deathtocapslock | Let's Read Tales of Beedle The Bard, part one: The Wizard And The Hopping Pot.

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Let's Read Tales of Beedle The Bard, part one: The Wizard And The Hopping Pot.

Thought of starting a Let's Read of ToBtB. Let's say I have mixed feelings about it so far... :/

General Plot of the Story: Muggle-loving father dies and leaves his Muggle-hating son a slipper (presumably because the guy was...weird. :P). Guy's a jerk to other people because they can't use magic. The titular pot starts to go ballistic. Guy can't take it any more and changes his ways. Muggles get well again. Guy fits slipper on hopping pot (I shit you not), and the pot hops away...honestly, it's kind of like an acid trip. Bizarrely sweet, though.

Dumbledore's commentary (call it All There In The Manual): Dumbledore says, and I quote, "A simple and heartwarming fable, one might think -- in which case, one would reveal oneself to be an innocent nincompoop." (11) Well, good to know that Dumbledore's crankiness/bitterness has survived from beyond the grave. :P (Speaking of which, what's the commentary doing there? Is Dumbledore -- ghost-collaborating with Hermione? Is Hermione relaying his instructions? Is Harry? I'm so confused. XD) Nothing really of interest here (well, other than the bit about Beatrix Bloxam and the "ARGH KILL IT WITH FIRE!" reaction that a lot of the kids had to her...interpretation of "The Wizard And The Hopping Pot").

Thoughts: I will admit -- risking my own life -- that this is actually sort of sweet. Or would be, if the wizard had done the deeds he did out of the goodness of his heart (or if he wanted to change). *Cough* A Christmas Carol. *Cough* Mostly, he had a change of heart if only to shut the pot up. That said...it's mostly okay, so far. Not bringing out the nerd rage yet. (Well, other than Dumbledore's commentary, but...um, yeah)

Dumbles Rage-O-Meter: 5. It's bad, but it's within tolerable range. Continue. :)

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"A simple and heartwarming fable, one might think -- in which case, one would reveal oneself to be an innocent nincompoop."

What the hell? Is he under the impression that this needs wise mentoring to recognise the Plea For Tolerance (TM) in this story or is JKR pretending there's some hidden deeper meaning behind it all? (Maybe she's going to publish a Da Vinci Code themed sequel to this, revealing a secret conspiracy covering up Harry's descent from Godric Gryffindor).

(Speaking of which, what's the commentary doing there? Is Dumbledore -- ghost-collaborating with Hermione? Is Hermione relaying his instructions? Is Harry? I'm so confused. XD)

I suspect that this is meant to be translated from the book Dumbledore left to Hermione. Meaning that he thought it more important that the Trio correctly interpret ancient irrelevant fairy tales (and maybe I just remember the good ones, but compared to real world fairy tales this just sounds shit) than that they know anything quest-relevant. On the other hand, I think the review of this book at Ferretbrain said that JK Dumbledore's commentary on The Three Brothers explains the history of the Hallows, making Xenophilius' overlong exposition utterly pointless, so...

"What the hell? Is he under the impression that this needs wise mentoring to recognise the Plea For Tolerance (TM) in this story or is JKR pretending there's some hidden deeper meaning behind it all? (Maybe she's going to publish a Da Vinci Code themed sequel to this, revealing a secret conspiracy covering up Harry's descent from Godric Gryffindor)."

Honestly, from the way Dumbledore described Beatrix Bloxam, I think he doesn't really have much fondness for children's stories. :P (Meaning that, considering what he said about Voldemort at King's Cross -- for the goddamn upteenth time, come to think of it. XD -- he and Voldemort probably have more in common than he wants to acknowledge...*jots it down* Maybe that's one reason why he puts down Voldemort, to reassure himself -- in a twisted way -- that he's not like him?)

But yeah, I agree. :/

Come to think of it, why didn't Hermione just use THE TALES OF BEEDLE THE BARD to find out about the goddamn Hollows? Seriously.

Come to think of it, why didn't Hermione just use THE TALES OF BEEDLE THE BARD to find out about the goddamn Hollows? Seriously.

Wow, yes, that's another DH error, isn't it?

The plot of that book was so fantastically jumbled, but ... Hermione was given the Bard's book so she'd see the Hallows symbol that Harry had seen by huge coincidence at the wedding, thus knowing to go to the Lovegood's. But, yes ... all Lovegood told them was what was in the book anyway.

THIS DOES NOT MAKE SENSE.

Deathly Hallows read like a transcript of a game of Dungeons and Dragons with an inept games master. Nothing made sense and nothing happened except by impossible coincidences.

Nothing made sense and nothing happened except by impossible coincidences.

Yes. It's ... embarrassing ... how Rowling's final books were so amateurish. It's funny ... had someone asked "Brad, could you write an ending to the HP series?" back in 2005 or 2007 I would have responded "no, I wouldn't be able to think up a good ending". No-one would have contemplated, not for a split second, of just inventing a heap of deus ex machina gimmicks and tossing them in, connecting things with "impossible coincidences". It's a practice that we all just automatically eschew as way too amateurish to even consider.

