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Harry Potter, Book 8 title candidates?

elipse said:
*snip*
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If you don't mind too terribly I would like to use this argument anytime someone asks me why I don't like HP (it happens more than I like). Your post illustrates a small portion of why, but you've articulated it much better than I ever did.
 
Well, Harry's parents were killed 30 years ago today, but it isn't Harry's birthday. That comes at summer's end, in August I think. Certainly not Halloween. :cool:
 
marksman said:
[qimg]http://www.mamapop.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/07/6a00d8341c5d9653ef0120a88cc43a970b.jpg[/qimg]
Yyyyyyoooooooooooooooowwwwwwwwwwww!
[cue The Who music]
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Yea, that's concept art from Islands of Adventure, Universal Studios Florida in Orlando. The castle is most a facade, but the rock it sits on is a ride called...

Harry Potter and the Forbidden Journey

If you're familiar with the park, they tucked Hogwarts back behind the Jurassic Park water ride in some space set aside for expansion while the rest of the area was converted over from Lost Continent. The 1st expansion for WWOHP is coming and will take over Sinbad and Poseidon's Fury.

Squid
 
Mudcat said:
If you don't mind too terribly I would like to use this argument anytime someone asks me why I don't like HP (it happens more than I like). Your post illustrates a small portion of why, but you've articulated it much better than I ever did.
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Sure, that's very flattering. Why else don't you like them? I only read each book once, so I don't have a really good memory for them.
 
JoeTheJuggler said:
I don't mind beating it up. I just never liked that the Rowling books are treated as appropriate literature for adults.
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I don't like it that they're thought of as appropriate literature for children. (See my previous post on the subject.)

I thought someone at least would demand a citation for when Hermione orchestrates that other woman's gang rape, but I guess no one (other than mudcat) actually bothered to read my post. Ah, well; it was a derail anyway.
 
elipse said:
I don't like it that they're thought of as appropriate literature for children. (See my previous post on the subject.)

I thought someone at least would demand a citation for when Hermione orchestrates that other woman's gang rape, but I guess no one (other than mudcat) actually bothered to read my post. Ah, well; it was a derail anyway.
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Well, I'm pretty sure I would have noticed it when I read the books; can you be more explicit?
 
Ok, I don't mind if people don't like HP for one reason or another, and hell I hardly think of it as high art, but I don't like people on any subject spewing ignorance and making out that it's actually the case. Much like people who claimed you could see sex, or who claimed that you scored by killing cops in the GTA games it's not a valid argument. Dislike the books on writing style, skill or actual objectionable content all you like, and there's certainly some of that, but when you say something like the following, well...yeah I'm going to call BS that you've actually read these books.

elipse said:
I don't like it that they're thought of as appropriate literature for children. (See my previous post on the subject.)

I thought someone at least would demand a citation for when Hermione orchestrates that other woman's gang rape, but I guess no one (other than mudcat) actually bothered to read my post. Ah, well; it was a derail anyway.
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I assume you mean the thing with Umbridge, yes?

It's never stated what happened. I first read that when I was about 18, so hardly a sheltered child, and I didn't get the impression it was gang rape. I only thought about that angle to it when I found someone else talking about it online. I assumed she had been tortured, yes, but not gang raped. I do understand the links between centaurs and rape in classic mythology, but that's because the early depictions of Centaurs were as savages. It's not even made clear in the early writings that Centaurs are half man half horse, and it's equally likely that they are just brutal horsemen, somewhat akin to the huns. In fact, in the earliest writing on Centaurs, they are the kin to a group called the Lapiths, regular humans who invented horseback riding. The first writer to explicitly describe them as half man half horse was Pindar.

Further to this, why assume that the rape-loving nature of the Centaurs of classic writing, be they horsemen or literal horse-men hybrids was carried over into HP? Sure, Rowling uses elements from classic mythology in her books, but she doesn't take all the elements. For example Centaurs, who in classical writing were all uneducated savages, were meant to represent what were considered the baser, animalistic tendencies such as lust and violence. The Centaurs in HP on the other hand, while still aggressive and wild are scholars and thinkers as much as they are warriors. They are depicted as having a civilisation with speech and probably writing, and a grasp of astrology and astronomy that far exceeds humans. Hardly savage beasts representing the base nature of the wild.

