-year-old is intelligent.
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posted
Which part? First of all, he explicitly rejects the notion that magic is simply another aspect of the physical laws of the universe. That seems simplest to me.
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You honestly think it is more likely that the universe wants you to say "Wingardium Leviosa" than a group of Latin-ish speaking humans made it that way?
I think it is fairly likely that the actual power source is inherent to the universe, but Harry's theory on the "triggers" seems pretty plausible to me.
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posted
Wingardium Leviosa? The exact intonation matters, and the way you swing your wand?
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Blayne Bradley
unregistered
posted
Not nessasarily as you become skilled you don't need the wand or the movements I believe.
But its like in the Dresden files where the pseudo latin and hand gestures are just the "trigger" in your mind but with enough understanding those become unnessasary.
Saying it in High Gothic or Ancient Chinese or Ancient Hebrew would also I imagine work since magic had to have existed before latin.
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quote:Why not? Precise angle of a right hook matters too.
But why does the universe speak Latin of all languages?
We've seen Quirrel (in this story anyway) do a spell let you see across the universe. It had words that sounded alien to Harry. A possible explanation of that was that Quirrel was speaking the "true" language of magic, and that the psuedo-Latin is a translation of that. Like speaking in Pascal instead of Binary. Easier to learn but less powerful.
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quote:Why not? Precise angle of a right hook matters too.
But why does the universe speak Latin of all languages?
It's pseudo-Latin, actually.
And we don't actually know that it doesn't work with any other language; just not the specific ones Harry tested, or in the specific way he tested them. Still quite a jump to an intelligent designer. Posts: 32919 | Registered: Mar 2003
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posted
You are suggesting that the laws of the universe include specific rules about human voice-boxes. The language doesn't matter, the fact that a human larynx can produce the sounds does! Never mind 'intelligent', that's a matter of opinion, but certainly this points to a human designer.
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posted
Oh I don't think the evidence is at all clear-cut, Harry hasn't done any testing yet, but I think this is plenty of evidence to at least generate a hypothesis.
Other note: I just reread chapter 26 and realized I totally missed the last line on my first read through. I'm disappointed that Rita is dead already, rather than getting to see how the fallout would have been. I'm assuming Quirrel killed her on purpose, not sure how I feel about that.
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posted
Indeed, that seems like a bit of overkill. If Harry had destroyed her so thoroughly, why kill her on top of all that? I can see why Quirrell would do it, sure, but it seems narratively very inefficient.
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posted
Yeah, I thought it would have been way more interesting if she had overheard the whole thing and lived to react to it.
Narratively "inefficient" may not be the right word, since it DOES eliminate a chapter he'd have to write about how she reacted. But narratively "lame," definitely.
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The author decided to trade away Rita's reaction and future involvement in the story in exchange for extra characterization for Quirrel.
Killing someone in cold blood, especially someone who had apparently been defeated already, is definitely a big moment for that character.
It may or may not have been the best choice for the author to make, but it seems like it wasn't a totally unreasonable tradeoff.
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It wasn't entirely unexpected, and was in keeping with the character. But still, we hadn't actually seen him do anything like that yet. So yeah, I think it was a reasonably bit moment.
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posted
The fact that he kills her when she's already defeated is. (I wouldn't have been too surprised for him to kill her based on last chapter, but it did seem like deliberate overkill by the point it happened).
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posted
It was sort of anticlimactic, that's the problem. We have a perfectly good solution to the Skeeter problem, which he's spent two chapters developing. It is an awesome solution. We'd really like to see Skeeter's face ground in the dust when she realises how badly she's screwed up. And then she just dies, no buildup, bang, as though she were some irrelevant mook. Come now! She's no protagonist, but this is excessive! She's got speaking lines and a point-of-view section and all!
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quote:Originally posted by King of Men: We'd really like to see Skeeter's face ground in the dust when she realises how badly she's screwed up. And then she just dies, no buildup, bang, as though she were some irrelevant mook. Come now! She's no protagonist, but this is excessive! She's got speaking lines and a point-of-view section and all!
posted
I'm glad Skeeter is dead, she was vile, and I wasn't expecting that last line, and the shock value was worth it to me, story wise. It was great.
Posts: 454 | Registered: Mar 2005
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posted
I think her death was good storytelling. I also enjoyed how it gave someone from Gryffindor the chance to do something Harry couldn't imagine. The bashing is pretty tedious, after all, though understandable from Harry's PoV in this story.
But the big setup towards her reputation defeat, that wasn't good storytelling, I think, if she was just going to get smooshed.
As for Voldemort killing someone he despised when it was literally as easy as bumping into a small bug in a sealed room with only one witness who wouldn't even see it? That is totally in his character, isn't it?
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posted
Skeeter is barely a step above Jar Jar Binks as far as characters go, so anything that removes her from the story as swiftly and irrevocably as possible is a plus in my book.
Posts: 1515 | Registered: Feb 2002
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posted
I note that strictly speaking we do not know that the blue beetle was Skeeter. Perhaps Quirrell, for some complicated reason of his own, wanted Harry to think he had killed Skeeter? (Harry might find out about the Animagus thing later on, flash back to Quirrell's uncharacteristic stumble, and go epileptic from the Horrified Realisation.) Or alternatively, perhaps Quirrell thought he was killing Skeeter, and in fact merely got a completely unrelated blue beetle? But they're not very likely explanations, I admit.
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posted
I think the author's having fun in thwarting the expected plot points. Ron? not Harry's friend. Scabbers? dead, so Sirius Black will probably stay in Azkhaban. Rita Skeeter? dead. Snape? neutralized. Dumbledore? not Harry's friend. Chamber of Secrets? less likely to open.
