The Cauldron: A Pagan Forum

I'll save my thoughts for after I see what y'all have to say.


[video=youtube;qDgk8RAckCE]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qDgk8RAckCE[/video]


Were any good points made?

Did you at least get a laugh?

I'll save my thoughts for after I see what y'all have to say.

Were any good points made?

Did you at least get a laugh?

 
I gave up at the 3:40 mark. I figured if I hadn't laughed by then, I wasn't going to.

The Harry Potter series is far from flawless; however, if someone's going to bother critiquing it, they ought to at least pretend to have a basic understanding of the source material.

*stops listening to Goin' Back to Hogwarts*

OK, my reactions..

1.08 Because the time-turners get destroyed in OotP. Have you not read the books? Also, all the stuff Hermione says about how screwed up it can get when you use a time-turner? Yeah...

They might not have read the books. I haven't read all of them myself. I've seen the movies though so.*shrug*

1:45 Umm... International Statute of Secrecy? Seriously, has that guy even read the books? If the British MoM let the Muggles know then they would be in deep, deep shit with the International Confederation of Wizards.

The point still stands. At that rate, the International Confederation of Wizards would be partially responsible for the deaths of thousands of "muggles" because "secrecy" because #reasons. I just started Pottermore, so there could be a reason behind them going this route BUT by the time a genocidal maniac comes to enough power to instigate a war that, should it spill over, would hit a major economic and political power center FIRST? (London) Yeah, I'm going to giving serious side-eye behind that kind of "secrecy."

2:15. See above. Also, the entire first chapter of Deathly Hallows? Hello? Read it at all?

Nope.

2:30. Slytherin Tower? Slytherin Tower? Right, that's it.

Meh, this is more along the lines of that whole "Would you kill baby Hitler if you went back in time?" kind of thing.

3:21. Slytherins are guaranteed to be evil? Yeah, somebody really hasn't read the books and is just going by the films. But oh well, this is the same guy who thinks that the Slytherin dormitory is in a tower.

Now my husband HAS read all of the books and even HE says that J.K. Rowling does not make it obvious that there are shades of grey when it comes to the people populating this magical world. She creates a god-bad dichotomy that is rarely explored unless it directly has to deal with a main character (Snape for example).

SO if someone IS going by the movie (which many people are since many have not read the books) they would have NO IDEA that Slytherin =/= automatically wealthy, racist, douche-nozzle with a purity complex and one hell of a propensity for cray-cray.

3:35. Dark Arts only became a lesson in the 7th book, which you would know if you had actually bothered to read them!

See above.

I don't mind people picking Harry Potter apart (and it can be very funny), but I do mind when they're picking it apart with completely inaccurate crap and very little understanding of the canon like they have done here.

Considering how much expansion has had to be done just to fill in the blanks for material even covered in the book? I'd say the canon was a little weak to begin with. Then again, I highly doubt the author expected a)adults to be critiquing her work in film form let alone book form and b)for as much to be omitted from the movies as there, apparently, was.

Hell, many people who have seen the Lord of the Rings films have not read the books and have no idea that the Great Eagles could actually talk or the reason why it was so significant that Galadriel gave Gimli three of the hairs from her head. Doesn't mean they can't riff on Bilbo and Thorin's homoerotic subtext in the film.

Sorry you didn't think it was funny though. I laughed my ass off.

By the way, when I said "you" in my previous post I was talking to the four people in the video, not you dionysiandame.

 

They might not have read the books. I haven't read all of them myself. I've seen the movies though so.*shrug*

If they're going to try to pull it apart with even a shred of credibility then they need to read the books. Simples.

The point still stands. At that rate, the International Confederation of Wizards would be partially responsible for the deaths of thousands of "muggles" because "secrecy" because #reasons. I just started Pottermore, so there could be a reason behind them going this route BUT by the time a genocidal maniac comes to enough power to instigate a war that, should it spill over, would hit a major economic and political power center FIRST? (London) Yeah, I'm going to giving serious side-eye behind that kind of "secrecy."

It's the MoM's responsibility to protect the Muggles anyway. Because letting them go around getting harmed by somebody who doesn't care about the laws is breaking the ISWS anyway. Besides the best way they can protect the Muggles is by getting rid of Voldy. Plus, Muggles really don't have any resources against wizards, even if they knew. Now if a wizard saw missiles coming for them, well, shield charm, arresto momentum, evanesco, freezing charm etc. Any of those would work to stop the wizard from being killed. Or you know, just disapparate if they don't care about what would happen if the missiles did explode.
Not to mention that Voldy is practically the king of hide and seek and if the aurors can't find him then there's no way a Muggle would be able to find him because of repello muggletum.
 

Now my husband HAS read all of the books and even HE says that J.K. Rowling does not make it obvious that there are shades of grey when it comes to the people populating this magical world. She creates a god-bad dichotomy that is rarely explored unless it directly has to deal with a main character (Snape for example).

Actually she does. And pretty much hammers it home in the epilogue. The characteristics of the Houses were around for a thousand years before Voldemort. His death wouldn't have any impact on the characteristics of Slytherins.

Considering how much expansion has had to be done just to fill in the blanks for material even covered in the book? I'd say the canon was a little weak to begin with.