And then Rowling went ahead and did just that. It's ... incredible.

I have to retract, though, much of my ire of my earlier comment. Hermione knew all about the story of the Three Brothers, she even reads it out loud at Lovegood's. The only thing she didn't know was the connection between the Hallows symbol and the story; they went to Lovegood because of the symbol.

And because of the "impossible coincidences" that led to them knowing of his use of the symbol.

The games master pointed the symbol out when the Potteroids were at the wedding. Hermione goes *to paraphrase* "the games master wouldn't have drawn attention to the symbol unless it were important, we had better investigate this Xenophilius Lovegood purely on that basis."

The way I think we were supposed to understand it is that the only significant bit of information Xeno provided was that some people (he among them) believed the Hallows were real and the supporting evidence were stories about the Deathstick cropping up once in a while. She definitely read the book already before visiting him, connected the sign of the Hallows to the sign on Ignotus' tombstone, Albus' letter to Gellert and the sign Xeno wore. So the question is whether that was enough to start suspecting the Hallows were real artifacts, and how do Albus' comments fit in.

Yes, as I said in a later comment I'd forgotten that Hermione *did* know all about the story. She just didn't know about the connection between the symbol and the tale.

Ah. I see. Just checking. :)

Part of the problem with this story, of course, is that the wizards are willing to do anything for the nonmagic people in the village, and as such, the nonmagic people never learn how to take care of themselves. And this is never even addressed.

Maybe a rewrite of the story could make the older wizard be the bad guy, who wanted the Muggles to be indebted to him forever by never telling them how to look after themselves. The younger wizard would be the hero by finally teaching the Muggles how to take care of themselves and then would ride off into the sunset.

*This*! :D

Seriously, why didn't *you* write the HP books? :)

If I wrote the Harry Potter books Harry would have hung up on the wizarding world as soon as he became an adult and saw how messed-up and utterly childish it and everyone in it was (he probably would have still defeated Voldemort, but that would be incidental to his growing-up).

In my stories, adults who devote their lives to magic are always unduly childish, since all they ever think about is how best to play with their pretty powers. I'm sick of stories that treat the magical world as being just plain better than the real world.

*This*! :D

Yes, thank you! That would actually be a very interesting concept.

I never read any of these, just didn't feel like purchasing the book so I didn't even pay enough attention to know there was Dumbledore quotes in it.

along with Dumbledore quotes I may have found it way more interesting IMO if there had been Snape quotes as well. At least for laughs.

I'll probably buy the book eventually . . . maybe.

snapes_witch,

Just be ready with special...protective measures for when the nerd rage erupts. /recommendation.

That would have been awesome. :)

Maybe I'll do a Snape/Slytherins MST of Beedle the Bard.

Do it! /Palpatine mode. XD

No, seriously, do it. It'll be awesome. :3

Definitely do that!

Phineas Nigellus might like to help too XD

:D!

That would be too awesome for words. ^__^

*Please?*

Severus comments on Tales of Beedle Bard.

story 1 - "Boring."

story 2 - "stupid."

Story 3 - "rubbish."

Story 4 - "idiotic."

Story 5 - "Avada Kadava."

Why couldn't Snape have done a commentary on each of the tales instead of Egodore? Blunderbore had been dead for longer than Snape so perhaps it would not be quite so bizarre for Snape to be commenting on them posthumously as it is for Fumblewhore to be commenting on them posthumously.

At the very least, Snape's commentary would have probably averted nights of mopping up the blood that shot out my nose. :P

But yeah...Rowling would probably butcher him. :/ #Is Grumpy.

I guess JKR has to save up Snape for special occasions only. He's apparently like really expensive wine. And Dumbleroar is more like cheap wine in a box.

One of my favorite for Dumbledore - Dumbdoor.

Something of the mess of Beedle the Bard could have been salvaged if only JKR had intended for the Dumbdoor to be a parody of her more pompous critics. It would have been quite easy for him to be put across in that style.

In a certain way there's more than just Dumbledore quotes in it. The book is, when it comes down to it, all about Dumbledore and his mighty wisdom. The actual fairy tales are incidental. Seriously: if you do a page count, Dumbledore's commentary takes up just over half the book.

Snape's commentary would be priceless, as long as JK didn't write it ... she would probably make him all angsty and self-loathing, and end up parroting Dumbledore's thoughts anyway.

And Rowling's "wisdom". Unfortunately. :(

Seriously, Chance the Gardener is far more awesome than Dumbledore can ever be. XP

I haven't read 'Beedle the Bard'. After reading this review/summary I am ... totally confused.

Your mission - to convince me that I need to read 'Beedle the Bard'.

So far - I'm not convinced.