Letsee, and Harry hates Quiddich, so he won't go to the World Cup and help free Barty Crouch.
Yeah. So next he'll probably mention that Lockhart and Delores Umbridge have gotten married and left on a round-the-world cruise.
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posted
The other thing is, just how is this takedown of Skeeter supposed to be so brilliant? Ok, she's been convinced of something that's not true, but what of it? She's written untrue things before without getting into trouble. And the nature of the story doesn't seem particularly damaging to Lucius's interests either. Harry Potter engaged to Ginny Weasley, well, so what? It seems to me that Harry and Quirrell are both being very impressed with the technical difficulty of what's been done, without particularly considering the more relevant aspect of how damaging it is. They both just assume that Lucius will retaliate against Skeeter, but why should he?
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posted
The idea is that Lucius was essentially paying Skeeter to plant misinformation in the mainstream media. By arranging to have her publicly discredit herself, Lucius' investment was made worthless. That said, I think the author perhaps overestimates the rationality of the news-reading public. Posts: 37449 | Registered: May 1999
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posted
Precisely; it doesn't seem any more incredible than the camels that the public regularly swallows in canon. It's a tabloid; it's actually quite difficult for a tabloid to discredit itself.
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posted
Point was for mainstream people to start treating the daily prophet LIKE a tabloid, as opposed to a news source that was supposed to be fairly reliable. I think even people who read tabloids are usually aware they are reading garbage, however fun it may be.
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posted
The thing is, in canon, especially in books 5-7, it should be fairly obvious to anyone that the Daily Prophet is an untrustworthy rag that makes the Daily Mail look like Holy Scripture.
But the wizarding world is, by and large, full of complete morons.
So yeah, if Skeeter hadn't gotten squished, I question how much she'd really be discredited. The public doesn't seem to *care* about accuracy.
You think Skeeter couldn't have published a followup that redeemed her in the public eye while condemning the Conspiracy that Misused the Free Press for its own Selfish Ends? Of course she good have.
posted
My understanding was that the Daily Prophet is the only major news source, and people in general didn't have an alternative to fact check with, nor a frame of reference for how "crazy" the stories were.
Edit: Also, the point was not necessarily to destroy Rita Skitter, but specifically to make people be afraid to trust anything they read about Harry Potter, period. In that regard, I think this was successful.
[ June 18, 2010, 09:04 PM: Message edited by: Raymond Arnold ]
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posted
I came home today to find my family watching the movie "Chamber of Secrets". I was just in time to see the big finish, where Harry tries to escape with the Sorcerer's Stone, up the steps, when Voldemort tells Quirrel "Stop Him!"
And Quirrel does, by creating a wall of fire. How does he do this? Wave his wand? Say magic words? Throw a potion?
No, he stops Harry Potter by....snapping his fingers.
And I started laughing.
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quote:You think Skeeter couldn't have published a followup that redeemed her in the public eye while condemning the Conspiracy that Misused the Free Press for its own Selfish Ends? Of course she good have.
Are you forgetting that the conspirators here are two 13 year old boys and an eleven year old with plausible deniability? Do you really think Skeeter could possibly have saved face by admitting she'd been hoodwinked by a couple or kids with a budget of 44 sickles?
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posted
That assumes she would have honestly claimed who had duped her. It would be much more likely that she would, if mentioning the kids at all, claim they were the agents of some adult-possibly Dumbledore or McConnagal.
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posted
Again, discrediting Rita wasn't even the major goal, the goal was to create a state where the public couldn't tell WHAT to believe about Harry Potter. If there's a conspiracy that can produce crazy compelling evidence to trick Rita, whether they are kids or Dumbledore, then future pieces written about Harry Potter will always be suspect.
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posted
You gave up after a few sentences? That would mean you gave up halfway through the introductory paragraph, which describes a bookshelf! You might want to force yourself to read a ~little bit more than that before dismissing the whole thing as boring. That paragraph isn't terribly representative of the rest of the fic.
Posts: 241 | Registered: Nov 2009
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posted
He's an American high-school student. They have the attention span of butterflies. You can't expect them to read anything with more intellectual depth than, say - actually, I can't think of anything they do read.
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posted
Please. I read just as avidly when I was a high school student. Maybe more so as I was less likely to be as tired as I am now at the end of the day.
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quote:Originally posted by sinflower: You gave up after a few sentences? That would mean you gave up halfway through the introductory paragraph, which describes a bookshelf! You might want to force yourself to read a ~little bit more than that before dismissing the whole thing as boring. That paragraph isn't terribly representative of the rest of the fic.
By a few sentences I meant as soon as he starts angsting about how his parents don't take his opinions into consideration.
Posts: 1574 | Registered: May 2008
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posted
Do I have to have read all of the Harry Potter books to get this? I've read 3-4 of them, but haven't yet finished the series.
Also, the Card Fanboy in me wants to know if Mr. Yodkowsky specifically mentioned Ender anywhere in this work?
Posts: 636 | Registered: Apr 2002
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posted
You don't have to have read the whole series, but there may be some spoilers for you.
One of the chapter intros was a nod to OSC: The enemy's gate is Rowling.
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Blayne Bradley
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posted
The whole "smarter than ender" bit just bugs me. I do hope that is not what the author claimed or some such for both canonical Enderverse reasons (namely Bean's monologue about the relative merits of command between him and Ender regarding the unsuitableness of testscores) and because of literary reasons, namely that you can with enough effort make any character seem smart and that making the claim seems kinda pretentious.
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