death to capslock

Cursed Child nonsense

Tue, 23 Aug 2016 19:52:00 GMT

Posted by: dracasadiablo.livejournal.com

I know that there are some excellent snarky Cursed Child sporking, reviews and reactions already. And I fully plan to read them and comment on them. But I wanted to wait until I read the blasted Cursed Child thing.

However I won't be finishing this book. As much as I hate leaving books half read; this is just too much for me. And for my blood pressure.
Still, I would like to ~~rant~~ discuss the part that made me see red and give up on this mess.

( Read more )

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Hermione Granger and the Missed Opportunity

Tue, 29 Sep 2015 21:09:00 GMT

Posted by: sunnyskywalker

I'm re-reading PS/SS, specifically paying attention to things which are part of the overall 7-book plot but which Harry (and we, back in the day) didn't have enough information to flag as relevant. Absolutely fascinating, and I'm sure I'll be posting about some of that soon. This isn't that time, or not exactly. I was also paying closer attention to wizard/Muggle relations, and so I stopped at this little exchange:

"And you could ask your parents if they know who Flamel is," said Ron. "It'd be safe to ask them."

"Very safe, as they're both dentists," said Hermione.

I can't help but picture the AU where she does ask, and her father says, "Flamel? Wasn't there something about him in that history program on the telly last night?" And her mother replies, "Yes, something about alchemy, wasn't it? Was he really a wizard, Hermione dear? How exciting!" And then Hermione comes back after the break all bright-eyed, very pleased as she shows the boys her photocopies of Flamel's entry in her Muggle library's encyclopedia. "No wonder he wasn't in any of the books on modern magical discoveries, he was born so long ago that witches and wizards still lived openly among Muggles, can you imagine? Do you think alchemists can really make a Philosopher's Stone?" Which reminds Harry of Flamel and Dumbledore's alchemical partnership on the Chocolate Frog Card, and off they go.

The schedule of events would hardly be different from the actual book, but the kids would have discovered that Muggles aren't just helpless, pitiable lumps. Wouldn't that have been something.

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Harry Potter Abridged! HBP Chapter 9

Fri, 29 May 2015 18:49:00 GMT

Posted by: sweettalkeress.livejournal.com

( Read Chapter 9 )

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Harry Potter Abridged! OotP Chapter 16

Sun, 10 Aug 2014 18:32:00 GMT

Posted by: sweettalkeress.livejournal.com

[Sometime later, Hermione broaches the subject of Harry teaching Defense Against the Dark Arts again.]

( Read Chapter 16 )

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Miss Granger and the Centaurs

Sat, 08 Mar 2014 08:32:00 GMT

Posted by: terri-testing.livejournal.com

Miss Granger and the Centaurs

Back in the comments to “The Missing Mirror” spork, the issue of what, precisely, Hermione hoped to accomplish by dragging Umbridge into the Forbidden Forest came up again. And it was clear from the comments that people didn’t remember precisely what canon told us about Hermione’s knowledge of the centaurs. Specifically, everyone was forgetting that she’d encountered the centaurs in Hagrid’s company less than a week before she led Madam Umbridge out to meet them.

When Hagrid took her and Harry to be introduced to his little brother (OotP 30).

So in evaluating what Hermione might have expected to happen, we need first to look at what she learned from the previous encounter. Let’s look at it.

Before they entered the Forest, we read:

( Hagrid )

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Thoughts on Hermione and Bias

Fri, 07 Feb 2014 22:07:00 GMT

Posted by: terri-testing.livejournal.com

Oneandthetruth’s sporking of DH 23, specifically the detailed comparison of how Jo described Hermione’s torture to how the author had earlier treated Xeno’s, made me realize that Jo had used the exact same technique, with similar effect, in earlier books.

( ”Specifically” )

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Sun, 02 Feb 2014 02:00:00 GMT

Posted by: ladyzenobia.livejournal.com

http://www.hypable.com/2014/02/01/jk-rowling-ron-hermione-relationship-regret-interview/

“I wrote the Hermione/Ron relationship as a form of wish fulfillment,” she says. “That’s how it was conceived, really. For reasons that have very little to do with literature and far more to do with me clinging to the plot as I first imagined it, Hermione ended up with Ron.”

Have you seen this? I think it's interesting that she said that she was clinging to the plot as she first imagined it. That explains a lot about the epilogue!

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Deathly Hallows, Chapter 23: Malfoy Manor

Thu, 02 Jan 2014 19:11:00 GMT

Posted by: oneandthetruth.livejournal.com

Beethoven was right: It’s vastly harder to rewrite something you’ve finished than to write something entirely new. Especially when you have to revert to HTML because that’s the only way to enter tables on LJ. Aaaaagggggghhhhh!!!!!

