The Harry Potter Series

[Deleted]

Jun 23, 2011 12:20:04 GMT -4 @baignoire said:

Official Pottermore announcement via ONTD with screencaps and links!

This looks awesome/like a total timesuck. (Good thing I will be done with school by then, because I'm procrastinating on writing a paper right now by posting this.) And the information that JKR has been sitting on for years (what would have gone in the "encyclopedia") will be incorporated into the site.

[NappingAthena]

I had to keep checking back, but I'm in the queue for early sign up. The thing I'm most excited about is how if you get sorted in a non-Gryffindor house you get extra content about your house. I'm going to be so sad if I don't get Ravenclaw, although I can live with Hufflepuff.

[MissPandora]

I still want a print encyclopedia, damn it.

[kostgard]

I'd probably get sorted into Hufflepuff. The doormat house.


I'm debating reading the final book before the movie. In some ways I like the refresher, but at the same time it's nice to kinda be surprised again when it happens on screen (and I won't remember some of the stuff they will leave out).

But looking back, I'm really amazed at how human Rowling made her characters, even the "hero" adults Harry looked up to.

- I mean, Sirius was kind of a douche. I like him, but he was. On the one hand, you can understand because of how awful his family was and he managed to break away from their small-minded way of thinking (and that is admirable), and I'm sure going to prison for years for a crime you didn't commit has a negative effect on your personality. But on the other hand...still really immature, and kind of a douche. And the flashbacks confirm that he was that way before prison and seemed to be the worst offender of their little group when it came to bullying.

James? A douche when he was younger. He apparently grew out of it, but still a douche a school who bullied Snape. And as far as we know, he didn't have the excuse of a terrible family. Lupin? Not so much a douche because that whole werewolf thing has got to suck and he didn't seem to be all that actively engaged in the bullying, but he stood by and let it happen, and later he had the rather cowardly moment when he tried to run out on his wife and kid. Even saintly, wise Dumbledore had an extremely dark past and honestly, probably could have handled a lot of stuff a lot better.

Snape, of course, did some awful stuff, but then it seems that the deck was constantly stacked against him. Could he have worked harder to overcome it? Yeah, probably. But again, one wonders if he even had to proper tools in his toolbox to overcome it, as factors outside of him didn't help at all (like Dumbledore's comment to him about the kids getting sorted too early. What if he weren't sorted into Slytherin? What if because of that he didn't hang out with all the future Death Eaters? Would he have been different? Would things have turned out differently with Lily? Would he have been able to pull himself out of the nosedive and turn it around, not unlike Dumbledore did?)

Anyhoo, all that is just me saying that I'm impressed with how she drew her characters. I do wonder if she'll ever return to this world, or will start something completely different. I know she doesn't have to, seeing how she has Oprah money, but writers write, right?

[tabby]

I'd probably get sorted into Hufflepuff. The doormat house.

One online Sorting Hat put me into Slytherin. I spent hours analyzing my answers and wondering how I became such a despicable person. Then I stopped using online Sorting Hats.

[roseland]

Snape, of course, did some awful stuff, but then it seems that the deck was constantly stacked against him. Could he have worked harder to overcome it? Yeah, probably.

The thing I can't get past with Snape is that he horribly bullied an 11-year old child because he didn't like the kid's father. That's why I could never really like the character.

[NappingAthena]

Jul 11, 2011 13:12:31 GMT -4 tabby said:

I'd probably get sorted into Hufflepuff. The doormat house.

One online Sorting Hat put me into Slytherin. I spent hours analyzing my answers and wondering how I became such a despicable person. Then I stopped using online Sorting Hats.

Hufflepuff's my second choice for house, but I'm going to be hoping for Ravenclaw. I usually get one of those two in tests.

[bklynred]

I'm torn between Ravenclaw and Gryffindor. IMO, the only difference between the two was that Ravenclaw used more logic ("that's a good idea but let's think of a less dangerous one"), whereas Gryffindor would be all "F*ck logic, let's do this!" and kick in a door with guns blazing. Hufflepuff was well, a bunch of poofs, and I'd be afraid of watching my back too often in Slytherin.

[kostgard]

Jul 11, 2011 13:12:31 GMT -4 tabby said:

I'd probably get sorted into Hufflepuff. The doormat house.

One online Sorting Hat put me into Slytherin. I spent hours analyzing my answers and wondering how I became such a despicable person. Then I stopped using online Sorting Hats.

Heh. The same thing happened to me once. I was all, "What the hell?!" and went back over my answers and couldn't figure out how it came up with Slytherin. I figured it was probably just a random generator and your answers didn't matter.

Jul 11, 2011 13:52:44 GMT -4 roseland said:

Snape, of course, did some awful stuff, but then it seems that the deck was constantly stacked against him. Could he have worked harder to overcome it? Yeah, probably.

The thing I can't get past with Snape is that he horribly bullied an 11-year old child because he didn't like the kid's father. That's why I could never really like the character.

Yeah, that was pretty gross. But in a lot of ways, I see it as the typical actions of a miserable person twisted through the prism of children's literature. Snape was clearly filled with misery and self-loathing, and those kinds of people tend to make other people miserable. And every children's book seems to have an adult character who just absolutely has it in for the protagonist and crosses all sorts of boundaries to bully/torture them. And despite all the crap he pulled, I never saw Snape as half as sinister as Umbridge.

But really, so many people in the HP world would be in prison if they ever had to answer to Child Protective Services. The Durseys kept Harry in a closet and treated him like a servant (and why didn't Dumbledore ever come around and kick their asses for it? Sure, Harry had to stay with them for his safety, but Dumbledore couldn't stop by and say, "Yeeeeeaaaaaah, you need to give the kid an actual room"? Hell, at Hogwarts the kids participated in school-sanctioned functions where they had to fight dragons, etc., there is something as dangerous as the whomping willow right on the grounds, and in the second book kids were getting petrified Medusa-style by some monster, and did anyone even call their parents? In the Muggle world Hogwarts would just be one giant lawsuit waiting to happen.

[angelaudie]

All this talk of Hufflepuff reminds me of a line in the UK Being Human original pilot (the pilot that is not featured on the DVD set, has different actors playing Mitchell and Annie, and yet was still shown on tv). Annie, Mitchell, and George are all discussing what house they would end up in and Annie states, "I quite fancy Hufflepuff actually. I've always thought in Hufflepuff they just spend the day making stuff with safety scissors and glitter." It's funny because it's true!

ETA: The sorting tests always put me in either Ravenclaw or Hufflepuff. I can see me ending in either one if I was in the Harry Potter world. I'm not ambitious to the point of destroying the lives of others and while I'm not coward I'm not brave to the point where I would go face a massive troll with little magical training. So either Ravenclaw or Hufflepuff for me!