Incidentally, your argument that it was "because she was bad" is...well, have you ever read the book in question? She isn't "bad" she's a psychopathic torturer who in a school detention of a 15 (not 13 by the way, and if it occurred late enough in the year, Hermione was 16) year old, forces him to repeatedly slice open the back of his hand. Further to this, she performs this punishment on all children she gives detention to, from ages 11 to 18. She brings back and encourages the use of flogging on students again between the ages of 11 and 18, and shows clear racist (even if it is fantastic racism) tendencies towards a number of individuals. Further to this point, as the group are carrying her away into the forest for what you assume is a gang rape, she continues to verbally abuse them.

Not only does she condone the use of flogging and cutting as torture of course, she also attempts (although is halted) to use a torture curse which has been explained as forcing the individual to feel as though they are being killed in the most painful way imaginable, but without the actual death coming. It's also revealed that at the beginning of the book she sends out Dementors to get Harry, creatures that "suck out a persons soul" leaving them functionally alive but essentially lobotomised and condemned to oblivion. She does this to a child.

In later books we also explicitly find out that she shares the bigoted fascistic viewpoint of someone who was a fairly direct parallel of Hitler, to the point of accusing individuals of having "stolen" magic and condemning them to a prison where they will feel continually clinically depressed but without ever being given the options of suicide or escape, only to be released and forced into begging, treated lower than animals.

So yeah, even though I don't agree with the implied torture (or gang rape, which isn't particularly obvious as an implication, let alone an explicit event) saying she was punished for "being bad" is insultingly simplistic and indicates you haven't actually read the books, especially since you seem to think that Hermione was 13.



As to the House Elves thing, it's explicitly stated that House Elves like work and don't ask for pay because they like work so much, but it's also indicated that most of them want to be treated better than they are. I agree that a slave race that is happy with this position is dubious at best, but Word of God states that while most of the elves did not want or get payment after the end of the books, there were significant leaps forward in the treatment of these creatures and laws put in place to give them considerably more say and rights.

Further to this, there are groups of people in the world even today, who want to live under the rule of a dictator. I'm not making this up or using it as an excuse for slavery or any of that nonsense, but the obvious parallel in the Hermione/House Elves sections are the lunatic do-gooders who jet off to places they consider to be "backwards" because they don't have free and fair elections and a Liberal Democracy. Sure, the intent of these people is good, trying to bring to their attention the fact that they are living in slavery essentially, (or literally in the case of the elves) but being so gung-ho about it that they completely ignore the fact that the people are so used to the situation that they are happy. No matter how sick and twisted the reality of the dictatorship is, these people are actually happy. Again, this doesn't excuse the treatment of the elves, but in HP Hermione, Harry and Ron represent a scale of attitudes.

Ron sees that the elves are more than happy with their lot and thinks that the status-quo shouldn't be disturbed too much, although he agrees with enforcing some level of welfare for the elves to ensure they aren't abused. Whilst this attitude is short sighted and backwards in many ways, it's also more reasonable than Hermione, who I shall get to shortly.

Harry on the other hand comes to agree with Herminoe's arguments about how elves should be treated, eventually coming to the realisation that yeah, elves are slaves and that's a hideous situation, and that since they do like work they should instead be employed in a similar way to how servants are (which isn't the same thing at all, even though I have ethical issues with servitude as well). The difference is that Harry realises that attempting to force things like wages and holidays on the house elves against their wishes is stupid and wouldn't work. Thus Harry, given the explicit nature of the "House elves genuinely like nothing more than housework" reality that HP is set in, is by far the most reasonable and clear thinking of the trio, and Word of God backs that up.

