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deathtocapslock2016-08-12 04:28 pm
fdsfd) wrote in deathtocapslock2016-08-12 04:28 pm
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Cursed Child Act One Scenes 2-5
The second instalment of this literary masterpiece. It took a while to write because every time I looked at the page
But before we do that, check out this scientific graph of why this play sucks
http://probablydavid.tumblr.com/post/148572276325/harry-potter-and-the-cursed-child-number-of
love that #data.
Act One Scene Two (Platform Nine and Three Quarters)
- the platform is busy, filled with witches and wizards trying to work out how to say goodbye to their "progeny" (quote unquote). Progeny sounds like something a scientist would say to describe a fertilised embryo, so maybe start by not calling them that.
- The family Potter encounters Ron, Hermione and Rose. They seem to have left half their progeny behind. Run, Hugo, run!!! Ron does a bad nose stealing trick on Lily, proving that Movie!Ron the idiot has been sent up from casting instead of an actual character. He'll be here a while :/
- Rose and Hermione are both certain that Ron only managed to pass his driving test by confunding the examiner. This is fine because muggles are a lesser species, so you don't have to not mess with their heads or follow their laws, while their roads, train stations, etc are at the disposal of your (superior) segregated society.
- Albus tells Harry he's worried he might be put in Slytherin. Harry, in only the first of many instances of good parenting we will encounter, meets this test of fatherhood by demonstrating to Albus that he never completely grasped the subject-object distinction so he thinks its fine to reassure his walking tombstone child that one of the two people (who are dead) Albus serves as a mobile epitaph for was in Slytherin and was a brave person and saved his bacon and so Harry has no problem with Slytherin so neither should Albus so stop worrying about it. nailed it.
Harry tells Albus that Hogwarts "will be the making of him," as it was for himself, omitting that "the making of him" was orchestrated by the other half of Albus' walking tombstone, was for the purpose of making him a disposable suicide bomber and nothing else, (a "pig to slaughter") and ultimately made him into a prick.
Ok so this play is largely about two boys (Albus and Scorpius) and their bad fathers and they go on a quest to save another boy who doesn't matter, which serves as a proxy a) for the fathers to relive their trauma through their sons and b) for the sons to accept their identity as sons. A lot of the spork is going to be taken up with pointing out how poorly conceived and executed this theme is, so if you think I'm harping on Harry the bad father, and Albus the ungrateful son, thats because everything else is just a backdrop to this. The point here is just that Harry is relating to Albus as an extension of himself rather than a unique individual. He'll do that a lot.
- Harry tells James to stop teasing Albus and that they both better get on the train. Lily tells us she's going to chase the train as it leaves (re-enacting Ginny in PS)
- Hermione tells Rose to say hello to Neville for her. Hermione comments that Rose is worried whether she'll break the Quidditch scoring record in her first or second year, and how early she'll be able to take her OWLS, and what colour dress she should wear when she gets a medal for inventing a cure for lycanthropy, and whether seventh year students will take orders from their shrimp sized head girl, etc, etc, etc. I get it she's perfect please stop. Ron comments that he has no idea where Rose's ambition came from. Neither do I but being ambitious and obnoxious is going to be 3/4 of her character, for the time when she exists at all, so we gotta deal with it.
- Ginny asks Harry how he'd feel if Albus was sorted into Slytherin. The most important thing about Albus' sorting is how Harry feels about it (just so you know). Ron comments that they always suspected that Ginny would be sorted into Slytherin. "Fred and George ran a book" no they didn't. Why must JK peddle lies in my house? For Fred and George to have taken bets on whether Ginny would or would not be a faithful maidservant of the Gryffindor OBWHF Ginny would had to have had a character before emerging as a sparkling flawless butterfly in OOTP, so I'm calling bullshit on that one. Also the extremely astute sporker of HBP noted how JK "re-fashioned" Ginny as a Cool Girl by associating her with Fred and George, a trend that continues here. Fred's dead, JK. I didn't even like the guy, but can he not RIP in peace??
- Hermione wants to leave, because everyone's looking at them. Ginny says that happens a lot with those three. She sounds jealous. Well, it might have happened with you, Ginny, but you never had an actual character or character arc, so honestly I think you should be grateful you were allowed to gestate the next protagonist and the other two walking tombstones, and that we let you talk occasionally. Thin ice, Ginny. Thin ice.
(they leave)
Act One Scene Three (The Hogwarts Express)
- Albus and Rose are on the train. So is the Trolley Witch (we'll meet her again later). While Albus wants a chocolate frog, Rose is already plotting her future popularity. Their future popularity. "I'm a Granger-Weasley and you're a Potter - everyone will want to be friends with us, we've got the pick of anyone we want." What a snotty little brat. What is she, the child of some aristocrat? I bet Draco thought the exact same thing when he was riding the train for the first time. Rose is going to find a whole bunch of silent lackeys (like Crabbe and Goyle) to carry her around on a palanquin and peel grapes for her. Who put these ideas into her head? Hermione? Was it you?
Honestly, there was a girl in my year like this at school, her mother was a famous barrister or something and she thought it entitled her to be the Queen of the friendgroup and get people to shun each other based on some imagined slight and it took a concerted ignoring effort from everyone to disabuse her. But this isn't Rose's story, so we don't get to watch her chill out (I'll be surprised if we find out the names of her friends tbh) so she needs to tip herself in the garbage can ASAP so Albus can get on with being the protagonist.
- The co-protagonist is hiding in one of the compartments. He's the best character in this garbage pile, but seeing as everyone else is so terrible that's not really saying very much. He doesn't meet Rose's lackey standards though. He offers them some sweets, and Rose gives us the backstory that everyone already knows (his dad was a death eater, their parents didn't get on, his mum for all intents and purposes doesn't exist [sorry Astoria]), and then makes it so much worse.