I apologize if they look weird, but I followed the instructions, and that's how they turned out. However, the instructions were posted almost eight years ago, and LJ has changed its programming some since then. It's also possible I couldn't transfer my tables because I wrote this on iPages, not Word.

Are everybody’s barf bags at the ready? All right, then, let’s go!( Read more... )

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Hermione, or the Ghoul in Pajamas

Thu, 06 Jun 2013 04:56:00 GMT

Posted by: terri-testing.livejournal.com

Never, never pontificate without re-reading the original scene.

Here's what, precisely, Hermione says to Harry about her preparations to take off with him, specifically about her decision to modify her parents' memories so that "they're convinced they're really called Wendell and Monica Wilkins and that their life's ambition is to move to Australia, which they've now done.

"That's to make it more difficult to track them down and interrogate them about me--or you, because unfortunately, I've told them quite a bit about you."

She says it outright.

Ron's stratagem, the ghoul, is an attempt to protect his family from reprisals; Hermione's, to protect herself and Harry from the Grangers' knowledge of them. Not to protect them, or to protect them from being used as hostages to influence her.

And, y'know, it was a good thought. I mean, just imagine if her parents had blabbed about taking their little girl camping in the Forest of Dean.

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Our Reading of Hermione

Sun, 26 May 2013 21:49:00 GMT

Posted by: terri-testing.livejournal.com

Our Reading of Hermione

I trust none of them. Only my existence
thrown out in the world like a towchain
battered and twisted in many chance connections
being pulled this way, pulling in that.

… I don’t trust them, but I’m learning how to use them.

Adrienne Rich, “For a Sister,” in Diving into the Wreck

I’ve been thinking about a suggestion made a while ago (in the sporking of chapter nine?) in a debate about our reading of Hermione: that the contradiction between chapters six and nine of DH, between Hermione claiming to have memory-charmed her parents and Hermione claiming only to know the theory, could be resolved by assuming that Hermione had lied to her friends to protect her parents. Madderbrad, of course, was all over that idea, but I had reservations. Unfortunately, my reservations come from the same source as Madderbrad’s enthusiasm: our prejudices about the character. The suggestion clears Hermione of one of the most problematic crimes she committed in Harry’s service, and so runs counter to my perception that she had degenerated morally under the influence of Albus, Hogwarts and the Wizarding World.

That Hermione should have Obliviated her parents and sent them off to Australia seemed to me to be a crime in line with her past, increasingly lawless, behavior. (Only for a good cause, of course!) So the suggestion violated how I’d come to read Hermione’s moral progression (or regression).

But the suggestion that, instead, she’d simply lied to Harry that she’d done so, to persuade HIM of her dedication (while hiding her parents’ true whereabouts from him, lest he inadvertently betray them to Tom), seemed…. wrong to me on another level.

True, that suggestion very neatly cleared up one of JKR’s egregious factual contradictions.

But I found it harder to credit that Hermione would deliberately deceive Harry, than that she would Obliviate her parents.

Oneandthetruth’s discussion of spiritual stages gives me a framework to try to articulate why I read her that way: why it seems to me that lying to Harry (and possibly Ron) about her parents seems out of character for canon Hermione, while shoving them out of danger—and out of Hermione’s way--under a memory charm, does not.

( ”I )

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Hermoine, compassion, and idealism

Sun, 07 Apr 2013 09:06:00 GMT

Posted by: malic-ba.livejournal.com

Hi everyone

First post, hope this works!

This started out as a comment in response to DH chapter 9, below, but I decided to put it where it can be seen more easily because I'd really like to learn what people think.

The discussion was about Hermione as compassionate and/or ruthless, which grew out of a discussion of her changing her parents' identities.

To me it seems that she cares about the rights of others as an ideal, from her own perspective. That does show compassion but it's patronising. I think that's something pretty common among Western do-gooders (and probably do-gooders more generally) and it's something I have to struggle against myself. It's entirely likely in someone so young.

The scary thought is her level of potential power and the lack of guidance in the WW to help her really consider those she's trying to help. Ron points out that house elf values are different - whether because he actually considers them or to protect the status quo - but Hermione doesn't respect anything he says. Her approach agrees perfectly with the most 'enlightened' wizarding attitudes to muggles, and there are plenty of wizards who've grown up with them. I can easily see a 'greater good' type attitude developing as Hermione gains power in the Ministry.

Since JKR worked for Amnesty I wonder if this aspect of Hermione is based on what she found there?

Also, I wonder what message she was trying to send. Is it supposed to be a good or bad part of Hermoine's character? Or, with unusual subtlety for these books, both? The message almost seems to be that 'do-gooding' is pointless - SPEW is a misguided joke, compassion is wasted on goblins and giants, and no-one questions the inferiority of muggles. At the same time I'm sure it's meant to show Hermoine's courage and goodness.