Hermione on the other hand is exactly the type of ignorant busy-body that cause some people in the world to hate even the most peaceful attempts to bring about things like democracy. She doesn't listen, neither to her friends nor the people she is trying to help. It's made obvious that to some degree, the treatment of the elves isn't fair nor what they want but ingrained into them by the years they have suffered, but she goes further than this. She tries to force her own beliefs and her moral code onto the people she's trying to help. When it's pointed out that this is not only non productive but is actually making the elves angry, she bluntly states that the only reason the elves aren't in agreement with her is that they don't know any better. The parallel that Rowling was making, given how Hermione's attitude mellows over time, is that she is a less forceful version of the kind of Imperialist who went about the world spreading the message of Empire with the full "knowledge" that the ignorant savages he was forcing into his system would realise that they were mistaken when they wanted to carry on living how they always were, and that Western ideals were so obviously the best that they would agree given time.

While it's made clear that Hermione is actually in the right when it comes to her intentions it's also shown that her methods are brutish and bullying, and that she's hardly better than the people who want to force the elves to continue as slaves. When she offers the elves freedom they refuse, so instead of say, educating them and trying to reason that their lot in life could be improved, thus probably making a difference, she tries to force them to become emancipated, to the point at which they stop cleaning the Griffindor common room.

Your point about bullying is more accurate, but is also sorely ignorant of the actual facts in the books. I can only assume that your remark about happening "only to evil people anyway and which just serves to bring out the evil that was already there" refers to Severus Snape, yes?


Yeah, no. The treatment Snape got was laughed off rather chillingly and is, in my opinion, one of the things in the books that it is valid to rally against but the whole of your statement is woefully inaccurate. Firstly dealing with the Snape issue, no the bullying he receives from the Marauders does not serve to bring out evil that was already there. It's explicitly stated that his fantastic racism and obsession with Dark Arts came about because of who he was friends with. It's also been confirmed by Word of God that he could have been a better man than he was if he had listened more to Lily rather than the proto-Death Eaters he was also friends with. Indeed, it's also hinted at rather anviliciously that the reasons Snape becomes a Death Eater are essentially two. Firstly, he is hanging around with a vicious, prejudiced group of thugs and sociopaths who use his interest in the Dark Arts to corrupt an essentially good person, and secondly his outburst to Lily, the woman he loved caused her to reject him. Yes, the bullying made him bitter and angry at Harry's father and by extension Harry because it resulted in a scarred psyche (something explicitly stated to not be a good thing) but it didn't make him "more" evil because he wasn't evil in the first place.

Secondly, it's also been confirmed by Word of God that at the time of the murder of Harry's parents, Lily convinced James to go and apologise to Snape and try to mend things between them because she knew that he was actually a genuinely and potentially nice man, despite some darker aspects to his personality.

Thirdly, Snape wasn't evil. It's also been explained by Word of God that no one is inherently evil and any evil actions a person commits are due to choice and the corrupting nature of both power and the Dark Arts. The closest anyone in the books comes to being "inherently evil" is Voldemort, and that's explained as being because he's a sociopath. It's also explained that he could easily have been a good and decent person had his situation (being the product of magical rape, being raised in a crap orphanage, being neglected) been different. Snape was in fact a good guy. Continually risking his life to save Harry, a child who he hates not only because he reminds him of his father, someone who bullied Snape as a child, but also because he represents what Snape threw away. It's made fairly clear that Lily and Snape were in love when they were at school, and that she was desperately ignoring his corrupting friends, interest in Dark Arts and burgeoning belief in the primary fantastic racism of the books.

As for your argument that bullying happens only to the evil people in school, that's also a load of nonsense. The characters of Malfoy Crabbe and Goyle ring any bells? Yeah, they bully (to a lesser or greater degree of success) anyone they can, including Hermione (racism) Neville (picking on the weak kid) and the Weasley children (being poor and not adhering to the fantastic racism that they espouse). So...yeah but no, it doesn't only happen to evil people.


Sorry Elipse, I like and have massive respect for you, and I normally agree with you that I've seen, but if you have read these books, your recollection is rather patchy to say the least.
 