- The rumour about Astoria and Scorpius is just so stupid I'm not going to dignify it by typing it out. Its not even a good piece of misdirection for Delphini or a good forewarning of time travel. Its just dumb. Astoria joins Ginny as a walking womb :/
- Rose tells Scorpius it's probably rubbish "I mean.... look, you've got a nose." If only JK had made her antagonist actually threatening, then we wouldn't have had to sit through that ghost of a joke.
- Scorpius: "Father-son issues, I have those." Yes and this play is going to consist of little else, so its best you start mentioning them early and often.
- Rose turns up her nose and leaves, leaving the two co-protagonists together to deal with their important boy issues together. No girls allowed.
Act One Scene Four
- Ok so in lieu of a series of events that develop characterisation and provide some conflict (a "narrative" and "drama" respectively) Scene Four is just a slew of random scenes thrown together. The characters are largely static over the course of the play (if they develop its not obvious to me) but here we see them get sorted and do broom flying lessons. The only notable bits here is that Rose says "thank Dumbledore" when she gets sorted into Gryffindor (ugh) and Albus and Scorpius go into Slytherin, although all traits that make Slytherin Slytherin have been stripped from the house so instead of it being a conflict about blood, or society, or history or anything its just about the colour of their ties. Anyway Rose has been shunted off to Gryffindor, and Albus is in Slytherin with Scorpius, so no girls allowed in Slytherin I guess.
After Albus gets sorted Rose comments that "this is not how its supposed to be" which bugs me for reasons I can't quite elucidate - like Rose is aware of the fact that there's a script for the Potter Granger kids to be following, and the kids of Ron, Harry and Hermione are just pawns to re-enact their parents' glory and Albus hasn't quite got the memo, but then Albus and Scorpius will literally re-enact their parents glory anyway, and Rose isn't a part of that, so its not like any of this matters. Like I get that they're characters reading from a script, but Rose pointing out that there is a script, and then going on to be ignored as Albus and Scorpius re-enact it anyway, it just feels really hollow. Almost fake? I don't know. Like I really like stories where characters are aware of their authors intentions and fight against it (as opposed to just hearing a prophecy, which is being used as an easy way to plot by the author, and doing everything it says) but here even if Rose is aware there's a plan, she's not a part of it anyway so who cares.
- Anyway once Albus is done failing at broom holding he meets his father back at the station after Christmas. Albus doesn't want Harry to stand too close to him, while Harry does autographs and tells Albus not to worry, that people are staring at Harry and not him. Anyway, Albus begins the thing where he's a disappointing ungrateful son, and Harry does the thing where he only conceives of his son through the prism of his own egoism, and it's just as awful as I'm describing it here. James tells the Slithering Slytherin to stop dithering and get on the train, which is a nice bit of assonance. Maybe elucidation skips a generation, because he didn't get it from Harry or Ginny. Scorpius tells Harry that he doesn't need Harry's version of friends (aka a new iteration of Ron and Hermione), he's already got a friend, so that's that.
- Draco emerges from the crowd. He wants help from the ministry about the rumour thats too stupid to be typed. Apparently Astoria isn't well and the rumour isn't helping. Actually, Astoria isn't well because she's got invisible-itis, as well as having her name permanently mis-spelled, so the rumour thing is probably pretty low on her list.
- Albus and Rose only need to keep up the pretence of being friends until the train leaves. I'm not really sure what the beef is, here, only that Gryffindor and Slytherin are still enemies, because problems never get solved, or because Rose is determined to perpetuate house rivalry, or because Albus isn't lackey material, or what. Its a good thing that Rose is only a girl, so I don't have to waste the energy explaining why her problems don't matter. Oh she's now the best chaser ever in the entire world so don't pretend girls don't matter.
- Albus and Scorpius keep sucking at potions. I wonder who the potions master is?? Anyway both boys get bullied pretty heavily here, but by total non-entities, about totally ridiculous things, so its very hard to take it seriously.
- Anyway we flash-forward to third year Hogsmeade forms. Albus doesn't want to go because he hates the student body for bullying him. Harry tells him he's been owling the headmisstress - Albus is surly, uncooperative [not "being bullied" I note - is McGonagall blind or just going ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ in her office?] Albus says a whole bunch of stuff about not being able to change himself into a perfect son via magic and then runs off.
- he runs off to find Scorpius, whose extremely upset because Astoria died to give him bad feelings about it. Maybe the invisible-itis was too much for her.
- This year Lily is sorted into Gryffindor, and the scene ends with Albus saying that he didn't choose to be Harry's son. Well, unfortunately, the hack of a playwright chose to write a play about this issue, instead of other, actually interesting things, so we're both stuck, aren't we?
Act One Scene Five
(The Ministry of Magic)
- Ok so here we are with actual adult characters. Unfortunately the actual adult characters are going to behave like how a precocious child thinks adults should behave (or like adults who never properly grew up, which is more likely). It reminds me of https://www.fanfiction.net/s/3682339/1/The-Golden-Age, where Harry and Hermione basically just assimilate themselves/ are assimilated into the power structure of the Ministry and just start conforming as hard as possible. Like what if this play was a fanfic that was good??? It would look more like that honestly.
- Anyway Harry brings Hermione the plot device. Theodore Nott's being arrested, on charges of what I don't know, maybe Hermione made "being evil" a crime. He's bleeding from a cut on his cheek because he's the man who takes charge, but all the duels he'll be in on stage he'll lose really badly so he's competent, but only when there's no one around to check.