:-)

I'm not convincing you to read THE TALES OF BEEDLE THE BARD. Honest. I just started this out of boredom. :)

I just started this out of boredom. :)

You've got to get your money's worth out of the book somehow. That's one reason why many of us enjoy mocking Rowling's work. :-)

Listen to the audio if you can't be bothered to read it. The audio doesn't take long:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/audio/2008/dec/08/digested-read-jk-rowling

/(well, other than the bit about Beatrix Bloxam and the "ARGH KILL IT WITH FIRE!" reaction that a lot of the kids had to her...interpretation of "The Wizard And The Hopping Pot")./

I think that Beatrix Bloxam was supposed to be a parody of Laura Mallory and the other crazy Christian fundamentalists who scream about how Harry Potter promotes witchcraft and corrupts children, etc. The kids' reaction to her sugar-coated version of the story is JKR's way of poking fun at parents who say that Harry Potter is too dark for their children to handle.

/Or would be, if the wizard had done the deeds he did out of the goodness of his heart (or if he wanted to change). *Cough* A Christmas Carol. *Cough* Mostly, he had a change of heart if only to shut the pot up./

Yeah, that bothered me a little too, when I first read it. The son didn't help the Muggles because he realized that it was the right thing to do; he mostly did it just to shut the pot up. I know that at the end, we're supposed to conclude that he had a change of heart, but he could have just as easily continued to help Muggles because he was afraid that if he didn't, the pot would start making a racket again.

And as Dan Hemmens pointed out in his review of "Beedle the Bard," while the moral of the fable is that wizards should help Muggles, none of the wizards that we see in the books seem to follow that moral. We don't really get any instances of wizards using their magic to help Muggles. We don't hear anything about wizards using their magic to cure diseases, help the poor, preserve the environment, or anything of the kind, which kind of sends mixed messages.

Ah, I see. Thanks for the clarification. :)

"
Yeah, that bothered me a little too, when I first read it. The son didn't help the Muggles because he realized that it was the right thing to do; he mostly did it just to shut the pot up. I know that at the end, we're supposed to conclude that he had a change of heart, but he could have just as easily continued to help Muggles because he was afraid that if he didn't, the pot would start making a racket again.

And as Dan Hemmens pointed out in his review of "Beedle the Bard," while the moral of the fable is that wizards should help Muggles, none of the wizards that we see in the books seem to follow that moral. We don't really get any instances of wizards using their magic to help Muggles. We don't hear anything about wizards using their magic to cure diseases, help the poor, preserve the environment, or anything of the kind, which kind of sends mixed messages."

*This!* :D

And as Dan Hemmens pointed out in his review of "Beedle the Bard," while the moral of the fable is that wizards should help Muggles, none of the wizards that we see in the books seem to follow that moral. We don't really get any instances of wizards using their magic to help Muggles. We don't hear anything about wizards using their magic to cure diseases, help the poor, preserve the environment, or anything of the kind, which kind of sends mixed messages.

In fact, Hagrid, Dumbledore's man through and through, explicitly says that witches and wizards keep themselves hidden specifically because if they didn't, Muggles would want magical help.

Maybe that's the moral he and a lot of other wizards got out of the story as kids... Heck, maybe that was the original moral, and Beedle reinterpreted it for his own reasons.

That always seemed like a silly reason to keep separated from muggles. I mean, don't you think the muggles would be able to help THEM with their technology that they actually had to invent rather than having everything handed to them on a silver platter? Or at the very least, the muggles might be able to school them in common sense. ;-)

I think it was good enough justification to Harry in the first book, to explain that there was indeed a magical world entirely separate from the one he knew, and this was why he'd never heard of it before.

This falls over completely in following books which try to tell us that being concerned about Muggles is a virtuous thing. It would have all worked much better if JK hadn't gone into all that pureblood/mudblood business, or at least kept it confined to some idea of races amongst wizards.

What?
That story is... ugh. JKR you make Aesop cry.
The moral (that I'm sure JKR wasn't intending) of the story is : "Do as your relatives tell you or they will nag you into insanity."
Not like we had Molly Weasley to teach as about power of nagging. *roll eyes"

Seriously, if JKR wanted to write a story with a good/kind/helpful/father wizard, nasty/grumpy/uncaring son, stupid/unresourceful/dependent Muggles and a pot that changed the son she could have made the pot a combination of pensieve / farseeing + empathy device?

Something that would have forced the son to experience the emotions of Muggles that needed help (shame of the girl with warts, worry of the man with the missing donkey and desperation and love of the mother.
That way he could have felt compassion and helped them out of sympathy and not to save himself the trouble of the Hopping Pot. :(

A sort of Christmas Carol version, maybe without the Christmas? Could work.

Seconded! :D

"A sort of Christmas Carol version, maybe without the Christmas? "

I know. It's been done before but it would have been better then this "O.k. I'll help the stupid Muggles just stop bothering me" story.

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Let's Read Tales of Beedle The Bard, part one: The Wizard And The Hopping Pot.

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Dungeons and Dragons

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Albus Dumblesnore's commentary

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Audio version

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