Actually, everything I said is something that anybody who has read the books would know. No need to read anything from Pottermore or all the stuff from interviews with Jo.

Hell, many people who have seen the Lord of the Rings films have not read the books and have no idea that the Great Eagles could actually talk or the reason why it was so significant that Galadriel gave Gimli three of the hairs from her head. Doesn't mean they can't riff on Bilbo and Thorin's homoerotic subtext in the film.

Thorin is in the Hobbit films not the LotR films. *is a pedantic bitch, sorry :p*
If they're doing a critique of the LotR and the Hobbit films as films, then yeah. But if they are trying to pull apart major parts of Arda with very little understanding of the basic concepts of Tolkien's work then I have every right to disregard what they're saying and also to correct them. It's really not that difficult to pick up a book and read it. Or even go to google.  

My point still stands: Everything they talked about is explained in the books. Therefore, I think they're idiots. Not for not reading the books, but because they've made a youtube video trying to be funny and clever about something that they haven't bothered to learn about.
There's a big difference between a person who makes a scripted youtube video  to gain hits when everything they're trying to be funny and clever about is right there ready for them to read about or even google, and a person who hasn't read the books but has the same questions. The former is an idiot. The latter isn't.

Were any good points made?

Did you at least get a laugh?

I was so glad someone else has noticed that young wizards and witches don't appear to learn any maths, science, non-magical history, English, foreign languages etc after the age of 11. This has always worried me... They do have PE, though, and I suppose that's the important thing!

I thought it was quite amusing and will look up what else they've done.

Did you at least get a laugh?

Not a big Potterhead, so it had its moments for me.  "It's a piece of felt that determines your academic future" made me laugh.  

Brina

Okay, currently on the family iPad, so can't see the link for the video. However, I have to jump in here, if only to point out that just because those subjects (maths, science, etc.) aren't explicitly mentioned does not automatically indicate they're not part of the curriculum; it only means they're not important to the story. We've no idea how many subjects are taught at Hogwarts, simply because they're not mentioned.

It could be that Jo took it for granted that people would assume non-magical subjects were a part of the Hogwarts curriculum, and didn't mention them because they're not relevant to the story.

On Pottermore, JKR listed all of the classes taught at Hogwarts.  The only one that wasn't mentioned in the books was Alchemy which Dumbledore gives special classes on from time to time.

As for not being relevant to the story, History of Magic wasn't relevant past Chamber of Secrets yet it's mentioned all the time.  The same could be said for Astronomy which wasn't relevant until Order of the Phoenix (though the Astronomy Tower was relevant in books one and six).  None of the elective classes Hermione took are relevant to the plot (we didn't even learn the name of the Muggle Studies teacher until the first chapter of Deathly Hallows  and iirc, we still don't know the name of the Ancient Runes teacher).

(Getting off my soapbox now. It bugs me when people have to pick apart every little aspect of something, just to find "what's wrong with it, and how So-and-so could have done it better.")

 
I personally find dissecting works of fiction and finding their flaws quite constructive as it can help a budding writer try to avoid the same mistakes.

On Pottermore, JKR listed all of the classes taught at Hogwarts.  The only one that wasn't mentioned in the books was Alchemy which Dumbledore gives special classes on from time to time.

One of the things people sometimes forget about the subjects, too is, that up until relatively recently, British education really *did* work mostly like that: once you got over the age of 11, you specialised heavily and early. (And you were tracked, via the 11+ exam, extremely early.)

My parents were both educated in the UK: they were born in the 30s, and neither of them took any science or math classes after they turned 12. That continued up until something like the mid-80s, if I remember correctly. (My father did Greek, Latin, English Lit, History, and something else. My mother did modern languages and history and English.)

Comparatively, Hogwarts, with its 7 mandatory subjects (Astronomy, Charms, DADA, History of Magic, Herbology, Potions, Transfiguration) is actually sort of well-rounded, especially if you assume Astronomy has a certain amount of basic maths, History of Magic at least theoretically covers a bunch of history, and several classes at least potentially have a degree of analytical writing built in.) And it gets more so when you add on the electives.

(Oh, and Bathsheda Babbling for Runes - but her name comes from one of the lists Rowling released, it's not mentioned in the direct canon.)

You see students talking about writing essays, so clearly someone's providing *some* feedback. (I'd also argue that 'History of Magic' covers the Wizarding history, and people interested in Muggle history get it - badly, but that's a whole *different* worldbuilding issue - in Muggle Studies.)

I will note, from helping wrangle the Alternity class schedules, that it is basically impossible for the named faculty (see the above list) to actually teach the number of students presented in text, in the number of class hours available, in the spaces available, unless they are Time Lords and Ladies. (The ways you have to overlap classes to teach everyone Just Don't Work.) But again, that's another kind of worldbuilding issue

As much as I gripe about the worldbuilding gaps in Rowling's work, I admit I also find them fascinating, because trying to make them make *sense* is intriguing. (I, f'ex, have an argument for what the base salary for a Hogwarts professor is, based on canon evidence, a bit of real world theory, and a certain amount of eyeballing, that manages to be remarkably consistent with an inconsistent economy. I like that sort of puzzle, obviously.)