- This plot device is even better than the one in PoA. "Apparently wizardry has moved on since we were kids" well mentally you're both probably still eleven, so, young in mind, young in body I guess.
- Hermione chides him on his paperwork. Apparently his papers disclose that evil is afoot. Hermione can tell its evil, because she's using her nineteenth century imperialism!glasses, through them she can see that its the British ministry's responsibility that mountain trolls are riding graphorns through Hungary (question 1. could Harry or Hermione find Hungary on a map? 2. could they have a conversation with a Hungarian where they treat the Hungarian as an equal or a psuedo-English almost person like Krum? 3. Are there that many mountains in Hungary for the trolls to have a rodeo in? I thought it was mostly a plain? Has anyone been there to check?), mountain trolls with winged tattoos are walking through the Greek Seas (its August and they're on vacation and they got tattoos because they're rad af leave them alone) and the werewolves have gone underground (so pumped Remus died so werewolves could continue to exist on the margins of society). Anyway, the trolls, graphorns, giants, werewolves, etc are evil. Hermione says they're "allies of darkness, people and beasts that fought alongside Voldemort" and because she's an incredibly clever adult she hasn't realised that they had genuine grievances about a society that oppressed them that only he promised to address and after he lost I guess the ministry (and Hermione and Harry) just pretended that actually they were just evil and savage this whole time.
- Now that she's the person giving the orders, Hermione's rebelling against her parents (the brain-meddled, Australian ones) by eating toffee. That's probably something for a psychoanalyst, honestly.
- Hermione and Harry commiserate about being absentee parents. Imagine how much damage these two could do if they were more involved. Also her secretary is called Ethel (what a cute name it sounds like something out of the worst witch) and because she never appears and has to deal with Hermione as a boss I've decided that she is the best character and Delphi's girlfriend and her and Delphi run off to France together with Teddy as a ménage à trois.
- Harry leaves via the guest entrance of the Ministry (the phone box), the staging directions telling us that he "has the weight of the world on his shoulders." But seeing as he already fixed all the problems in society, along with Hermione, that weight probably isn't all that heavy. Maybe its magic.
Ok I'll leave it there. Next time we'll get more into the "plot" (such as it is) and also the Trolly Witch will re-appear, and my personal favourite character (Delphini) will emerge from the sludge of this mistake, rich and compelling female characters both, so look forward to it :)
But before we do that, check out this scientific graph of why this play sucks
http://probablydavid.tumblr.com/post/148572276325/harry-potter-and-the-cursed-child-number-of
love that #data.
Act One Scene Two (Platform Nine and Three Quarters)
- the platform is busy, filled with witches and wizards trying to work out how to say goodbye to their "progeny" (quote unquote). Progeny sounds like something a scientist would say to describe a fertilised embryo, so maybe start by not calling them that.
- The family Potter encounters Ron, Hermione and Rose. They seem to have left half their progeny behind. Run, Hugo, run!!! Ron does a bad nose stealing trick on Lily, proving that Movie!Ron the idiot has been sent up from casting instead of an actual character. He'll be here a while :/
- Rose and Hermione are both certain that Ron only managed to pass his driving test by confunding the examiner. This is fine because muggles are a lesser species, so you don't have to not mess with their heads or follow their laws, while their roads, train stations, etc are at the disposal of your (superior) segregated society.
- Albus tells Harry he's worried he might be put in Slytherin. Harry, in only the first of many instances of good parenting we will encounter, meets this test of fatherhood by demonstrating to Albus that he never completely grasped the subject-object distinction so he thinks its fine to reassure his walking tombstone child that one of the two people (who are dead) Albus serves as a mobile epitaph for was in Slytherin and was a brave person and saved his bacon and so Harry has no problem with Slytherin so neither should Albus so stop worrying about it. nailed it.
Harry tells Albus that Hogwarts "will be the making of him," as it was for himself, omitting that "the making of him" was orchestrated by the other half of Albus' walking tombstone, was for the purpose of making him a disposable suicide bomber and nothing else, (a "pig to slaughter") and ultimately made him into a prick.
Ok so this play is largely about two boys (Albus and Scorpius) and their bad fathers and they go on a quest to save another boy who doesn't matter, which serves as a proxy a) for the fathers to relive their trauma through their sons and b) for the sons to accept their identity as sons. A lot of the spork is going to be taken up with pointing out how poorly conceived and executed this theme is, so if you think I'm harping on Harry the bad father, and Albus the ungrateful son, thats because everything else is just a backdrop to this. The point here is just that Harry is relating to Albus as an extension of himself rather than a unique individual. He'll do that a lot.
- Harry tells James to stop teasing Albus and that they both better get on the train. Lily tells us she's going to chase the train as it leaves (re-enacting Ginny in PS)
- Hermione tells Rose to say hello to Neville for her. Hermione comments that Rose is worried whether she'll break the Quidditch scoring record in her first or second year, and how early she'll be able to take her OWLS, and what colour dress she should wear when she gets a medal for inventing a cure for lycanthropy, and whether seventh year students will take orders from their shrimp sized head girl, etc, etc, etc. I get it she's perfect please stop. Ron comments that he has no idea where Rose's ambition came from. Neither do I but being ambitious and obnoxious is going to be 3/4 of her character, for the time when she exists at all, so we gotta deal with it.
- Ginny asks Harry how he'd feel if Albus was sorted into Slytherin. The most important thing about Albus' sorting is how Harry feels about it (just so you know). Ron comments that they always suspected that Ginny would be sorted into Slytherin. "Fred and George ran a book" no they didn't. Why must JK peddle lies in my house? For Fred and George to have taken bets on whether Ginny would or would not be a faithful maidservant of the Gryffindor OBWHF Ginny would had to have had a character before emerging as a sparkling flawless butterfly in OOTP, so I'm calling bullshit on that one. Also the extremely astute sporker of HBP noted how JK "re-fashioned" Ginny as a Cool Girl by associating her with Fred and George, a trend that continues here. Fred's dead, JK. I didn't even like the guy, but can he not RIP in peace??