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elipse said:
I don't like it that they're thought of as appropriate literature for children. (See my previous post on the subject.)
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You're entitled to your opinion.
I thought someone at least would demand a citation for when Hermione orchestrates that other woman's gang rape, but I guess no one (other than mudcat) actually bothered to read my post. Ah, well; it was a derail anyway.
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Those of us who actually read it knew it was a POE, and didn't bother to respond.
 
MarkCorrigan said:
Sorry Elipse, I like and have massive respect for you, and I normally agree with you that I've seen, but if you have read these books, your recollection is rather patchy to say the least.
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I only read each of them once, and that when they came out. So I fully admit my memory might be patchy.

A few things, though:

I seriously don't remember the house elf thing EVER coming up again in any of the books. It infuriated me at the time, so I looked for it to resurface and it never did--at least, not that I recall, and I think I'd recall that. It was Hermione trying to emancipate and no one taking her seriously and laughing at her, and then bam! nothing. She gives up and it's never talked about again. When did it come up again?

If I'm remembering correctly, the centaurs make a huge deal about the woman being an adult. Hermione makes a huge deal about not being grown up. The centaurs don't give a darn about the boys in the picture; they only want to know if Hermione is grown up. I think it's hard to claim that Rowling didn't write it to mean rape. If I'm remembering correctly, that is.

I had forgotten that she was that evil. Is it okay to have her gang-raped and tortured because she's evil? What about considering the point you spend a lot of time trying to convince me of: that the books make a point of showing that no one is REALLY just straight up evil?

The books show year after year of a school where the kids bully each other constantly and the "good" kids' tactic always seems to be to get back your own somehow or to let it roll off your back. Authority figures aren't, and it's only the (let's call them) weak kids who let it bother them and eventually their weakness leads them to do evil, evil things. If only they could have just let it roll off their backs, the way good kids do...

But yeah, read 'em each once, thought the world was interesting, thought the characters and the ethics were terrible and thought the last one was insufferably boring. If you say I'm misremembering I will have to capitulate.
 
elipse said:
I only read each of them once, and that when they came out. So I fully admit my memory might be patchy.

A few things, though:

I seriously don't remember the house elf thing EVER coming up again in any of the books. It infuriated me at the time, so I looked for it to resurface and it never did--at least, not that I recall, and I think I'd recall that. It was Hermione trying to emancipate and no one taking her seriously and laughing at her, and then bam! nothing. She gives up and it's never talked about again. When did it come up again?
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Why is this an issue. Some people complain the books are too long, other complain that things are left out.
If I'm remembering correctly, the centaurs make a huge deal about the woman being an adult. Hermione makes a huge deal about not being grown up. The centaurs don't give a darn about the boys in the picture; they only want to know if Hermione is grown up. I think it's hard to claim that Rowling didn't write it to mean rape. If I'm remembering correctly, that is.
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Perhaps it is because they are more familiar with human boys, the most likely candidates to sneak into the Forbidden Forest. (The name alone... ;))

Also, as the three are together she would be representative of them.
I had forgotten that she was that evil. Is it okay to have her gang-raped and tortured because she's evil? What about considering the point you spend a lot of time trying to convince me of: that the books make a point of showing that no one is REALLY just straight up evil?
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Where did JK say anything about rape?
The books show year after year of a school where the kids bully each other constantly and the "good" kids' tactic always seems to be to get back your own somehow or to let it roll off your back. Authority figures aren't, and it's only the (let's call them) weak kids who let it bother them and eventually their weakness leads them to do evil, evil things. If only they could have just let it roll off their backs, the way good kids do...
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Highly selective version of the stories, I believe.
But yeah, read 'em each once, thought the world was interesting, thought the characters and the ethics were terrible and thought the last one was insufferably boring. If you say I'm misremembering I will have to capitulate.
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I thought the last one was brilliant, she actually pulled it off. The six prior books were prelude to that one and it came out far more coherent than I thought it would. She brought in elements of all the other books into the last one, and wove them together successfully.
 
Gawdzilla said:
You're entitled to your opinion.

Those of us who actually read it knew it was a POE, and didn't bother to respond.
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Hm. Not really sure how to respond to that. Did you really think I was kidding? Mis-remembering, maybe. Kidding, no.
 
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