The Tales of Beedle The Bard
Jan. 3rd, 2009 11:51 am![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
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deathtocapslock <lj-cut text="The Tales of Beedle The Bard">
Hi, first time writer.
* Rowling's intro is dull and unnecessary.
*If wizard and Muggle culture weren't separated when Beedle was writing, why do they have separate fairytales?
*Didn't bards recite poetry and play music, rather than writing stories?
*"the wicked witch has poisoned the apple" - where does it say Snow White's stepmother was a witch? Or that it was a magical poison?
*Beedle's heroines take their fate into their own hands - rather than sit around and wait for a father figure to tell them what to do like certain other heroes?
* "he rather liked Muggles, whom he regarded as ignorant" - ah, probably a Weasley ancestor.
*Beedle's heroes and heroines display kindness, common sense and ingenuity. Pity he didn't write the Harry Potter books, then.
*"Tragic events atop the Hogwarts Astronomy Tower"? But wasn't it not tragic after all, given that Dumbledore was about to die anyway?
*Anyway, on to "The Wizard and the Hopping Pot". Our wizard dispenses free magical medicine. All he asks for in return is the adulation and hero-worship of the locals. He leaves a slipper inside his cooking-pot at death with an unhelpful cryptic note. Probably a Dumbledore ancestor then.
*The son resolves to use the pot as a rubbish pail - um, why?
*"Begone! What care I for your brat's warts?" Why does he insist on using Ye Olde Syntaxe? This is supposedly written in dialect English of the 15th century and would be thus completely unintelligible, not just contain mixed-up sentences. It could be that this is an affectation by Hermione in translation, but JKR's not that subtle. And why is it written in runes (according to the frontispiece) in the 15th century?
*He couldn't sleep with the pot banging - does this imply that he tried to sleep? With a crazed pot jumping around next to him?
*"And I am hungry now!" - too right. Only one of three who come to his door even bothers to say "please". They just assumed they could suck that magic teat forever.
*Bad cheese and sour milk? No wonder the townspeople have become incompetent at farm work if they had a wizard around to magic away their stupidity. And no wonder that guy didn't bother tying up his donkey properly - if it wandered off, a wizard would save it anyway.
*I like to imagine the flying donkey is the same one from Shrek.
*The moral appears to be - if you have a necessary skill, don't teach anyone how to perform it; just do it yourself and say it's magic that no-one else can do. The wizard could have just told them how to identify dittany and to wipe it on the sick baby, thereby transferring his skills to the community; but then they wouldn' t depend on him. By Rowling's logic, we should spend all our aid money on sending food to the Third World, instead of education, peacekeeping, water systems or electricity. After all, those "Muggles" would just make a mess of it!
*It's clear why Dumbledore likes this story. It has his two favourite things: blind obedience to a doddering father figure, and pointlessly cryptic instructions. "But he was teaching his son a lesson!", you say. Yeah - but couldn't he have written, "Dear Unnamed Son. Do everything the villagers tell you to do or the cooking-pot will become slightly irritating. Yours, dead unnamed father." without ENDANGERING A BABY'S LIFE? For all father wizard knew, his son would just run away and leave the whole village to die of idiocy.
*The alternative Hopping Pot story is much more fun.
*Brutus Malfoy: obviously evil. Because evil is in the blood. Also, he has an nasty name.
*"any wizard who shows a fondness for the society of Muggles is of low intelligence" - exhibit A, Arthur Weasley.
*Mrs Bloxam's version sounds a lot less pedestrian. I think I'd prefer that one too.
"The Fountain of Fair Fortune"
*"The Fountain's benison" - someone's been at the thesaurus!
*"The sky was rent with the first ray of sun" - oh, come on. The rising sun's rays do not "rend" the sky. There's a difference between poetic language and faux-etic language.
*I made a pun.
*If you're interested, Altheda (al-thada) is Arabic for "faith", Asha is Hindi for "hope" and Amata suggests the Latin "amat", "she loves", so "love", these being the three Christian virtues. None of them will show any of these virtues, though, "faith" being anathema among areligious wizards, "hope" being unnecessary as everyone knows the fountain works, and "love" - more like desperation, a dumped woman falling for the first vaguely nice man she sees.
*They reach the foot of the hill - but weren't the walls around the garden already on the hill? Is there a second hill on top of the first hill?
*The worm was blind, unlike all other worms of course.
*"Pay me the proof of your pain" - more annoying riddles. Albus is happy.