- Hermione wants to leave, because everyone's looking at them. Ginny says that happens a lot with those three. She sounds jealous. Well, it might have happened with you, Ginny, but you never had an actual character or character arc, so honestly I think you should be grateful you were allowed to gestate the next protagonist and the other two walking tombstones, and that we let you talk occasionally. Thin ice, Ginny. Thin ice.
(they leave)
Act One Scene Three (The Hogwarts Express)
- Albus and Rose are on the train. So is the Trolley Witch (we'll meet her again later). While Albus wants a chocolate frog, Rose is already plotting her future popularity. Their future popularity. "I'm a Granger-Weasley and you're a Potter - everyone will want to be friends with us, we've got the pick of anyone we want." What a snotty little brat. What is she, the child of some aristocrat? I bet Draco thought the exact same thing when he was riding the train for the first time. Rose is going to find a whole bunch of silent lackeys (like Crabbe and Goyle) to carry her around on a palanquin and peel grapes for her. Who put these ideas into her head? Hermione? Was it you?
Honestly, there was a girl in my year like this at school, her mother was a famous barrister or something and she thought it entitled her to be the Queen of the friendgroup and get people to shun each other based on some imagined slight and it took a concerted ignoring effort from everyone to disabuse her. But this isn't Rose's story, so we don't get to watch her chill out (I'll be surprised if we find out the names of her friends tbh) so she needs to tip herself in the garbage can ASAP so Albus can get on with being the protagonist.
- The co-protagonist is hiding in one of the compartments. He's the best character in this garbage pile, but seeing as everyone else is so terrible that's not really saying very much. He doesn't meet Rose's lackey standards though. He offers them some sweets, and Rose gives us the backstory that everyone already knows (his dad was a death eater, their parents didn't get on, his mum for all intents and purposes doesn't exist [sorry Astoria]), and then makes it so much worse.
- The rumour about Astoria and Scorpius is just so stupid I'm not going to dignify it by typing it out. Its not even a good piece of misdirection for Delphini or a good forewarning of time travel. Its just dumb. Astoria joins Ginny as a walking womb :/
- Rose tells Scorpius it's probably rubbish "I mean.... look, you've got a nose." If only JK had made her antagonist actually threatening, then we wouldn't have had to sit through that ghost of a joke.
- Scorpius: "Father-son issues, I have those." Yes and this play is going to consist of little else, so its best you start mentioning them early and often.
- Rose turns up her nose and leaves, leaving the two co-protagonists together to deal with their important boy issues together. No girls allowed.
Act One Scene Four
- Ok so in lieu of a series of events that develop characterisation and provide some conflict (a "narrative" and "drama" respectively) Scene Four is just a slew of random scenes thrown together. The characters are largely static over the course of the play (if they develop its not obvious to me) but here we see them get sorted and do broom flying lessons. The only notable bits here is that Rose says "thank Dumbledore" when she gets sorted into Gryffindor (ugh) and Albus and Scorpius go into Slytherin, although all traits that make Slytherin Slytherin have been stripped from the house so instead of it being a conflict about blood, or society, or history or anything its just about the colour of their ties. Anyway Rose has been shunted off to Gryffindor, and Albus is in Slytherin with Scorpius, so no girls allowed in Slytherin I guess.
After Albus gets sorted Rose comments that "this is not how its supposed to be" which bugs me for reasons I can't quite elucidate - like Rose is aware of the fact that there's a script for the Potter Granger kids to be following, and the kids of Ron, Harry and Hermione are just pawns to re-enact their parents' glory and Albus hasn't quite got the memo, but then Albus and Scorpius will literally re-enact their parents glory anyway, and Rose isn't a part of that, so its not like any of this matters. Like I get that they're characters reading from a script, but Rose pointing out that there is a script, and then going on to be ignored as Albus and Scorpius re-enact it anyway, it just feels really hollow. Almost fake? I don't know. Like I really like stories where characters are aware of their authors intentions and fight against it (as opposed to just hearing a prophecy, which is being used as an easy way to plot by the author, and doing everything it says) but here even if Rose is aware there's a plan, she's not a part of it anyway so who cares.
- Anyway once Albus is done failing at broom holding he meets his father back at the station after Christmas. Albus doesn't want Harry to stand too close to him, while Harry does autographs and tells Albus not to worry, that people are staring at Harry and not him. Anyway, Albus begins the thing where he's a disappointing ungrateful son, and Harry does the thing where he only conceives of his son through the prism of his own egoism, and it's just as awful as I'm describing it here. James tells the Slithering Slytherin to stop dithering and get on the train, which is a nice bit of assonance. Maybe elucidation skips a generation, because he didn't get it from Harry or Ginny. Scorpius tells Harry that he doesn't need Harry's version of friends (aka a new iteration of Ron and Hermione), he's already got a friend, so that's that.
- Draco emerges from the crowd. He wants help from the ministry about the rumour thats too stupid to be typed. Apparently Astoria isn't well and the rumour isn't helping. Actually, Astoria isn't well because she's got invisible-itis, as well as having her name permanently mis-spelled, so the rumour thing is probably pretty low on her list.
- Albus and Rose only need to keep up the pretence of being friends until the train leaves. I'm not really sure what the beef is, here, only that Gryffindor and Slytherin are still enemies, because problems never get solved, or because Rose is determined to perpetuate house rivalry, or because Albus isn't lackey material, or what. Its a good thing that Rose is only a girl, so I don't have to waste the energy explaining why her problems don't matter. Oh she's now the best chaser ever in the entire world so don't pretend girls don't matter.