What does anyone think? Is JKR really trying to turn people off idealism? If so, does that have anything to do with the actual wishes of the 'helpees'?

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New COS Content on Pottermore

Tue, 20 Nov 2012 17:18:00 GMT

Posted by: dracasadiablo.livejournal.com

( The Polyjuice Potion )

( JKR about The Polyjuice Potion )

( Ghost )

( Chamber of Secrets )

( The sword of Gryffindor )

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Hermione’s True Crime(s): Her Betrayal of the DA in Context

Fri, 28 Oct 2011 08:53:00 GMT

Posted by: terri-testing.livejournal.com

Much of the tendency of the “Marietta’s True Crime” debate was to put Marietta and Hermione on a moral see-saw. The unspoken premise was, the more justified (or sympathetic) Marietta was in approaching Umbridge and telling her about a certain illegal student organization, the less so was Hermione for “punishing” Marietta by mutilating her, perhaps for life.

(Only “perhaps,” fine. Just as it’s only “perhaps” that Dolores scarred Harry permanently with that Blood Quill. We know from Mad-Eye, Albus, Arthur, Bill, Draco, and Harry himself that magical injuries can leave lifelong scars. But still, it’s not explicitly stated in canon that Harry, fantastically old, died with that scar still on his hand. For anything we know, it vanished one page after its last mention in DH. So no one can accuse Umbridge of scarring Harry for life, right? But in canon, the last we saw, Harry bore “I must not tell lies” engraved into his flesh. In canon, the last we saw of Marietta, she was trying desperately to hide the word “Sneak” blazoned across her face.)

Now, in schoolkid morality, tattling on someone to the teacher is a crime. Tattling on a friend, after explicitly promising not to tell, is the worst crime possibly imaginable!

We, however, are adults, and have larger imaginations.

And Hermione’s betrayal of her schoolfellows (and Hermione’s other crimes) may be judged without reference to Marietta’s transgression.

( First )

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Marietta's Real Crime

Wed, 12 Oct 2011 00:43:00 GMT

Posted by: mary-j-59.livejournal.com

In the discussion about "The Centaur and the Sneak", Dracasdiablo made a very interesting point. She stated that Marietta was a bad friend to Cho. After thinking about this for a while, I have to admit that I actually agree. The quotes that follow will, I hope, make clear why I think this. ( Read more... )

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Oh, TV Tropes...!

Wed, 05 Oct 2011 22:42:00 GMT

Posted by: sweettalkeress.livejournal.com

Quite honestly, the Harry Potter stuff on that site has gotten to the point where I can't read it because just about everything is fawning over how great and super-special-awesome the series is, oh, and how Snape is an evil douchebag who wanted to get Harry and James killed so he could keep Lily. But this... this makes me want to scream:

"Hermione... [is] one of the smartest and more pro-active females in the whole Harry Potter canon and English literature in general"

WHAT THE FUCK?!?!?!

How could they make such a claim?! Hermione is a better heroine than, say, Tiffany Aching?! How about Eliza Doolittle?! And I'm sure you could come up with other examples.

No, no, in Harry Potter it seems fairly obvious that the most powerful women in the series are antagonists. Sure, Hermione's perfectly independent and capable, but in the last several books it's like she becomes Harry's servant because he's too lazy to do anything himself!

God damn it, Harry Potter wouldn't bother me so much if everyone didn't insist it was the greatest thing since sliced bread!

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Link of potential interest

Wed, 03 Aug 2011 00:15:00 GMT

Posted by: sharaz-jek.livejournal.com

Would that this had been the case...

http://globalcomment.com/2011/in-praise-of-hermione-granger-series/

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Miss Granger’s Intelligence

Wed, 01 Jun 2011 14:57:00 GMT

Posted by: terri-testing.livejournal.com

“When to her lute Corinna sings
neither words nor music are her own….

Not that it is done well, but
that it is done at all? Yes, think of the odds
or shrug them off forever!

… Bemused by gallantry, we hear
our mediocrities over-praised,
indolence read as abnegation,
slattern thought styled intuition…”

from “Snapshots of a Daughter-in-Law” by Adrienne Rich, 1958-60

( In )

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Marrying In: My Take on the R/H Ship

Wed, 23 Mar 2011 20:09:00 GMT

Posted by: terri-testing.livejournal.com

Marrying In: Pureblood Wizards’ Attraction for Muggleborn Witches

This is actually a response to the numerous posts about the Hermione/Ron ship in the responses to GoF 10: Mayhem at the Ministry.

Sorry, I’m very slow. But I think this is relevant to that debate.

( Who )

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