*A giant worm licking tears off a woman's face - probably the most disturbing image I have ever been forced to imagine. Does Rowling design death metal album covers on the side?
*Maybe she means "Worm" as the archaic term for a dragon, but this should really be said.
*Now they need sweat. Any guesses what the third fluid will be? I'll give you a clue - it determines whether you're good or evil.
* I was wrong! Curse you, Rowling, and your occasional descent into non-cliche.
*How are Muggles supposed to pour their memories into the stream?
*A random collection of herbs thrown together in a minute can cure any fatal illness? God, Snape must be a shit teacher if it takes hours to make a boil-relieving potion.
*Actually, why did they have to make boil-relieving potions at Hogwarts? Who gets boils nowadays? Wizards who never wash themselves except after Quidditch, I suppose.
*Apparently Amata's gift was the gift of being a bitch. Girls, remember, if your boyfriend leaves you it's because he's "cruel and faithless". No other explanation.
*The fountain illustration features magical symbols: Mars, Sun/Moon, Jupiter, Omega, Mercury, All-Seeing Eye, Saturn, Deathly Hallows. These, of course, don't mean anything, they're just meant to look vaguely eldritch. And the winged snake (?) appears to be vomiting on itself.
*And it turned out the magic was in their hearts all along and the fountain wasn't magical! Tough shit for all the kids with leukaemia who climbed up to the fountain in the past.
* Note that none of them makes a heroic sacrifice. The poor witch gets her money, the sick one gets better, the lovelorn witch and the lonely knight get together. In fact it's a total copout of an ending - rather than them having to decide which is most deserving of the blessing, which might possibly lead to conflict, character development or drama, several dei ex machina arrive to end the story.
* Any school play must, of course, involve a love triangle in the cast. It's cliche D-32.8 of high school TV/movies.
*It seems the previous COMC teacher was even stupider than Hagrid. I like to imagine him doing Hagridish things, but in an even more "X-Treme" way. Kettleburn called Filch a "filthy, ugly sneakin' Squib" every day, threw students into lion pits to toughen them up, gave third years an eldritch abomination to fly on their first day, and made sixth years hunt a centaur for their final exam. He lived in a leaf pile behind Hagrid's hut and subsisted on Hagrid's garbage and unicorn blood. He made three kids visit him almost every day and fed them mud pies and bits of concrete, and attempted suicide if they didn't show up. He broke into Hagrid's house and stole the leftover tea from Harry, Ron and Hermione's mugs. His letters were so encrusted with tears, blood, sweat and semen that they were always illegible, but he could only write one word ("TEA") so his three "friends" knew what it meant. He fed one to a Manticore when she didn't take COMC as a NEWT. The school paid him in gin, ten bottles a week. While a student, Kettleburn (the Heir of Hufflepuff) raised a giant robotic badger to remove all the intelligent people from the school. It devoured fifty students and Headmaster Dippet, giving a certain Transfiguration professor the fancy office. So a deal was made in gratitude and Kettleburn got a job for life.
*To raise the badger, press the button on the wall of the Hufflepuff common room with a picture of a robot badger on it. Because thinking hurts.
*If Harry can regrow limbs, why can't Kettleburn? Because cripples are funny? I can imagine Fred and George making hideously cruel puns. "That dragon must have cost you an an arm and a leg", "I have to hand it to you", "There's no 'arm in it", "standing on your own two feet", "Bet you were legless at the pub last night" ['legless' is slang for 'drunk'] Those wacky guys.
*Unsurprising that Hogwarts bans theatre, seeing as there's no sign of fiction, poetry, or art of any kind there either. Who needs culture when you've got violent sport and Gobstones?
*Hahaha! "Lord Voldemort's Favourite Death Eater"! Great joke Albus, I bet the loved ones of the hundreds who were killed by the Death Eaters found it extra funny.
*Is Dumbledore saying that he didn't care Lucius was a Death Eater until he tried to have Dumbledore sacked? And why would Lucius explicitly mention Draco's lust for hot Muggle booty?
"The Warlock's Hairy Heart"
*Gambolling? As in, frolicking around like a pony? What sort of fruity world does our warlock inhabit?
*"Sagacity": again with the thesaurus.
*"What wife could be worthy of Lord Martius, Duke of Stue, the handsome, rich and talented? Search the land for Lady Maria de Sue!"