- Albus and Scorpius keep sucking at potions. I wonder who the potions master is?? Anyway both boys get bullied pretty heavily here, but by total non-entities, about totally ridiculous things, so its very hard to take it seriously.
- Anyway we flash-forward to third year Hogsmeade forms. Albus doesn't want to go because he hates the student body for bullying him. Harry tells him he's been owling the headmisstress - Albus is surly, uncooperative [not "being bullied" I note - is McGonagall blind or just going ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ in her office?] Albus says a whole bunch of stuff about not being able to change himself into a perfect son via magic and then runs off.
- he runs off to find Scorpius, whose extremely upset because Astoria died to give him bad feelings about it. Maybe the invisible-itis was too much for her.
- This year Lily is sorted into Gryffindor, and the scene ends with Albus saying that he didn't choose to be Harry's son. Well, unfortunately, the hack of a playwright chose to write a play about this issue, instead of other, actually interesting things, so we're both stuck, aren't we?
Act One Scene Five
(The Ministry of Magic)
- Ok so here we are with actual adult characters. Unfortunately the actual adult characters are going to behave like how a precocious child thinks adults should behave (or like adults who never properly grew up, which is more likely). It reminds me of https://www.fanfiction.net/s/3682339/1/The-Golden-Age, where Harry and Hermione basically just assimilate themselves/ are assimilated into the power structure of the Ministry and just start conforming as hard as possible. Like what if this play was a fanfic that was good??? It would look more like that honestly.
- Anyway Harry brings Hermione the plot device. Theodore Nott's being arrested, on charges of what I don't know, maybe Hermione made "being evil" a crime. He's bleeding from a cut on his cheek because he's the man who takes charge, but all the duels he'll be in on stage he'll lose really badly so he's competent, but only when there's no one around to check.
- This plot device is even better than the one in PoA. "Apparently wizardry has moved on since we were kids" well mentally you're both probably still eleven, so, young in mind, young in body I guess.
- Hermione chides him on his paperwork. Apparently his papers disclose that evil is afoot. Hermione can tell its evil, because she's using her nineteenth century imperialism!glasses, through them she can see that its the British ministry's responsibility that mountain trolls are riding graphorns through Hungary (question 1. could Harry or Hermione find Hungary on a map? 2. could they have a conversation with a Hungarian where they treat the Hungarian as an equal or a psuedo-English almost person like Krum? 3. Are there that many mountains in Hungary for the trolls to have a rodeo in? I thought it was mostly a plain? Has anyone been there to check?), mountain trolls with winged tattoos are walking through the Greek Seas (its August and they're on vacation and they got tattoos because they're rad af leave them alone) and the werewolves have gone underground (so pumped Remus died so werewolves could continue to exist on the margins of society). Anyway, the trolls, graphorns, giants, werewolves, etc are evil. Hermione says they're "allies of darkness, people and beasts that fought alongside Voldemort" and because she's an incredibly clever adult she hasn't realised that they had genuine grievances about a society that oppressed them that only he promised to address and after he lost I guess the ministry (and Hermione and Harry) just pretended that actually they were just evil and savage this whole time.
- Now that she's the person giving the orders, Hermione's rebelling against her parents (the brain-meddled, Australian ones) by eating toffee. That's probably something for a psychoanalyst, honestly.
- Hermione and Harry commiserate about being absentee parents. Imagine how much damage these two could do if they were more involved. Also her secretary is called Ethel (what a cute name it sounds like something out of the worst witch) and because she never appears and has to deal with Hermione as a boss I've decided that she is the best character and Delphi's girlfriend and her and Delphi run off to France together with Teddy as a ménage à trois.
- Harry leaves via the guest entrance of the Ministry (the phone box), the staging directions telling us that he "has the weight of the world on his shoulders." But seeing as he already fixed all the problems in society, along with Hermione, that weight probably isn't all that heavy. Maybe its magic.
Ok I'll leave it there. Next time we'll get more into the "plot" (such as it is) and also the Trolly Witch will re-appear, and my personal favourite character (Delphini) will emerge from the sludge of this mistake, rich and compelling female characters both, so look forward to it :)
no subject
Who would have thought that Rose Granger-Weasley would turn out to be a female Draco Malfoy. Hermione and Ron talk about her in the same way other parents talk about their obnoxious and annoyingly "gifted child". Ugh. I was just talking about this here in the previous post. Maybe I shouldn't be surprised, but I honestly didn't expect Rose be such an arrogant asshole.
no subject
WHAT HAPPENED? DID A GIANT PENGUIN JUMP ON TOP OF YOU? I think the rest of that sentence is missing. Or are you deliberately keeping us in suspense?
It's a contest! Guess the ending! Every time Halycon Jazz tried to read CC ...
Lily tells us she's going to chase the train as it leaves (re-enacting Ginny in PS)
Using simplistic Rowling romance foreshadowing this means she must marry the first boy who waves at her, right?
Is Rose head girl? But not yet in her seventh year? Because she's so awesome?
Ginny says that happens a lot with those three. She sounds jealous.
Well, that's Ginny. She spent half of DH being jealous.
I'm a Granger-Weasley ...
Oh dear. I'm a Hermione fan, but why did they apparently make her into such a pronounced feminist? Hyphenating her own name is one thing, but I gather passing the double-bunger down to the 'progeny' is much less popular.
On the other hand, I wouldn't want to be known as a 100% Weasley either!
... the rumour thats too stupid to be typed.
