Harry Potter & the Cursed Child

[borg-princess.livejournal.com]

For anyone who's curious, the plot of the play has been discussed in spoilery comments at the following links:

Source 1

Source 2

Source 3 UPDATE: Snitchseeker took down their spoilers as JKR called out another website for doing the same and TPTB have been contacting people to request they don't post any details. *eyeroll*

But never fear, Andrew Sims of Hypable (whom JKR called 'Wormtaily' for betraying the secret, lmao) linked to a cohesive recap of the entire two-part play.

When I first read about this, I thought it was someone trolling, but there's multiple sources? Either there's a conspiracy afoot or it's legit, IDK what to believe!

What kind of crappy fanfic, lmao! A Time-Turner plot, seriously? To save CEDRIC DIGGORY, of all people, wtf?

How shitty that anti-Slytherin prejudice is still going strong to the point that Albus is ostracized for being sorted into Slytherin. :/

Cackling at Ron & Hermione never getting together as a result of the temporal shenanigans, hehe. But I'm pissed that her being single results in her becoming a bitter Hogwarts teacher as opposed to happily married Hermione being the Minister of Magic, the implications there are pretty gross.

I can't even process everything I just read. Wow. JKR should be fired from her own world, just what even.

Comments

[madderbrad.livejournal.com]

I haven't absorbed too much of the plot but it sounds horrible, 'bad fanfic' as so many fans seem to have opined. Major mistake to bring in time travel - that's a topic that automatically makes for a failed story unless the author knows what she's doing.

Joanne ('oh, maths!') Rowling is not that sort of author.

We'll have to look up our books and see exactly where Time Turners are mentioned. Wasn't there a hard-and-fast rule that they couldn't alter the timeline? Or if they did the universe would explode? This will have to be checked out.

Thanks for the links and post!

[borg-princess.livejournal.com]

You're welcome! I admit, I posted this thinking that you might get a kick out of R/Hr being retconned out of existence - I'm sure the universe will be set to rights by the end of Part 2 (and how ridiculous and blatant a money-grab is that), but still. ^_^

I can't be bothered looking up PoA to see what JKR said on Time-Turners, but let's be real, JKR wouldn't have even taken the time (lol) to fact-check herself. From what I recall, you weren't able to alter the timeline, it was something to do with a closed loop, ie. you could only change things if you ORIGINALLY changed it and therefore you were only making it happen as it was MEANT to happen. (so the kids could only save Buckbeak because they didn't see him getting executed because they had already gone back in time to free him something something timey-wimey handwave)

I actually thought that was pretty clever, it was a neat way of explaining why nobody ever used Time-Turners to change history because it wasn't possible, but obviously she had to ruin one of the good things she established.

In the comments at one of the posts, someone pointed out that if Albus and Scorpius prevent Cedric from competing in the maze, thus keeping him from being killed in front of Harry, that means Harry isn't able to see thestrals which were a big plot point in OotP... (I guess Voldy could've killed someone else, but this is the problem with time-travel, you pull out one thread and the whole thing unravels)

[madderbrad.livejournal.com]

I admit, I posted this thinking that you might get a kick out of R/Hr being retconned out of existence -

And so I did. :-) So thanks again. :-)

I wish I was seeing this play, if only so I could applaud and whistle as it is announced that R/Hr never formed. :-) BWA-HA-HA.

Regarding the Time Turners, from HBP:

"We couldn't have done," said Hermione. "We smashed the entire stock of Ministry Time-Turners when we were there last summer. It was in the Daily Prophet."

So Rowling actually applied some small amount of due diligence in tidying up that loophole in the original books. Of course, I've always said it was still a loophole, as dark wizards like Malfoy would have been sure to have had their own Time Turners stashed away. But at least Rowling *tried*.

And so we find, in this play - Part II, which I just read? - that there are indeed two (!) Time Turners that survived.

Playing with time travel. Something that almost always results in failed movies with failed scripts. I can't believe even Rowling tried this.

Harry isn't able to see thestrals which were a big plot point in OotP.

True, but in that book Harry should have showed some brains and used superior transport anyway - the floo at the castle, or the Knight bus. A pity that Hermione wasn't allowed to be clever for fear of ruining her author's simplistic plot. Something that happened all too often. Stupid plot needs dumb heroes and even dumber villains.

[oryx_leucoryx]

Hermione said terrible things happen when people meet themselves while time-turning, and her actions are such that show she doesn't want to overtly change the timeline, but I don't think this is stated explicitly as something that *can't* be done.

[madderbrad.livejournal.com]

Thanks. And so time travel remained as a bit potential loophole in Rowling's series, then, as the dark wizard families were bound to have some Time Turners stashed away.

I can't believe she resorted to time travel for this play. It's like DH all over again, she knows it will be an instant success no matter what she writes.

[borg-princess.livejournal.com]

I don't recall PoA much, but people more dedicated than I have examined how the Time-Turners were said to work there and calculated that one would have to turn the mechanism 190,000 times...lol, who has time for that!

Side-note: a critic that JKR called out and whose site she targeted for posting spoilers (grow up, woman, jfc, how did she not expect spoilers to be everywhere) said the following:

Cursed Child flirts with Breaking Dawn level absurdity and goes all in on fan service but a fun/solid cast and special effects help save it

Twitter source. (https://twitter.com/sims/status/741016410118316032)

[madderbrad.livejournal.com]

Cursed Child flirts with Breaking Dawn level absurdity and goes all in on fan service but a fun/solid cast and special effects help save it

Nuts. "Help save it" ... so that means it's 'saved'. A script like that doesn't deserve saving.

I just tried to read the full summary that you referenced in another of your comments ... and I couldn't do it. My eyes glazed over after the third or fourth time travel hop. What a ludicrous plot.

SUCH a pity that it is 'saved'. :-(