*It would take a hundred years to find such a woman, but one turned up the next day. A bit like if you were moving around the entire island of Britain (80,000 square miles) at random and happened to land 200 yards away from your school buddies just as they were performing expository dialogue.
*Or if you ran away from home, had no idea what to do and accidentally summoned a bus that could take you anywhere in the country.
*Ick. Way to charm her, warlock. Boys, remember: when you meet a girl for the first time, do not show her your hairy organ of love. She won't like that at all.
*Is Harry's chest monster a hairy heart?
*So trying to be invulnerable by avoiding love is foolish, big D? Bit hypocritical. Maybe JKR intends us to see the contradiction, but probably not.
*Love must be "unbreakable, eternal, unconditional"? Way to fuck up a generation of kids, Rowling. Aren't you a middle-aged woman who's been married twice? Shouldn't your view of Love (capital L) have changed since the age of fourteen?
*Note that it's "A Guide TO Wizards who won't commit", not "A Guide FOR Wizards who won't commit". A book to teach ladies how to snare a husband, given that that's the main task of the witch aged 15-17 (All witches find a nice man at Hogwarts during NEWT years).
"Babbitty Rabbitty and her Cackling Stump"
*Oooh, soldiers and dogs. Those people with magic powers will be quite helpless.
*"The King's Private Magic Master" - sounds just a little naughty, doesn't it?
*Babbitty cleans linen, and is therefore a virtuous woman. Wicked women don't wash.
*I like to imagine the charlatan being "halved" a la the movie Walk Hard.
*The king believes that by cutting a witch in half he has cursed the kingdom. Killing dozens of witches and wizards before this was OK though.
*How foolish: Muggles think the tree can think and talk. Unlike all those inanimate objects that can also talk (and maybe think).
*Wait, she was threatening him with the Cruciatus Curse? But she's the heroine so I suppose she was being "gallant". And if it's not illegal then it's not evil.
"The Tale of the Three Brothers"
* So Death can't see through Invisibility Cloaks, but Dumbledore can?
*Why does Death need a physical cloak to be invisible?
*This story is unimaginably lame. Don't be ambitious: it'll make people murder you. Don't try and resurrect your lost love, even though Love is supposedly "unbreakable, eternal, unconditional". If you were told you could have anything in the world, and you asked for your dead girlfriend back, shouldn't that be presented as a good thing to ask for? Yeah yeah, death is final (unless you're Gary Stu), you've said it a million times Jo. It's not like there are literate children who are unaware of this.
*The best thing to be is passive, and hide from your enemies with a cowardly cloak. "then he greeted Death as an old friend, and went with him gladly, and, equals, they departed this life." WTF? Is life for the elderly that horrific that death is a blessing? How does not fearing Death - an eternal cosmic force - make you his equal? And how does Death depart this life? It's not alive to begin with.
*Why would you engrave a picture of a coffin onto a tombstone?
*Dumbledore's lying. This is unsurprising.
*Knowing the three words "Hope springs eternal" makes you well-read in wizard terms? A whole novel would probably give a wizard an aneurysm.
*"He died as he had lived, in a ferocious duel with a wizard known as Egbert." This implies that his whole life was one long duel with Egbert.
*Godelote alsoe uses Ye Olde Spellinge, withoute anne attempte atte realistick accuracie.
*If Dumbledore doesn't want people to know about the Elder Wand, why does he keep on talking about it?
*"humans have a knack of choosing those things that are precisely worst for them." Therefore, be passive like Harry Potter and don't make a single decision in your entire life. A kindly father figure will sort everything out.
Letter from Baroness Nicholson.
*Don't want to criticise the closing letter, but "most of them are not orphans, but are in care because their families are poor, disabled or from ethnic minorities": W.T.F??? Do they steal gypsy children away from the camps, or something? Don't want them to grow up and rob us, after all.
*Charity seems very worthy, but only 23% of the cover price (£1.61 of £6.99) goes to the charity? Does it honestly cost £5.38 to print a slim A5 hardback? Bloomsbury must be creaming a nice profit. Maybe send a fiver to the CHLG as a direct donation instead.</lj-cut>
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Date: 2009-01-03 06:13 pm (UTC)Also, yeah, it's funny in that quote it does sound as if the children are "in care because their families are from ethnic minorities" as if ethnic minorities can't take care of their children--or shouldn't. You'd think somebody would have caught that and explained it a little better.
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Date: 2009-01-04 12:08 am (UTC)Oh I'm sure we're due for another "clear the air" interview from Jo on that subject.