I haven't heard this rumour, you've really got me wondering what it is. Can you whisper it to me?
all the duels he'll be in on stage he'll lose really badly -
Yeah? Darn. Rowling was really REALLY determined not to have a 'powerful' so-called 'hero', wasn't she?
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LOL, the sentence finished in the lj-cut text! 'every time I looked at the page...it got worse'.
The one thing I liked about the bloody awful epilogue was that Hermione kept her last name, no ghastly Hermione Weasley and certainly not Hermione Granger-Weasley. Too bad the kids got lumped with it!
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The one thing I liked about the bloody awful epilogue was that Hermione kept her last name -
I'm fairly sure her surname wasn't mentioned; it was one of the rays of hope we Hermione or H/Hr fans could glean out of the epilogue. Technically it wasn't definite that she was married to Ron; she could have been divorced '19 years later'. She could have been a Weasley, a Granger or a G-W.
Is Hermione addresses as G-W in CC? In addition to Rose?
On the other hand Harry's family are referenced as 'the five Potters' so it was sadly canon that Ginny was married to Harry. Oh, and had taken his last name, I guess (unless CC says otherwise).
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...I can't actually see :P
Rose isn't actually headgirl, she's just a fathead who thinks that because of who her family is she's entitled to instant popularity, deference, etc. I don't know why her character's presented as being a supercilious brat like this; thats not how I would have imagined Hermione & Ron's kid at all. Like Hermione never really flaunted her "popularity" (I got the impression that she was never really very liked) and Ron, even if it was only from his feelings of inadequacy, often seemed to have a sense of humility, so why is Rose behaving like a mini empress???
As for the rumour thats too stupid to be typed, just for you, I'll find the exact phrasing:
Scorpius: The rumour is that my parents couldn't have children. That my father and my grandfather were so desperate for a powerful heir, to prevent the end of the Malfoy line, that they used a Time Turner to send my mother back...
Rose: The rumour is that he's Voldemort's son, Albus.
How is that not dumb? Voldemort didn't go around providing progeny for his minions. He wasn't running a breeding service/ stud farm what is this honestly. Its so dumb it hurts to type. Anyway its supposed to foreshadow Delphi's parentage (dumb) and the time-travelling debacle (also dumb) so we get the dumb hat-trick serving as one of the central conflicts of the play.
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Voldemort saw himself as numero uno, the big boss, the Lord cheese ... not as a servile prize stud for the breeding purposes of his minions! Jeeze.
Plus, anyone coming back from the future would be interrogated to an inch of their life, once they tell Riddle that he's dead. Maybe they'd lie ... but isn't it canon that Riddle is a master Ligilimens?
Stupid rumour is stupid!
But thanks for telling me what it is.
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Draco and Lucius get cucked 2k16 loooolll.
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This entire prophecy rumour gets worse the more you look into it. I'd expect maybe 1st and 2nd years to believe it but the fact that anyone else didn't laugh in the face of anyone spouting that rubbish is unbelievable.
Astoria was the younger sister of Daphne Greengrass (who was a Slytherin in Draco's year).
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I haven't read the play - finding it hard to summon the energy, since I know I won't like it - but, you know, I don't think the deus ex machina stick nor any of the Hallowed garbage is mentioned even once? Certainly I haven't seen them mentioned.
We've seen all the parodies of the Elder Wand nonsense ... I'm going to assume that James, while a baby, snatched the d.e.m. stick out of his dad's hand, and so became THE MASTER OF THE WORLD'S MIGHTIEST WAND ... and then lost the mastery to Albus two years later ... then one day the brothers were pranked by Lily Luna, who became MASTER OF THE et cetera ... and so forth.
Leaving Harry with only his native magical talent, wit and skills ... oh dear.
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As for the wand... well, there's no way to tell what's happened between the end of the book and whenever this happens, but the first duel he loses in the play is to Draco. I quite like the idea of Draco becoming the master of it again, honestly. (Though it's entirely more plausible it went to some random schmuck in Auror training, or something like that.)
But the play never acknowledges the wand's existence, and I don't recall it using the phrase "Deathly Hallows" at any point.
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More vindication to those who decried the desperate injection of the super-duper Hallows in DH as just another Rowling 'lazy writer' one-book wonder designed to dig her out of her plot holes.
I quite like the idea of Draco becoming the master of it again, honestly.
There's one or two fanfics I've read, I think, which has that happening.
Though it's entirely more plausible it went to some random schmuck in Auror training, or something like that.
Exactly. Goodness, this takes me back to the days right after the publication of DH, when Rowling proclaimed that Harry had become an Auror. What happened to "I've had enough trouble for a lifetime"? What happens the first time he and his squad go into Knockturn Alley and some petty thief out-duels him? Or brushes past him in the alley and causes Harry to drop his wand? Or knocks him out in a pub brawl? Or ..."
Really, the Deus Ex Machina stick was the most horrible of all the horrible get-Rowling-out-of-trouble gimmicks that she wrote.
Thanks for letting me know about the Hallows' (lack of) presence in the play!
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You're quite probably right. She just *doesn't care* about the details, keeping things straight, and so forth.
And why should she? She got where she is by pumping out the first few books rapidly and then the others as relative stand-alone efforts. And proudly said that she never re-reads her own work.
*cries*
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And as JK can twist her world for that to be true, I've just always looked at it as that.
Since JK had to bring back Voldemort (essentially that's what she was doing there) and make a rumour about Voldemort for her protagonists to have any problems at school shows me that she certainly seems to believe that.
But Rose's character goes completely against canon. WTF? The kids had no idea their parents were famous. Didn't Albus or Rose ask why everyone was looking at them in the epilogue and Ron brushed it off as they were looking at him specifically?
As unrealistic as it was, making Rose a brat didn't have to the answer. But going back to that when writing this plot she was criticising all the fans who criticised her: this could be a "see, I was right moment" as since they knew they were famous, Rose turned out to be a brat, isn't it so much better when they didn't know?
Or it could be not that at all, but that one of JK's ships is Rose/Scorpius (hinted at in the epilogue with Ron's comment for Rose to stay away from him, and then made cannon in the play with Scorpius having a crush on her), and that for some reason JK thinks for Scorpius to like her she has to be a brat, just like for Harry to fall for Ginny, she had to make fun of people and pick on people to look cool.
I also don't mind the father/son issues much either. It's a pretty common thing for middle grade fiction and for characters their ages. I've read more mother/daughter, because I'm a girl, but it's fine plot when done right.
Ignoring bullying and the parent NOT backing up the child over bullying, does bother me, though. My mother and I had/have many problems, but if I'd ever come home to tell her some kid at school hit me or hexed me in this case. She would have been at that school in a heartbeat. This is actually why I didn't tell her about the little things. It's embarrassing having your parent rip apart the administrators over something they knew nothing about.
Obviously, this all depends on the child, but when you're bullied there is the back and forth you have in your mind on whether it's bad enough to go to adults with the problem yet. If you can handle it on your own, you feel silly asking for help. If you can't, you get a little resentful to the teach who is right fucking there doing nothing about it. Knowing that if you go over her head to her boss, which you could, it will piss her off and might make everything so much worse.
On that note, Albus has already put this in the category "bad enough to tell my father" so even though JK kind of sucks at writing bullying (unless she'd doing it on accident and we're supposed to like the bullies, for some reason), Harry's reaction of dismissing it and not asking more questions about it like: what happened? Just bothers me a lot.
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Obviously, this all depends on the child, but when you're bullied there is the back and forth you have in your mind on whether it's bad enough to go to adults with the problem yet. If you can handle it on your own, you feel silly asking for help. If you can't, you get a little resentful to the teach who is right fucking there doing nothing about it. Knowing that if you go over her head to her boss, which you could, it will piss her off and might make everything so much worse. "
Hogwarts isn't that sort of place tho'. Witches and wizards are tacitly encouraged to sort out their own grudges, with ambushes and hexes and duels.
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House Points aren't the punishment for breaking rules. They tend to be used for little things that aren't a big enough deal to send someone to detention for. Just like our world detentions are the punishment for breaking school rules, and we see them throughout the series.
There is a high disregard for safety at Hogwarts that people have talked about being part of the Wizarding culture maybe because it's so easy to fix the damage - which I can see - but it still doesn't go against that when being picked on, kids go through the back and forth of whether or not to get help for it.
If that is how Hogwarts works and hexing in the hallways is encouraged as well as fighting your own battles, Albus would be used to it as he would have been raised in the same manner, just like everyone else.
Which means his internal battle of "is this bad enough I need help" would take more than mine, but it doesn't mean that it disappears completely. They are still children. If all the adults really thought they never needed them again, they wouldn't be there in the first place.
They wouldn't assign detentions at all.
All those things are in place, because they know there is a point when they do need to intervien.
Which brings me back to: if kids can deal with it themselves, then they are already doing it. If they are asking for help, that's because they need help. And it's a horribly shitty thing for a parent to do to ignore and dismiss their child when they need their help.
Edit: she sums it up rather nicely here, actually:
So the “real rules” that we can infer are probably part of established Hogwarts tradition are the same two as those honored by the WW as a whole: name-calling isn’t a crime, and favoritism is to be expected. The others seem to be Dumbledore’s own.
Her own conclusion was that it was Dumbledore and not a part of the culture of Hogwarts, and certainly not the WW as a whole.
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Oh, no. :(
/Rose and Hermione are both certain that Ron only managed to pass his driving test by confunding the examiner./
Oh, my Lord, he's supposed to be a grown man by this point and he's *still* the butt of jokes? Was it really necessary to keep that part from the Epilogue?
/Ron comments that he has no idea where Rose's ambition came from./
Probably Hermione.
/Ginny asks Harry how he'd feel if Albus was sorted into Slytherin./
Of course, if everything had been truly resolved by the end of DH, this wouldn't have even been an issue. If Slytherin was treated as a House like any other, there would've been no need for this question. Which proves that "all was well" was bunk.
/"I'm a Granger-Weasley and you're a Potter - everyone will want to be friends with us, we've got the pick of anyone we want." What a snotty little brat./
What is wrong with this girl? Neither Ron or Hermione assumed that they would have the 'pick of anyone' when they were kids, so why is their daughter acting this way? But of course she ends up in Gryffindor, so we're not supposed to see any parallels between her and Draco.
/The rumour about Astoria and Scorpius is just so stupid I'm not going to dignify it by typing it out./
As others have said before, it makes no sense! It comes out of nowhere. Voldemort has been dead for decades and Scorpius is only eleven. How on earth does anyone think that would work? And we know nothing about Astoria, so why would Voldemort be with her of all people?
/The only notable bits here is that Rose says "thank Dumbledore" when she gets sorted into Gryffindor (ugh)/
So, I guess that Dumbledore has been given the same hallowed status as Merlin.
/Rose comments that "this is not how its supposed to be"/
Rose, shut up. Voldemort's dead, Albus is still your cousin, so stop being such a drama queen. I bet Draco thought that Harry becoming his enemy instead of his friend was "not how it was supposed to be," but he got over it.
/tells Harry that he doesn't need Harry's version of friends (aka a new iteration of Ron and Hermione)/
So, we don't need a female character to be their friend. Rose could've filled that role, but since she's an overbearing snot for no reason, forget that.
/He wants help from the ministry about the rumour thats too stupid to be typed./
Again, why would anyone take it seriously? Including Draco?
/Albus and Rose only need to keep up the pretence of being friends/
Except that they're not just friends. They're cousins. And yet Rose turns her back on him just because he's wearing a green tie.
/upset because Astoria died to give him bad feelings about it/
So, we never get to meet this character in the books and before we get a chance to meet her in the play, she's just killed off. Why? She's the wife of one of the major characters in the series. Would it have been too much trouble to actually give her a personality?
Forget it, I say that she left the country to recuperate and to get away from all the morons who believed that ridiculous rumor, and her 'death' is just a cover story to explain her disappearance. She owls Draco and Scorpius every week to ask if people are still buying that stupid rumor and when they inevitably tell her yes, that's another week that she's spending in France or Japan or wherever.
/Hermione's rebelling against her parents (the brain-meddled, Australian ones) by eating toffee/
Did her parents ever get their memory back? Do they ever get first names?
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And he is all the way up there at Hogwarts. Considering the way the books seem to ignore that teachers might have 'lives' outside (after all, it all comes through HarryVision), JKR might just not even bother to give Prof. Longbottom much of a life outside school - even though she does tell us he married in interview.
And what do our main adults here have in common with Neville other than shared experiences? Unless one wants to always discuss the war, they might not have much to talk about.
However, what you describe also does not sound like Neville to me. Iwould think he would be especially sensitive to 'outcasts' - altho' he might hold Scorp's father against him (a mirror to Snape?) you would think he would make an effort for ASP unless Neville is highly anti-Slytherin?
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The Trolley Witch was a one-off scene, and honestly didn't read as human to me. She's apparently been doing the same job without complaint for 190 years, she talks like an Eldritch Abomination, and her entire motivation is doing that job so as not to let down the superior who installed her in it (who is no longer around). She's the longest-lived character in the Harry Potter canon, and she's literally a servant who is bound to the train and whose entire identity is bound up in that service (I was wondering if she was brainwashed somehow). You'd better believe they'd never portray a male character that way, unless he was also a house-elf or some other supposedly subservient species.
The more I think about the Trolley Witch, the more horrific I think this depiction actually is, because if anything she started off as human and something was done to her to bind her to the job and give her the weird/freaky abilities she uses in the text, as well as confer her abnormal longevity (is she immortal?). And I think the writers did that without a second thought, for shock value and/or humour. Not to mention that her role in the play is to be the EEEVIL WOMAN trying to keep the boys in their place, she's an obstacle for them to overcome and nothing more.
And then there's Delphi, who (I strongly suspect) was shoehorned into existence because they needed someone who wanted Voldy to return and couldn't think of any existing character who might. Any agency she might have had was ruined by the fact she's eventually revealed to be following a prophecy (how much better a villain would she have been if she'd spent ages poring over history books, trying to figure out what changes would work?), and her characterisation is all over the place (Manic Pixie Dream Girl/Tonks clone until the reveal she's evil, then she's basically just a cackling panto villain doing it For Teh Evulz and then in the end it's revealed to be daddy issues all along? I didn't buy it.), and with the inexplicable wacky hair colour and improbably strong magical abilities, she trips pretty much every Canon Immigrant Mary Sue radar imaginable. (Plus the logistics of her existence are very, very difficult to justify.) Genetics make you evil, heritage is destiny!
There may be some potential in Delphi for fanfic authors to explore (I've actually already encountered a thing or two) but I do not think what's actually on page/on stage justifies "rich and compelling" without a great deal of external assistance.
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Good point on the Trolley Witch seeming literally inhuman. Does she even get a name? Maybe she's not actually a person but a golem or something so its less awful.
Re: Delphi. I said Scorpius was the best character, but because of her nefarious plans, evil cackling, OTT melodrama, etc, I think she's going to turn out to be my favourite. I love a woman in control, honestly. Also she's the only character who is actually driving the plot of this car crash so there is that. Shame its just for a man instead of on her own behalf though :(
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The Trolley Witch never gets a name, no. Everyone who refers to her throughout the entire play only ever calls her that. I prefer to think of her as a magical construct because the alternatives are all pretty horrific. If she's human, she's literally the longest-lived human in the Potterverse except bloody Nicolas Flamel.
I do actually think there could have been ways to salvage Delphi somewhat, which I discuss in my own sporking of this. If she didn't end up being motivated by a prophecy that said "the plot of this play is going to happen", but had actually spent ages studying history books trying to figure out what she could change... well, it'd be a start, at least.
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Oh, do you mind providing a link to the sporking? :)
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That said, when it comes to how to fix Delphi I didn't end up having much more to say than "it'd be better to get rid of the prophecy and have her figure out the plan via careful study of history". That would do a lot by itself, in terms of general competence and motivation, but it still situates her in this ludicrous time travel plot. There's not really anything I could come up with to make her origins make sense.
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If you wish to succeed as a jester, you’ll need
To consider each person’s auricular:
What is all right for B would quite scandalize C
(For C is so very particular);
And D may be dull, and E’s very thick skull
Is as empty of brains as a ladle;
While F is F sharp, and will cry with a carp,
That he’s known your best joke from his cradle!
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also, this is a train that does about 6 journeys a year. How does she fill the other 359 days?
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I'm always sad when I'm reminded of how Ron was treated. J.K really disliked that some people liked him more than Hermione. I heard she was pretty delighted with the change in the films, and since she started writing him like he was in the films and he became more and more incompetent I believe it.
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Wait, isn't Ginny supposed to be a professional quidditch player by now? Shouldn't she get recognised all the time by quidditch fans?
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